Two Claremont books this week, starting with Uncanny X-Men #447.

On paper, this is the final part of his first storyline - which, by the way, seems to have changed its title from "The End of History" to "The End of Tomorrow" since last issue.  Odd.  Unfortunately, the penny is dropping that this is another of those titles, like Weapon X, where the "part 4 of 4" bit really indicates nothing more than a convenient break point for the trade paperback.  The first four issues don't constitute a complete story, and in fairness, nor do they really pretend to - save by being labelled as a four-parter.

If you stop to think about what's actually happened in the last four issues, it's kind of all over the place.  Part 1: A baseball game at the Mansion, the XSE fight a bunch of villains called the Weaponeers who never turn up again, and Nightcrawler and Wolverine go to help a mutant boy.  Part 2: The rescue mission goes wrong because of police bigotry, a plot thread that then disappears entirely.  Half of the team visit Braddock Manor and are immediately attacked by the Fury as the issue ends.  Parts 3 and 4: The X-Men fight the Fury.  It's a two-issue fight scene tagged onto two issues which... well, I guess they're setting up plot ideas for down the line, but they certainly don't seem to have anything to do with the Fury.

The other problem is, as I've said before, that the Fury is a character of very limited interest unless you use him properly.  Point one, he needs to be unstoppable.  Point two, he's got no personality, so he needs to be a weapon for a more interesting villain - as the villain in his own right, he's just a runaway steamroller.  In fairness, the letters page promises an explanation of the Fury in upcoming issues.  Fine, but it means we've spent two months on Mr No Personality.  And for those of us who've read the original Fury stories, it's painfully obvious how badly this version has been watered down.

Claremont is trying to do the old story where the heroes struggle against the villain individually, but defeat him at the end because they come together as a Team.  It's an old standard and it usually works.  The problem, though, is that Claremont isn't even willing to make the X-Men look all that vulnerable even in the first half of the story.  It seems these days as though the only people who pose a really credible threat to Claremont's X-Men are mind-controlled X-Men.  The Fury really ought to be doing a lot more damage than breaking Cannonball's leg - the most marginal member of the team.  And he certainly shouldn't be coming off on the worse end of a fistfight with frigging Sage, no matter what the mitigating circumstances.  That's just stupid.  If you need somebody to cut a bit of tech out of the Fury's body, have Sage point out where it is and then get Wolverine to go and get it.  This is not the time or the place to put Sage over as a physical combat superwoman.

As for the "coming together as a team" bit, the mechanics border on incomprehensible.  There's something about a little box that appears from nowhere, but god only knows what it's meant to do.  For some reason, the X-Men seem to think it's a good idea to strap Wolverine and Nightcrawler back to back and make them fight the Fury like that.  It's at points like this that I expect the Stupidity Police to break down the door and seal the comic in a biohazard container.  Seriously, what in the blue hell was the point of that bit?  How on earth does that do anything other than cripple their effectiveness?

It's beautifully drawn, of course - Alan Davis' art goes a long way towards carrying the book, and Frank D'Armata's colouring also deserves credit.  But it's an incoherent affair which badly misuses the Fury, and as a consummate storyteller, Davis is not the sort of artist to produce visuals that overpower the plot.  Admirable, but it also means that his art is never going to really transcend the limitations of an awkward plot.

Rating: C

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