Finally for this week, X-Treme X-Men wraps up the Schism storyline.

And it's along pretty similar lines to previous issues.  The central plot really doesn't interest me much - it's yet another mind control and slavery angle, which Claremont seems to find perennially fascinating.  But neither the villain nor his victims are particularly interesting characters.

Much more interesting is the ongoing feud between Claremont's team and the rest of the X-Men.  Claremont's chosen to use Emma Frost as the focal point for the Morrison X-Men, which makes reasonable sense in plot terms because of the history between her and Storm - though I still think he's been overplaying objections to her being on the team at all, bearing in mind that she hasn't been a villain in twelve years now.

Of course, choosing Emma also helps with the schism angle itself, since she's probably the member of Morrison's X-Men most easily cast in an antagonist role without having to stretch her character too badly.  Nonetheless, Claremont does keep up his largely good track record of not attacking the new direction, but letting its characters argue their position.  Readers are clearly being invited to sympathise with Claremont's faction, but then it's their book, and the Morrison characters are given a fair chance to put their case.  Xavier turns up and sides with Morrison - inevitable in plot terms, but still put fairly clearly.

And Claremont is plainly aware of the overtones that take this story beyond the X-Men arguing about their own policies, into hinting at tension over the direction of the book itself.  When Xavier dismisses Storm's approach as belonging to "a more innocent time", it's fairly clear that he's talking about the style of the writing as much as anything which happened in the plot.  Admittedly, Claremont characters have always had a tendency to lament simpler and more innocent times, but it does work here.  The question, really, is whether you're prepared to accept that the hardline principles of Claremont's X-Men are grounded in reality, or whether the more ambiguous approach of Morrison's team is simply a necessary reaction to the way their world works.

In case newer readers are wondering, by the way, the cover shows Emma Frost standing in front of a symbol comprising half of the X-Men's logo and half of the Hellfire Club's logo.  We haven't actually seen the Hellfire Club's logo in ages, and it's largely obscured by the logo here, leaving the unfortunate impression that Emma has grown a tail.  Which is annoying, as it's otherwise a rather nice cover.

Rating: B

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