The orders on New X-Men #151 should be interesting to see, because Marvel already released the entire story (well, minus one page, but whatever) in Wizard.  I suspect a significant audience overlap, which ought to mean rather low sales for this issue.

Anyway, for those of us who don't read Wizard, this is the start of "Here Comes Tomorrow", the final Grant Morrison arc.  After that... well, here be monsters.  This takes us into one of the standard X-Men concepts Grant hasn't used yet - the dystopian future.

Morrison is going with the spirit of the dystopian future rather than anything particularly connected to "Days of Futures Past".  Manhattan's a crater, the X-Men are led by Cassandra Nova (which vaguely mirrors Magneto leading the surviving X-Men in "Days of Futures Past"), and the Beast is the main villain.

To be honest, this has never been one of my favourite aspects of the X-Men mythos.  "Days of Futures Past" was a perfectly good story, but not so good that it could withstand being battered into the ground over the next twenty years.  This is basically a set-up issue, and while there are some mildly interesting ideas in there, I can't say I'm particularly enthralled by it.  Despite a brave (and semi-justifiable) effort to sell us on the idea by referencing the fall of the Roman Empire, the whole idea is one that I lost interest in years ago.  I'm much more interested in the couple of pages with Scott and Emma at the end, to be quite honest.  This leaves me distinctly underwhelmed.  Maybe once the story gets underway...

One thing that does interest me is the positioning of Beast as the main villain.  In marked contrast to the other core members of this cast, Morrison hasn't appeared to do much with the Beast.  It may be that this arc - which supposedly is going to contain some of the explanations for what's gone before - will shed some light on why Morrison was so keen to have him on the cast.

Marc Silvestri turns up on art, some twelve years after leaving the X-books for greener pastures at Image.  Apparently Top Cow come as a package deal these days, since Silvestri comes accompanied by the Top Cow inkers and colourists.  Hire me, hire my studio.  I rather liked Silvestri's art when he was first involved in the X-books, and kind of lost interest when he headed off to Image.  I found his Image work a bit too glossy for my tastes, and frankly, I stopped following his career years ago.  This issue isn't bad, though - it's still got all that fiddly crosshatching, which I could live without, but it's got a looser, sketchier feel to it.

Not, by a long stretch, one of Morrison's better issues.  Still, we'll have to see how it all ties together, since this is supposed to be more than just an epilogue.

Rating: B

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