Uncanny X-Men #465 rounds off "Season of the Witch", the book's House of M crossover.  But never mind that - can I sell you a car?

The number of adverts in Marvel's comics has been creeping noticeably upwards for some time now, but they've now achieved absurdly detrimental proportions.  Uncanny X-Men #465 contains 24 pages of story.  And between page 1 and page 24, there are 22 pages of adverts.  The comic boasts three double-page spreads of art, and a further three of adverts.  One of those double-page adverts is placed, ludicrously, immediately after page 1 of the story.  Basically, though, we have now reached a point where the story is interrupted every other page for adverts.  And, being adverts, they are designed to distract.

This may have escaped Marvel's notice, but they are in the business of selling stories and entertaining readers.  The current level of adverts displays an arrogant disregard for the quality of their product.  The monthly pamphlet is a format with little to recommend it.  It is slow.  It is flimsy.  It will unavoidably carry adverts.  About the only thing it has going for it is that it comes out before the trade paperback; if it were the other way around, I wouldn't go near the things.  But at the very least Marvel could try and make a token effort to make the damn things look like a quality product, not a portable advertising hoarding.

Now, things are literally becoming unreadable, with any attempt at atmosphere destroyed, and pacing shot to fuck.  To be fair, it's not uniform across the line - it's the $2.50 books that have the stupid proportions of adverts.  The $2.99 books have only ten pages of advertising interrupting the story, which is tolerable.  No doubt Marvel will claim that they need the extra adverts to keep the price down. 

But DC's $2.50 books have only thirteen pages of advertising - and four of them are on the centre spread, meaning that you can just tear it out and never be bothered by them again.  And there's no excuse for Fantastic Four & Iron Man: Big in Japan #1, which fits 24 pages of adverts into 22 pages of story and comes priced at an indefensible $3.50.  What am I getting for my extra dollar, you assholes?  Ooh, two fewer pages of story, two more pages of adverts, and a shiny cover.  And a general sense of contempt for the paying audience.

Seriously, Marvel.  Don't you have any pride?  Don't you have any self-respect?  Don't you care about putting out a quality product?  Don't you even care about your reputation for quality?  And if you do, why are there 22 pages of adverts cluttering up the 24 page story that I have paid my hard-earned money to read?

On a lighter note, I have to applaud whoever it was in the advertising department that managed to get somebody to take out a double page advert for, of all things, the Honda Civic.  Looking remarkably out of place amongst the adverts for computer games and DVDs, the Honda Civic gazes coyly at us from the opening spread, the product of what I can only assume to be a catastrophic demographic miscalculation at the advertising agency.  I have visions of a horrified advertising executive racing down the stairs to the mailroom at 5.15pm yelling "Stop the mail!  Stop the mail!  I've ticked the wrong box!  I've ticked the wrong box!"

If all of this seems suspiciously unlike a review of Uncanny X-Men #465, well, tough, because the main impression that issue left me with was "Christ, there's an annoyingly large quantity of adverts in this comic."  So far as the actual story is concerned, this more or less wraps up Claremont's House of M contribution, with Captain Britain and assorted other heroes who'll be joining the cast of New Excalibur teaming up to stop reality unravelling by... well, plugging a literal hole in space.

By this point the regular cast have essentially been shunted aside, and we're reading a four-issue prologue to New Excalibur rather than any sort of Uncanny X-Men storyline.  In fairness to Claremont, if nothing else, he's actually done a story within House of M that seems to have some significance, partly by bringing his upcoming cast together, and partly by apparently writing out Meggan - presumably to set up storylines in New Excalibur.  Whether any of this is heading anywhere in Uncanny X-Men itself, I rather doubt, but so be it.

The story, however, boils down to "the heroes fight the villains and eventually do something cosmic and incomprehensible to close the rift."  It's all decidedly vague, and not exactly helped by the presence of Chris Bachalo on art.  After a few months of relative clarity, Bachalo is sliding back into murky obscurity again, with pages that just don't guide the reader's eye to the right bits.  It's genuinely difficult to follow, for no good reason, and lacks drama as a result.  It's hard to care about what's happening when you're too busy wondering what it is.  The closing pages with Meggan on the other side of the rift are rather good, but the earlier action sequences are just a mess.

The story also never really gets around to tying up its loose ends.  Nocturne turned up in the first place because she was on the run from the House of M for some reason.  We never found out what that reason was, and since it's back to normal continuity next month, I suppose we never will.  But, er, wasn't that a central part of the plot...?

As a story concept, better than many of the House of M crossovers; in the execution, rather lacklustre.  And way too many adverts.

Rating: B-

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