Writer: Joe Quesada
Artist: Josh Middleton
Publisher: Marvel
For all NYX brings to the table, I feel like it's a bit too obvious in lieu of Marvel's recent vision. The idea of mutants in plain society is nothing new, and although this book doesn't report directly to the X-Men canon, it does feel a bit out-of-place. I found myself enjoying the story a lot more before I realized the obvious---that Kiden is a mutant. It was then that all relevance and most of the entertaining aspects of the book was stripped away, in favor of something along the lines of Brian Vaughan's Runaways.
Joe Quesada is quick to establish the background and status-quo of Kiden. Her fatherless upbringing is brought on by murder in a drive-by upbringing. Her New York neighborhood eventually "goes to hell", and she ends up in the spin cycle of the teenage experience, participating in such things as raves, smoking, drugs, and gang warfare to name a few. It should come as no shock that her mutant power manifests itself in the middle of all of this.
Since his run on Iron Man, Quesada has been very consistent in his scripting. It's a very quick moving, believable style which uses good dialogue and doesn't rely on the artist too much for storytelling. Unfortunately, as I said earlier, I'd much rather have this be a non-mutant book. Since the mutant revelation was previously announced in the solicits, it takes a bit of the charm away from the book, and makes everything seem unadventurous in retrospect. The underlying premise is decent enough for a return for #2, but the mutant facet may make it stale all the more quickly.
Josh Middleton is the snatched-CrossGen (via Com.X) talent of the past few months, and has a slightly cartoonish, impressionistic style that reminds me of a less detailed but more accurate Scott Kolins or Tony Harris. Although there is one thing I don't get: do we really need vaginal shots of sixteen-year-old girls? I mean I know they have underwear and all, but at times it seems that the art goes out of its way to show as much skin as possible (sometimes below the waistline), especially during and before the peeing scene. I personally don't care for the whole raver and tongue fetish, but perhaps other people do. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned.
A slightly interesting tale which loses some of its relevance in the mutant aspect; Quesada seems to once again want to reach out to a mass audience he'll never get. This book will end up in the hands of X-readers or other comic shop regulars, and maybe even some scantly dressed, teenage clubgoers.
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