Meanwhile, back in the House of M crossover, Mutopia X continues. 

This is the sort of crossover book that might cause problems for Marvel in the long term.  It's basically another five issues of District X, but it's been ordered at massively higher levels - issue #1 was up 146% on the final issue of District X.  And it doesn't take a genius to work out why that is.  But while nobody could accuse it of being a "red skies" crossover, it doesn't really seem to have anything to do with the core storyline.  Readers who bought the book for that reason might be a little disappointed.

Now, on the other hand, one of the classic arguments in favour of doing crossovers is that they bring in new readers and expose them to comics that they weren't otherwise reading.  Often what they get is something totally unrelated to the title's usual stories.  This approach means that crossover readers are actually getting a fair indication of what District X is like.

Except, of course, that District X is cancelled, so it's a bit late to be recruiting new readers now.  Mind you, they might not have known that when they commissioned this story.

The big idea in this issue is Sapien Transcendence, which is a concept that's already been flagged up in some of the background material elsewhere in the event.  Even in a world where the number of mutants is going through the roof, there's still a significant number of children of mixed marriages who are stubbornly refusing to demonstrate mutant powers and seem, god forbid, to be human.  This plainly won't do, so enter Mutopia, Absalom Mercator's welcoming but slightly New Age community, who offer to use mutagenic fruit and dangerous reality-altering powers to unlock these kids' mutant genes. 

Izzy's daughter is one such case, and the family's keen to see her changed.  Izzy's not so sure, largely because the whole exercise reminds him of humanity's place in the world, rather than because of any more specific objection.  The Mutopians, on the other hand, regard humans as suffering from "arrested genetic development" - continuing the book's theme of even the nice liberal mutants being unbelievably patronising to the poor beleaguered humans.

It's a nice idea.  One of the strongest aspects of House of M is that it's resisted the temptation to go for a straightforward world where the mutants crushed the humans, in favour of one where the relations between the two are rather more complex.  The Mutopians are at least trying to bridge the gap, but are coming at it from a decidedly mutant perspective - which offers hope to the humans who might get an upgrade and move on in the world, but just really annoys all the others.  The set-up also gives us another side of Izzy's attitude to mutants by putting him in a situation where he ends up even more defensive than usual.

On the other hand, I'm slightly confused by the amount of time which is being devoted to re-enacting the Izzy/Lara relationship, something that's only just been done for real in District X itself.  It's not a story that was crying out to be reprised so quickly, and at such length.

But there's a lot of good material in here as well, and it's undeniably doing something with the crossover that couldn't have been done in the regular title.

Rating: B+

back | continue