About Heroes

Author: Marc Guggenheim
Penciller: Yanick Paquette
Inker: Ray Snyder
Cover: Terry Dodson

It’s only been two months since Cyclops disbanded the X-men and already he is putting a new team of young mutants together. Wonder why he didn’t just keep his old team of New X-men together? I wasn’t thrilled when I saw the solicitations for this book. Paquette’s art puts me to sleep and his pencils can look rough at times. That cover by Dodson is rather boring and wouldn’t get my attention if I was looking to pick up a new comic.

I really thought the book was going to start us off in the Danger Room when I saw the Young X-men taking on Pierce, but to my surprise it was Blindside that was having a premonition dream. It seems that Cyclops is recruiting a new team of mutants to take on the new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. In this issue he recruits ex-New X-men members Dust and Rockslide as well as a new more grown up Blindfold, Dust, Wolf Cub, and a new Tattoo mutant. It seems that Wolf Cub is connected to the Werewolf arc from Chuck Austen’s run. Tattoo seems to be another lame mutant who can manipulate the tattoos on his body…of course we have seen this before with characters created by Grant Morrison and Chris Claremont. The ending shows a picture of this new brotherhood of evil mutants and it is made up of Cannonball, Sunspot, Moonstar, and Magma

I don’t know where I stand with this book, since it’s the first issue it’s really hard judge. The idea of ex New Mutants becoming a New Brotherhood of Evil doesn’t make any sense. Perhaps Sunspot, since he has ties to the Hellfire Club and at one time was a villain named Reignfire, but that’s even pushing it. This better be some kind of damn test for these new kids. I thought it was silly of Cyclops to have gone and search for these kids. Couldn’t he just give them a ring and ask these kids to join? Breaking someone out of jail and destroying property really doesn’t seem like the Cyclops I know. Of course he is probably being written more like a hard ass.

The story is okay and Guggenheim really has a new cast of characters on the team, so he can’t screw up the dialogue that much. Even though I don’t think this is the same Blinfold I’ve been reading on Astonishing. I really don’t have anything nice to say about the art, except it looks cleaner and I can tell there are figures in this book. There are hardly any backgrounds and the figures themselves aren’t easy on the eyes. I’ll keep reading the book and see what happens, but my expectations are very low. C