Something is lurking in the shadows of Central Park…a monster that steals mutants in the night. And when GENERATION X takes it upon themselves to investigate…they might just find themselves face-to-face with an all too familiar threat.

Well this “monster” doesn’t exactly steal mutants in the night, just attacks them as the kids were alerted to one of their one being attacked by an unknown assailant. And that was pretty much the highlight of this issue. I was so excited for this title when it was announced, but we’re on issue 3 and Christina Strain has given us a boring, uninspired story. There is nothing new or original here; a “special” group of kids brought together by an administration that has told them “well, you won’t be X-Men, but we’re going to make sure you learn something”.  Which is all well and good, but then we have a student who expresses interest in being an X-Man, wanting to train for it and she’s told she’s where she needs to be.  And to make matters worse, someone advises her mentor to speak to her because “something isn’t right there”. What, the student asked to take an active role in her education and training and she’s told she’s in the wrong? Way to go there Xavier School.

And the cast itself is a real problem to this book. Every character has an attitude or a chip on their shoulder and it gets old really fast. Ok, there are maybe 2 who aren’t too bad, but geez all the sniping and comments back and forth….we get it! These kids were put together for a reason, but it all comes off as just one note.

And I wish I could at least say that the art is nice to look at in this book, but I am really not feeling the style used here.  Amilcar Pinna and Roberto Poggi do give us nice detail, and there are panels where the characters look alright but overall we get some very strange looking faces with their proportions off and angles like we’re either always looking up or down at the characters. But, I can say the art matches the writing in this book…but that is in no way to be taken as a positive.

I think I’ve made my feelings pretty clear by now, but overall I am very disappointed with this title. Uninteresting characters, uninspired storylines and pretty shaky art all add up to a huge let down for this Generation X fan. Maybe I’m just stuck on what this title once was, I don’t know…but is that a bad thing?  Why not just do a Generation X 2.0?  Have Chamber, Husk and Jubilee back together, maybe out to find and help M who’s been infected by her brother Emplate (minor spoiler if you didn’t read that latest volume of Uncanny X-Men). Anything to have this live up to what Generation X was and is remembered for, not just throwing some random young mutants together with former Gen X members popping up now and then. There was great potential here, but this title has really missed the mark.

Story: Christina Strain Art: Amilcar Pinna and Roberto Poggi
Story: 4.0 Art: 4.0 Overall: 4.0 Recommendation: Pass

Marvel provided Graphic Policy with a FREE issue for review