Weapon X #18 is the final part of "Defection."  But it's one of those issues that would benefit tremendously from not being billed as the final part of anything, since Frank Tieri seems clearly to have it in mind as the end of this act rather than any kind of conclusion.  Labelling stories like that just leads readers to expect resolutions that aren't coming.

Anyway, Chamber duly fulfils his mission to kill John Sublime, and that's about it.  It's a perfectly acceptable superhero book with pleasant enough art from Jeff Johnson (though I've seen much better from him in the past).  The choice of Sublime as villain is fairly baffling, since Tieri plays him in the role established for him as leader of the U-Men, while New X-Men is off giving him a much wider role.  It's particularly strange given that the same editor, Mike Marts, is responsible for both titles - so it's not just that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand's doing.

Moreover, given that Sublime only just came back from the "dead" two issues ago, it rather undermines Chamber's misery at having killed somebody.  Okay, perhaps Marvel would prefer it if readers can shrug their shoulders and go "He's not really dead, so Chamber's not a murderer."  But Sublime's a character who's evidently particularly hard to kill off, and there's no sense of finality to Chamber killing him.

Basically okay, though.

Rating: B-

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