Rounding off this week's X-books is the final issue of X-Statix - or, as the cover puts it, the "downbeat yet strangely moving FINAL ISSUE!"

You can't fault the cover for accuracy.  Acting as an epilogue to the series, this final issue basically detonates a bomb under the whole thing.  Milligan and Allred provide a deliberately arbitrary and ironic form of closure by despatching the team on one last, and ultimately suicidal, mission against villains never identified for reasons that the team themselves aren't entirely clear on.

The subtext, of course, is that the book has run its course.  X-Statix don't do these things to be heroic, and they used to do it just for the fame and the hell of it.  When the novelty of that wears off, and the idea has been fully worked through, you end up with this - characters going through the motions.  And this being X-Statix, they're duly punished for not having the good sense to quit while they're ahead.

X-Statix works best when it balances the ironic and satirical side of things with genuine character moments.  The fact that Milligan and Allred managed to create characters who could operate in these kind of stories, and yet still feel like they had a soul beneath all the irony, is one of their most impressive achievements with this book.  The final issue is full of that kind of thing, as the characters find themselves wondering quite why they're doing any of this - and the action scenes are intercut with the team blithely preparing for their final mission.

Rather than go out with the battle scene, Milligan ends on a flashback, with the team happily departing for their final mission and leaving an empty building behind.  It's a great sequence.  And even though the book has run its course, and it really is time to call it a day, I'll still miss them.

Rating: A+

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