Finally for this week, X-Treme X-Men.  Breaking the pattern, this book is starting a new storyline, "Intifada", rather than wrapping one up.

With the obligatory movie tie-in out of the way, Claremont is returning to his core themes - mutants and humans hate each other, and never the twain shall meet.  In keeping with the focus of this book, however, the approach is less about heroes and villains than running with the vastly increased number of mutants established by other writers, and treating it as a large scale social problem.  What do you actually do with a bunch of mutants running around who are, for all practical purposes, above the law?

In amongst a selection of subplot scenes designed to show rising tensions, we get a sequence of world leaders discussing the problem at the Presidential Ranch.  Despite security being "exceptionally tight", that hasn't stopped Storm and Gambit breaking in... but okay, they are meant to be the X-Men.  At this point, Claremont launches what seems to be an attempt to tie his themes into headline news.

Basically, the latest bright idea to keep the mutants in line is to declare them all "weapons of mass destruction", and then make it illegal to be a mutant.  Since you can't actually stop being a mutant, it's a little unclear how exactly that would work, unless it's supposed to be a euphemism for legalised genocide.  It's also rather odd to see this argument being advanced by Valerie Cooper for two reasons.  One, she's generally been written as fairly rational and tolerant of mutants.  Two, the argument is obvious nonsense - while there are a few mutants powerful enough to fall within that definition, it's plainly ludicrous to claim that somebody like the Angel would qualify.

Of course, in 2003 you don't pick the words "weapons of mass destruction" at random.  The obvious question is quite what point Claremont is trying to make by doing so.  It's tempting to read the story from my own political viewpoint and conclude that Claremont has deliberately given the US government a braindead argument where they try to use emotive language to bridge the gaps in their logic.  That would be a bit of a leap at this stage.  Nonetheless, Claremont does seem to be using the US government's favourite all-purpose justification in connection with an obviously villainous scheme, so something tells me we may be heading for controversy as the story moves on.

The title, "Intifada", is of course a reference to the ongoing problems between Israel and Palestine.  There's no mention of either country in this story, but again it's a loaded word to invoke unless you're planning to say something about the subject.  Israel and Palestine are a classic example of a cycle of violence where both sides inexplicably cling to the view that bombing the fuck out of the guys is going to work in the end, despite the fact that they've been trying it for years and it's never worked yet.  The last time Claremont wandered into this territory, with the Legion storyline in New Mutants, he seemed to be making a point along similar lines, throwing in a classic liberal plea for understanding of the Palestinian suicide bombers' perspective.  (In that story, by understanding the perspective of his Jewish enemies, the bomber transcends his violent nature and turns out to be the only sane and reasonable man in the story.)

There's nothing all that new here in the way of general themes - most of Claremont's X-Men work is making the same basic point that placing dumb prejudice over mutual understanding is the cause of the world's ills.  But the deliberate foregrounding of headline news, much of it politically loaded, is an interesting choice.  It remains to be seen whether this is going to be just topical window dressing, but I suspect it's going to be a little more than that.

Rating: B+

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