Written by James Asmus
Illustrated by Ibraim RobersonNEW CREATIVE TEAM! Hope and what is left of her five lights travel to China to find their latest recruit. Wait, is that X-Villain SEBASTIAN SHAW? James Asmus (UNCANNY X-MEN
 ANNUAL) and Ibraim Roberson (UNCANNY X-MEN) take the reins of the most-talked about new X-Book.
What? The book isn’t written by Kieron Gillen anymore? Raise the pitchforks, light the torches! We’re chasing this thing into the windmill!
Or, I guess we could give this an honest to goodness shot. No sense in jumping to conclusions, right?
Let’s find out, after the cut.
Generally, I think it’s an accepted (and even expected) habit of comic books that when a writer leaves and a new one comes in, the book is supposed to become that much more accessible to a new reader. That is, in fact, how I got into many books — scoping out when a seismic shift would be taking place in the title’s line-up and hopping on board for the ensuing adventure. While many times it is a sad thing when a good writer leaves his or her title, you can always cross your fingers that maybe new people will be able to attach to the title with you with the new options given to them by a writer and artist.
I suppose, then, that it is fairly impressive that James Asmus and Ibraim Roberson have essentially given me Generation Hope #1 while I wasn’t paying attention, since I was too busy reading Generation Hope #13.
The issues opens with the Hope kids training against the new X-Men line-up (sans Scott, Emma and Danger), an unmatched fight if I’ve ever seen one. Throughout the match we are briefly re-introduced to the concept that these kids have code names (an element that Kieron Gillen introduced in his run yet never really stuck with, and to be honest I had forgotten about), what their powers are and what their personalities are like. Some running commentary from Scott gives the idea behind the team a light re-introduction, and before you know it the scene comes to its apex and we move on to business as usual. It’s an extremely cleve and subtle little piece, but it is infinitely important.
What Asmus and Roberson has done with this opening sequence is boiled down the re-introduction time that could bring new readers to the title and hidden it in a veil so that older readers like myself don’t feel the introduction drags from too much exposition. That can be a problem when hopping into a title with new writers and artists; sometimes it seems they feel they really need to put their stamp on procedure, really let you know how they will be running things with the writing and art. Instead, Asmus and Roberson have taken the idea inherent in Marvel’s Point One initiative, put it in a sauce pan and distilled it to just a few entertaining pages for everyone to enjoy. It’s the Generation Hope Intro cocktail, and it goes down fairly smooth and easy.
From there, Asmus and Roberson carry on as if it were just another issue of Generation Hope. We move into a few light-hearted pieces about Teon and Kenji, bring in a new character to the book (and a cult-favorite, at that) before hopping right into the middle of the book’s central purpose: find new mutants and rescue them before disaster happens. While the book slightly moves away rom Gillen’s previous format of focusing on specific characters, we still have Generation Hope at its finest; everything old is new and vice versa. In fact, outside of a few lines here and there, if you didn’t even look at the credits you might not have even noticed a new writer came onboard — that’s how tiny the gap is conceptually between issue #12 and #13. I don’t think there is any higher praise to give than that, in broad terminology.
Continued belowNow, I will note that on the negative side, the solicit is wildly inaccurate of what is contained within the book. China? Not so much. The return of Sebastian Shaw? Well, that isn’t very clear. I’m not sure at what point the disconnect or any number of changes were made, but the inaccurate solicit is rather curious. That, and (this might be a mild spoiler), you can’t really be sure that the character at the end was Sebastian Shaw. Sure, you can make assumptions given any number of likely scenarios, but it also could just be “some guy.” It is the kind of finale where you question what you just read, and not necessarily in a good way. It’s both a theoretical reset button and an incredibly unclear scenario, but given the strength of the rest of the issue, I’m willing to overlook these elements in favor focus towards the positive.
Asmus and Roberson do make a terrific duo for the book, however. Asmus has a great sense of dry and slick humor that fits in well with Gillen’s, and he seems to have a decent handle on the characters already: the stern yet soft sensibilities of Hope, Gabe’s gung-ho attitude in the face of his own demise, Laurie’s passion and Kenji’s outsider mentality are all readily present within the book just as much as they ever were. Teon especially remains his affable self with a hilarious little bit involving the Stepford Cuckoos (and it’s perhaps notable that that one scene is what ultimately gave me infinite faith in Asmus’ ability to carry on as the writer). Meanwhile, Roberson brings a more heavy sense of artistic realism to the book than what we previously had, given Espin’s more cartoonish nature, McKelvie’s pop-driven sensibilities and Sander’s wonderfully dark finale. Roberson dark inks with Jim Charalmpidis’ colors ground the book in a believable setting, taking Gen Hope out of the frying pan and into the fire, as it seems the team is finally ready to be just that: a team.
Ultimately, the greatest strength of the issue lies in its nature to directly address the reader without being afraid to do so. In many ways, it felt like the issue — on top of all the actual lines of dialogues and scenes — was displaying a sign barely visible to the naked eye that read, “Yes, everything is ostensibly different now, but things are still very much the same.” There’s comfort in knowing that Asmus and Roberson don’t plan to take the book too far off its original course in developing these new and younger characters while shifting the direction ever so slightly. It’ll be interesting to see if they choose to bring back the more character centric stories that Gillen and co. had done previously (such as the ever depressing Generation Hope #9), but for now its nice to see the team finally sprung into action.
We could make any number of assumptions about the book’s future from this one issue, but I think it’s safe to say that the future is bright.
Final Verdict: 8.0 – Buy. If you were already buying, continue to do so. If you weren’t, fix that.
