The X-Men Icons miniseries haven't been desperately impressive so far.  And when Chamber was announced, there seemed to be a general feeling that this was really stretching the definition of "icon" a little too far.  (Coming soon, X-Men Icons: Foxbat.)

However, the series is off to a promising start.  It's written by Brian Vaughan, whose current main project is Y: The Last Man for Vertigo.  He also wrote the X-Men Icons Cyclops miniseries, but we'll gloss gently over that.

Despite being the focus of the four issue Poptopia storyline, Chamber hasn't made much impression in Uncanny X-Men.  Vaughan fills some of that void with material about Chamber's place in the X-Men, and takes the understandable angle that because of his rather drastic mutation, he still feels like an outsider even within the X-Men's expanded school.  Interestingly, Vaughan uses Cyclops as the X-Men's representative in this story, a character Chamber's never actually had any scenes with in the parent book.

The main focus of the story, however, is an affirmative action scheme for mutants at Empire State University.  Some of the mutant students have been killed, and Chamber enrols in the university as an open mutant in order to find out who's responsible.  The metaphor isn't exactly subtle - we get a scene of armed soldiers guarding Chamber as he arrives for his first day of classes.  Still, it's a good theme to be exploring with the X-Men, and one that hasn't really been viable until the recent decision to tone down the anti-mutant hatred to saner levels.

Naturally, most of this first issue is about introducing the university cast, who double as a suspect list and an array of different viewpoints on affirmative action.  The radical mutant faction who idolise Magneto are a touch heavy handed, but for the most part they're a fairly rounded ground of characters.

Lee Ferguson's artwork is clean and tells the story well enough.  It's Jose Villarrubia's colours that really make an impression, though, adding more depth and atmosphere to the art without being obtrusive.  Villarrubia is an excellent colourist who seems to be doing more cover work than interiors these days, so it's nice to see him signed up for this series.

A pleasant surprise, all told.

Rating: A-

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