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

[randyripoff]

Academy-X kind of started in a similar direction in that everything was happening at the school, they weren't going on missions, etc. They were dealing with the regular angst of being teens and interacting socially without much of the BIG MUTANT ANGST that was rife among X-titles at that point. Sadly, around issue 19 or so, it was back to business as usual.

[sevarem]

Eh... it mostly seems like a very stereotypical manga, right down to Kitty being a clumsy, yet kind hearted student who does terribly in school.

Bishounen Magneto ain't doing it for me either.

[punishermax]

Holy fuck this art is nightmarish

[nezchan]

Welcome to Shoujo manga, where characters are stiff, inconsistent and usually very angular. I'd like the stuff better if the art wasn't typically so horrid, to say nothing of screen tone abuse.

[nezchan]

I do like the "awesome champion of good" panel there.

[auggie18]

I was about to recommend Academy X. Loved that series. Just mutant kids being mutant kids.

[northstarfan]

I really didn't think this manga had that much to recommend it (except for some of the LOL!WHAT?! reimaginings of certain characters, and even then, it was the authors using a shoehorn to get most of them to fit into the usual shoujo roles). As above, I do think that the first dozen issues or so of New Mutants 2.0/Academy X/New X-Men were much better for that sort of thing.

[sinorhizobium]

MAG-NEATO. LOL

I also like the random sparkles that are appearing as he speaks dramatically about mutant rights. :D

[selke]

I wonder if they made Kitty the main character just to have an excuse to draw cat girls?

[icon_uk]

To be fair, Kitty was originally designed to be an audience identification character for the X-Men, something they hadn't had in years. A normal middle-class kid aside from her mutancy. Claremont and Byrne apparently clashed over Claremont's decision to make her a supergenius in the fields of physics and computer hardware from the outset as Byrne felt it made her less relatable and more un-normal.

Cypher served much the same role in the New Mutants, and he was only a "un-normal" in areas relating directly to his powers.

[q99]

I liked Misfits, my one complaint was they spent too much time on the mutant vs human politics later on and not enough on the shoujo awesomeness!

[ravenous_raven]

Hm, this is piquing my interest. On the one hand, there's too much of a shoujou influence to make me feel like it's really X-men. On the other, if taken as an alternate reality, I can accept the entirely different feel.

I do like the Kitty's thought process about Magneto's frequent speeches and it makes a lot of sense that Erik would be that kind of teacher if he was one.

[sevarem]

I must've missed it. I couldn't get too far past bishounen Mags.

[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.

[nezchan]

I could handle Cypher as a cat-boy...

[ar_feiniel]

I like the sequence of her falling through the wall while eavesdropping. Magneto is kinda freaking me out though.

[cypherfdp]

Oh man, I've always wanted a reason to use these cat ears.

[mullon]

This is inteesting.

[fleur_de_liz]

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

[neev]

My issue with what I'm seeing of this is that it's directly grabbing shoujo tropes without any sense of awareness of those tropes. It seems very by the book and that's quite disappointing. I have no issue with shoujo style or even the use of manga-esque stylization in non-Japanese media, but to simply parrot it is dull and derivative.

[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.

[icon_uk]

Would have made his relationship with Wolfsbane that little bit more risky.

[nezchan]

I think I speak for all of us in saying I'D TAKE THAT RISK!

[richardak]

I might take a look at that at some point then. Are you referring to the comics collected in New X-Men: Academy X Vol. 1: Choosing Sides, New X-Men: Academy X Vol. 2: Haunting, New X-Men: Academy X Vol. 3: X-Posed, and House of M: New X-Men? And if so, should I really bother with that last one? I have no interest in House of M in general. How much does the crossover impinge on the individual title in this case? More generally, how difficult will it be to follow what's going on without following any of the other X titles?