It's a nice quiet week for the X-books, with only Weapon X #11 shipping.  This is the penultimate chapter of the six-part "Underground" storyline, and it's not the sort of story that's going to turn round anyone's existing opinions on the book.  But let's take a look at it before moving on.

Last issue, the Director was provoked into a murderous fit of rage where he managed to somehow beat the hell out of Aurora.  This time he's in a regretful mood and sets out to rebuild some of the bridges he's burned over the course of the series.  Tieri seems to be setting up for a big change in the status quo after next issue, and this also provides an opportunity to tour the supporting cast and draw some of the threads together.

I think I see what Tieri is trying to achieve here.  The Director's arc is supposed to be an anti-tragedy.  He was actually making pretty good progress towards his goal of wiping out mutants.  The scheme was working.  But because of his tragic flaw - he's a needlessly obnoxious asshole - he's alienated everyone around him to the point where they turn on him.  This will bring his scheme crashing down around his ears.  In this issue, the Director begins to realise that he may have overstepped the mark, but it's too late.  Most of the major characters have already turned on him, even though he doesn't know it yet, and so he's already passed the point of no return.

Now, okay, that's a fair enough plot.  So why doesn't it work?  The problems are in Tieri's inability to create believable characters.  His plots call for people to be multi-faceted and inconsistent, which is not necessarily a bad thing.  But he can't actually pull it off in the writing; the effect, almost invariably, is of one-dimensional characters who lurch awkwardly between completely incompatible personalities from one issue to another.  The skill is to bring across those conflicting character traits at the same time, not to write characters who all seem to be suffering from multiple personality disorder.  Tieri is not good at subtlety; consequently, his characters tend to pick whatever trait they're supposed to be expressing at any given time and then hype it up to a histrionic degree.

So, because the Director is meant to be obnoxious and unpleasant, the result has been a story where from the word go, he's been written as a lunatic psychopath.  Not only does this make his later behaviour implausible, it removes any real sense of the Director having crossed the point of no return.  The character started off at the point of caricature, making it completely unbelievable that any other sane character would agree to work with him in the first place, or indeed that anyone in their right mind would have promoted him to a position of authority.  It's not like he makes a secret of his behaviour.  When the Director's behaviour should have grown over time to justify alienating his supporting cast, instead it's been pitched at a constant ear-splitting screech of gratuitous sadism.  There's no real logic to the point where characters have decided to turn on him.  This is hardly surprising, given that none of the characters are remotely believable.

Meanwhile, the Director lurches awkwardly between character traits and occasionally chucks in the odd piece of infantilism ("I did a BAD thing") which goes nowhere.  Tieri's difficulties with giving his characters distinctive voices are painfully apparent from a structure that runs parallel narration from both the Director and Cable - who sound exactly the same.  And in the ludicrous climax, traitorous agent Washout boils the Director alive - depicted in the art with the character's head about to explode and horrifically distorted - only for him to be absolutely fine a couple of panels later.  Perhaps the problem here is the art overselling the idea, but it does look silly.

Somewhere at the core of this story, there's a passable idea.  But viewed in the context of the series, it's painfully clear that the writing just can't deliver on it.

Rating: C+

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