New Mutants and X-Treme X-Men both devote their final issues to the aftermath of the Grant Morrison run.  It's a slightly odd way to round things off because, with the school simply being rebuilt, neither title is actually impacted all that directly.

There's also an odd sense of delayed reaction, as the other books finally get around to noticing that the X-Men's school was blown up.  That took place back in New X-Men #147, which shipped last October, but it seems the other books have been waiting until now to acknowledge the whole storyline in one go.

Writers Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir sidestep the remit.  While a lot of the story involves people standing around gawping at the wreckage of the Mansion, the real focus is on taking the opportunity to reunite some of the original New Mutants, and on bringing back Donald Pierce for a final battle to round off the title.  Pierce was the villain in the New Mutants' origin story, so this provides a bit of symmetry, rather than just referring back to an earlier story.

There's some nice interplay between the characters, and a perfectly acceptable action sequence, albeit that artist Khary Randolph goes way over the top at a few points.  Donald Pierce's FBI agent nephew is a little over-convenient, but still a fairly interesting character.  (One irritating legal nitpick: you can't actually be extradited from France to face the death penalty, because the European Convention on Human Rights doesn't allow it.  So Pierce's deal with the government isn't much of a compromise.)

I get a feeling of obligation from the whole thing - the book is going through the motions of reacting to a storyline which is technically a major event for the characters but which the creators don't really want to have hanging over them for years to come.  When New X-Men #1 ships later this month, one imagines that the status quo will be pretty much restored to where it was a couple of issues ago.

With the book having scrabbled to get back on schedule at all in time for Reload, they could probably have got away with skipping this issue altogether and just acknowledging the rebuild in New X-Men #1.  Nonetheless, there's entertaining material worked in along the way, when the book isn't caught up in the ripple effect from another title.

Rating: B+

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