New Exiles #7 - Marvel

This remains to be one of my favorite X-Men titles. But right now we're in the process of the story where Chris Claremont is building up a lot of hanging story-lines that won't come in to play until much later. That's how he builds his stories, and keeps things interconnected across dozens of issues. The end result is fabulous. But, sometimes in the middle it leaves you with a lot more questions than answers. However, the story keeps moving, so you just kind of forget about them until they pop up later on . . a few issue down the road. Or sometimes, years down the road. Like I said, it's effective. It definitely works for Chris. I'm thrilled to see Tom Grummett back on the art chores this issue. Thinking back, from some of Tom's previous series, he is the kind of artist that he'll take and issue off every 8 to 10 issues or so. That's his usual MO. My guess is we'll have another fill-in issue after this story-arc, or maybe the one after. But it's nothing to get alarmed about. I'm sure Tom will be on this series for the long-run. I think, somehow, we got a couple of pages out of order on this issue. We see Rogue and Mystiq rescuing the King of England, an 8 to 10 year old child, but then the story goes back to the set-up for this mission. I understand the set-up, but, by doing it this way we see that they do actually rescue him, and we find out who one of the villains are, or rather the mole inside the King's court, ahead of time. It kind of makes the story a bit anti-climactic. Sure they probably wanted to start out the issue with a little action, but I think they tipped their hand a little to early on this one. We also see that Betsy's nemesis, the Slaymaster, is somehow involved in all of this. And, Kat is somehow hooked in to the systems of the Crystal Palace a lot more than she should be. Enough so that she's putting a pattern together. " . . the Omniverse is dying! The stars are blinking out. It's happening in real time . . right before my eyes! Entire dimensions are ceasing to exist. All of creation . . is coming to an end!?" My guess is . . all the knowledge that Sage absorbed from Saturyn is going to have to come in to play. Which means she's going to have to deal with the identity issues that she's been having. It looks like the next storyline's going to be focused on Betsy, Kat and Sage. By the way . . . I love this series.