Young X-Men #1 - "Final Genesis" (Writer: Mark Guggenheim, Artist: Yanick Paquette, Inker: Ray Snyder, Colorist: Rob Schwager)

The X-Men have disbanded, and that leaves many of the younger students of Xavier's trying to live their own lives. However, Cyclops decides to round some of them up for a new mission.

What's going on here is pretty pedestrian and predictable, the only surprise being the ending (if you hadn't already read solicitations, which I did). It's a standard issue "gather the team" introduction. We see each of the team members living their life, and then Cyclops comes up and recruits them for the team.

It's not bad, but it's not terribly good here. The only positive is the suspicion that all is not as it seems in one direction, but that will likely take some time to be revealed.

In contrast, there are a couple things that rankle. The issue does seem to put the lie to some of the post-Decimation hype we've been getting. We've been told for months now how now every mutant is precious, they're an endangered species now, and that it's time for all mutants to unite under one banner because extinction is looming. Yet, apparently in the wake of Messiah Complex, all the X-Men have decided, "Screw All That", and threw the younger, more defenseless X-Men out on their own, without any backup, in a world that still has people like the Purifiers out there who are more than willing to kill children, if they happen to be mutants (or, for that matter, ex-mutants). That Scott _has_ to go to each of them and recruit them for the mission just feels wrong. They should never have split up, or if they did, there should have been a damn good explanation. What's more, everybody seems to be blending in pretty fine with a world that seems to be more anti-mutant than ever. Some of them have even managed to get halfway around the world to go on private missions, despite all of them being de facto registered and presumably monitored by forces like SHIELD.

The other problem is that one of the cast (so far) is a mutant we haven't met yet. Wait, hold the rejoicing, X-Men, this isn't a new mutant manifestation, it's simply, apparently, a mutant that the audience has never heard of before, but must have been around for a while because nobody's terribly surprised.

Okay, that might be fair enough. New book, you might want to include a new character. It still seems a little dodgy in that we were supposedly not going to see any newly revealed mutants for the next several years after Decimation, but I like meeting new mutants, so I'm all for making an exception... but only if there's something particular to recommend the exception. Here we've got a character with vague, potentially limitless powers (he gets new powers based on what tattoos he has), and who's already annoying the first time I've seen him. The last time we had a character with vague, potentially limitless powers, was Lifeguard, and she's thankfully been in Limbo since nobody but Chris Claremont ever wanted to use her. If this wasn't post-Decimation, I might roll my eyes at the character but go with it, but since it is, I'm actually even more annoyed that they finally decide to bend the rules to give us a new mutant to enjoy, and this is what we're given.

I'll still stick with it to see what they do with the main plot, but I'm not impressed with most of the cast, and as a first issue it leaves a lot to be desired.

Review: 3 stars
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Well, that's it for this week folks. Next week, according to the shipping list, there's just one book, Serenity: Better Days #2.