Generation Hope #6 – Review

By: Kieron Gillen (writer), Salva Espin (art), Jim Charalampidis (colors), Dave Sharpe (letters), Jordan D. White (assistant editor) & Nick Lowe (editor)

The Story: Hope and kids head off to find another emerging mutant with a new liaison to the big-boy X-Men in tow.

What’s Good: Most of the fun from this issue stems from seeing new characters doing new things.  Between Hope and her Five Lights, Hope is the best known character and we (the readers) still don’t even really know what her powers are.  The rest of the Lights are really black boxes beyond a cursory description such as “Laurie is blue, had fins on her head and can fly.”

So, those of you who bitch and moan that there aren’t even any new characters in comics, you should check this out because it is almost 100% about new characters.  And you almost feel like you’re learning about their powers at the same time as the writers.

Probably the most interesting of these new characters are Kenji and Teon.  Kenji (who everyone says is an Akira rip-off, but I haven’t read Akira, so there!) seems to view his body as a piece of living organic art, which should be interesting to anyone who enjoys the artform side of comics.  There is also the small fact that Kenji may or may not be evil making him more interesting.  I think Teon is mostly getting his positive vibe because he’s hanging out with Wolverine.  For years, it has seemed that the only way to make new characters stick with the X-titles is to have them be mentored by Wolverine, so perhaps we’re seeing the same formula that worked so well in the past with Kitty, Jubilee and Armor (someone needs to use Armor!) only with a young man instead.

I have mixed thoughts about Kitty being the new liaison for Hope’s team.  On one hand, IMHO the biggest thing making the X-titles weak over the last several years has been the lack of established roles for the characters.  For better or for worse, I think we would get more interesting stories if characters like Kitty are forced into a defined role on a sub-team of X-Men instead of being a minor, supporting character in all of the stories.  By putting her in a role like this, we are most likely to get interesting Kitty moments as she interacts with the new team and has to deal with being the grown-up after decades of being the “kid”.