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Before you ask, yes, there was an issue of
X-Treme X-Men only last week. And now there's
another one. And, in theory, there was going to be one
every week during December - though they've already
rescheduled a couple of them, so in practice that's not going
to happen.
Issues #36-39 are a serialisation of what
was originally going to be Chris Claremont and Igor Kordey's
Storm graphic novel. In a curious move, Marvel
have decided that it should instead appear as part of X-Treme
X-Men, so the result is an issue with 36 pages of story,
of which the first four look suspiciously like a framing
sequence attached with a rivet gun.
The set-up for this arc - so far as the
ongoing series is concerned - is meant to be that Storm is
sent off to Japan to capture ill-conceived villain Tullamore
Voge, as a precondition for getting the new XSE off the
ground. Having helpfully set this up in the next four
pages, Storm never mentions it again, in a story which reads
to me like she's just visiting Yukio on holiday again and
stumbles into an underground fighting arena.
Anyway, the plot is in very familiar
Claremont territory. Storm and Yukio do their usual
routine, and there's an underground fighting circuit with
generic mutants. Claremont has written this basic idea
before - in New Mutants, for example - and it's not
immediately clear that he's adding a great deal to it here.
Of course, this is the set-up issue, but thus far it seems
decidedly like a return to well-worn pet themes.
Kordey's art benefits from much more
striking layouts than we've seen in recent issues. From
the look of it, he's had much more time to spend on this than
on some work we've seen lately. Visually, Storm's arrival in
Japan is a great little sequence. I'm not entirely
convinced by his idea of clubwear - did the script really call
for Storm to look like a post-operative Rupaul? - but the
strength of Kordey's storytelling comes across here with a
force that hasn't been apparent in a while.
At this stage, though, it's a stock plot.
Visual flair takes it so far, but the overwhelming impression
is deja vu.
Rating: B
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