Chris Claremont is currently off work recuperating from health problems.  As a result, we've got guest scripters on Uncanny X-Men and New Excalibur, together with what seems to be at least six months of Frank Tieri stories upcoming on the latter title.  Despite the insistence that Claremont is merely taking a break, the circumstances rather suggest that it's going to be some considerable time before he would be in a position to return.

It is, therefore, entirely possible that the eighteen-issue X-Men: The End really will be Chris Claremont's final contribution to the X-Men.  Fortunately, he must have been working ahead on this book, because it's still scripted by him.  If Claremont's swansong does turn out to be this issue, then at least that would be strangely appropriate.

In the circumstances, nothing would please me more than to tell you how good the comic is.  Unfortunately, with the best will in the world, I simply can't do that.  If anything, this final issue illustrates the complaint I've been making about the series for the last two years: what on earth is any of this doing in a series called X-Men: The End?

The history of The End books is hit and miss.  The best ones tend to be those that go for the jugular, hit the core themes of the character, and provide the closure that can never be achieved in an ongoing series.  The Hulk and Punisher books, for example, work in that way.  The more a story deviates from that formula, the less successful it tends to be.  Wolverine: The End is unbearable dross, and X-Men: The End is simply trying to do too many things at once.

The first volume was marred by an ill-advised attempt to include every character known to the X-books, no matter how peripheral, resulting in a slew of confusing and cluttered subplots.  Subsequent volumes have improved on that, but still placed most of their emphasis on space opera and the Shi'ar.  Yet these were never remotely close to being key themes for the X-Men, so Claremont finds himself trying to wrap up their story while striking out in the wrong direction entirely. 

The B-plot, in which Kitty Pryde runs for mayor of Chicago, is much closer to the mark, but never really developed in any interesting way.  Kitty runs for office.  Kitty makes speeches about tolerance.  Her opponent, a one-dimensional bigot called Alice Tremaine, makes hate speeches.  Everyone wrings hands and waits for the vote.  There's not really a story to it beyond that.

Up to this point, I've largely written off the series as a book that was simply doing a big space opera storyline, and ignoring the premise of The End books altogether.  On that basis, I'd classified it as a story that would probably entertain the core Claremont fanbase but which could be cheerfully ignored by everyone else.  But remarkably, in the final issue, it suddenly turns out that Claremont wants to provide closure for the X-Men concept after all, even though he's done nothing whatsoever to set up his finale in the previous seventeen issues. 

Hitherto, it's been the X-Men and assorted outer space villains punching one another.  Now, suddenly, we have everyone standing around and making angst-ridden speeches about reconciliation and trust.  Cassandra Nova suddenly decides to be nice.  Professor X announces out of nowhere that he's been tainted by fear and distrust, which is why the X-Men have been hiding away in their mansion instead of interacting in the community.  This leads the X-Men to disband, even though none of the characters who survive the story are actually present in the room to hear this revelation take place.

There follows a pass-the-sick-bag epilogue set twenty years into the future, where Kitty Pryde is the President, and Alice Tremaine has inexplicably seen the light and become tolerant.  The less said about that, the better.

Now, somewhere in there, we have the glimmer of an interesting idea.  The X-Men's mission is to preach harmony between humans and mutants.  They've done that by hiding in a mansion and fighting bad guys.  A final revelation persuades them that they should be doing it in the community and living the ideal, so that's the end of the X-Men.  This is all fine.  This would be a perfectly acceptable storyline for X-Men: The End.

But it's not the story that Claremont has been telling for the last seventeen issues.  It doesn't even have anything to do with that story.  We've had almost two years of random violence, and suddenly out of nowhere everyone is having grand revelations twelve pages from the end.  It just doesn't work.  At best you might argue that the Kitty Pryde subplot goes some way to build this conclusion, but it isn't really a plot at all, since nothing actually happens.  It doesn't illustrate the point in any persuasive way, and when Alice Tremaine comes on at the end as a reformed character, it falls flat because there's nothing in the series to foreshadow it.  And, you know, he's had seventeen issues.  If you can't set up the finish properly in that time, it's hard to make excuses.

I was never expecting to give this a good review, but I was at least hoping to be tactfully upbeat and say that it was decent if you like that sort of thing.  But I really can't.  If this is the finish that Claremont was building towards, then what the hell was he thinking over the last seventeen issues?  They certainly don't dramatise any of the points this story tries to make.

Rating: D+

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