X-Men #17 Review

X-Men #17 marks the end of Brian Wood's tenure on the series. The previous issue gave me hope that he'd be able to wrap up his run on a satisfying note, but that doesn't prove to be the case. Poorly paced and largely unfulfilling, X-Men #17 only eaves me wishing Wood had stuck around a bit longer to take care of some loose threads and more definitively cap off this arc.

In the tradition of so many X-Men storylines before it, "Bloodline" ends with the X-Men dusting themselves off after recent defeats and suddenly roaring back to beat the enemy into submission. I'm all for comics the showcase the X-Men fighting as a well-oiled unit. That's something Wood has excelled at. But it's always a little odd to see the stakes so suddenly shift in the climax of a story. The X-Men wind up dealing with The Future so quickly and resoundingly here that all sense of conflict leaks out of the story. For a guy who supposedly knows every move his enemies will make, the Future is bizarrely short-sighted.

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