The main problem with Craig Kyle and Chris Yost's run on New X-Men so far as been excessive levels of carnage.  I was amused to see them defending their first year in a recent interview by arguing that deaths were much more dramatic with only a handful of mutants left.  Absolutely true - but that only goes to show how far over the top they went, by hammering the death toll to the point where it ceased to have any dramatic weight whatsoever.

Well, with "Mercury Rising", Kyle and Yost finally seem to be getting their psychopathic tendencies under control.  Strictly speaking, they didn't quite manage to contain themselves for the whole story - they bumped off Mammomax in part 2 in a cheap attempt to crank up the drama.  But hey, it's Mammomax.  Who really cares?

Dead elephant notwithstanding, New X-Men finally seems to be easing off on the angst and striking a better balance between action and character.  The book seemed to be losing sight of the need for its teenage characters who have some kind of life outside mass slaughter, and "Mercury Rising" has taken us at least a little way back in that direction.

The plot is straightforward.  The Facility - the evil scientists who created X-23 in the first place - are hired by the mad Reverend Stryker to make a genetically engineered mutant-hunter.  Even though he died in the last arc, the Facility have cashed the cheque and figure they might as well go ahead with the job.  For entirely arbitrary reasons, they capture Mercury so that they can use her DNA to finish their lovely new creature.  X-23 and Hellion go after her, and the big fight ensues.

I suspect a major reason for doing this story was to bring the Facility into a present-day story, and cross-promote the current X-23: Target X miniseries.  Since X-23 seems to be a popular character if sales are anything to go by, it's hard to fault them for that - though they need to beware of turning the book into X-23 & Pals.

Still, it works quite nicely as a four-issue action story, and it gives a little more prominence to Mercury, one of the most likeable and underdeveloped members of the cast.  It also provides a context where Hellions gets to be more of a conventional hero, although I'm wary that they're showing us a side of his personality which actually makes him less interesting in the long run.  Paco Medina's bright, clean artwork does a decent job of selling this as an action story rather than another four months of misery, which it could easily have been in the wrong hands.

There's still work to be done, though.  The pacing is a little curious.  The Facility's agent Kimura is summarily despatched in a very strange epilogue which belatedly tries to give her a personality and then promptly kicks her to the curb, as if Kyle and Yost were desperately rushing through a story that they forgot to tell earlier on.  And most of the team are sidelined throughout the story.  Since the New X-Men were overshadowed by their guest stars for most of the previous arc, we're long overdue for a story where the title characters all get to function as a team, and a proper team dynamic can emerge.

Room for improvement, but definitely back on the right track.

Rating: B

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