THE CREATORS: Written by Frank Tieri, with pencils by Georges Jeanty and inks by Dexter Vines.

THE FILL-IN ARTIST COUNT: Three.

WHAT HAPPENED IN 2003: Mutants get carted off to Neverland; Cable and some stray X-Force characters guest star in "The Underground", leading to a change of command; Mr Sinister pastiches Schindler's List; and Chamber is offered a job.

Remember the halcyon days of 2002, when Frank Tieri was the worst writer in the X-books?  Well, there's a flicker of that coming up later.  But for now, with that honour comfortably taken by Austen, Tieri has settled down to a relatively quiet year on Weapon X.

I'm still far from impressed with this series, but I've got to admit that it's been improving.  Early issues were plagued by characters who changed their entire personality from issue to issue depending on what was convenient for the plot.  Tieri couldn't even seem to make up his mind whether Wild Child had an animal intelligence, or whether he was just mute.  (Or if he could, he was unable to convey it consistently.)

That, however, has largely been eliminated.  Characters seem to have settled down into relatively consistent behaviour.  Most of this year was given over to the lengthy "Underground" storyline, which was supposed to pay off many of the stories to date.  Up to a certain point, it manages to do that.  It suffers from the fact that early issues laid the groundwork in a very incoherent way, which stops any of the characters having an overall believable character arc.  And even in "The Underground", there are some very misguided ideas - Garrison Kane's sacrifice is both undermotivated and an unintentionally hilarious visual.

Still, with a change of control at the Weapon X project, and a line drawn under most of the storylines to date, Tieri has established a workable starting point.  I still have grave reservations about this book - I don't really wish to see any more of Mr Sinister, and I certainly question the tastefulness of having him appear in a take-off of Schindler's List in issue #14.

It's still not great by any means, but it's improved to the point where it's just rather bland.  Perhaps, with the benefit of a clean break from past storylines, it can do better in 2004.

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