New X-Men #11 is the second half of "Too Much Information", in which David learns what would happen if his powers were enhanced.

Well... actually, when you stop to think about it, he doesn't, really.  But thinking about it isn't really advisable, because if you think about it, the story falls apart.

Last issue, David asked Emma to remove the mental blocks which keep him from retaining knowledge that he copied.  Emma obliges, and we embark on an alternate-future story where David becomes an "ends justify the means" character, and everything goes horribly wrong.  But wait!  Of course, it's not real at all, because it's all just an illusion projected by Dani so that he knows why he had the mental block in the first place.

And that's the bit that doesn't work.  Because the idea of the story is that David is meant to learn from what he sees in this illusion, and understand why it's a bad idea to maximise his powers.  And if he was seeing events which were actually going to happen, then that would be fair enough.  But that's not what Dani does; she does illusions based on your irrational fears.

This is a particularly irrational story, since it seems to work on the assumption that the more David knows, the more callous and unfeeling he becomes.  Why?  What's the connection?

What exactly is the moral of this story supposed to be?  As near as I can make out, it's "Surrender to your irrational fears, because they're probably well founded."  Or possibly, "Stay ignorant, because knowledge makes you evil."  I can't believe that Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir set out to write either one of those, but that's what they've produced.  I think they were heading for some kind of point about unearned achievements, but it falls flat; David may not earn his knowledge in this future, but he's still gone out and acted on it, and in that sense his achievements are earned.

Paco Medina's art is pleasant enough, but he struggles hugely with the requirement to draw characters set 18 years in the future.  Most of them look completely unchanged.

Doesn't really work.

Rating: C

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