The "Schism" storyline continues in X-Treme X-Men, and what we have here is a book of two halves.

On the one hand, I'm enjoying the continuing feud between Claremont's cast and the Morrison regulars.  As I've said before, there's an obvious tension between the two approaches to the comic.  The best way of dealing with that, rather than brushing it under the carpet, is to put it centre stage.

Claremont tries to make this into a personal feud between Storm and Emma Frost, and of course he can point to a string of past stories involving the two to back that up.  It does seem a little odd for Storm to be quite so worked up about Emma's involvement in the X-Men at this stage, though.  While she's only joined the X-Men relatively recently, she's been an associate of the team since Generation X started, and that was ten years ago.  Personal animosity with Storm makes perfect sense, but surely Xavier's decision to take in Emma as an ally is a stale issue by now.

Nonetheless, it does help to personalise the conflict, and there's still some legitimate points in issue between the characters, so things more or less work out.

I'm rather less interested in the Jeffrey Garrett storyline.  Jeffrey isn't a particularly rounded character, and the plot is looking increasingly like a conglomeration of some of Claremont's favourite plot elements (slavery and mind control, most notably).  We've got an enigmatic off-camera mind-control villain, and it's hard to get all that worked up about him.  The plot serves its function in bringing the two factions of X-Men into conflict, but as a storyline in its own right, it's not all that engaging.

Larroca is on good form, however - I could live without his Witchblade-style psychic armour for Emma, but then I've never been wild about his costume designs.  He turns in a strong action sequence with Emma and Storm, and it's a generally good-looking issue.

Regular readers should be perfectly happy with this; it's one of the stronger storylines the book has run, although not to the point where it's likely to win over people who haven't found the book to their taste in the past.

Rating: B

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