Mekanix

Claremont, why do you do this to me? After reading through your work on X-treme X-men, Uncanny X-men, and Excalibur over the last year or two, I've brought myself to the conclusion that you've completely lost all of your storytelling abilities and then I pick up Mekanix because it looked interesting (not knowing it was written by you), read it, and come away from it feeling satisfied. Why did you have to write a decent miniseries? Couldn't you have just written a really crappy one so I could totally write you off? It would have been so much easier that way.

Mekanix is a six issue miniseries that came out in 2002, right in the middle of Grant Morrison's run on New X-men, that focused on Kittie Pryde. The first four issue are basically a character study of how Pryde tries to adjust to a normal person's everyday life as opposed to living life as an X-man. She enrolls in college, works with a research group, makes a few friends, and works at a bar to pay the bills. That sound like a pretty normal college lifestyle, except for the fact that along with those things, her research group is targeted by an online group named Purity and slandered amongst the college populace.

In one run in with some Purity members, Kittie beat the living bejesus out of six guys so she's been forced to take on anger management counseling sessions in order to stay enrolled in college. The majority of the first four issues deal with Kittie and her talks with her counselor. You really get a good look into Kittie's tortured character. Her father died in Genosha when the Sentinels wiped out the island. She had to put one of her closest friends, Colossus, to rest. The X-men lifestyle had simply become too trying for her and the conversations she has with her counselor shed a lot of light onto the hurt and heartbreak she's been experiencing.

The last two issues, the two weakest issues in my mind, shift the focus to a sentinel attack on Kittie and her mutant friends. It's handled very well, and is very action packed, but I was enjoying the character study of Kittie more than some mutants beating up on robots. I've seen that many times before, but it's not often that you get to see the character of an X-man deeply explored.

One other thing that annoyed the hell out of me with this mini were the covers of each issue. They are terrible! They look like a little kid drew them with a thick pencil and then tossed some water colors over what he drew. They are easily some of the ugliest covers I've seen in a long time. The interior art is pretty standard fare, thank goodness, but the covers are atrocious. Don't let them scare you away, however, as this is actually a wonderful little miniseries that explores character instead of just having superheroes hit things.

Ratings
Art:2.5
Story: 4
Overall: 3.75