Without Rhyme or Reason
I was curious when I first heard about this all female cast to an X-Men book, which, for whatever reason, is still called X-Men and not X-Women (heck, even an adjective of some capacity might have helped with referring to it as something other than "the all women X-Men series"). I'm big on promoting all female casts in comics, a genre generally vacant of such things. Yet, as we've seen in Fearless Defenders, making an all-female series for the sake of having one often doesn't bode well.
This is a prime(r) example of just that.
We're quickly introduced to the plot through a very vague flashback scene that either gets us interested in the story or makes much sense. Generally, this is a pretty solid way to deter readers in general. As I was once told, a good way to gauge a writer is by the first sentence of a story (although, in comics, I would say that a page is a better gauge of that; just look to the new Loki series for a prime example). This one starts with:
"Before anything else, there were two siblings."
This feels very much like a stock obscure comment to try to intrigue readers, but leaves me with a bitter taste in my mouth. Not only that, but the art presented with it is obscure images of events that we can hardly see, mostly monotone colors with a lot of black background and some rather uninteresting scientific imagery. Frankly, that just doesn't do it for me, and brings a bad vibe to the table from the start.
After this obnoxious flashback, we are greeted with Jubilee, a fairly disliked character in the series, although I've honestly never had a problem with her. I really enjoy her character costume, and she's one of the generally under appreciated X-Men women. So, when she's shown to be the main character here, I see a lot of character development potential on the horizon for her. Sadly, there isn't really any of that here.
It's also made clear early on that Jubilee has a baby that needs caring for. Why does she have the baby? Well, she just kind of happened upon it, and thinks it was orphaned (although, as she says, she's not entirely sure... which is absurd). Also, the trope of making the women be in charge of caring for the baby? That's just a little insulting, don't you think?
Without giving much more away, this issue presents us with a moot conflict that doesn't engage the reader very well, two pages wasted on an issue between two students (both female, as if we didn't already see a steady theme) that doesn't actually go anywhere or amount to anything, a team that kind of just forms because (where the hell are all the male characters anyway?), a tense scene that isn't remotely interesting, thus diffusing any potential tension, and a dumb cliffhanger ending that further solidifies how base the theme of this story is, only providing surface value.
Also, a small detail caught my eye when writing this. In order to reach Jubilee to help her, Storm, Rouge and Kitty leave to assist her, but, as Storm is the only one of them that can fly, Rouge is made able to fly, as she states that she borrowed Northstar's power. But then... where the hell is he and why didn't he go and do it himself? Also, later in the same situation, Rouge is abnormally strong for no reason at all. She didn't obtain anyone else's powers, so why can she do what she does? It makes no sense.
Most of the characters here have almost no personality. Rouge doesn't have her accent, speaking like everyone else, Kitty Pryde feels, more or less, just along for the ride rather than strong and confident, Rachel Gray and Psylocke hardly participate at all, and Storm is just kind of bossy, but doesn't do much anyway. Jubilee is the most driven here, but she's kind of monotonous, focusing so much on the baby that there's hardly any room to expand her character beyond an obnoxious statement about family she keeps mentioning. I have a niggling suspicion that isn't coincidence, and the last book I read about family, FF, began spiraling downward after it began to really push that theme. That's not to say it's a bad theme; it certainly can be handled well. But, in these instances, it's kind of forced upon the reader when they didn't ask for it.
I really don't see a reason to continue the series, nor do I understand why the other reviews make it sound so great. I really enjoy a lot of these characters, particularly Kitty, but they're so poorly used here, it's like they are completely different people. The art looks pretty solid generally (although the quality does vary), but that doesn't make up for such a poorly constructed story. I'd like to think Brian Wood might learn to use better characterization, but, considering the general success of the series, I kind of doubt it.
