I’m still likin’ X-Men Forever about as much as I ever was and hope it isn’t canceled anytime soon. (How can a book like this, at $4 an issue, survive? I guess it’s doing okay, though, since a few issues have gone back for second printings…) The last few installments have been a bit below average–the series hasn’t hit again the
highpoint for me that it did in issue 5–but there’s still a growing
intrigue that I can’t help be drawn into, regarding the shadowy plot against mutants.

The pencilling, at times, is rudimentary and almost amateurish in a few spots. But on the other hand, the colors and inking are still pretty great. The colorist in particular did a great job of setting an appropriately spooky mood. Still, I can’t wait for Tom Grummett to return. When the best thing you can say about the pencilling is that you enjoyed the absurdity of seeing Jean’s painted-on costume, Rogue’s gaudy shoulder pads, and Kitty’s audaciously short skirt and chunky goth boots…all while the ladies are investigating serious crimes in a dark, abandoned base in the middle of a jungle…then you know there’s a problem.

Claremont’s Claremont. You either like the writing, or at least accept it and find some charm in it, or you don’t. For what it’s worth, this isn’t Claremont anywhere near his most atrocious. A few days ago I tried to read a few issues of his FIRST return to the X-universe, beginning with X-Men vol. 2 #100 in 2000, and it was awful. X-Men Forever isn’t anywhere near that bad. It’s a relatively simple story that’s proceeding in a measured fashion. And for ever absurdity you might find in Claremont’s writing in this series, there are at least two decently good character moments.

For those of us who like this sort of thing, X-Men Forever is better than the sum of its parts. Overall, impossibly, I’d give the issue a 4/5, rounded up from a 3.5.