New Mutants # 4

One doesn't have to be a rabid fan to be turned off by this book's visually repulsive look. This art makes Rob Liefeld old NM work look attractive, and Grant won't ever approach the skill of New Mutants co-creator, cartoonist Bob McLeod. Grant certainly knows how to compose a sequence of panels to tell a story, but his art style, some kind of faux-anime pastiche, is a cynical and lame attempt designed to fool potential new readers into thinking New Mutants is manga. The real dummies are the editorial morons who think they can fool the Love Hina and Chobits crowd into dropping authentic manga to buy assembly line hackwork like this.

Thankfully, the writing for New Mutants has been fairly good. Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir know how to compose a story with likeable, engaging characters, emphasizing an old Chris Claremont specialty - heroic young mutants who stay on the straight and narrow even in the face of bigotry. DeFilippis and Weir do the little things that endear us to the characters. By giving them pleasant personality traits and clever personality quirks, they are developing a New Mutants cast that might keep us coming back for more.

GRADE C-