Have I missed an issue?  Because New X-Men #133 was all about the Shi'ar, Phoenix and that Dust character.  And none of that is in this issue at all.  Instead, Morrison establishes some completely new plotlines and characters.  It's like he's trying to do an entire X-books line in the scope of one title.

Anyhow, this issue takes us back to the X-Men's school, and the kids.  The school is one of those buried elements of the X-Men concept that was prominent right at the outset and then faded from view before being shoved aside altogether and used as the premise for New Mutants and Generation X.  It's a testimony to the X-Men's skill at deceiving people that they managed to keep up the facade of being a school during the first half of the 1990s, a period in which they had one school-age person resident in the building.  Maybe they told the neighbours that Jubilee required very extensive tuition.

Morrison's school is a completely different proposition from anything that's been seen before, simply because it's a ful-scale school, and the pupils aren't superheroes.  This issue establishes a few more of the students as characters, although oddly it doesn't make use of some previously seen characters like Angel and Beak.  The Stepford Cuckoos are back, the transparent guy finally gets some dialogue (his name's Herman), but most of the plot is given over to new characters.  Quentin Quire is a fairly obvious nerd/genius stereotype to start, but that's just the starting point from which to launch him in more interesting directions.  His opposite number is Slick, the faintly dumb but cool kid.  Traditionally in these stories we're meant to empathise with poor Quentin as the put-upon geek, but here it's just misdirection - Slick never does anything wrong, and Quentin rapidly loses our sympathy as the story goes on.

Meanwhile, Scott and Hank have a chat about the unusual "Is Hank gay" subplot, which actually gives a clear answer.  No, he's not, but he's playing along now that everyone thinks he is.  This is pretty much what I'd been expecting, but Morrison's clearly going somewhere with this, and it's a promising idea.

The latest in the endless parade of guest artists is Keron Grant, who seems to be adopting the traditional fill-in approach of aiming neutral.  This is not his most distinctive work - there's virtually none of his usual habits of distorting characters and messing about with perspective.  It's pleasant enough to look at, and it tells the story perfectly well, but it's definitely subdued by his standards.

Judging from the solicitations, this is presumably the issue which kicks off the "Riot at Xavier's" arc.  Most of this is promising, but it does seem strange pacing to abandon the previous issue's storylines altogether.

Rating: B+

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