GENERATION M #1

By: Kurt Amacker
Review Date: Thursday, December 01, 2005

Most COMICSCAPE readers know that, except for WOLVERINE and their Ultimate counterpart, I avoid the X-Men like the plague. The continuity mess, innumerable series and spin-offs, and blatant milking of the franchise turned me off to Marvel's mutants a long time ago. After years of escalating the mutant population (and thus, the number of X-books), Marvel finally recast the muties as a minority after Wanda Maximoff de-powered almost all of them in HOUSE OF M. Of course, the X-Men and the rest of the remaining mutants will have their due, but in GENERATION M, Paul Jenkins tells the story of those many that once had incredible powers, but lost them on what the denizens of the Marvel Universe call M-Day.

Left wing, problem-drinking reporter Sally Floyd of The Alternative (think The Village Voice) once wrote a series of columns called "The Mutant Diaries." After mutants the world over suddenly lose their powers, several die in mid-flight, mid-burn, mid-swim, or whatever. One Ned Ralston large, red, dragon-shaped crashes in front of the paper's office. Sally attends his funeral, and then begs her editor to restart the column with the name changed to "The Ex-Mutant Diaries." She wants to tell the stories of those former mutants coping with the change. When she writes about Chamber a former mutant on life support without his powers she finds celebrity overnight, and discovers that some people want the remaining mutants dead.

I enjoyed Jenkins's run on HELLBLAZER, and while I usually don't care for mutant stuff, he manages to infuse humanity and grit into the last title where I'd expect to find either. Jenkins takes the expected potshots at the Bush administration and the War on Terror, but that's becoming so normal that it doesn't faze me much. In a story driven by a flawed heroine, he realistically portrays the likely consequences of such a disaster. More than anything, he succeeded in making me care about the ex-mutants. The artistic team of Ramon Bachs and John Lucas seem to have been main-lining the blood of Richard Corben. The latter's influence couldn't be more obvious, but their pencils and inks evoke him, rather than imitate him. In any case, they've drawn a down-to-Earth, human world devoid of ridiculously overbuilt muscles and breasts. Whether you like the X-Men or not, GENERATION M is worth your time.

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