According to the title, New X-Men #145 is the final part of "Assault On Weapon Plus."  But, as Grant Morrison often points out in interviews, he doesn't actually write in arcs any more.  What we've actually hit is the break point at the end of the next trade paperback.  And since it ends on a cliffhanger, the people who are reading the series in six-monthly instalments are going to be really annoyed.  Ah well.

This issue takes Fantomex, Wolverine and Cyclops up to the Weapon Plus orbiting satellite, which by a happy coincidence is shortly to go live and make a bid of the global destruction of the entire mutant gene-line.  Weapon XV, who went flying up to the satellite at the end of the previous issue, promptly lies down and accepts what the Weapon Plus people tell him, as is his wont.  So it's up to Fantomex and the X-Men to get rid of them - though Wolverine's more interested in reading the computer files.

I suppose I should mention the obvious objection to this story.  Given that Fantomex' plan is to blow up a manned space station, presumably killing everyone aboard, it's a little odd that neither Wolverine nor (especially) Cyclops seems to object.  In fact, Cyclops is perfectly happy to play along.  It's an odd thing to just gloss over.

We don't actually get to see all of the Weapon Plus files, but it does indeed appear that Morrison is trying to cement them as a power behind the throne for all of the various North American government-sponsored super soldier projects that have turned up over the years.  Captain America is indeed established as Weapon One (with a throwaway reference to a Weapon Zero presumably accounting for Truth: Red White & Black).  In a curious nod to continuity from a different series altogether, it appears that Nuke was a product of the Weapon Nine Project.  I suppose it does make a kind of sense to tie these various projects together, although quite what the earlier ones have got to do with anti-mutant sentiment is far from clear.

Meanwhile, Morrison's pet theme of metafiction rears its head.  Basically, the Weapon Plus Program's plan turns out to be to create a loyal JLA of Super-Sentinels who'll be the marketable, acceptable face of genocide.  All of them have been carefully designed to fit obligatory genre roles, and the general implication is that Fantomex is an attempt at Batman gone horribly awry.  If you thought that the story was trying too hard to sell you on the idea of Fantomex's inherent coolness then... well, it seems that may have been precisely the point.

It reads a little oddly for characters who live in a world of superheroes to talk about the Super-Sentinels as "scripted" characters, and as a "Saturday morning cartoon come to life."  But that's how the Weapon Plus Program - as represented by Sublime - insist on talking.  The idea of fictional characters having some degree of reality and autonomy is one of Morrison's pet ideas, and I have a suspicion that we may be about to take a headlong dive into this area.

Regardless, despite my reservations, we're getting into some interesting territory here.  And it's got a good old-fashioned cliffhanger to boot.

Rating: A-

back | continue