New X-Men is one of those odd books that sounds like it ought to be really good, yet frequently ends up being merely above average.

If nothing else, there's no denying that New X-Men has a rational place in the line - it's the book about the X-Men's trainees.  They've had one of those since New Mutants was launched in 1983, and it's undeniably a distinctive idea.  The twist this time round is that there are tons of pupils in the school and they've all been organised into a load of different teams.  In other words, it's a slightly awkward attempt to compromise between the convenient houses-fighting-one-another plot device from Harry Potter and a thousand public school stories, and the good old-fashioned superhero team set-up.

Last issue, Kevin Ford was hauled off by the FBI on the not-unreasonable basis that he'd killed his dad.  The Hellions are out to rescue him, and our heroes take it upon themselves to avoid disaster.  As usual for this book, they don't do a very good job of it - at best, they manage to stave off disaster long enough for the X-Men to turn up and shake their heads despairingly at the mess.

There are plenty of good ideas in here, so why does the book feel like it's not quite living up to its potential.  The problem, unusually in this day and age, may be that there's simply too much going on and too many characters to keep track of.  Between the New Mutants, the Hellions and the core teaching staff, this is a book with sixteen regular characters - and that's before you even bring in any antagonists.  Worse, almost all of them have a soap opera storyline of their own.  The characters end up being portrayed in slightly broader and flatter strokes than they merit.

Still, the idea is sound, the story is good, and the book is only a small distance from working.  It's moving ever closer to getting the balance right; I want it to work, and I still feel like it's going to get there in the end.

Rating: B+

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