Academy X #15

Archive

Title: School’s Over Forever
Published By: Marvel Comics

Writers: Nunzio DeFilippis & Christina Weir
Pencils: Paco Medina
Inks: Juan Vlasco
Colors: Pete Pantazis
Letters: Dave Sharpe
Editor: Mike Marts
Publisher: Dan Buckley

Ahh, graduation day for mutants. There are few things you can expect.

One. Angst – gods do them mutants love their angst.
Two. Status quo shift – when any teen drama ends something always changes.
Three. A bad guy – Come on… duh.

So here we are at one of those little lowly X-Books that skirts the line of cancellation time and time again. Let’s see if they did anything different.

STORY!

One. Angst. Yep, it’s in there. You see due to all of the events happening in the other X-Books (Yes, credit where credit is due, DeFillipis and Weir actually mention that the other books exist) – the teaching staff is down to seemingly Dani Moonstar and Shan aka Karma. Shan does her best to try and bring Rahne Sinclair aka Wolfsbane back to the fold, but she is busy working for Jamie Madrox… I can type that with a straight face, but hopefully it will lead to more stories from the Triple X investigative team that we came to love over in Peter David’s book ‘Madrox’.

On the interior, Noriko has beef with David and relationships seem to blossom… aww”¦

Two. Status quo shift. Yep, it’s in there. David makes the prophetic statement at the end that the New Mutants seem to be no more”¦ which, unless the book is getting cancelled, we know not to be true – but, the fact is he’s commenting on some minutiae of drama. Seems a bit angsty to me, but I guess whatever sells books. We also get Armana invited and joining us as a teacher, and the Hellions actually being less Hell-y.

Three. Bad guy. Yep, it’s in there. Here comes the Blob, huge and Blobby. Why he chooses to show up now? Bah, unimportant – he is here to teach the kids a valuable lesson. At the beginning of this series, they couldn’t stand each other OR fight with each other as a unit and here they work together and handle the situation promptly.

Everything is there – but sadly, I knew that before I opened the book. If this book wants to survive happily, it definitely is going to need to kick it up a notch. I love the fact that it references all of the situations (the death of Northstar, Golgotha, Madrox etc.), but when that excites me more than the actual story… not so good.

Art!

Medina is excellent for this book – with Juan Vlasco on inks, and Pete Pantazis on colors, the book is vibrant, colorful and ideal. Except for one problem. Noses. Every single character has this very odd shaped nose, especially Rahne and Dani.

I’ve mentioned Dani Moonstar being a personal gripe of mine for awhile, and that’s mainly because she is always drawn so stereotypical. You would think that on a week to week basis she holds rain dances and prays to totems – which if she does, that’s fine – but, based on the theory of ‘stereotypes must reign as their stereotypes’ she doesn’t sound American-Indian, but every beaded feather in her hair lets you know.

Otherwise, I would love to see this team go further, as long as they work out that nose situation.

Overall!

Meh. Simply meh. The book has floundered in the stereotypical for awhile – and Defillipis and Weir know how to write teens – they know how to write interaction – and they handle HUGE teams of characters well, with nobody really feeling lost in the mix.

It’s just that they reaaaallly need to work on the plotting.