Continuing the theme of underachievement, Weapon X #12 is the penultimate chapter of "The Underground."  Yes, it's seven issues.  God have mercy on our souls.

The good news is that the storyline does indeed seem to be ending in a deck-clearing exercise, as the Director is swept away from office.  Unfortunately, as you might have guessed, Brent Jackson turns out to be doublecrossing our heroes.  You might well wonder why Cable failed to pick up on this, considering he's meant to be a telepath and all, but I suppose we're meant to take it that this falls under his reluctance to use telepathy.  It's a bit of a strain.

Tieri does have a decent idea about the Director linking his change of fortunes to his face and trying to slash it up when he realises everything has gone wrong.  It's a cute inversion of the normal way facial mutilation gets used as a symbol.  Otherwise, this is a competent fight scene issue with moments of inadvertant comedy - Kane's heroic sacrifice ends up looking utterly ridiculous.  The script calls for him to absorb all of the Director's technology into his body; not surprisingly, George Jeanty fails to find a way of rendering the resultant pile-up of components which looks tragic rather than ludicrous.

The issue illustrates painfully Tieri's failure to effectively foreshadow plots.  Kane's change of heart comes almost entirely out of nowhere.   Worse, much of the issue is given over to a fight between Marrow and Sabretooth in the sewers, as if this were a plot which was desperate for a blow-off.  In fact, until last issue Tieri had almost totally ignored any possibility of tension between the two.  This storyline should have been set up from day one if it was ever going to happen.  As it is, any resonance will be confined to people who already knew about Marrow and Sabretooth's intertwined history from reading earlier (better) comics.  The Morlock Massacre was seventeen years ago, for heaven's sake.  You can't just assume readers know this stuff.

The irritating thing about this book is that in fact, it's not devoid of decent ideas.  It just hasn't set them up effectively - and consequently, the climax isn't working.

Rating: C+

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