All New, All Different

Young X-Men #1

Cyclops builds up a new X-team, including Wolf Cub, Dust, Ink, Rockslide, and Blindfold. We’ll also be getting a new character named Greymalkin, but he’s only briefly seen during one of Blindfold’s prophetic visions. Their headquarters is, as far as I can tell, in the basement of the still-demolished Xavier Institute. And their first mission is to take down the new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants — this time consisting of former members of the New Mutants.

I gotta say, it’s a fairly odd team. Ink has interesting powers — he gains new abilities when he gets new tattoos — but he’s a petty crook. Wolf Cub is a stereotypical feral beast-man, and Rockslide is a seriously overconfident rock-covered guy. Blindfold is blind, and her unique speech quirks make it a bit difficult to tell what she says to anyone — there’s no indication that she has any powers other than precognition and telepathy. Dust really does seem to be the most interesting character — she’s a very traditional Muslim girl, and she looks like she’d be the toughest character in a fight. Wolf Cub threatens one guy, Ink picks a fight with a couple of cops… but Dust skeletonizes a terrorist’s arm and gets a whole squadron of Taliban terrorists to flee in terror. This gal should be fronting her own comic, not playing backup to Ink, Rockslide, and Blindfold…

Verdict: Thumbs up. I dig Marc Guggenheim’s writing, and I’m a big fan of Yanick Paquette’s art. Ink’s habit of calling everyone “cuz” or “cuzzin” is awfully irritating, but I really liked the way Rockslide insists that he’s not joining the new X-Men team unless Cyclops lets Blindfold in, too. All around, it’s pretty good stuff — let’s hope they can keep it going.