Review by Frank Plowright

Despite the new title, writers Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir are largely following the same cast they introduced in New Mutants: Back to School, along with some newcomers broadening the idea of a protective teaching establishment for mutants. As seen on Randy Green’s sample art, they even conceive new ways existing characters can employ their powers. Due to ructions in the wider X-Men diaspora, the primary alteration is the switch from a school run by Professor X to an establishment where Cyclops and Emma Frost maintain order and discipline.

Over an engaging opening chapter the writers smoothly reintroduce a large cast and setting to new readers, featuring smart character moments and occasionally funny dialogue, which becomes more formal to maintain distance between staff and students. It’s followed by the arrival of still more interesting personalities, and the splitting of the cast into teams. As was the case in Back to School, DeFilippis and Weir are writing about people who have super powers rather than superheroes, so this isn’t a succession of battles with the villain of the month, but a teen drama. Much of that is generated by separating the cast into two teams, with Julian Keller excellently written as consistently provocative in leading the Hellions.

Poor art scuppered the New Mutants material, but here the artists are all good, changing as a new two-chapter story begins. Green, Staz Johnson and Michael Ryan (sample art right) define and distinguish the cast well, capture the reactions needed and are convincing when powers are used. Johnson underlines the ludicrous nature of Emma Frost’s skimpy white costume by having her totter around a junkyard in it, in what’s otherwise an effective sequence restoring a character from the previous series.

The focus is on teams mentored by Frost and Dani Moonstar, between them encompassing a dozen teens, but others occasionally appear. Sometimes the character notes are shorthand, slipping into melodrama, but considering the amount of people and interactions spotlighted Choosing Sides delivers excitement and suspense.

Haunted is the next volume, but almost all of this iteration of New X-Men is also available as New X-Men: Academy X – The Complete Collection.