Its official! This new title and its KILLER creative team have won me over! I really was dead set against this series as there just didn’t seem to be a need for it. With the swarm of X-books out there right now I felt like Wolverine’s new school could have appropriated one of them and made it their new home (like Legacy or Astonishing). After a wonderful first issue, the Grey School student body kicked the action into high gear, and with so much going on they even still found time to develop some of the newer characters as well as some older ones too.
First the character development side. It’s about time that someone laid into Bobby “Frosty” Drake and told him to grow up. Now maybe that’s not exactly what Logan said to Bobby in the ruins of the former Xavier Institute for Higher Learning but the was the jist of it. As one of the original X-men, Iceman has a responsibility to set the bar for excellence as high as he can, but for years he’s just joked his way through one situation to the next. He didn’t even feel the need to develop his powers to their fullest until Emma Frost did it first when she took over his body in Uncanny X-men #314. It took her giving an embarrassingly powerful display of HIS power for him to even try. Wolverine and Iceman’s conversation left me thinking that we should watch for him to do great things at this new school and then the army of frosted dupes (each controlled by Bobby) appeared…Multiple Iceman? Jaime Madrox is going to be furious. And how about Oya and Broo? LOVE IT! It’s wonderful that a girl as jaded as Idie is can still find an attraction in one of the ugliest forms of alien that we know of in the Marvel Universe. And it was hilarious to watch Broo (who, it hadn’t even occurred to me, we hadn’t even heard his name outloud until she said it) verbalize his thoughts as he logic-ed his way through the parts of “a crush” as he felt them and really showed that despite being a mutant Brood, there is still some residual Brood in him. I see this being a brand new Angel and Beak scenario…you know…minus the creepy mutant bird/fly babies and trashy hut to raise them in. If the writers can keep the emotions churning and development coming then this book will be a smash hit!
Now the action! They were NOT kidding with this battle! I guess I understand they want to really grab people’s attention but DAMN. We were given fair notice that a classic villain was going to return so I was already prepared for some sort of “wow” moment. Then Sauron and Wendigo showed up (if you can consider state examiners mutating into them “showing up”). I was already a little floored, as far as classic villains go they were pretty good. Neither character gets used very often and used well even less so I was happy with the villains guest stars…and then an army of Frankenstein’s monsters appeared from inside bullets! Ok, not really an X-men villain but definitely classic (maybe they didn’t mean a classic X-men villain specifically I thought)…and then…KRAKOA showed up. KRAKOA?? Ok you just don’t get any more classic then Krakoa. I mean the Island Who Walks Like a Man is basically one step down from Magneto when you consider milestone villains, and talk about out of left field. I t was amazing! It was a great touch for them to keep with the Deadly Genesis version of things, and not have the living biomass talk too. Meanwhile, all the way up on a nice safe hilltop is the Hellfire Brats. I’m really torn on them at this point. They’ve seemed really cool up until now but they are always starting to sounds cheesy and corny with their constant “evil chatter”, for example it was funny the first time the blond girl (whose name I cannot remember for the life of me, and it isn’t mentioned in the issue) talked cutely about hitting penguins with a hammer and then it got old. I would hate to see this new Hellfire Club go the way of the Upstarts, cool as hell right off the bat and then quickly becomes tired and lame.
As I already admitted, I am totally sold on this title now. All thoughts of oversaturation from X-books are gone (not that we aren’t oversaturated but I don’t mind it is what I mean) and I can’t wait until next issue. I mean, we don’t exactly have Cyclops, Havok and Polaris to send Krakoa into space this time do we? I am expecting a gorgeous combining of powers to whack this weed and get the school finally opened. If I had to have one complaint it would be that we didn’t see enough Rachel or Paige, but I suspect they are going to have bigger roles over in Legacy once that title joins ReGenesis next week. And what about the examiners?? Or am I the only one that noticed they disappeared after transforming and weren’t seen again? Hmmm, that’ll look bad on the report…
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