X-Men #167 continues Peter Milligan's shaky start on the title.  Let's be blunt, there are serious problems with issue.  Well, one serious problem, when you get down to it.  It's damned hard to follow.  On a first read, it's utterly confusing, to be honest.

The story suffers from a combination of storytelling problems which make it hard to keep up when the story seems to leap between ideas.  For one thing, while the art is uniformly gorgeous, the visual cues aren't quite right.  Golgotha is kept largely off panel in scenes where everyone's meant to be introducing it.  That necklace thing at the end of the issue just plain doesn't resemble it, which makes the scene far more confusing than it needs to be.

Also, following the story requires that you either remember some exposition about the meaning of the word "Golgotha" which was delivered in throwaway fashion at the start of the previous issue, or alternatively have a working knowledge of Aramaic Biblical place names.  Otherwise, you're likely to find yourself wondering why everyone is babbling about Latin roots and Calvary.  It was all fully explained last issue, to be fair, but it could have used reiterating.  It's not like there wasn't plenty of space on the recap page.

Otherwise, we've got a bunch of characters acting in deliberately out of character fashion as Golgotha affects their minds.  I suspect Milligan is trying to use this to wrestle with the oddball personas Austen left him, and transition them into something a little more normal.  There's some decent stuff in there, and Alex shows signs of being interesting for the first time in years.

But ultimately, it's all a bit cluttered and confused, and never quite hangs together in the way it ought to.  It's okay, but it's not winning my heart.

Rating: B-

back | continue