This is going to be a relatively short week, not because I didn't have time, but because there's just not much out there, and none of the new launches caught my eye.  So, I'm just going to run through the X-books and leave it at that.

X-Men #203 is the fourth and final part of "Blinded By The Light" - although that's "final" in the sense that issue #204 is billed as an epilogue, rather than as part five.  The story clearly serves as a lead-in to the upcoming "Messiah Complex" crossover, and since the X-Men generally make for better stories when they're fighting from behind, that means it's time for them to take an extended pummelling again.

When Mike Carey started writing this title, his first act was to introduce one of the weirdest rosters in X-Men history - a group that included Sabretooth, Mystique, Lady Mastermind and Omega Sentinel, not to mention Cable.  Now, with this story, he's dismantled that team entirely, before it really had a chance to get going.  Five characters are written out, two are hospitalised.  Of the roster that started the storyline, only Iceman is still on his feet. 

Instead, the cast of Astonishing X-Men have been imported to fill the void.  Perhaps that's no bad thing.  Astonishing hardly ever comes out, so somebody might as well make use of its characters.

I'd be intrigued to know how far ahead this was planned.  Carey's run now reads very oddly, introducing a completely new cast and then promptly writing them all out again.  Cable joined the team, and got written out of his own series, for this?  But whatever the reality, between this story and his "Endangered Species" back-up strips, Carey is at least doing a very good job of making everything look like it's part of a bigger plan.  He's the first writer in years to give priority to a wider sense of coherence, and even though we all know he's working with completely disparate threads left by writers who were barely co-ordinating at all, he's managed to take these random elements and build something workable out of them.

The basic plot of "Blinded" mainly concerns Mr Sinister and his assorted followers running around trying to eliminate all the X-Men's possible sources of information about the future.  The X-Men get completely taken by surprise and spend most of the arc trying to figure out what on earth is going on.  It's basically an extended action/chase story, and I'm not entirely sure it needed four whole months, but Carey has held it together.  The idea of the X-Men replacing the Destiny Diaries with fakes (and then wiping their own memories in order to throw telepaths off the scent) is cute, and a subplot about Gambit's inexplicable presence on the other side has been built nicely.  Mainly, though, the writing has had the feel of chaos and crisis, and it's managed to sell the idea that something big and important is just around the corner.  That would be the crossover, presumably, and Carey is building it well.

Humberto Ramos illustrated this storyline, and while he's certainly much clearer than Chris Bachalo, I'm not quite sold on his work here.  Ramos has a peculiarly distorted style which worked just fine when he was drawing hyperactive characters like Impulse.  But it's not so good when he comes to draw something more subtle.  There's an odd contradiction in his art here. The characters are as exaggerated as ever, but their expressions and body language are subdued to the point of being outright wooden.  The issue is full of people who, for all their distorted bodies and crazy anatomy, are just standing there, arms by their sides, looking vaguely stoic.  It's quite bizarre.

Over in the back-up strip, "Endangered Species" finally seems to be heading somewhere.  We've progressed beyond a tour of the backwaters of Marvel continuity, and reached the inevitable point where the Beast's doppelganger has done something entirely unacceptable in trying to find a cure for the depowered mutants.  This is clearly supposed to be the point where Hank reaches rock bottom and nearly throws in the towel - which presumably means that the moment of inspiration that reverses this hopelessly misguided storyline is just around the corner.  Er, right...?

Rating: B

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