THE CREATORS: Written by Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir.  Keron Grant starts out as the regular artist but leaves after issue #4.  Carlo Barberi takes over with issue #7

THE FILL-IN ARTIST COUNT: Two.

WHAT HAPPENED IN 2003: The cast is introduced, and the "Ties That Bind" storyline begins.

The third of the somewhat successful, X-related Tsunami books is New Mutants, a book which hasn't really worked.

Frankly, you have to wonder about Marvel's forward planning on some of this stuff.  New Mutants is a series about some of the pupils at the X-Men's school.  Of course, the school was shut down a few issues back in New X-Men, but that hasn't come up yet in this title.  Apparently we can expect that to be addressed at some point in 2004, but - even in these continuity-conscious days - there's a distinct sense of parallel universe syndrome here.

Still, there's nothing wrong with the basic idea of having a series about some of the kids in the school - even though you might have thought it would make more sense to do a book about the Special Class who were given so much time in Grant Morrison's New X-Men, rather than create an entirely new bunch of characters.  But on paper, this didn't sound too bad.  Writers Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir had picked up good reviews for their work at Oni and, after all, it's a solid idea for a series.

But it's never quite managed to get off the ground.  Devoting the entire first arc to gathering the cast resulted in a series of repetitive stories, and few of these new characters are really interesting enough to carry a story on their own.  In more recent issues, where they're been given a chance to interact, some more potential is evident.  Nonetheless, it's been a rather flat book thus far.

The art hasn't helped much.  Keron Grant is an artist who likes dynamic action sequences.  So god alone knows why somebody thought he would be at home on New Mutants, which is essentially a talking heads title.  In the event, Grant produced some rather subdued work which undeniably conveyed what was happening, but didn't go much further than that.  It was difficult to avoid the impression that he was bored to tears with the whole thing, and when he quit halfway through the first arc, it wasn't much of a surprise.

Grant moved on to a Spider-Man miniseries which he's also left halfway through, so heaven only knows what's going on with him now.  Anyway, his replacement Carlo Barberi seems much more at home with this series, so at least the visuals look set to improve in 2004.

New Mutants isn't a bad title so much as a thunderously average one.  Frankly, the most memorable thing about the book is Joshua Middleton's covers - and if you like those, you can buy NYX.  New Mutants could work; there's nothing fundamentally horrible about it.  But it just goes in one ear and out the other.

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