X-Men Messiah Complex: Chapter 6-9
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 (x3)

Well, here I am again with the monthly Messiah Complex round up, taking in the latest issues of Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor, New X-Men and X-Men. After Carey’s previous issue of X-Men injected a bit of umph into the proceedings at the end of last month, I had high hopes going in this month. Sadly however, I’ve come out of the experience rather ambivalent and with an overwhelming sense of déjà vu.

This month kicked of with Brubaker’s Uncanny issue, and, like most of his Uncanny issues to date, it isn’t bad. It’s just not that great either. Brubaker gets the luxury of a fairly focused issue this month, something the other writers certainly don’t. Almost all of the pages are taken up with a massive sentinel attack on the Institute, which both Tan and Brubaker handle competently, but you can’t help feeling you’ve seen it all before; literally and several times. The end of the issue sees the formation of the much touted new X-Force team, which I have to confess seems like a recipe for utter drivel to me, but I’ll withhold judgement until a final product appears next year.

Chapter 7 sees us return to the pages of X-Factor, and as usual the quality is fairly high. Peter David gets to focus about 40% of his time on Madrox and Layla as they explore the apocalyptic anti-mutant future they find themselves trapped in (again…). Another 40% is taken up with the new X-Force tracking Cable, and to be honest some of my worst fears regarding this group were actually belayed. In David’s hands at least, the team works, there’s a balance of personalities and Wolverine is as an effective leader for this kind of team, which is a role we rarely see him in. The remainder of the issue sees a brief Predator X scene, just to remind us we care, Cable runs into a bit of trouble when the Purifiers catch up with him and we get yet another confrontation between the Professor and Cyclops. These arguments were quite worthwhile the first few times, but at this point it’s just driving the point of conflict home a little too hard. We get it already, Scott has had enough, the Professor is on his way out, we don’t need a reminder every other issue. Scott Eaton’s art is as always a fine balance between detail and deadline meeting. It does it’s job but it’s not going to blow any minds.

Our penultimate chapter this month is in the pages of New X-Men, which ironically doesn’t actually feature many of the New X-Men. Almost all of this issue is taken up with the confrontation between Cable, Lady Deathstrike, the Purifiers and X-Force. If someone had described that to me as a story for almost a whole book, I would have told them it was trash, in the execution though it’s pretty entertaining. In no small part that is down to Ramos’ art. I realise a lot of people can’t stand him but personally I think he’s fabulous. There’s an energy to the art in much the same way there is with Bachalo, only with Ramos you can actually follow what is happening. In this issue in particular there are some great single and double page spreads that really made me smile. This issue may not be anymore original than the others this month, but at least it has a sense of fun. I have to say though the death of a team member seemed utterly pointless to me. It served no valuable purpose as a story telling mechanism and it isn’t a character anyone cares enough about for the shock value to be valuable in and of itself. If I hadn’t been paying attention I might have even missed it.

Once again we finish up in the pages of X-Men, and once again most of the story progression seems to have been saved for Carey. This issue kicks of with us back in the future, where we get a bit more of a sense of setting and tone for the apocalyptic future as Madrox is tattooed and dumped into a concentration camp. Progression of the story in this X-over has in general been slow, but for the Madrox/Layla thread in particular it has been achingly so. It’s been fed to us in a drip drip fashion and at an inconsistent speed, which makes it very hard for the storytellers to maintain a sense of tension and difficult for the readers to maintain any sense of interest. The remainder of the book, happily, works a bit better. Cyclops and the X-men seniors join up with the X-force team in the aftermath of their battle, while the Cuckoos and the X-men juniors fix up Cerebra (probably should have done that earlier) and locate Cable, who is with the mutant baby and en route to Forge. The physical meeting up of the two senior teams, together with the communication from them to the junior team in the house and the mental tracking of Cable by the Cuckoos serves to create a good flow between the different threads of the story, and really this issue is one of the few times, since the X-over began, that those threads have really pulled together in any way. In that respect this issue at least feels like a coherent story, rather than a disjointed collection of 4 different stories. I won’t spoil the reveal at the end of the issue in case you haven’t read it yet, but like Carey’s previous issue it serves to inject a sense of impact that is distinctly missing from all the other chapters so far. You can at least leave this issue with the sense that something has happened, and against all my previous prejudices I actually found Bachalo’s art totally clear, digestible and at times quite beautiful this month.

I’m not sure anyone is still caring about, or indeed reading, Marvel’s massive X-over at this point, and to some degree I can see why. The format of multiple story threads told in bite sized portions over several months hasn’t really worked well for maintaining tension. I can’t help feeling that it would have worked better if New X-Men had been canned before the event began, the main X-men story line could have been compacted down and published in X-Men and Uncanny, each released on alternate weeks. The Layla/Madrox story could then be held by itself in X-Factor, which could be released weekly with issues having been prepared up front. In that format the event could have been compressed down to 5 weeks, rather than almost 3 months, less writers and artists would have made for a greater sense of artistic identity, the change in publishing schedule might have grabbed the attention of some new readers and the whole thing would have been more coherent, punchy and engaging. What do I know though?

To be fair, despite these complaints, the quality of dialogue and art in all four of the X-books has been consistently acceptable, and more often good throughout Messiah Complex; probably the best the line has seen in years in fact. The problem is that in terms of storyline we’ve all been there before: Sentinel attacks; apocalyptic future; cameos by every x-villain in history; almost pointless character deaths. At a time when characters like Captain America, The Avengers and even Iron Fist, of all people, have been given a fresh lick of paint and a contemporary direction, it’s sad to see a flagship line like the X-men still choosing to re-hash the same storylines. I think a lot of people really felt that this X-over might actually see Marvel push these characters in a new and inventive direction. I guess at just over half way through that still might happen, but for now it’s all a bit of a let down.