Writer: Ed Brubaker/Peter David/Craig Kyle & Chris Yost/Mike Carey
Artist: Billy Tan/Scott Eaton/Humberto Ramos/Chris Bachalo
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Price: $2.99 (x4)

It’s been a long road, but finally this month sees the conclusion of Messiah Complex. At the end of last month’s offerings I was beginning to have my doubts that this X-over was really going to deliver anything new or notable. Were the final chapters of this grand epic able to persuade me otherwise?

This month we opened up with Uncanny #494. The first third of the book is taken up with resolving the confrontation between Bishop, intent on killing the baby to save the future, and Cable, intent on saving the baby by taking her into the future. It all ends in a big fight between Bishop and the marauders, things ending in a big fight rather than any kind of sensible narrative resolution has been a running theme of this entire crossover, so I wasn’t that surprised. We pop briefly to the future to catch up with Madrox and Layla, and learn something of Bishop’s motivation, and then the rest of the issue is taken up with the Uncanny and X-Force teams beginning to mobilise against Cable and the Marauders. On the whole this was a much better issue than previous ones. As the various storylines pull together the individual chapters feel more coherent, and the whole affair less disjointed. It’s still somewhat disappointing to see every issue have to contain a fight of some sort, but that’s just something I’ll have to accept I suppose. It’s worth mentioning, I think, since this is the final Uncanny issue that Tan’s art has come on in leaps and bounds over the course of his tenure on the book. While he still isn’t mind blowing, he is detailed, clear, polished and on time. For me that’s 4 out of 5 for an artist right there.

Of all the X-books, X-Factor has been the one that has most obviously suffered from being wedged into this X-over. As the one X-book that didn’t follow the “one fight an issue, big villain every arc” formula, it just felt knocked off course by being forced into that mold. This issue finally ties up the future storyline, with Layla sacrificing the Madrox clone in the future in order to send that clones information back to Madrox in the present. The entire purpose of this part of the story seems to have been to allow the X-men to somehow discover Bishop’s new found evilness. I can’t help feeling that it was an unnecessarily convoluted way to go about doing this. It remains possible that, with Layla trapped in the future and another Madrox clone off in a second future, Peter David will use the storyline productively in the pages of X-Factor in order to drive that books story going forward. If however that doesn’t happen the whole thing has not only added nothing, but actually been detrimental in a number of ways. The whole future storyline has felt disjointed from the remainder of the crossover, and has taken up valuable pages that could have otherwise been used to tell more interesting story; or have been removed all together to trim the whole X-over down. In addition by breaking up the main story with another story every issue the flow of that main story has been broken as well.

Regardless, with Madrox back in the present the rest of the X-men learn of Bishop’s betrayal and once again saddle up for a fight, at the same time Cable recruits the professor to help him, and the marauders arrive with the baby at Muir Island where we learn that, unsurprisingly, Mystique hasn’t exactly been playing everyone straight and that Sinister is dead as a result. I realise I was supposed to somehow care about Sinister being killed, but I really just couldn’t, and I’m not sure why he has been involved at all, other than the fact he’d be conspicuous by his absence if he hadn’t been, given every other X-villain is rammed in here somewhere. The final pages have the obligatory Predator X scene - oh yes, and a big fight starts. By now with all the fights and the repeated 3-page reminders of Predator X’s existence it’s beginning to feel a touch repetitive.

Eaton’s art somehow seemed less detailed to me this issue, I’m not sure if it was inked or coloured differently, but there was a change, and in my opinion one for the positive. The lack of detail served to give Eaton’s work a bit more of a stylistic edge, something to make it stand out a bit more, which can’t be a bad thing.

The penultimate chapter finds us in the pages of New X-Men #46, the final issue of that book, and initially we’re on Muir Island finding out what exactly happened between Mystique and Sinister, and seeing a massive fight kick off between the Marauders and X-force/Bishop. That fight doesn’t go on for long before the rest of the X-men turn up, along with Cable and Xavier, to make and even BIGGER fight; woot!. On a much more interesting note we learn both Mystique and Gambit’s motivations throughout this whole affair; to save Rogue. This was something I didn’t see coming, although I admit I hadn’t exactly had many sleepless nights pondering it, and it was one of the few parts of the story so far that seemed to sit perfectly in the context of the characters involved and what had gone before. The rest of the issue is taken up finally realising the point of the Predator X story. The Predator, or dog as I will call him for short, arrives at the mansion and starts chasing all the younger X-men. This all ends up with a showdown in the infirmary where the new X-men try to protect Beast, Nightcrawler and the other injured parties from being eaten by the dog. It’s at this point that Pixie decides that since X-23 has killed another dog before that she should take the new dog to her. She then transports herself, the dog and everybody else in the infirmary to Muir Island, thus allowing for the BIGGEST fight of all…EVER! So that’s 3 pages of dog, almost every single issue of this crossover so far, all in all probably a whole comic books worth of random dog appearances, simply to provide a plot device to get the New X-Men to Muir Island for the big showdown; and it’s not even a very good plot device. To say I consider that weak story telling would be an understatement.

At this point there are roughly 40 individual characters involved in a fight on Muir Island. Understandably Ramos is beginning to struggle with drawing that in any meaningful way, and that made me very nervous to see what Bachalo might do in the final chapter. The issue ends with Cable and Xavier finding the baby and Cable just about to escape to the future when both Bishop and the dog attack; don’t ask me how the dog got all the way across the battlefield to the basement without being molested by any one of the 40 super powered beings upstairs. He just did.

The final chapter of this long journey is once again in the hands of Mike Carey in the pages of X-Men. This issue involves a lot of fights. There’s a brief three way fight between Cable, Bishop and the dog, there’s a fight between the New X-Men and the Marauder and a fight between X-force and the dog in which Wolverine demonstrates that he really is the best he is at what he does. Aside from the fights there is actually some quite good stuff. Rogue, now cured by the baby of all her many personalities, confronts Mystique, and once again leaves Gambit to find herself. Cyclops and Cable confront each other over the future of the baby, and in a scene with a surprising emotional resonance allows Cable to leave to the future. Finally Bishop confronts everyone and shoots someone fairly surprising in the head. As a final chapter this is certainly action packed, but it offers little resolution, additionally there is little doubt that Bachalo was under strain here. While the more sedate scenes show his usual flair and style, a lot of the fight scene pages lack some detail and punch. However in all fairness he does communicate the action quite clearly.

As has become the trend for these kinds of large stories, there is no end to Messiah Complex, rather there is a whole new set of storylines triggered that will be followed up on in subsequent series. That is, in and of itself, no bad thing. Some of those storylines look quite interesting, and while this X-over itself hasn’t offered the originality and freshness I was hoping for, by tying up a number of loose ends and re-positioning certain key characters, it has cleared the board for the X-line to now offer those things moving forward. What that means though is that it is hard to judge the quality of the X-over in isolation. By itself it offers reasonable dialogue, average art, poor pacing, some interesting ideas that are drowned out by some unoriginal and some poor story-telling decisions. If however the X-books going forward can capitalise on the room to manoeuvre that this X-over has given them, it may yet be remembered as a turning point in the history of the franchise.

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