X-Men Generation X #1 – Comicphiles
- Written by
Christina Strain
Art by
Amilcar Pinna
Cover by
- Terry Dodson
The first comic I ever picked up was a story featuring the X-Men. I was obsessed with Xavier and his band of mutant misfits for years, but for the past few years I’ve been more interested in comics outside the realms of the Marvel and DC universe. Image is the pinnacle of quality, in my opinion, and I’ve been mostly buying their titles, with a few others from Boom! Studios as well.
However, for this week’s Comicphiles, I decided to pick up Generation X #1. Hands in the air, the main reason I picked it up was because one of the X-Men’s best characters – Jubilee – was front and centre on the cover. I figured if I’m going to delve back into the X-Universe, I may as well start with a character that’s a proven winner. 
The story is about the new and improved school and its latest generation of mutants, ready and ripe to be trained. There’s been a name change too (yeah, yet another one) and now the school runs under the moniker ‘The Xavier Institute for Mutant Education and Outreach’. Quite a mouthful, right? Well, the name isn’t the worst part; the school is now situated in Central Park. Central Park in New York… Yeah. I wasn’t a fan of that either, but the rest of the comic makes up for it.
This issue follows Jubilee, who now has a baby called Shogo, as she starts her new job as a mentor at the school. Professor X no longer runs it, of course, and his shoes have been filled by none other than Kitty Pryde. Besides these old faces (although good luck recognising Kitty), the new set of mutants features a Cuckoo sister (Emma Frost clone), a face changer, a guy who can see people’s memories by touching them, a nature girl and a chick that may share some blood with The Thing. We’ll see. Oh, and Quentin Quire too, otherwise known as Kid Omega. It’s a good group and although there’s a lot of friction and awkwardness, there’s potential there for them to be a great super team.
As there usually is in an X-Men comic, there are mutants trying to carve a place in the world for themselves and, typically, there are people who want to kill them. In this new series, the bad guys are called The Purifiers who want to “purge the earth of the mutant plague”. It’s only the first issue so all we really see is the new group of mutants and the attack on the school by the Purifiers, but it’s a start, and it’s a fairly good one. There were so many X-Men comics over the years where I was just so bored, so hopefully Generation X is enough to maintain my X-Men interest again.
What I think I’m most excited about in this title is that there’s a new kind of approach. The thing is, not all mutants are made to fight Sentinels or serve as ambassadors on behalf of their kind, nor should they be expected to. Some are just lucky to survive in a world that hates and fears them. I think in this title we’ll see more mutants who are just trying to live their lives instead of being trained up as child soldiers to fight their kind’s war.
What do you think? Would you read Generation X? Let us know in the comments!
