Frankly, there's not a lot going on this week.  Marvel, in particular, have apparently chosen to hold back some of their biggest titles for Wednesday (which just so happens to be the release date of Final Crisis #2, oddly enough).  But it's been pretty quiet across the board, so I'm just going to run through the week's X-books, mid-story or no.

Ultimate X-Men #95 is the second part of Aron Coleite's story "Absolute Power."  The story is a thinly veiled steroid allegory, which doubles as the introduction of Alpha Flight.  Northstar has been recaptured by the Flight, whose powers have all been boosted by the mutant drug Banshee.  Last issue, Colossus turned out to be using it too, and he enlisted a bunch of other powered-up X-Men to rescue his boyfriend.

There's also a bloody great banner on the cover saying "March on Ultimatum."  I have no idea why.  Apparently it's supposed to be some sort of tie-in indicator, and not just a generic advert.  But the story doesn't read like it's building to anything wider, so I'm none the wiser as to what Ultimatum is or what this story might have to do with it.  Not that I'm complaining, mind you.  I'm much happier when the books are largely self-contained.

Now, when I reviewed the first part of this story, I gave it the benefit of the doubt, even though it plainly had the potential to be incredibly stupid.  On the whole, I decided to be cautiously optimistic.  Judging from my mailbox, a lot of you weren't quite so forgiving.  And, well, if you didn't like last issue, this one isn't going to change your mind.

Actually, I still don't have a problem with Coleite's basic idea, which is that mutants with slightly flawed powers might be using drugs to sort themselves out.  Steroids are a reasonably interesting idea, and the concept is fair enough.  But in practice, it's a bit heavy handed.  Cyclops finding that he can control his optic beams... well, fine.  Angel turning into a bird-man, and nobody seeming to find that at all creepy?  Um, no.  That doesn't work.

What's more, if you stop to think about the plot, it unravels rather quickly.  As the issue kicks off, Colossus' breakaway group - who have already taken Banshee, don't forget - head off to get some more drugs.  And to do this... they go to Colossus' home town in Russia.  So...

So, hold on. 

Colossus has supposedly been using this stuff the whole time he was with the X-Men.  His powers don't work properly without it.  If that's so, where has he been getting it all this time?  Has he been making regular drug-smuggling trips back to Russia?  Or did he show up at the Mansion on his first day with five crates of illegal drugs?  And if Colossus has to go all the way to Russia to get this stuff, why does he only order twelve vials, to share between five people?  And come to think of it, how does he even contact the dealer, whose identity is supposedly a secret to him?  And why does this dealer, who's so concerned about his identity that he makes Colossus wear a blindfold, appear in plain sight of the window from Colossus' living room?  And how come none of the other X-Men take the opportunity to look at him when he does?  And if Xavier is that keen on finding out who the dealer is, why doesn't he just read Colossus' mind to find out how to contact him?  Is there really a moral difference between taking the information and getting Cyclops to trick it out of him?  One that would mean anything to the telepaths in Ultimate X-Men?

So... yeah, there are some problems here.

Despite that, even though my head says this is a bit of a mess, I didn't mind it nearly as much as you'd expect.  It's not great.  In fact, it's a seriously flawed story, and it's going to irritate quite a few readers.  But it's quite readable if you don't think about it too closely, and a part of me rather admires the audacity of doing something as odd as this in a fill-in arc.

Even so, I can't quite bring myself to recommend it.

Rating: C+

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