After the slight misfire of Prodigy's nightmare future, New X-Men returns to its normal agenda as Josh and Rahne's relationship is exposed.

This subplot has been simmering for over a year now, and it feels like it needed a bigger pay-off.  What we get is something relatively low-key, where Kevin tells Scott and Emma, Rahne gets called into an office, and a couple of people storm out of rooms.  It's the way you'd play it on a TV soap opera.  Which is fine as far as it goes, but it really feels like it needed a bit more.  Especially when it's only getting one issue, compared to the two that were devoted to David's head trip.

Of course, we'll have the characters dealing with the fallout of this story for some time to come.  Or at least, dealing with it as far as stepping around the crossovers permits.  Next issue is a belatedly tie-in to "Enemy of the State", apparently dealing with the death of Northstar.  And then in June, issue #16 begins a four-part House of M tie-in which isn't even set in the mainstream timeline.  Which means that of the next seven issues, five are crossovers.  To be fair, sales on New X-Men have been perpetually slipping since the book was launched and it could probably use the help.  Nonetheless, it's hard to avoid concluding that there's going to be some really choppy pacing on the soap opera plotlines which lie at the heart of the book.

Anyhow, back to this issue.  It's a perfectly good story idea.  It's handled okay.  But as so often with this book, it never quite seems to achieve lift-off.  It's full of good ideas that feel like they could have been done just a little bit better, and it makes for a slightly frustrating book.

Rating: B

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