Well, so much for Grant Morrison.  Life must go on, so let's move on to the remaining X-books.

Weapon X begins a new storyline, "Countdown to Zero", which should take it through to Reload.  We pick up on Marrow, who disappeared at the end of the Underground storyline.  Since then, she's seized control of the Underground and remade it into a new version of Gene Nation, who have resumed their terrorist activities.

One of the major problems with Frank Tieri's writing is a tendency to write highly inconsistent characters, whose personalities and motivations swing wildly about the place depending upon what's convenient for the plot.  In all fairness to him, this is a problem which has been steadily improving as the series goes on.

However, the problem is back in full force here.  The plot requires Marrow to re-form Gene Nation and go after Weapon X as a terrorist.  On many levels this is quite an interesting idea.  It's consistent with Marrow's history in the broad sense, and since Weapon X are legitimately a rather nasty bunch, she actually has a point.  Gene Nation are marked out as villains for their lack of concern for the safety of bystanders, but they obviously have a legitimate argument for attacking Weapon X offices.  After all, Weapon X want to throw them all into concentration camps.  This is an interesting time to be introducing terrorist groups who are bombing the US government and have a basically valid complaint.

The problem is that ever since Marrow was introduced into the cast of this book, she's been written broadly as a loyal soldier.  There's been nothing to suggest a sublimated desire to blow the whole place up.  As a result, even though this makes sense for the character in terms of her wider history, Marrow's sudden reversion to terrorism seems hopelessly undermotivated.  Tieri tries to justify it by her slightly impaired physical appearance after leaving Weapon X (but heck, it's not that bad) and by her encounter with Sabretooth (but why would that turn her against Weapon X)?  It doesn't really add up, though.

The problem is more with the earlier issues where Marrow was excessively co-operative with Weapon X, rather than with this issue as such.  Reading between the lines, I would guess that the idea was that Marrow would put up with her dislike of Weapon X in order to have the benefit of keeping her powers under control.  But because that dislike never came across, the character arc doesn't work.

Still, in broader terms it's not such a bad direction for the character, and it certainly carries some interest if only because it's unusual in 2004 to see Americans presenting terrorist groups with any moral ambiguity at all.  Marrow's Gene Nation aren't exactly protrayed sympathetically, but at least there's a degree of equivocation.

Rating: B-

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