Unreachable Star Reviews April 2nd, 2008 (SPOILERS)

This is our 254th edition, only one book this week and it's a
new X-Book.

This week we have...

Young X-Men #1 - 3 Stars

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Young X-Men #1 - "Final Genesis" (Writer: Mark Guggenheim, Artist:
Yanick Paquette, Inker: Ray Snyder, Colorist: Rob
Schwager)

The X-Men have disbanded, and that leaves many of the younger students
of Xavier's trying to live their own lives. However, Cyclops decides
to round some of them up for a new mission.

What's going on here is pretty pedestrian and predictable, the only
surprise being the ending (if you hadn't already read solicitations,
which I did). It's a standard issue "gather the team" introduction.
We see each of the team members living their life, and then Cyclops
comes up and recruits them for the team.

It's not bad, but it's not terribly good here. The only positive is
the suspicion that all is not as it seems in one direction, but that
will likely take some time to be revealed.

In contrast, there are a couple things that rankle. The issue does
seem to put the lie to some of the post-Decimation hype we've been
getting. We've been told for months now how now every mutant is
precious, they're an endangered species now, and that it's time for
all mutants to unite under one banner because extinction is looming.
Yet, apparently in the wake of Messiah Complex, all the X-Men have
decided, "Screw All That", and threw the younger, more defenseless
X-Men out on their own, without any backup, in a world that still
has people like the Purifiers out there who are more than willing to
kill children, if they happen to be mutants (or, for that matter,
ex-mutants). That Scott _has_ to go to each of them and recruit them
for the mission just feels wrong. They should never have split up, or
if they did, there should have been a damn good explanation. What's
more, everybody seems to be blending in pretty fine with a world that
seems to be more anti-mutant than ever. Some of them have even
managed to get halfway around the world to go on private missions,
despite all of them being de facto registered and presumably monitored
by forces like SHIELD.

The other problem is that one of the cast (so far) is a mutant we
haven't met yet. Wait, hold the rejoicing, X-Men, this isn't a new
mutant manifestation, it's simply, apparently, a mutant that the
audience has never heard of before, but must have been around for a
while because nobody's terribly surprised.

Okay, that might be fair enough. New book, you might want to include
a new character. It still seems a little dodgy in that we were
supposedly not going to see any newly revealed mutants for the next
several years after Decimation, but I like meeting new mutants, so
I'm all for making an exception... but only if there's something
particular to recommend the exception. Here we've got a character
with vague, potentially limitless powers (he gets new powers based
on what tattoos he has), and who's already annoying the first time
I've seen him. The last time we had a character with vague,
potentially limitless powers, was Lifeguard, and she's thankfully
been in Limbo since nobody but Chris Claremont ever wanted to use
her. If this wasn't post-Decimation, I might roll my eyes at the
character but go with it, but since it is, I'm actually even more
annoyed that they finally decide to bend the rules to give us a
new mutant to enjoy, and this is what we're given.

I'll still stick with it to see what they do with the main plot,
but I'm not impressed with most of the cast, and as a first issue
it leaves a lot to be desired.

Review: 3 stars

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Well, that's it for this week folks. Next week, according to the
shipping list, there's just one book, Serenity: Better Days #2.

See you next time...

Peter Dimitriadis
http://www.unreachablestar.net
The Unreachable Star - Comics & SF News/Reviews/Opinion