Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Uncanny X-Periment # 88: "The Kids"

X-Man # 45-46, Cable # 63, X-Man # 47, Generation X # 46-50, X-Man # 50, Generation X # 51, X-Force # 94-95, Generation X # 53-58, X-Man # 53-55

It’s been a while since we’ve seen the “kids,” so I thought we’d check in on X-Man, X-Force, Cable, and Generation X.

We start off the X-Man/Cable crossover by the name of “Blood Brothers.” Nate Grey arrives in Latveria with Maddie following up some prophetic, destruction dreams. Shortly after encountering Blaquesmith, a pyramid shows up contained the completely alive and well Stryfe and the restored Dark Riders. There’s a psi-battle. Some of the Dark Riders go off to kill Jean and Scott, but Maddie secretly save them. Stryfe, who hopes to siphon off his power using Doom’s energy-absorbing machine, then captures Nate. But Cable shows up to save his ass! Wooohoo! However, Cable falls to Stryfe as well, since Stryfe now has some of Nate’s powers. Maddie then goes and joins Stryfe’s side. Eventually, a crazy battle follows in which Stryfe BLOWS UP.

Over at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, there’s trouble afoot. After getting new school uniforms and saving an inspector from the board of education, the Generation X kids face down an alien/computer creature spawned out from a new Danger Room that Forge created. Following this, the school turns out to be in financial ruin. Emma goes to her sister Adrienne for help. Adrienne decides to help her by becoming a third headmaster and opening the school up to the general public.

This does not go well. The Generation Xer’s head out to Boston to air out their problems – Jono and Paige’s suffering relationship; Monet and Jubilee’s anger at each other; Gaia’s place in the world. They then encounter Gene Nation, who takes them to the Dark Beast. Back at campus, Emma Frost and Gaia come across Nate Grey, who was psi-probed by Emma earlier. Nate helps Emma free Generation X and they part on pleasant company. Upon returning the campus, Generation X tracks down the captured Banshee, who was kidnapped when his father took one of the human students (Tristan) home. They free him and Tristan finds out Generation X’s secret.

Meanwhile, X-Force heads to Genosha at the behest of Pete Wisdom. Wisdom lured the team there with a box full o’ memories in the hopes that they would help him recover an AI computer that crashed near Genosha. After encountering Quicksilver, battles between the Acolytes and Magistrates, and Magneto himself, X-Force fulfills the mission and gets the AI (which is really the brain of Pete’s old friend Archie, who now has a new robot body).

Generation X go through a number of trials. This includes an adventure in Madripoor with Paladin against a new team called the Rising Sons to retrieve a sword that belongs to Adrienne. After this, the team is forces to relive the death of the Hellions, which was arranged by Adrienne to torture Emma Frost. Adrienne departs and the gang prepares for the big dance – so there’s tons o’ teen drama! This dance gets interrupted by the arrival of Emplate, which eventually leads to the freeing of Monet’s sister from the Penance form and the creation of a new Penance entity (who then goes off and fights with a bigfoot –yeah). Monet’s father, upon picking up his daughters, then insists that M goes to a new school.

Finally, Nate Grey, Cyclops, and Phoenix are up in Alaska, where a mountain base from the Age of Apocalypse somehow manifested itself in a mountain. The trio goes to blow it up before it unleashes an army of Infinities. This includes a battle with a creature called Rachet-9, which doesn’t last long. After this, they encounter Modt and Jahf, the guardians of the M’Kraan Crystal, who test Nate Grey. He passes and Nate leaves, feeling better and strong in his relationship with Scott and Jean.

So, okay, let’s break it down.

“Blood Brothers.” Ugh. Well, besides a nice little reunion and nice moments seeing Stryfe, Maddie, Nate, and Cable together, this story doesn’t make any sense at all. How did Stryfe come back? And why was it just to steal Nate’s power? Shouldn’t he have just as much power as Nate? Ugh.

Generation X provides some nice drama, but the comic comes off a little silly at times. The X-Man crossover is rather cliched and forced, although it’s cool to see the characters interact. Nate’s a good fit with Generation X and I enjoyed seeing them take on Dark Beast and Gene Nation together. I wish there had been a stronger conclusion to this story, as it would have made it much better. I got a nice feeling of nostalgia while reading this, as it was what “New Mutants” was to the teens of the 80s and “New X-Men” is (supposedly) to the teens of now. The more “school”-related issues are better than the super-heroic ones, as they are much less cliched and far more relateable.

X-Force’s adventures in Genosha make up the most interesting of this group. These kinds of missions are pretty much why Cable formed the team. Seeing them face off with Magneto is a great scene, as it stands on a foundation of Magneto’s tenure as their teacher.

What I did like, out of all of this mess, was seeing Nate Grey interacts with different parts of the X-Men mythos finally dropping that “I hate all those X-Peoples except for Rogue and Syrin” that was had hurt his character for so very long. Really, this was when the character and X-Man stories started to get good.

The art is decent, though no real highlights.

Overall, despite some nice points, it’s pretty much “blah.”

~W~

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