Finally, X-Men: The End is now halfway through the first book.  And we're still in the set-up phase.

I imagine anyone who cares has already made up their mind on this series, and whatever I say about it now is completely academic.  The hardcore Claremont fans will, naturally, adore it.  The rest of us get to become increasingly restless as any sense of momentum continues to get lost under the pedantic urge to include every character under the sun.

Apparently there's a plague which is causing mutants to lose their powers.  It seems to have been going for a while, and you might have thought we'd have heard about it before issue #3.  There's a completely new subplot with Dani Moonstar in Neverland, and another one with minor characters from the spin-off books (M and X-23, of all people) hunting down Sage, who in turn seems to have something in mind involving Malice.

And what does all this have to do with the return of Phoenix?  Uh...  Well, Sinister seems to think that the return of Phoenix is going to hasten... something or other... so he's going to do... something.  The X-Men are... kind of hanging around, vaguely hoping that a plot will become apparent to them.  And Jean is lounging around on a spaceship waiting for... er, for something to happen.  Basically, other than Sinister (who won't explain what's going on), nobody has a clue what's happening, and indeed nothing seems to be happening, other than everyone having a general sense of urgency seemingly unrelated to anything that might actually be happening.

Here we have the polar opposite of the decompressed book, that somehow manages to end up with much the same problem.  By throwing in everything but the kitchen sink, the book ends up with a horde of subplots, all of which move at a snail's pace.  Halfway through the first miniseries, the plot remains entirely oblique - there is no tension because there has not even been the vaguest indication of what the threat might be or what's supposed to be at stake here.  And we're still not getting into any of the themes you might expect to see from a book called X-Men: The End - three issues in, we haven't even established who's on the X-Men team at the moment, if they're still active at all!

Those who like it will love it; everyone else can safely give it a wide berth.

Rating: C+

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