Reviewer: James Hatton
Title: ‘New X-Men: Academy X – Choosing Sides (1 of 6)’
Written by: Nunzio DeFilippis & Christina Weir
Penciled by: Randy Green
Inked by: Rick Ketcham
Colored by: Pete Pantazis
Lettered by: Dave Sharpe
Editor: Mike Marts
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Many years ago, the X-Men had a storyline called the Phalanx Covenant, which crossed over into every X-Book and at the end we were left with Generation X. For a long time Gen X & Image’s Gen 13 were the watermark we held teen superhero books at. So if those are the watermark, than this book starts off drowning.
Story!
It’s hard to tell whether or not the story in this book is muddled because DeFilippis & Weir were boxed into restarting at #1 by the X-Editors, or if it isn’t good on it’s own accord. In my opinion it’s a whole lot of column A, a little bit of column B.
The premise of the issue is to introduce us to our new characters again, in case you weren’t reading ‘New Mutants’. (Which, might I add, most weren’t, thus the #1 restart.) The problem with this is, it is obvious from the beginning that these characters have a history with each other, but we are promptly spoon-fed their powers and abilities all the while circulating around a silly subplot of Nori losing a knob off of her glove. Add to this that in the first few pages we are shown quite a few new characters, but the entire story circulates around the folks from New Mutants.
From what I have been told DeFilippis & Weir are very good writers, but the problem seems to be that they just don’t understand how to write a team book yet.
ART!
Nothing spectacular here either. The new costumes for Cyclops and Emma are revamps of older versions, and all of the characters look consistent. There was one panel where it seems our colorist got a bit hyper with his lighting, as Nori goes from wearing a plain t-shirt and jeans to a skintight club shirt and leather pants, but the rest of it was acceptable.
Backgrounds showed you the scene, and the facial expressions were telling. Nothing really outstanding to speak of.
Overall
I generally will try a book for a story arc, and this one is no exception, but I have a feeling that’s all I’ll be giving this one. It’s not as fun and action packed as Gen13 was, and definitely not as fresh and new as Generation X was. Hopefully, by the end of this arc we will see some growth; otherwise it’s just another X-Book to do away with.
