X-Statix #13 is over a month late, but then it has an excuse.  It's been rather heavily revised.

This is part one of "Back From The Dead", the storyline that was originally meant to see print as "Di Another Day."  In the original version, the idea was that Princess Diana would come back from the dead due to her hitherto unnoticed mutant powers, and would end up joining X-Statix.  Since X-Statix are all about celebrity and self-promotion, she would have fitted in rather nicely.  So the theory goes, anyway.

To nobody's surprise, all of this proved rather controversial.  In fact, it proved so controversial that the storyline was vetoed from on high and, if you believe some versions of the rumours, may have been one of the factors that cost Bill Jemas his job.  However, for all its deliberate tackiness, the story clearly had an arguable artistic point, besides which they couldn't really scrap it because they didn't have anything else to run in its place.  So here we have "Di Another Day: Redacted version 2.1"

The original announcement was that the story would be altered so that Diana would be replaced by a generic princess.  Even that has now gone out the window.  The role is now occupied by aristocratic pop singer Henrietta Hunter.  Since most of the issue appears to be the product of dialogue rewrites and art fixes (aside from a couple of new origin pages at the beginning, they've just put Diana in a wig), we have a problem.  The plot was not written for a pop singer.  And as published, the story doesn't work.

My guess, by the way, was that the original plan was to replace Diana with a hybrid character based in part on Princess Stephanie of Monaco.  Stephanie did in fact pursue a pop career with some success in mainland Europe.  As another bizarre celebrity figure, she wouldn't have been too out of place in this series either, albeit that she would have called for a drastically different plot.

But we have to make do with what actually sees print.  And using a pop singer in the Diana role creates tremendous problems.  Everyone is left horribly undermotivated.  There is no obvious reason why the establishment in her home country of Europa would be so desperate to get rid of her.  Nor is there any apparent reason why the public would be so devotedly obsessed with a character who, as written, is closer to Sophie Ellis-Bextor than Diana.

Unfortunately, the only reading strategy for this book which makes any sense is to ignore Henrietta's appearance, name and origin as given in the first two pages; ignore all references to "Europa"; and mentally substitute what would presumably have been there in the original version.  It kind of makes sense then, if you're prepared to play ironic conspiracy theorist.

A lot of glitches have slipped through.  The silhouette on the banner over Henrietta's family home is clearly Diana, not Henrietta.  There's a reference to the British taxpayers and the Financial Times, both of which are rather out of place considering that she's meant to be from another country altogether.  Some of the dialogue rewrites are unbelievably awkward.  ("Popstar Henrietta"?  "Popstar-known-as-princess", even though she's never referred to as "princess" at any other time?)  And quite honestly, a lot of the jokes only work if you read the character as Diana - her mutant power of empathy, for example.

It's such a bizarre mess that two possibilities suggest themselves.  One is that nobody involved could summon up much enthusiasm for the rewrite procedure, so they didn't really try.  The other is that they deliberately botched it in order to leave clues as to how the story should really be read.  This being Milligan, my money would be on option 2.  But I'm guessing.

The story doesn't work.  The frustrating thing is that if you squint hard enough, you can see the shadow of one that did.

Rating: C+

back | continue