Exiles #2
Story:
Art:

Written by Judd Winick
Pencils by Mike McKone

Published by Marvel Comics
Price: $2.25

My Verdict: Weak.

Torn from what they've previously known, X-Men from various alternate realities have been thrown together as a team in order to leap from reality to reality, setting things to rights. In the previous episode, they were sent to a world to release their greatest teacher. One would assume that was Professor Charles Xavier. One would assume wrong.

The problem with this book is that it's Mutant X mixed with Quantum Leap and a dash of Avengers Forever thrown in for good measure. Not that that in itself is a bad thing. Hell, based on that premise alone, I'd buy the book. There are some very cool ideas and characters at play, my personal favorite being that the original Thunderbird not only survived but it was HE who became the instrument of Apocalypse.

But unfortunately, this book doesn't seem to want to accelerate up and above its high concept breakdown. That's ALL it is. Now granted, maybe it's just on its second issue and I'm being too hard on it, but you have to simultaneously setup a storyline for us to get interested in and then keep us interested long enough until everything cements. This is kind of hard to do when the middle of the book's revelation about how the mutants of this world have been persecuted feels like it should have been the cliffhanger ending of the issue. Instead, everything's compressed into two pages. Imagine if you had decompressed that time and used it to, oh I don't know, let us learn a little bit about the characters. Also, the battle scenes are dialogue-heavy--and not even good dialogue, or even dialogue that seems like it's coming out of multiple characters' mouths.

This book has a great deal of potential, and Winick probably just needs some time to warm up to it. That was the case with his Green Lantern which I dumped for a few months and then came back to. There are a couple of cool moments in the book, but let's hope that the cool factor gets ramped up a bit. I hope this book succeeds--but it's not there yet.