X-Men wraps up "Day of the Atom", and leaves me with the same complaint I had about Uncanny X-Men's "The End of History."

This is not a story.  It's a first act.  And pretty much everything we needed to cover was already done two issues ago.

You can pretty much sum up the entire arc as follows: The X-Men go to China.  They find Xorn, which is surprising, because he's not meant to exist.  Then they fight off a load of people until they find his containment helmet.  Then they go home.  The end.  Oh, and Gambit gets his eyes burned out.

Now, all that's fine so far as it goes, but the interest in this story surely lies in who Xorn is and why he exists at all.  Instead, we've spent the last few issues with generic figures from Chinese mythology and big fights with the Collective Man.  (Who's meant to be dead, by the way.)  This is a distraction.  Yes, they need to work in Gambit's blinding somewhere along the line, but it does nothing whatsoever to address the central plot question: Who is Xorn and why does he exist?  It's just a gratuitous fight thrown in to delay answering those questions.

Of course, it's drawn by Salvador Larroca, so at least it's a very pretty fight.  And Larroca does make the most of a nice set piece with the Collective Man fighting a giant Iceman.  But ultimately it feels like the book is playing for time to avoid dealing with the plot, rather than telling a story.

It could certainly be worse, and the last couple of pages with the Black Tom subplot really aren't bad.  But this really doesn't feel like it's heading anywhere.  It's just putting things off.

Rating: C+

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