About Heroes

Authors: Chris Claremont
Penciler: Patrick Scherberger
Inker: Norman Lee
Colors: Chris Sotomayor

I’m sure I sound like a broken record when I reminisce of my childhood and reading comics. I couldn’t go a month without buying Uncanny X-men, New Mutants, and X-factor. By far Uncanny was the best of the three and I can’t think of Uncanny X-men without thinking of Chris Claremont. See, broken record. Things haven’t been the same since Claremont left in 1991 and made his return to the X-world in 2000. He’s had some good stories and some…err not so good ideas, but there is one thing that you can still say about the man and that is he knows his X-men history like no other, hell he wrote 90% of those classic stories.

Here comes GeneXt, the new kids on the block, Marvel’s answer to what today’s X-men generation would be like if the Marvel Universe aged in real time. Most of these kids seem to be children of original X-men such as Gambit and Rogue’s son Oliver Raven and Storm’s daughter Becka Munroe. Of course some are a third generation like the grandson of Colossus, Pavel Rasputin. Then there is No Name and Rico whose parents haven’t been revealed to the reader yet. They are trained by X-23 and seem to be under the tutelage of Beast and Cecilia Reyes. We still don’t know the whereabouts of the remaining X-men or what has happened to Professor Xavier.

It’s these kind of stories that really makes Mr. Claremont shine. He is not attached to old stories, even though I am sure he will get the urge to continue past plot lines left open. He is free to create his own rules and play with his new history. Damn, the man can still write some dialogue and each kid sounds different than the other. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but in today’s comics it gets harder and harder to find a writer that can give each character their own voice. If anything this kind of reminds me of a mixture of New Mutants mixed with the good elements of X-men The End. But it’s not all without flaw, because nothing really happens in the first issue. The kids train under a very angry and annoying X-23 and go out and have a dispute with “norms” at a club. It was a rather boring plot and if it wasn’t for the connection to the X-men I really don’t see this book working at all.

The art is something else I had a problem with. Scherberger can really draw the hell out of kids, but that’s the problem, much like Chris Bachalo and Humberto Ramos (who I’m sure are his inspirations) everyone looks like a young adult. His backgrounds leave much to be desired and his facial expressions seem to be limited. I also have no idea why the hell this book is $3.99. Is it because of the 8 page X-men First Class preview and sketches? Because gas is way too fucking high for me to fork over a gallon on a comic that was halfway decent. It’s not a bad start and the kid’s personalities and ties to the X-men is really the only thing keeping me interested. C+