Review by Frank Plowright

As the Academy aspect of the title indicates, the focus of this collection is on a bunch of mutants being educated, guided and trained in the use of their powers, with the team of Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir writing everything collected.

The premise is that the mutants are organised into teams of six, each with a mentor and competing against each other in the assorted training sessions. While all teams are identified in pin-up pages at the end of the book, for story purposes only two really count. The bulk of the kids who carried over from DeFilippis and Weir’s previous New Mutants series are teamed as the New Mutants, while the more disruptive kids are the Hellions. With the exception of provocative leader Julian Keller, they’re not as often in the spotlight, but are eventually the team who merit a solo story.

New X-Men: Academy X is an unconventional superhero series for not really dealing with superheroes. They fight among themselves on occasion, and there are holographic missions in the X-Men’s Danger Room, but only one recognised super-villain appears, the Blob, and we’re toward the end before he turns up. Instead this is a well-written drama about teenagers who have super powers. Puberty is hitting, the hormones are popping, and few of the cast can see beyond their own needs, which provides for plenty of clashes, misunderstandings and romantic yearnings. There is the occasional wrong turn, a sub-plot of young teacher/older pupil romance for one, but for the most part these are entertaining stories on an emotional level attached to clever plots, the best of them being a glimpse into a possible future.

DeFilippis and Weir were particularly unfortunate in being saddled with poor artists on the series where most of the cast were introduced, but there’s compensation here. While one might want for greater artistic continuity, with one exception the different artists work on individual stories, and they’re all talented in bringing out the feelings and at distinguishing a large cast. The sample art is a page from Michael Ryan and one from Paco Medina, the most frequently used artists. Ryan’s art is more naturalistic than Medina’s cartooning, but both provide well considered layouts and don’t slack off when multiple characters are called for.

As slimmer individual paperbacks the content is available as Choosing Sides, Haunted, X-Posed and Hellions, but the the collection doesn’t quite gather all stories DeFilippis and Weir wrote for the team. The topsy turvy world of mutant royalty is only available collected in House of M: No More Mutants.