New Mutants Volume 1: Back To School Tpb (X-Men)

Rating:
Summary: Mutants with heart
Review: When the New Mutants re-appeared on the stands, I was just returning to comics after a 15-year hiatus and welcomed the sight of a familiar face to ease me back into the monthly habit. Joshua Middleton's beautiful cover art featuring some of the women from the original lineup drew me in, and Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir's patient, nuanced introduction of the first mutant of the new generation, and their reintroduction and use of a tortured Danielle Moonstar as the story's anchor, kept me glued through to the last page.

The closing dialogue sealed the deal for me:

Sofia: What's Xavier's like?
Danielle: Like no place else in the world. You'll see.

While I didn't love Keron Grant's interior art, nor his uneven trio of inkers, there was something in its intent that worked for the tone of the story. Over the next 5 issues, DeFilippis and Weir made good on Danielle's promise, consistently delivering the goods by capturing that tricky combination of teenage angst and super-heroism that Marvel Comics seemingly trademarked ever since Stan Lee came up with the idea of a nerdy science buff bitten by a radioactive spider, but that so few mainstream comics are able to pull off today.

Unfortunately, this series was derailed by the X-Men Reloaded marketing stunt and relaunched as the vastly inferior New X-Men: Academy X.