World War Hulk has been going well so far, but right from the word go, World War Hulk: X-Men has leapt out as a questionable idea.

The basic premise of World War Hulk is that the Illuminati - Mr Fantastic, Iron Man, Black Bolt and Dr Strange - fired the Hulk into space in an attempt to get rid of him.  Now he's back, and he's very angry. 

So why, you may ask, is the Hulk fighting the X-Men?  Ah well, it's because Professor X is also a member of the Illuminati.  He was missing at the time, and he had nothing to do with firing the Hulk into space.  But he's still a member of the Illuminati and, as one speech balloon right near the end helpfully clarifies, the Hulk somehow extracted this information from Black Bolt.  Presumably through the medium of charades.

Having learned this, the Hulk has come to confront Professor X and find out whether he would have supported the whole "firing the Hulk into space" plan.

No, really, that's the concept.  The Hulk has come to find out what Professor X would have done if he'd been in a story that he wasn't in.  That's the big idea of this whole miniseries.  Lame, isn't it?

Creative team Chris Gage and Andrea DiVito do their best smoke and mirrors job to disguise the lack of a point.  Gage throws in all sorts of discussions of unrelated X-Men storylines, even down to Mercury's recent encounter with the Facility in New X-Men.  (Relevance to present storyline: nil.)  There are some cute character moments as the New X-Men trainees get to fight the Hulk, and the Beast is well written as the one proper X-Man around to lead them.  I can't fault the execution.  It's just a ridiculously weak premise.

Consider the cliffhanger, in which the Hulk asks Professor X what he would have done.  What are we being set up for here?  If Xavier says he agreed with the Illuminati, then it's two more issues of random fighting.  If he says that he disagreed, then following through with the plot logic, the Hulk thanks him for his support and heads home.  Come to think of it, bearing in mind that the Hulk showed up expressly asking to talk to the Professor, why did the Beast think it was a good idea to hurl trainee students at him in a pre-emptive attack?  Why not just fetch the Professor, if he was going to come out anyway?

It's a pointless cash-in, and while it's done well enough to be entertaining, it becomes more and more irritating the more I think about it.  World War Hulk is a straightforward central premise: the Hulk fights things.  It's got obvious tie-in possibilities: the Hulk's supporting cast meet lesser heroes.  It doesn't need random Hulk/X-Men minis, especially given that the X-Men long since ceased to be Marvel's top-drawer property.  Books like this dilute all the characters and stories involved.

Rating: B-

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