From the preview thread:
Whew...OK. I don't know if that was 10/10, but it had more emotional impact than all of Disassembled, and that's not meant to be damning with faint praise.
The best elements that Thompson and Nadler bring into play aren't the omnipresent, unseen threats of elements like Department X/The X-Tremists, it's the quieter world-building touches - the language that implies there are no families, only vat-grown infants, nurses, and creches before a mandatory stretch of service to the state that begins in childhood, or the knowledge that Jean and Bishop aren't even being permitted to remember the crimes they're being punished for. It all combines to make the utopia represented by Rosanas' clean, warm art a very stark and uncaring place. In a recent interview, the writers compared what they were doing to David Lynch's tendency to present the familiar and comforting, then slowly flay away the facade to reveal the rot underneath. They're doing a good job so far, imo - I feel like one of the more interesting points as this book goes on will be discovering where everyone's breaking point is. Who actually knows about and abets Dept. X, and who's been memory-wiped so often that they're all but innocent? Who'd go along with it even if they did know?
"At what price paradise?" isn't a new concept for sci-fi, and the X-Men have already riffed on it a few times before. But it's typically resulted in very good stories (the first X-Men/Alpha Flight crossover and New Mutants Summer Special come to mind), and I'm very eager to see where this stable of creators take the concept. It's creepy with a lot of potential for character exploration, and hopefully they'll be able to push some boundaries given that this is an AU spin. And yeah, I may be adding Marvelous X-Men to my buy pile for this event.