Here's an odd one.  I kind of feel obliged to review New X-Men #46, because it's the final issue of the series.  Admittedly, something called Young X-Men appears to be taking its place.  But they haven't solicited it yet, and really, it could be anything.

So this is the end for New X-Men, the second incarnation of a book that has never really quite worked.  New Mutants was too domestic, too quiet, and too light on the genuinely fantastic.  New X-Men has swung far too far in the other direction, with any sense of subtlety or personality being lost beneath a seemingly endless bloodbath.  Yet the characters have plenty of potential.  Perhaps the third time will be the charm.

I've said all this before, so there's not much point going into any more detail.  Frankly, New X-Men #46 isn't much of a final issue.  It's the penultimate chapter of "Messiah Complex", a crossover in which the New X-Men have played only a peripheral role.  The perennial problem with these line-wide crossovers is to find an excuse for all the books to take part.  "Messiah Complex" is basically an X-Men story, but the creators have given Madrox a big role in order to justify X-Factor's involvement. 

What about the New X-Men?  Well, they have two main justifications to be here.  First, the story used the Purifiers, who are principally New X-Men villains.  But as the story has turned out, the Purifiers were basically a red herring at the outset, rather than being more fundamental to the plot.  They won't be around for next week's finale, from the look of it.  Second, there's been a long-running subplot with Predator X, also a New X-Men villain.  That finally pays off this week as the creature attacks the New X-Men, and Pixie has a panic attack, teleporting the whole fight off to the X-Men for help.

It's a passable excuse for having the New X-Men there, but it still feels like something which has been tagged on to the main story.  The reality is that this is mainly an issue about the X-Men and the Marauders fighting each other over the baby, with the title characters reduced to a few pages of subplot.  It's not a particularly dignified way for a series to meet its demise.

Mind you, as a chapter of "Messiah Complex", it works just fine.  It's clear by this point that the story is simply going to be a fight for control of the baby, and its actual significance won't be explored until later on.  I'm not sure I would have dragged matters out quite that far - after all, "Messiah Complex" itself was trailed by "Endangered Species", which was several months long in its own right.  But as an action story, it does work.

Perhaps the oddest decision in this issue is the elimination of Mr Sinister, a character who's been portrayed as virtually invincible for twenty years, but can now be taken out by Mystique.  The story tries to set up an unusual method of killing him, but it still seems decidedly out of whack with his normal power levels.  I have a vague recollection that Sinister was whining about his powers being reduced in the X-Men: Colossus - Bloodline miniseries, but that was two years ago, nobody read it, and I don't recall any mention of it in this storyline, nor in the build-up.

Still, that aside, it's another solid issue of action.  As the final issue of New X-Men, it doesn't work at all, but I'm choosing not to see it that way.

Rating: B

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