REVIEW: Generation Hope #13 (X-Men Regenesis)

Posted by ptb under *like, Comics |

James Asmus’ first issue of Generation Hope taking over for Kieron Gillen (who gave fans permission to buy the book since he didn’t have any of his own on the shelf this week) manages to strike a nice balance familiarizing readers with the principal characters and their mission, bringing new characters into the mix, and launching the team into their first adventure following Schism. Ibraim Roberson also enters as the book’s regular artist and all told the Regenesis rebranding has been very good to this title.

Spoilers for Generation Hope #13 will follow.

The “training exercise” that pits Hope’s team against some of the X-Men’s heaviest hitters (and Boom-Boom) is a bit over the top, but it’s forgivable since it introduces the characters for a new Regenesis audience and it looks great. The action moves fairly seamlessly into the team’s first mission and their encounter with the amnesiac Sebastian Shaw. He’s by no means a “new” mutant, but he’s new to Hope and her team and her discovery of a previously unknown mutant drives the action. The inclusion of Shaw also capitalizes on the character’s appearance in this Summer’s X-Men: First Class film, and his mind wipe by Emma Frost in Uncanny X-Men #534 opens up new possibilities for how to use him going forward. His actions at the issue’s cliffhanger ending as a walking bomb in Pakistan are certainly edgy.

It’s clear that this is still Hope’s book (which is good to see as female fronted titles from Marvel have been the subject of a lot of talk this week), but Asmus has plans for others in the cast. This marks Pixie’s first issue as the team’s teleporter, and while she’s as much a part of the action here as anyone, the real star here is Zero. His confrontation with Magneto during the training exercise cuts to the core of both characters and is ripe for future development. He also brings Martha Johansson into the mix as a love interest and it’s great to see Grant Morrison’s “No-Girl” get some unexpected panel time after being featured in the Regenesis one-shot.

The mutant youth don’t look quite as youthful as previous art teams have depicted them in this title, but this is another strong outing and a solid first issue for artist Ibraim Roberson. I first took notice of his work on the New Mutants issues of X-Men: Second Coming, and while Roberson’s work is normally pleasing to the eye something in the ink and color here is different and I really enjoy it. Colorist Jim Charalampidis provides a nice complement for Roberson and I appreciated the changes to his palette as the story moved from the West Coast to the Middle East. Unfortunately, I don’t know that their cover image reflects the quality of what’s inside.

Generation Hope #13 completes the rebranding of the titles making up Cyclops’ “Blue Team” (both New Mutants and the adjectiveless X-Men already shipped their second issues this week as well) while we’re still waiting on three of the four titles affiliated with Wolverine’s Gold Team to sync up (November’s X-Men: Legacy, December’s Uncanny X-Force and January’s X-Factor). The issue should serve as a good starting point for new readers coming aboard for Regenesis while remaining true to the title’s mission statement of finding and training new mutants. New writer James Asmus is off to a good start with Hope and the newest mutants and appears to be a worthy successor to Kieron Gillen on the title. I’m looking forward to more from this book that continues to prove wrong my initial feeling that it was superfluous among the expanded X-Men line.