Ah, Soldier X.

In many ways I want to like Soldier X - after all, it seems willing to fly completely in the face of readers' expectations, and it's certainly trying to take the character in new, and unusual, directions.  But the approach it's taken is a very difficult one to pull off.

As the story cheerfully admits in the opening scenes, this storyline is downright absurd in many respects.  There are great chunks of it which don't make much sense.  This is not necessarily a problem - it plays into the central theme of Darko Macan's run, which is that Nate is looking for some sort of meaning and purpose in his life, but is frustrated at every turn by a storyline that blankly refuses to be explicable.  But if there isn't a basically coherent plot at the centre of it all, you risk losing the audience. 

In theory, that's addressed here, since the core of the plot is a basic quest plot - everyone wants Magdalena.  This issue picks up with Nate and his allies holed up with Magdalena in a factory holding off the Armenian mob on the outside.  Nice and straightforward - except, four months into the storyline, we still have no real idea why Nate wants Magdalena.  Oh, and the factory is full of giant statutes combining Communist and Christian iconography, which screams symbolism, but I frankly haven't got a clue what point it's trying to make. 

The off-centre nature of the story is in danger of leaving readers with nothing to hold onto, and there's little reason to get behind Nate's nominal quest to rescue Magdalena when we don't know why he's trying to get her in the first place (and nor does he).  These are deliberate elements of the story, and until the arc's complete it's still possible that this is going to come together in some brilliant and unforseen manner.  But it has to be said that this is looking increasingly unlikely.

The art is strong as ever, and the Saint Lenin imagery certainly makes for some wonderful visuals, albeit impenetrable ones.  Still, even as somebody who's sympathetic to the general approach here, this storyline is starting to try my patience.

Rating: B-

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