I have to admit, it’s been a long time since X-Men was on top of my reading list (years, in fact) but right now I’m on the edge of my seat whenever I check a new X-Men title out of the shops. It’s all because of Messiah Complex. I feel like my comics-reading credibility is shot to pieces, and let’s face it, with the amount of Marvel I buy it was never on solid ground.

Part 5 of the crossover sees the first big twist. It’s name is Cable, and just as I was starting to believe they might have killed him, he turns right up. Speculation at this point had largely pegged a reborn Cable as being the baby they were all fighting over, but rather it turns out that he’s alive, and what’s more, he’s the one who actually got hold of the kid. I have to admit, I didn’t remotely see it coming, but he makes sense as an player in the crossover, given the Sinister/Summers family connection and his own messianic role.

The rest of the issue has an excellent X-Men/Marauders fight scene (featuring this year’s best Gambit/Wolverine moment) and the New X-Men’s hubris catches up with them as they barely escape with their lives, spoiling the X-Men’s main plan and blowing Rictor’s cover in the process. Madrox-2 and Layla’s adventures in the future, however, are so far yielding nothing much different from the usual mutant-opression dystopia, so I’m hoping for a decent twist there.

There’s a lot going on right now in Messiah Complex, but so far it’s not become overwhelming and nothing looks too much like it’s barking up the wrong tree just yet, though the Sentinel attack and what I’m assuming will be the subsequent destruction-of-mansion seems far, far too much of an X-Men cliche, but at least it should, if I’m guessing right, mean that the O*N*E plot is at least finally tied up, because it’s been hanging around the fringes of the book without much to do for years now. If Messiah Complex accomplishes nothing else, that would at least make the whole exercise worth it.