X-Treme X-Men continues its crippling weekly schedule as it races to complete "Prisoner of Fire" before spring's X-Men Reload event.  (Disclaimer: The X-Axis reserves the right to reclassify Reload as a non-event, depending on what it actually turns out to be.)

As I've said in previous reviews, this arc is none-more-Claremont.  Mind control villains, old Claremont characters coming back, lots of people running around fighting one another.  A reunion of half the New Mutants - the ones who haven't been drafted into the supporting cast in New Mutants, anyway.  Rather oddly, a major role for Skids, who hasn't been seen in years, and wasn't a Claremont character.

Regardless, the hardcore Claremont fanbase will doubtless love it, because it's pretty much everything Claremont's associated with.  Those of us who aren't quite so enamoured of Claremont's recent work will be less enthralled.  After all, it's basically another retread of "one of the X-Men is captured by the mind control villains, and he fights the rest of the team."  And you can certainly question the logic of a story in which Bishop has overnight become so incredibly dangerous that he's a threat to the whole team on his own, yet still manages to get beaten up by a powerless Gambit.

Plus, the punishing weekly schedule continues to take its toll on the art, which again suffers from three inkers and at times looks decidedly rough.  Kordey did his reputation no favours when he was churning out short-notice fill-ins on New X-Men; he's now, unfortunately, been put in much the same situation on his own regular title.  He can do much better than this, and recent issues certainly haven't shown him at his best.

One for the Claremont fanbase; others probably won't be so captivated.

Rating: C

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