One consequence of the X-Axis' new format is that every so often you get a week where there are no story arcs concluding, and no self-contained stories, and no issue #1s.  Which means, strictly speaking, I don't have to review anything at all. 

And this is one such week.  So let's take X-Men #175 as our X-book for the week - not only is it one of the top titles, but it's starting a crossover with Black Panther.  Oh, and it's got a nice, impressive-sounding number, although Marvel have somehow resisted the temptation to cash in on it with an anniversary special.

Since Black Panther has already done its House of M crossover, presumably we're firmly in the post-House of M world with this issue.  Several other books have also now been through House of M and emerged from the other side - Pulse, New Thunderbolts and Cable & Deadpool.  It has to be said that, for all Marvel have promised major consequences and big world-changing events, to judge from these books, nothing of any importance has occurred.  I realise Marvel may be waiting until the end of House of M itself for the major plot points, but for god's sake, at least do something to acknowledge the supposedly massive consequences of the event, and drop a few hints.  One of the biggest problems facing House of M is that it's failed to convince readers that it matters in any sense at all; and this sort of thing isn't going to help.

Anyhow, this is the set-up issue establishing the premise for "Wild Kingdom."  Mutant animals have started to appear in the war-torn country of Niganda, which has apparently been in chaos ever since the previous government was overthrown in Black Panther #6. (A storyline which, whatever Marvel's editors may claim, can't be made to fit with previous continuity on any rational view, and in any event is supposed to have occurred during the Silver Age.  So naturally, everyone's talking about it as if it happened last month.)  The X-Men go to investigate.  And... yeah, that's basically it.  Black Panther turns up on the last page, to remind us that it's a crossover.

It's rather better than that makes it sound.  With only a rudimentary amount of plot to get through, Milligan uses the story as a backdrop to get on with his soap opera subplots.  His X-Men are a bunch of squabbling kids, but I don't have a problem with that.  It's more operatic grandstanding than anything else, and the melodrama should be way over the top in this sort of book.  Poor Havok is having a dreadful time of it as leader, stubbornly ignored by all the other senior X-Men, but that's a perfectly valid take on the character.  After all, his feelings of inadequacy compared to his brother have been a major part of the character for years.  He was fine leading a bunch of D-listers like X-Factor, but there's no way he's going to order Storm around and get away with it.

I'd be interested to know quite where the idea for this story started off, because Havok's squad are not exactly the obvious ones to be dealing with the Black Panther.  Storm duly turns up as a guest star, but you have to wonder why this story isn't simply being done in Uncanny X-Men with her team.  (Other than the practical issue that Uncanny is caught up in a House of M tie-in at the moment.)  It does come across as though she's being shoehorned into the book so that they can do the story.

On the whole, though, not bad.  A straightforward set-up which gives Larroca plenty of material to play with on art, and leaves Milligan plenty of space to go off on tongue-in-cheek tangents.  I suspect even the better Milligan stories are always going to prove divisive, depending on whether you share his sense of humour.  But I do, and I liked this one.

Rating: B+

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