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Rounding off this week's X-books is X-Treme
X-Men #33, the middle chapter of "Intifada."
Claremont's point seems pretty clear by
now. Robert da Costa has been using the resources of his
branch of X-Corp to quietly colonise Valle Soleada as a haven
for mutants. He clearly thinks this is a very good idea
indeed. But in fact all that he's doing is making the
situation worse, by encouraging racist tendencies in the
mutant population and radicalising the embittered human
minority.
It's another variation on the usual plea
for mutual tolerance and co-existence, but this time round
Claremont is making a point of stressing the idea of a
co-existence of communities. There hasn't really been a
mutant community in his stories until now (unless you count
the Morlocks), and it lets him play the same old themes in a
way that relates more clearly to the real world. With
reasonable subtlety, Claremont confines his topical references
to the story titles - it doesn't take a genius to see how all
this stuff must relate to Claremont's views on Israel and
Palestine, or indeed the concept of Manifest Destiny, but none
of these points are ever addressed directly.
One of the odd things about this arc is
that despite being the prime mover behind the whole thing,
Roberto has been confined to a few subplots. Presumably
the plan is for him to emerge from the shadows at a later
stage, but it does mean that thus far Claremont hasn't really
established why he's doing all this. The pitfalls of the
whole approach are glaringly obvious to the readers, so it
does beg the question of why Roberto remains happily
oblivious. There are plenty of tenable reasons why he
might, but the story should probably be getting into that side
of things by now.
The arc is probably running a little long;
it feels like it could stand to lose an issue and tighten up a
bit. The point was largely apparent last issue, after
all. It doesn't help that the themes of this arc don't
really lend themselves to superhero stories; it does end up a
bit on the talky side. Still, on the whole the story is
going into some interesting areas.
Rating: B
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