Just three X-books this week, and two of them are mid-storyline.  That leaves us with Uncanny X-Men #471, completing the three-part "Wand'ring Star."  Really, it's more like the second half of a six-part storyline which began back in issue #466, since the focus throughout that time has been on Marvel Girl and the Shi'ar Death Commandos.

In the first half of the story, you'll recall, the Shi'ar Death Commandos turn up to kill Marvel Girl.  For reasons of plot convenience, they slaughter all her relatives instead and leave her to last.  This seems a dreadfully inefficient way of going about things, and indeed the rest of the heroes showed up in time to save the day.  Now Marvel Girl has run away from the X-Men, and the Shi'ar Death Commandos come after her again.

And that's pretty much it, really.  The big finale is that the X-Men win the fight and Marvel Girl announces that she's going home with the team.  It's a thoroughly underwhelming story.  In theory, the big idea seems to be that Marvel Girl resists the temptation to kill the Shi'ar in revenge, but this isn't dramatised at all well.  Instead of having her actually make a decision on panel, the story just ends with her clarifying that, hey, don't worry, she didn't kill anyone.

It doesn't help, of course, that she's fighting the Shi'ar Death Commandos, some of the least interesting villains Claremont has produced in quite some time.  They're a throwback to about five years ago, when he was regularly churning out groups of anonyvillains and giving us no particular reason to care.  I'd struggle to tell you the names of more than a couple of these guys from memory, but since they don't have a shred of personality between them, it doesn't matter.  There's a half-hearted effort to make the leader, Blackcloak, into an honourable warrior figure.  But a one-dimensional stereotype is only a marginal improvement on a total cipher.

On the plus side, Claremont seems to be the only regular writer who's seriously trying to make Sentinel Squad O*N*E work.  While everyone else treats them as a nuisance who have to be quietly brushed aside in order to proceed with the plot, Claremont at least allows this issue's token Sentinel to come across as a worthwhile and effective presence who's genuinely trying to help out.  This is the sort of thing that they need to do much more of.  At least it makes the Sentinels into more interesting characters.  Shame the pilot doesn't seem to be identified, though, because their utter interchangeability remains a big problem.

That aside, it's a weak issue.  The heroes beat up some generic villains and the main character reaches some sort of moral decision as an afterthought.  It's never glaringly bad, but it's completely forgettable.

Rating: C+

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