Finally for this week's X-books, X-Treme X-Men #44.

This is the penultimate part of "Prisoner of Fire", but since the villain gets away at the end, I have a sinking feeling that it's actually the end, leaving next issue as an epilogue.  If so, god help us, because we've just spent five issues on a thoroughly boring, by-the-numbers plot about a personality-free mind-control villain, only for him to escape.  I'd really been hoping that Claremont was going to get this stuff out of his system and wrap up the plot once and for all, but instead he seems to be setting Elias Bogan up as a recurring villain.

He doesn't even make any damn sense.  If he can go around possessing people off his own back, what does he need to possess a telepath for?  I suppose if I gave a damn I could come up with some theory about augmenting his powers, but that would still leave the question of why Bishop and Gambit were able to fake being controlled by him.  In fairness, maybe there's an explanation for that coming in the final part (such as Rachel undermining Bogan's attempts to control them).  I can't honestly say I care, though.  God, what a boring villain.  I hope never to see him again.

The other main point of the issue is to fill in some of Sage's back story.  Just as Bishop was retconned into an Aborigine earlier in this story, Sage - who has hitherto been presented as a white woman called Tessa - is apparently now retroactively Afghan.  She's meant to be very upset about the fact that she killed some people even though she was a soldier at the time and they were obviously legitimate targets (looting a UN convoy, from the look of it).  It's a bit weak if that's all she's been worrying about, frankly.

I don't know.  A year or so back, it looked as if Claremont might be getting his touch back.  But this is just stuck in a rut.

Rating: C

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