New X-Men 1 - 6

Picking up where the second volume of New Mutants left off, these first issues of New X-Men detail the adventures of two new teams of mutants, the New Mutants and the Hellions. The thing that most obviously stands out to me after reading this arc is that there's a whole crapload of characters to keep track of.

In these six issues you're introduced to the six members of the New Mutants, the six members of the Hellions, along with the four faculty that watch over the students. Six issues in and I'm still unclear about keeping all of the characters straight.

Barring the sheer amount of characters presented here, this arc is a pretty good superheroes in school series geared towards the teen crowd. I think that this title could resonate very well with many teenage comic book readers as it deals a lot with the relationships of the students. Some of the situations you can tell are pretty blatantly set up to get a point across (like having two completely dissimilar students room together so they can learn tolerance).

As for the plot of this arc, there seems to be a lot of different things going on all at once. It starts off by the students getting acclimated to their surroundings and knowing each other, then it meanders into a team vs. team competition, then the FBI is added and a murder case takes center stage before the story reverts back to a team vs. team battle, etc. I guess it just felt like these issues lacked an overall focus, but in doing so it felt less like one of Marvel's standard six issue arcs and more free flowing. Still, I'd have liked to have seen a little more focus in this title.

Ratings:
Art: 3
Story: 3
Overall: 3