In keeping with the X-books' feast-or-famine scheduling policy, this week's only title is Uncanny X-Men #488.  The title and credits are missing altogether, but thanks to the miracle of multi-part stories, I can tell you that this is part 2 of The Extremists.

While the X-Men hunt through the Morlock tunnels, Masque leads his group on a terrorist attack which, he insists, fits into his plan to find Magneto.  His followers can't quite see how, but with varying degrees of scepticism, they play along regardless.  Meanwhile, Professor X and Nightcrawler begin their own hunt for the missing Magneto.

So far, this arc is looking like a definite improvement on the "Fall and Rise of the Shi'ar Empire" arc.  Even though the details of Masque's plan are extremely vague at this stage, there's still a much more tangible sense of progress being made.  The pace isn't exactly breakneck, but the story certainly has momentum.

More importantly, at last the book is getting to grips with the M-Day fallout that it should have been addressing a year and a half ago.  The X-office still has a long slog ahead of them to salvage this disastrous storyline, but at least Brubaker and Carey are getting seriously stuck in to the necessary remedial work.  And boy, do we need it.  The difficulty lies in trying to tell interesting stories at the same time as getting the X-books out of their present hole.  Brubaker has done better stories than this, but given the hopeless situation he and Carey have inherited, they're doing the best that can be expected.

The back-up strip, by Mike Carey and Mark Bagley, sees the Beast travelling to Wundagore in search of the High Evolutionary's help.  I don't recall Wundagore Mountain being quite so inaccessible in previous stories - my recollection is of something quite pastoral - but for present purposes it's become a blizzard-bound wasteland.  There's a limited amount you can do in five pages, but Carey is pacing this quite nicely, and so far, it's all looking promising.

Rating: B+

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