Rounding off this week's X-books is the end of another X-Statix storyline.

If I'm being honest, this particular storyline isn't going to go down as the best thing the book's done.  It's perfectly good, but it's really an above average superhero story with added ironic distance.  ("Maybe you should get us out of here so we can regroup and indulge in some expositional dialogue?")

The basic idea is that Bad Guy is the embodiment of a repressed memory and that Venus needs to identify the memory to defeat him - so it's an even more blatant example than normal of that old genre staple, "The villain symbolises the hero's fears."  The catch is that there's not a great deal of point to the blatancy beyond playing with the conventions for their own sake, and while that's still quite entertaining, it does mean that this is in the second tier of X-Statix storylines.

Of course, being the sort of person who likes writing reviews, I enjoy seeing Milligan and Allred mess about and expose the tricks of the trade.  Not everyone's going to feel the same way, which is one of the things that limits the book's appeal.

It's a good ending to a decent storyline, but the book has done better in the past.

Rating: B

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