New X-Men: Academy X Volume 1: Choosing Sides TPB (X-Men)

Rating:
Summary: Lame; wasted potential
Review: Before Marvel's big X-Men: ReLoad event, which began in the wake of Grant Morrison's departure from his prolific run on New X-Men, there was a little known X-book called New Mutants. Unlike the original New Mutants book that helped catapault Rob Liefeld to fame years ago, the modern New Mutants featured a young group of mutants training to become the next generation of X-Men. Kind of similar to Generation X, but with more character driven stories. With the X-Men: ReLoad event, New Mutants got canned, and replaced with New X-Men: Academy X, with writer Nunzio Defilippis and artist Christina Weir still at the helm. However, from the opening page on, Academy X is more alike the militant mutant books of the 90's, and you can tell that Defilippis really didn't have much say over what direction the book would go in now. It's a shame that New Mutants, just like Peter Milligan's brilliant X-Statix, both got the axe, and Marvel has replaced both with books like this and the current relaunch of X-Force with Rob Liefeld himself at the helm. All in all, Academy X is almost exactly like the X-books from the mid to late 90's on that turned me off of Marvel, and hopefully not every X-book will follow in this direction.

Rating:
Summary: Great series that doesn't get enough attention
Review: I really think that this is one of the most under appreciated of all the X-Men books. For those that don't know, New X-Men: Academy X is a continuation of Marvel's New Mutants series that premiered in 2003. It was relaunched as New X-Men: Academy X so it could be a part of the big X-Men reload event. The writers of New X-Men: Academy X do a good job of keeping the series accessible to readers who had not read New Mutants, but I would still suggest you do anyway. I think a TPB collecting the first half of that series is scheduled to come out soon.

Basically, the series, as the title implies, is about a group of mutant students who are being taught by the X-Men. All of the students in the main cast are interesting characters. The main storyline of this TPB involves the students at the school being split into different squads and competing with each other. Added drama involves a student who is being hunted by the authorities. His predicament causes a lot of different reactions among the students.

This is a really great series. If you are a fan of the X-Men, or were intrigued by the scenes with the mutant students during the X-Men films, then I think you will enjoy this series. I know I am.

Rating:
Summary: Reload Collateral Damage
Review: While the primary X-team got reloaded into the high-profile Astonishing X-Men, DeFilippis and Weir had to trade in their New Mutants title for a previously-used model, New X-Men, forced to take a crowbar to their storyline and cram in plot elements that completely threw off the dynamic they'd lovingly established over the previous 12 months. And in the first six issues of this reloaded series, they got three more artists to work with, not to mention five of the most trite, uninspired covers on the stands any given month. (Issue #3's cover was decent.)

This opening story arc, Choosing Sides, begins by explaining everything that's changed at the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning, with Cyclops and the apparently reformed Emma Frost serving as the new headmasters of the school; a cursory reintroduction of the New Mutants that reduces each of them to standard team book stereotypes; and, presents their first adventure as a team in the Danger Room. Standard stuff for a first issue, but even accepting that as a necessary evil, there's something missing from the overall package.

That spark of sincerity that made DeFilippis and Weir's short-lived New Mutants run work so well is clearly dulled, as if the corporate-mandated reload as a "team book" sucked the joy from it for them and they're now going through the motions. In issue #2, you get a sense that they're determined to work in some of the more interesting themes that were hinted at before the reload, but in the structured confines of an official "team book," they come off feeling forced and insincere. ie: The prerequisite hothead, and hottie, Noriko, is given an Afghanistanian roommate, Sooraya, complete with burqua and traditional beliefs, and they clash for a couple of panels of simplistic rhetoric. You get the impression that there was something left on the cutting room floor; that pre-reload, this two-page encounter would have been a primary sub-plot that would weave it's way through the series as they explored the ever-present subtext of mutants as minorities. Instead, it goes no further, Sooraya ends up being on the rival squad mentored by Emma Frost, code-named the Hellions, and it all smacks of a cookie-cutter editorial plan being handed down from on high.

By the arc's drawn-out conclusion in issue #6, the Hellions and the New Mutants go head-to-head, a couple of team members switch sides, and the whole thing starts to feel like Saved By The Bell: The Superhero Years.

The New Mutants, and DeFilippis and Weir, deserve better than this.