After four issues of retreat, Cable decides to stand and face Bishop, but the results of the clash aren’t anywhere near as conclusive as might have been expected. Both Swierczynski and Olivetti have noticeably raised their game during this first arc, but a number of problems make this issue a rather uncomfortable read.

That’s not to say that the writer hasn’t taken a number of well-judged decisions. The focus on Bishop, with much of the series so far viewed from his perspective, is initially surprising, but Lucas’s nineties solo series managed to remain in publication for more than a year, and the book will be strengthened if this fan base can be tapped into. The plot twist revealed towards the end of the story, whereby Cable can only move forward in time, promises some interesting stories. Presumably Swierczynski intends to confront Summers with the consequences of his actions as he continues to flee through the future, providing a different perspective on the idea of Cable’s influence on the world. This was a key part of Fabian Nicieza’s work on Cable & Deadpool, and it’s a relief to see those ideas being built upon. However, the story continues to advance extremely slowly. Swierczynski appears to have made a conscious choice to sink into the atmosphere of his future world, but after five issues of comics, the ongoing story of the book hasn’t altered in the slightest, with an under-resourced Cable still fleeing from Bishop with the baby. It takes more than showing the Phoenix logo in the little girl’s eyes to advance the story in a convincing fashion.

One particular scene strikes a jarring note towards the end of the issue, as waitress Sophie Pettit uses Cable’s discarded ordinance to breach the stronghold of the New Jersey militia, before shooting their leaders dead. Thus far, Pettit has mainly been an expositionary character, filling Cable in on the developments since he left the present day. Some empowerment of the character is already overdue, but her transformation into a gun-totting one-woman army is rather disquieting, both in moral and narrative terms. While the archetypical image of Nathan Summers has him running around with a bazooka three times the size of his body, the book has never glorified merely possessing a gun, and the result feels rather disturbing. The idea of Cable as an inspiration has been touched on in previous incarnations of the title, particularly during David Tischman’s aborted run, but this is the first time we’ve seen him induce this particular change. It’s possible that the writer will show Summers the severe consequences of his actions as he moves forwards through time, but the issue appears to be written with a straight face, showing the psychotic Sophie as a change for the better. However, there’s also a storytelling problem with this resolution. Small packs of the militia forces have been giving both Cable and Bishop a run of their money throughout the series to date, yet Swierczynski now expects us to believe that a waitress with only basic firearms training can breach their stronghold and execute their leaders, without sustaining so much as a scratch.

The book isn’t without merit, and it’ll be interesting to see if it can develop into the time-travel epic the character has always appeared destined for. However, much of the ethos behind it leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

It’s all over! Best post-Morrison X-Men story ever! (and a lot better than most pre-Morrison X-Men stories too.)

It’s fair to say that a lot of recent Marvel crossovers have dropped the ball in the final act, whether we’re talking the dead-end plots of of House of M and The Other, the hastily rewritten garbage of One More Day, or the anticlimatic surrender that capped off Civil War.

Messiah Complex isn’t entirely immune from that, but it’s far more balanced. Rather than feeling like it exists solely to set up a bunch of new stories,  it manages to feel like it’s told a story in its own right – the story of what happened to the first new mutant since M-Day, and the power struggle surrounding her. What it doesn’t reveal is the child’s identity, which is an interesting gamble – at this point it does look like she’ll actually be a new character.

The issue is rife with the things that I love about the X-Men. There’s a nod to X-History as Cyclops’ memory of sending the baby Nathan to the future informs his decision to release the “messiah” baby to Cable, and there are plenty of new moments destined to become iconic in their own right – Cyclops sending the New X-Men against the Marauders, Wolverine destroying Predator-X from the inside out, Cable fading away as he escapes to the future with the child, and of course, Bishop killing the Professor. I always knew the old geezer was going to play a major role in this story, and it’s quite the fall from grace for Bishop himself.

It’s not totally perfect – if there’s any massive failure in the final issue, it’s that Bachalo’s storytelling is, as with much of his recent work, too obscure to handle all the action. There are some sequences where it’s not easy to see what’s going on. The focus on Rogue in the final two issues comes way out of left field for anyone who hasn’t been reading Carey’s X-Men run, and would’ve benefited from a bit more set up in earlier chapters of Messiah Complex. The Professor’s death is a little undermined by the knowledge that he’s clearly coming back, and soon, according to the solicits (speaking of which, I’m glad I called Bishop for the villain in Cable’s series. I knew I’d get something right if I guessed enough!)

All in all, it’s an incredibly solid, mutant-packed crossover the likes of which we haven’t seen for far too long, and ultimately it’s achieved its aim of making me damn interested in where the X-Franchise is going, when previously (X-Factor aside) it’d only made it only my pull list out of a sense of duty and tradition more than anything else. Now I can’t wait for more. Hell, I might actually buy a Cable book just to see where his plot’s going…

We don’t usually do much in terms of new updates here, but since the April 2008 Marvel Solicits have just been released, and in light of all the secrecy over the casts of various titles, I couldn’t help noticing this Greg Land X-Men poster (top image below, click to enlarge)

Colossus, Frost, Cyclops, Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Pixie? Odd set of characters to be appearing on a poster together. It doesn’t appear to be the cast of Ellis’ Astonishing X-Men, after all (depicted here) though there is a little crossover. Could it be something to do with the post-Messiah Complex X-Men line? The Uncanny cast, perhaps?

There’s also this leaked Young X-Men cover (bottom image on the left, also click to enlarge.) YXM is, as we know, the successor to the dearly departed New X-Men.

 Clearly no Pixie there. Though I do recognise Wolfcub, Blindfold (in costume!?) Rockslide and Dust, clockwise from the far left, along with an (apparently) new guy on the far right and either Elixir or a new character in the centre. That’s clearly a Dodson cover even before you read the signature, though whether that means he’ll be the regular artist is anyone’s guess.

Still, I suppose we’ll find all this out soon when the full X-Men solicits come out on Thursday.

And, while we’re speaking about the solicits, it’s also good to see this has finally been announced:

X-MEN DIVIDED WE STAND BOOK 1 (of 2)
Written by MIKE CAREY, MATT FRACTION, CRAIG KYLE, CHRISTOPHER YOST and SKOTTIE YOUNG
Pencils by BRANDON PETERSON, JAMIE MCKELVIE, SANA TAKEDA and SKOTTIE YOUNG
Cover by BRANDON PETERSON
*Solicit classified until 1/24/2008*
48 PGS./Rated T+…$3.99

Frankly, that’s going to be worth it for McKelvie’s first mainstream superhero work alone. Excited? Yes sir.

An incredibly odd title comes to an incredibly odd end as the penultimate and otherwise unremarkable part of a crossover. I have to admit, were I a big fan of New X-Men, I might feel a bit short changed. As it is, I can’t get too worked up, not least because the rumours of a “Young X-Men” title are flying thick and fast which will presumably fill the niche this book, and Generation X, and (the original) New Mutants occupied before it (though as an aside, having run the “New” branding into the ground off the back of Grant Morrison’s New X-Men,  it seems Marvel are now eyeing up Young Avengers’ branding. What’s next? Young Daredevil? Young Punisher? Young New Excalibur?!)

Still, while it may not be much of a send-off for the plucky young group of cannon-fodder, it is a fairly decent chapter in its own right. There are some concerns, however. Rogue’s sudden reappearance as a major plot point doesn’t feel very foreshadowed, unless you’ve been reading the series prior to Messiah Complex, and her current “death touch” isn’t even mentioned shortly before it’s used to kill off Sinister, if you can believe that’s actually happened. Still, the idea of Mystique and Gambit working together in the Marauders is a logical one, and Gambit’s change of heart in giving the child to Xavier makes plenty of sense. There’s an excellent scene where Gambit looks over Sinister’s corpse and considers that if Sinister is dead, then his debt is truly over and he’s free again.

Perhaps the other major point in the issue is that the Predator-X arc finally intersects with the rest of the plot, which seems fitting because he is a New X-Men villain, after all. Faced with a battle they can’t win, the NXM have a fairly frantic battle which culminates in Pixie freaking out and teleporting the New X-Men – and more importantly Predator-X - to the X-Men, who she believes can stop it. Unfortunately, the X-Men are with mutant baby that made Predator-X go insane with hunger in the first place. Uhoh. It seems, then, that Predator-X will be providing the culminating battle, and in a few days we’ll get to see exactly how this all ends.

Chapter eleven of thirteen, and I have to admit I’m starting to get a bit worried about where the Predator-X story is going. It’s supposedly been tracking the “messiah” baby, to the point where its masters pointed the Predator at the mansion and it just ran the other way to find it, so… why is it now back at the mansion and about to eat the cast of New X-Men? Hilariously, the X-Men are so worried about whether there’s going to be a next generation of mutants, they’re not paying attention to the fact that the current one is about to get ripped into bacon.

The connection the baby has to Bishop’s future is revealed and, even though it requires a bit of continuity fudging based on what we already know about him, I welcome the attempt to simplify the X-Futures into what appear to be the “bad” future, where Bishop grew up, and the “good” future, where Cable grew up. The specific identity of the baby messiah isn’t identified yet, but at this point it’s hard to imagine it being especially relevant. If it’s not Phoenix, they’ll need to come up with a really good alternative because that seems like the most logical choice right now. 

There’s a nice nod to continuity where the Professor and Cable reminisce about the events of a previous crossover, the X-Cutioner’s song, a story this specific crossover owes a fair amount to. The reason why Cable didn’t go to the X-Men is fairly believable – Rogue’s team was full of Marauders – though with Mystique and Gambit apparently working outside of Sinister’s command, it seems that they might’ve been a good choice after all – it’s a nice reversal of the marauders infiltrating the X-Men, if so.

At the moment, the question worrying me most is how Layla’s going to get back from the future. At least readers of X-Factor do have a fair amount of the regular cast show up in this issue. To Peter David’s credit once again, he makes it feel almost like an issue of X-Factor, albeit one embroiled in a crossover. With the end for Messiah Complex now well in sight, one can only wonder what revelations are coming.

Well, it wasn’t Predator-X who stopped Bishop, but instead the Marauders made their re-appearance at a fortuitous moment, taking the baby for themselves. This is the first time it’s significantly changed hands during the arc, and presumably signifies the point of the final chapter – rescuing the baby from the Marauders.

At this point, I’m wondering if Bishop won’t become the main antagonist in Cable’s new series. His role in Messiah Complex just become far more important, and once his apparant betrayal comes to light it feels like the only really payoff can be death or exile, in the grand tradition of previous X-Traitors.

Speaking of which, Gambit’s appearance in this issue can’t fail to disappoint Gambit fans. Sometimes a character shows up and suddenly they’re just acting how they should, and you realise that for years they’ve been mis-written - This is one of those moments for Gambit, in my opinion. Tan’s artwork contributes to that, as he continues to improve massively. There’s a brilliant panel later in the issue where Wolverine squares up to a disobediant (and much taller) Warpath, that Tan deserves credit for rendering, because it’s an excellent little Wolverine moment.

The final twist in the issue sees Cable contact the Professor for help – as expected, the Professor’s about to play a big role in Messiah Complex which explains the earlier attempts to put him down. There’s going to be a triumphant return for one Charlie Xavier, but the question should be whether the X-Men will be pleased to see him or not. A few threads remain to be wrapped up – Predator X really has to do something big to justify his inclusion in the series, and Layla has to get back to the past somehow (though part of me wonders if this isn’t part of a plot thread introduced in X-Factor… I’ll elaborate if anything comes of it.)

Once again, the best thing you can say about Messiah Complex is that, Morrison’s run aside, the X-Men haven’t been this exciting or urgent in years. Only a few chapters left and I’m still as gripped today as I was at the start. I’m just hoping they manage to buck the trend for climaxing with a damp squib like most of Marvel’s recent big stories.