Age of X-Man: NextGen #1 (spoilers/discussion)

[Anduinel]

Moving things out of the preview thread:

This is another AoXM series off to a very strong start.

Brisson did a great job making Dept X seem scary as hell - Betsy as the attractive, smiling, squeaky-clean "for the greater good" face of law and order, Blob as the actual enforcer of that order, the lawful neutral thug threatening and manhandling a teenage girl (after possibly having tried to literally burn her and her friends out in the first place!). These guys are the role models for the next generation of heroes. Man. I suspect I am gonna have some complicated-as-hell feelings about the cast once The X-Tremists finally hits the shelves.

Most of this issue was about setting up character roles and building tension. Glob is still acting as our everyman. I think the way Brisson is going with this isn't that he was overlooked by Nate, but that he's been mindwiped before and his telepathic resistance has allowed him to keep some fragments of his canonical memories, and they're slowly resurfacing. Bling! and Anole seem to be forming a student resistance, and have definitely been caught and mindwiped before. Also, Anole is much better treated here than in Disassembled - he seems to have a brain, and the writer remembered his regen and camouflage powers. I honestly cannot tell if Pixie is a construct as theorized, or just an extreme goody two-shoes/suck-up, but yeah, not to be trusted. Armor seems a little too earnestly conflicted to be a plant, though.

I think the whole creepy aura of manipulation and fluid reality surrounding AoXM hits a bit harder here than in Marvelous X-Men #1 because the focus characters here are kids struggling against indoctrination and being repressed, both insidiously and violently, in response. So yeah, this book has the potential hit right smack in the feels once things go from "skin-crawlingly bad" to "Oh ****!" levels of fucked up. (And we just know they're going to.) I did not think I'd ever be saying that about something centered on Glob, but there you are.

Cast and cameos:
Primary Cast: Glob, Rockslide, Armor, Pixie Shark Girl, Anole
Teaching: Madison Jeffries, Sunfire, Husk, CeCe Reyes
Students: Bling!, Manon & Maxine, Gentle (miscolored), Match (miscolored), Transonic (miscolored), Primal
Other: The Marvelous X-Men cast, Blob, Psylocke