It's recently been announced this series is coming to an end, and that writer Chris Claremont will be turning his attention to another corner of the Marvel Universe and the resurrected of Excalibur. That's fine and dandy, because I can't for the life of me figure out what the point of this series is. Not surprisingly, Claremont has a number of character-oriented subplots on the go. It brings a grounded tone to these fantastic characters, but there are problems as well. This is territory that Claremont has visited far too often, and there seems to be a lack of any real direction or movement here. The good news: editor Mike Marts has finally found an inker whose work doesn't eclipse or submerge penciller Igor Kordey's striking and effective style.
The members of the X-Treme X-Men, an offshoot group from Charles Xavier's X-Men, gather to relax in the mutant community of Valle Soleada in California. A former enemy adjusts to living with mutants... and to the acceptance they've shown her despite her past violent actions. Sage tries to uncover the secrets of Valle Soleada, while Cannonball organizes an evening clambake as a means to reconnect with old friends. The ever-grim Bishop finds himself the target of a new enemy and discovers that he's recruited some more mutant mercenaries.
Greg Adams's inks add cleaner, smoother lines to Kordey's pencils, but they also preserve his style incredibly well. There's a grounded tone in the visuals, detailed and soft. I was particularly blown away by the splash on the third page. The artist encapsulates paradise two-fold. We see Rogue and Gambit's love clearly, and it's reflected in the pristine and inviting waters along the Californian beach. I also enjoyed the rough yet simply designs for the villainous mutants that turn up at the end of issue.
While the designs for those villains are pleasing to the eye, the nature of the conflict is all too generic. The third-tier baddies fail to stop the hero until their boss steps in with his undefined powers to put a stop to it. There's little to set these villains apart from the number of other evil mutant groups that the various X-teams have faced in the past. Elias Bogan is described only as a "mutant predator," and Claremont offers little other information. He's evil because the heroes need an enemy, as far as I can tell.
There's also a striking lack of logic at play in the plot. We're told that the heroes are in the middle of trying to piece together what's going on around them in Valle Soleada, yet only one of their number seems to be actually doing anything about it. The rest act as though they're on vacation. Is this down time for the heroes or not?
