Comic News And Reviews

By: Kieron Gillen (writer), Salvador Espin (art), Jim Charalampidis (colors) & Dave Sharpe (letters)

The Story: Hope and her new entourage (a.k.a. the “Four Lights”) head to Tokyo to meet a budding mutant with a bad disposition who they hope will be the fifth light.

What’s Good: Hope.  That is the only really good thing about this issue.  She has become a pretty important character as various X-writers have developed her over the last ~3 years and she has been central to that last three big X-events (Messiah Complex, Messiah War & Second Coming).  So, it is nice to see the spotlight shine on her a little bit as a central character without the story being about everyone trying to kill her.

Espin’s art is quite good in places.  He has a couple of odd moments with Wolverine and Cyclops (who look 28 years old), but the art is just fine and good in places.

What’s Not So Good: Many things… This is just a problematic story and concept.  It is understandable that Hope needs page-time.  She is a potential big-time character and we all CLAIM to want new characters, so Marvel must use her somewhere.  And the existing X-books are so crowded that she would have to be included at some other character’s expense.  But, it isn’t clear that she’s going to be a good enough character yet to carry an on-going series.

Marvel may realize that because Hope is still running around with Rogue.  That teacher/pupil relationship has a lot of potential, except that Rogue is filling a very similar role in X-Men Legacy.  So, why not just plug Hope into Legacy and give that title some more juice?

Marvel may have realized that having Rogue on-board was not enough, so when Hope and the Lights get to Tokyo, they are met by none other than Cyclops and Wolverine.  Really???  Does Wolverine have to be in this book too?  Why couldn’t you send Colossus or Storm and say, “Cyclops is really busy leading the mutant race and Wolverine is on 2 Avengers teams!”  Or why not do something inspired and send Dr. Nemesis so he can study the new mutants?

And given that this final “light” is pretty hostile, why are the four newbie mutants being sent into harm’s way?  Especially with Cyclops on-site?  Wouldn’t Cyclops say, “Rogue and Hope! What the hell are these kids doing here?  They are the first new mutants we’ve seen in years.  Take them back to Utopia immediately!  Logan is going to physically carry Hope and rub her on this new mutant so we can all go home.”  Hell, Cyclops barely trusts Cannonball to be involved in missions and he’s been around for 30 years.

Conclusion: Hope is a potential star, but so many problems are solved by just rolling Hope into X-Men Legacy.  I guess Marvel wants to keep Gillen busy and acclimate him to the X-universe since he is taking over co-writing duties on Uncanny X-Men in a few months, but this probably wasn’t the way to do it.

Grade: D

- Dean Stell

Filed under: Marvel Comics Tagged: | X-Men, Marvel, Wolverine, Cyclops, review, Comic Book Reviews, Weekly Comic Book Review, Dave Sharpe, Kieron Gillen, Dean Stell, Generation Hope, Generation Hope #1, Salvador Espin, Jim Charalampidis, Generation Hope #1 review, X-Men Hope

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