New X-Men is now two thirds of the way through its opening storyline, but this one actually seems to have enough material in it to fill six issues. 

Writers Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir have ended up with a very large cast by now, but building the series around the feud between the Hellions and the New Mutants is working nicely.  There's a ton of different relationships to deal with in there, as half the characters aren't wholly devoted to the feud anyway, and many of the rest have got other agendas that keep distracting them from that plot.

That means there's plenty of ground for the book to cover.  Even though the overall plot is moving at a fairly relaxed pace, there's a lot of material here dealing with all the different characters, and finding time to juggle all their numerous subplots.  Rather than dreading an endless series of "the New Mutants play basketball against the Hellions" stories, I'm being drawn into the soap opera side of things.

New X-Men, like New Mutants before it, has had great trouble holding onto artists.  This is the second consecutive fill-in issue by Staz Johnson, and you know a book's in scheduling difficulties when even the fill-in penciller is only credited for breakdowns.  Johnson is a perfectly good artist, but this is unavoidably high speed work, and he's going for the fairly bland style that one used to expect from fill-in artists.  There are some strong layouts which raise the book above the norm, but for the most part it's merely competent stuff.  Still, competent isn't too bad.

Now that the focus is firmly on the web of relationships, New X-Men is beginning to live up to the early potential of New Mutants.  If only they could settle on a regular artist for more than a few weeks at a time...

Rating: B+

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