Uncanny X-Men #453 is this week's flagship book, continuing "Chasing Hellfire."

In many ways, this is one of the better recent Claremont issues.  It bounds along nicely, and keeps up a decent pace - almost fast enough that, on a first read through, the plot holes aren't so noticeable.  Andy Park's artwork is great stuff, which brings some much-needed humanity to the characters.  His Nightcrawler is particularly good.

The big idea here is that Sebastian Shaw has reorganised the Hellfire Club as, allegedly, an organisation devoted to helping mutants.  To this end, he has miraculously sprouted some new back story where he knew Professor X and Sage in Afghanistan.  Of course, it's all based around the twin questions of whether we can trust Shaw, and whether we can trust the various other characters trying to get into the Hellfire Club.  Sunspot turns up to lend the group some moral credibility, but it has to be said that the others are way too far from the moral grey area for the plot to work - Viper, for example?

However, I think this issue flags up one of the points where Claremont has been going wrong of late.  Kurt and Logan break off from the story to have a chat about Kurt's romance subplots.  Awkward as Kurt's attraction to Ororo and Rachel may be, at least it's a recognisable human emotion.  In this scene, the two heroes are acting at least somewhat like real people.  It's easy to relate.

It's a world away from the main story, with casino-style slave auctions, weird secret societies, and characters gambling themselves into slavery on the cut of the cards.  Who in their right mind does something like that?  Claremont loves his slavers and his power relationships, a suspiciously dominant theme in recent years, but has never managed to make the set-up remotely psychologically plausible.  There is nothing to relate to in this slavery storyline - a bunch of characters parade around declaiming platitudes about the rules of their societies, and that's about it. 

I don't care what happens to any of these people, because none of them are acting like people.  And wasn't that the key to Claremont's success, back in the days when he was actually good?  For all the stagey dialogue and the melodramatic angst, there were characters you could relate to.  You could tell from the way they acted. Whatever happened to them?

Rating: B-

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