The chaotic "Back From The Dead" storyline finally struggles to a conclusion with issue #18.  I sat down earlier today and re-read the entire thing.  Boy, what a mess.

As everyone knows, the original idea of this storyline was that Princess Diana comes back from the dead and joins X-Statix, who are then deeply irritated at being overshadowed by somebody even more famous and beloved than they are.  Unfortunately, that plot got nixed when the storyline was already way into development, requiring the first half to be redrawn so that Diana was transformed into pop star Henrietta Hunter, and the remainder to be rewritten in the vague hope of extracting some sort of sense from the plot.

The result is inevitably chaotic, but it's not a storyline that can be easily swept under the carpet and forgotten about - after all, it does involve the deaths of three regular characters, one of whom was Spike Freeman.  The other two come in this issue, as Milligan goes on a sweeping campaign of culling the dead wood.  Phat's death is a bit of a surprise, but I suppose he'd already served his purpose in the earlier Vivisector storyline.

El Guapo's death is more mysterious.  I rather suspect that the loss of his legs was supposed to play into Diana's interest in landmines, leaving him with no purpose once Henrietta took Diana's place.  Even so, and even by the standards of this comic, it comes out of nowhere.

Anyway, since Henrietta can't be a princess any more, the final act gets a pretty glaring overhaul.  She was increasingly marginalised as this storyline progressed, as Milligan chose to focus instead on the random killings in the latter half.  Last issue she got killed off, and now she comes back as a ghost because of a posthumous single from her previously unmentioned record company.  Basically, it's a parody of The Ring, as the dialogue openly acknowledges.  It's played tongue-in-cheek, and it certainly allows for plenty of gloriously ridiculous gags.  The sheer deadpan obviousness of the whole thing is hilarious.

That said, it certainly doesn't work as a concluding issue to this six-issue arc.  But then, the arc was pretty much damaged beyond repair from the word go.  Milligan and Allred still deliver an entertaining issue, even if it's dragged down by the Diana mess.

Rating: B

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