Aside from New X-Men, it's a week of curios from the X-office.  First up is Soldier X, and the first of four fill-in issues leading the book to cancellation.  Since the book has no long term future and the main character is being shunted over to the living hell of Weapon X, the assumption must be that this is really just an exercise in page-filling.

However, the nice thing about low expectations is that you can be pleasantly surprised.  This isn't a desperately good issue, but it's competent enough.  And it's got typically beautiful artwork from Arthur Ranson, a man who clearly puts in the effort even for an assignment like this.  There has to be a major assignment out there which Ranson can be given.  He's an excellent artist, and one who deserves more high profile work.

The actual story is about domestic terrorism, the sort of theme we'll be hearing a lot more about now that writers have finally found something to replace the Soviet Union in the list of stock enemies of America.  While the organisation are a fairly standard assortment of white power survivalists, Bollers does liven things up a bit by suggesting that their leader has somewhat more imaginative plans in mind, and that Nathan is out to hijack the organisation rather than wipe it out.

That's not to say that this is a subtle comic.  While it's not totally clodhopping, it does have a whole load of stereotype villains.  And it also features possibly the worst use of symbolism in a mainstream comic so far this year, as the nasty domestic terrorists gather in a clearing, fire a celebratory volley into the sky, and inadvertantly kill an American eagle.  No matter how gorgeous it may look, it's still painfully bad writing.

Overall, however, this is acceptable enough.  The writing averages out to being okay, and the art improves things considerably.

Rating: B-

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