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You can't get much more topical than the
Royal Family just now, since they've spent the last week
desperately taking out injunctions to prevent anyone in
England finding out what the rumours about Prince Charles
actually are. Fortunately for me, I live in Scotland,
and the bozos in the Palace legal department forgot to get an
order covering us. (No, really, I'm not kidding.
The Scottish Sunday papers ran the story this morning.)
Sadly, I'm well aware that this site is
hosted in England and that the mailing list is widely read in
England, so I'm not going to just repeat what the rumours are.
I suppose I could take the X-Statix route and just
change the names in the most minimal fashion imaginable, but I
suspect that wouldn't really do the job.
The great thing is, in England, they have
metarumours about what the original rumours are. Are we
allowed to tell them what the rumours aren't? I
just don't know. It doesn't really matter. As a
republican, I enjoy weeks like this tremendously.
Anyway, back to the comic. Milligan
broadens his ambit somewhat this issue, and gets back to
marginally more conventional stories as a result. This
issue isn't quite so married to Diana (as opposed to a more
generic figure like Henrietta), and while it's clear that some
of it would have had much more ludicrous impact with Diana -
"Diana, the Taliban Slayer"?! - it's the first part of this
story which more or less works at face value.
Milligan brings in the Washington sniper as
another point of reference, although for perfectly good
reasons. When Diana insists on leading the X-Statix team
against the sniper, they're well aware that she's taking on a
mission which is just too high profile - the risk of it
backfiring on her if she fails is simply too high. And
of course, that's exactly what they want.
The level of satire in this arc is so high
that it's rather hard to worry about the more character-driven
aspects - poor El Guapo gets treated appallingly again, but he
almost gets overshadowed in the chaos. Still, the sheer
audacity and obnoxious of the whole arc carries it through;
after a slightly faltering start, the story is gathering
momentum.
Rating: A-
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