Review: Young X-Men #1

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REVIEW: Young X-Men #1

Writer: Marc Guggenheim

Pencils: Yanick Paquette

Inker: Ray Snyder

Cyclops has recruited another team on young mutants, this time telling them they are the only X-Men team. This squad will train to take on the new Hellfire club. This issue is all about the recruiting of the team. Their powers are not explained, though we get a bit of each character’s personality. The team, though built by Cyclops, is seen by a precognitive member of the team, Blind, who knows that one of them will die. This and the reveal of the Hellfire Club (or rather who’s in it) create the hook for the book.

It’s good that these create the hook, because nothing else does. Someone must tell Guggenheim that all teenagers are not smack talkers with attitude. We’ve got two generic wildcard types thus far, along with a huge smack talker and even Dust appears to have come out of her shell to be far closer to a modern anti-heroic ideal. This leaves the death of a mystery character we might not care about as half of the draw for the book. That’s no use.

Of greater use to X-Fans will be the reveal of the Hellfire Club. While I won’t spoil that here, it’s a good surprise, one franchise fans will surely care about. That said, for these particular characters, there’s going to have to be one hell of a great logic behind this for it to work. Still, I’m curious enough to see what the logic is to pick up another few issues. That’s a major success as getting old X-characters used in different ways that might appeal to old fans is a great way to grow a book.

So far Young X-Men is a mediocre mystery and a good one. We’ve got some characters, but they’re notably weaker thus far than those in New X-Men, so hopefully without too much delay that will change, or the cast will. Differentiating character voices would do a lot here and go a long way to getting the most out of the titles and making the mysteries mean more.

Glazer is a former senior editor at Pulse Wrestling and editor and reviewer at The Comics Nexus.