Bishop, having failed to stop Cable, recruits Storm, Pyro, Dazzler, and Angel to reform the X-Men.  He hopes Storm can convince Wolverine to come back to the team, but will the team be reunited in time to protect the mutant population from the Sentinels and the double trouble behind the mutant-hunting machines return?

THE LOWDOWN:  The story by Robert Kirkman is quite enjoyable, but is mostly a remix, remake, re-imagining, and rehash with interpolations of earlier X-Men stories.  Still, Kirkman is a good sampler/DJ, and he gives the beginning of this storyline the dark, foreboding, edgy tension and sense of dramatic conflict that make for the best X-stories.

Right now the art really sells this book.  Penciller Yanick Paquette and inker Serge LaPointe are doing a darn good riff on Kevin Nowlan, which is cool since Nowlan doesn’t do anything close to monthly comics.  The characters are designed and drawn as hip outcasts – Marvel mutants rocking the latest urban and youth fashions.  The smart duds and expensive hairdos (Ultimate Bishop, older than the original version, sports his gray hair in braids) go well with the sassy attitudes and snarky dialogue Kirkman gives these characters.

POSSIBLE AUDIENCE:  I wonder how the ultra-conservative Direct Market audience, so resistant to change, takes to these crazy, sexy, cool X-Men.  With two black members on the team at the same time and the brash attitude of these fashion conscious characters, this is probably the X-Men title that would be the most accessible to potential readers outside the DM… period.

A-

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