Saturday, March 14, 2009

Young X-Men #10 & 11

I can respect what Marc Guggenheim tried to do in this book, but I think he had a rough sell from the start. The team is too much of a mix of favorites from different eras. You've got Mirage and Sunspot from the New Mutants. Anole, Rockslide, and Dust from New X-Men. And new character Graymalkin, Cypher, and Ink. Overall it is just not a cohesive enough team to be that interesting. I'm reminded of Jay Faerber's take on the New Warriors from a few years ago, that motley team failed to find an audience too. These two issues focus on Dust as she is slowly dying from her battle with Magma earlier in the series. Beast can't help, but Donald Pierce can. I do like the odd relationship Pierce and Dust have established, even with Pierce hating her as a mutant, he appreciates her visits. In return for helping him escape, he will save her. The X-Men of course get in the way, and that's where Dust has a choice to make, how far will she go to help Pierce and save herself? Issue 11 has a lot of future-pages with only 4 surviving mutants (Wolverine, a solid White Queen, Graymalkin, and Anole) being killed off by a mystery character. I don't see the significance of this story, but I presume it will be explained in issue 12.

The art by Rafa Sandoval is fine in both issues. The future art by Daniel Acuna is of course much better. Acuna has a great take on the four characters. His future Wolverine has a neat new costume, and I loved his thicker, older take on White Queen. The X-books always seem to lend themselves to strong alternate future stories.

Issue #10 - Average
Issue #11 - Fair (based on Acuna's art)

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