Thanks to Marvel's bemusing publishing schedule, there's just the one X-book this week.  X-Men #195 is the middle chapter of "Primary Infection", and so I wouldn't normally give it a full review... but since it's the only one, I'll make an exception.

"Primary Infection" goes back to the story Mike Carey set up in part one of "Supernovas", when the X-Men rescued Karima and Lady Mastermind from a dodgy clinic which answered to somebody called Pan.  That turned out to have nothing to do with the rest of the arc.  But with that story out of the way, Rogue's team get to go after the villains.

Carey has generally impressed me as a writer, both in his Vertigo work and his mainstream superhero output, and I'm rooting for him to succeed here.  Unlike many of the writers who've worked on the X-Men in recent years, Carey seems to be looking to write straight, enjoyable superhero stories rather than to re-make the series in his image.  I have no problem with this; by all means, let's have an X-Men book that just does good X-Men stories instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.  The angle for this title is the oddball selection of characters in Rogue's roster, rather than the writer's overpowering style.  (If anything, it's artists Chris Bachalo and Humberto Ramos who are imposing their identity on this title.)

Now, all that having been said, I can't help feeling a little underwhelmed by this story.  Rogue has been captured; her team attempt to rescue her.  It's full of nice action sequences, entertaining stunts, and clever uses of the characters' powers.  But it doesn't really bring out much of their personalities.  Much the same could be said about Pandemic himself.  The idea, apparently, is that he's somehow managed to copy Rogue's powers at some time in the past, and then he's steadily acquired the powers of hundreds of other mutants.  This is a good enough gimmick, although I'm not entirely clear on how it's supposed to work.  Does he have to power up before each fight (in which case, it's a major loss when the X-Men smash up his collection of samples)?  Or does he have these powers permanently?

Moreover, I don't get much sense of what Pandemic is really about as a character.  He's powerful, sure, but is he interesting?  Basically, there's a lot of running around and fighting in this issue, and it's all perfectly well handled, but I don't see an especially strong idea at the core.

Now, it's not bad by any means.  It's still a good, straight action story, and perfectly entertaining in its own right.  Nonetheless, even within the parameters of mainstream superhero books, Carey can do better than this, and I'm hoping for something with a little more weight from him as the series continues.

Rating: B

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