Despite the high-profile relaunch, New X-Men still seems chronically unable to hang onto an artist. 

After two issues, Randy Green is gone.  This issue has fill-in art from Staz Johnson, an accomplished artist who's looking more than a little rushed here.  The book has the look of something bright and competent from ten to fifteen years ago.  It's not unappealing, but it lacks personality.  Then again, Green was originally solicited to pencilling this issue, so god knows how long Johnson had to do it in.  Apparently Michael Ryan is next in line to have a shot at the book.

Still, it's now over a year since this book launched, bearing in mind that to all intents and purposes it's the same title as New Mutants.  You'd have thought that they could have cobbled together a stable art team by now, especially in the wake of Reload.

This issue seems to be setting up our new status quo - the New Mutants and the Hellions as rival classes.  It doesn't take a genius to see that the house rivalry from the Harry Potter books is an influence there.  But to be fair, Rowling was hardly the first person to use the house system as a plot device in a private school setting.  After all, that's what it's for.

Rather than just having the teams set at one another, DeFilippis and Weir add a little more complexity to the relationships than that.  Josh and Julian do most of the aggravation, while some of the other Hellions are just playing along out of loyalty.  Dust and Jay refuse to participate altogether, and Laurie can't really understand why everyone's getting so worked up.  Sofia, who ought to be a voice of reason, gets neatly sidelined by forcing her into the leader role, so that she immediately becomes more stressed about winning for the sake of winning.  And she's a terrible leader, panicky and tactically clueless - which makes a nice change from everyone being a natural in the role.

The set-up is thoroughly contrived, but it does work.  There's enough in the web of character relationships to carry the book, while the competition set-up just provides a frame for it all.

Kevin Ford is reintroduced into the cast, to the surprise of precisely nobody.  His scene is a little less than convincing.  We're apparently meant to take it that he's been desperately avoiding using his powers at all, since he automatically destroys anything organic that he touches.  He seems to have been trying some ill-advised practice sessions on small animals.  When Emma turns up and suggests that he try wood, this seems to strike him as a revelation.  But wouldn't that be obvious?  This is a character who has to wear synthetic fibres in order to avoid destroying his own clothes.  Surely it would be blindingly obvious to him that he could practice on plants?

Still, it's generally a fairly successful issue.  The plot's not exactly complex, but now that all of the characters have been brought together, the character dynamics are finally starting to take off.

Rating: B+

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