X-Men Unlimited is back for a second run, after its first incarnation got axed last July.  This time it's also accompanied by a second volume of Spider-Man Unlimited.  I can't honestly say I'm pleased to see them back; X-Men Unlimited was a byword for superfluous stories.  It was a directionless title which showed every sign of existing solely because nobody could think of a financial justification for axing it.

So what's going to make things different this time round?  To be honest, not a tremendous amount.  The books are being used as a vehicle for new writers teamed with more established artists, but that doesn't really change the sort of content we can expect to see.  And we're back in the two-story anthology format, which is a restrictive format anyway.  There's only so much any writer can do when he has 11 pages to do a story about somebody else's character.  It doesn't help that, if the character is actually in use in another title at the time, the story is almost obliged to be inconsequential.

The options are limited.  There are two standard ways round it.  You can take Tony Lee's route, and try to flag up some side of the character which hasn't been fully explored yet.  Or you can take JT Krul's approach, and put all the focus onto a character you've created for the purpose, shoving the actual X-Men into a background role.

Lee, together with Ben and Ray Lai, takes a shot at Sage from X-Treme X-Men.  Sage is certainly a character with potential, and Lee is on the right lines by flagging up the relatively unexplored territory of her backstory.  Since Claremont retroactively gave her a background as a spy for the X-Men, she's now got a whole question of how she ended up being recruited by Xavier in the first place, which up to now consists largely of vague mutterings about wars.  In practice, this amounts to Sage demonstrating her powers and skills for most of the story, and then being a bit sensitive at the end when she's managed to recover a memento from her earlier life.  Well, it's a limiting format.

It's certainly got some pleasant art from the Lai Brothers, who seem to be aiming for a marginally less pneumatic version of Terry Dodson.  The characterisation, however, is a mite off.  Although Sage isn't entirely humourless, her main character traits are being enigmatic and withdrawn, and her sense of humour is generally written as being fairly dry.  She comes across here as a wisecracking Whedonette, and while it's a perfectly workable character, it just doesn't feel like Sage.  Nice try, though.

In the second strip, a kid at the X-Men's school likes Hallowe'en because it's the one time of year he can go out without people staring at him.  And, uh, that's basically it.  There's a bolted on story where some passing criminals get stopped, but the central idea never gets properly developed.  Yes, there's the ironic ending where the kid saves the day but everyone hates him now because he's exposed as a mutant.  But it's basically a one-idea story, and the one idea isn't really strong enough.

Tom Mandrake supplies the art, and he's a good match for the material.  He also does a reasonable job rounding out the lead character.  It's an alright story as these things go, but it's still basically throwaway.

To be honest, by the standards X-Men Unlimited has historically set for itself, this is above average.  There are inherent limitations in the format, though, and it's hard to see the title getting past its status as a book for completists.  Still, it's a reasonable package to start the new run.

Rating: B

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