Here's an X-Men comic I could really get behind.

[richardak]

In 2009, Marvel published with Del Rey a comic called X-Men: Misfits, reimagining the story in the style of a Japanese high-school soap-opera comic.  Even though I'm not a fan of the X-Men and never have been, I liked this comic, mostly because it took the idea of a school for mutants seriously, and the conflicts between different groups of mutants played out among factions of students and faculty at the school.  One of the (several) things I didn't like about the mainstream X titles was that, far too often, the interesting premise was just an excuse for conventional superhero action.  Unfortunately, it appears to be highly in doubt whether there will ever be a volume 2.  Oh well.  Anyway, here are some scans.  I've only done a handful out of the approximately 175 page first volume, so page limits shouldn't be an issue.  If there's interest, I'll post more.  Incidentally, this is not a Japanese comic.  The writers are American and the artist is Indonesian, but it has clearly been heavily influenced in both writing and art by a number of different Japanese comics.










When she arrives at school, Kitty is in for a bit of a surprise about the makeup of the student body....

To be blunt, it was an odd decision to make Kitty the only female student.  The purpose it serves in the story, so far as I can tell, is that it helps catapult Kitty quite quickly to the upper echelon of the school's social hierarchy, which is necessary for the direction the writers wanted to go to the story.  Putting Kitty in a privileged position within the school enables them to tell a certain kind of story.  Anyway, that's largely the subject of another post if people are interested.


One of the things I'm not sure how I feel about regarding this comic is the way they've introduced a family connection between Lensherr and the Prydes.  It's clearly implied that Kitty's grandfather saved Lensherr during the Holocaust, and the fact that the writers made Kitty the protagonist creates a pretty powerful subtext, hardly new to X-Men comics, but I've never really bought the metaphor.

Comments

[domino_blue]

I thought for the longest time that I was only who thought that, my god why can't they ever do good backgrounds?

[nezchan]

That's why I gave up trying to read the stuff. I appreciate the impressionistic aspect, that they're trying to capture emotion rather than action, but I think they fail pretty spectacularly. There are good stories (Hana Yori Dangou comes to mind), but I can't handle the art enough to read them.

[domino_blue]

I find some of the melodrama so off putting sometimes and I hate the men so much most of the time not because I think there girly mostly because there jerks who need to get kicked in the nads.That said I do enjoy Fruits Basket and Kimi Ni todoke, but I sometime wish manga like them would not try to rely on the environment and characters themselves to set the scene instead of sparkles or flowers.

[sevarem]

For me, I couldn't stand the way the girls are written. Either you have the cutesy, clumsy, but ever so kind-hearted, bland girl that all the men want even though her personality goes no further than those few characteristics... or you have some bad ass chick who is shoved so far into the background she hardly matters anyway.

Meh to the whole thing.

[domino_blue]

You're right on the mark there but I do think some shojo is worth it, I'm just tired of characters being extreme doormats for everyone else. Still some manga have some twists on it like Ouran, or Love Com. Another good one is Nana or Paradise Kiss. Okay now excuse while I go punch a wall to make sure I still count as a guy.

[sevarem]

Heh. I read Parakiss about 6-7 years ago, and yeah, from what I remember, that was pretty good in that it was *different* from the usual blend of boring. I've been out of the medium pretty much since then though, as I got fed up with the same old everything. I can only read about 15 year olds saving the world so many times before I go in search of new tropes.

[domino_blue]

Check out 20th Century Boy then, it's about middle age people saving the world. Okay it's about more then that but it is good.One of the best manga I read. Still yeah both Shonen and Shojo have their pitfall they fall into like pacing issues, melodrama, contrived plot hooks. I also wish they would use diffrent types of heroes instead of idiot her and extreme doormat heroine.

[nezchan]

20th Century Boys was brilliant. Great art too.

[sevarem]

I might check it out on that recommendation alone.

[nezchan]

That's one of the things I loved about the Hana Yori Dangou anime (couldn't handle the art enough to read the manga). The lead character put up with tonnes of abuse, right up to a point, at which point she'd snap and throw it right back in her abusers' faces. Usually forcefully.

[fleur_de_liz]

But why do backgrounds when you can just have twelve layers of zip-a-tone roses and bubbles? :P

[punishermax]

It's like that in pretty much every single Shojo manga I've seen clips of.