Now, before you ask, I realise that I'm not reviewing NYX #2 or Wolverine: Snikt! #5.  That's because Diamond UK, in its infinite incompetence, failed to deliver them to my store - along with 95% of this week's comics.  I picked up most of this week's books from the other store in town, whose order had also been screwed up, and who had additionally received a bunch of comics supposedly destined for yet a third store.

Longtime readers will remember that I'm not a big fan of Diamond UK, who once managed to lose the UK's entire shipment of Elektra/Wolverine #2, and eventually managed to get the thing on sale around a month after issue #3 had shipped.

According to my store, Diamond UK are being unusually helpful this time, as they at least admit losing the boxes.  Normally they just insist that everything was delivered.  Presumably they invite retailers to check down the back of the sofa.  (Which, in fairness, would be about the level of competence Diamond UK achieve themselves - so perhaps they assume the retailers are equally useless.)  Unfortunately, Diamond UK have so comprehensively lost the boxes that they have no clue when they're likely to turn up.

Not, of course, that Diamond UK are likely to give a fuck about any of this.  Their staff will retire to bed tonight and sleep the blissful sleep of the monopolist.  Diamond UK are the comics distribution equivalent of Virgin Trains - completely fucking useless, but it's not like you have any choice in the matter.

Anyway.

New Mutants #7 begins the second storyline, which is called either "Higher Learning" or "The Ties That Bind", depending on whether you're reading the splash page, the contents page or the front cover.  I realise that this stuff is trivial, but by the same token, getting it wrong looks amateurish and sloppy.  How hard can it be to agree what the story is called?

Anyway.  The cast have now settled in at the school, but Josh Foley - the one who used to be an anti-mutant bigot - finds himself a bit of an outcast.  For fairly obvious reasons.  DeFilippis and Weir don't overplay it; they give Josh his own circle of friends in the supporting cast, so he's not having a completely hopeless time.  And Laurie seems to be somewhat more open to him than the others.  But his roommate David won't talk to him, and in the way of such stories, Josh would like to prove himself.

Now that we're finally past the cast introduction issues, the book is settling down into its group dynamics.  Of course, these are characters who were created to interact with one another, and they do make for more interesting reading when they're not being asked to carry entire issues on their own.  Josh and David get most of the attention in this issue, and they're starting to feel like more rounded characters now that their origin stories are out of the way.

Magma figures into this story, primarily so that she can be written out of the book and shipped out to X-Treme X-Men.  I will come back to her later.

Carlo Barberi arrives as the new artist, and seems a lot more at home on this title than any of his predecessors did.  New Mutants is not a superhero title - it would apparently like to be a teen drama with superpowers.  Consequently, there's a lot of talking heads in this story, but Barberi seems much more interested in them than some of his predecessors.  Although his women are worryingly interchangeable (at least he dresses them differently), he's clearly put effort into the background details and decor.

If you're reading New X-Men as well, there are irritating time glitches here.  This storyline is taking place in what appears to be the autumn term.  That's unfortunate given that the current storyline in New X-Men has the school going off the rails during the summer holidays.  Apparently the plan is that events in New X-Men are going to be reflected in New Mutants with effect from the third storyline (ie, issue #13).  If so, we've got two titles working on radically different timelines for no discernible reason.  Again, this is trivia, but it's going to be immediately obvious to any remotely attentive reader.  If there's going to be interaction between titles, it needs to be done properly.

That aside, though, the story does what it sets out to do - it fleshes out Josh's character, and earns him some sympathy.  And the new artist is a tremendous improvement.  There are plenty of niggles with this issue, but the core is perfectly good.

Rating: B+

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