NYX: Wannabe [Hardcover]

I wanted to like this. i really did. throw away teens that didnt quite make it to the big leagues and all that seemed like such a promising premise. instead you get oddly placed underage panty shots, and a story that by the end I just had to ask "what was the point of this?"

i've like the idea of x-23 ever since x-men: evolution, but, especially for her emergence into main stream comics, she just seemed like such a non-character. Kiden Nixon seemed like someone that i thought had potential but just never really did anything. at least she wasn't whiny like the other two main chars.

this seemed like something that could have been awesome, should have been interesting, and maybe with a better writer would have become something great. and who knows? maybe when the new author took over and did "No Way Home", it gets turned around?

NYX is both a daring idea and a spectacularly misguided one. It’s daring because NYX stars four new female characters -- three runaway teenage mutant girls and a teacher -- without a cameo from an X-Man, Avenger, or Spider-Man. Together, these four come together to bicker at each other and be hunted by a murderous pimp.

Writer Joe Quesada wants to update the early Marvel tales of mutants discovering their powers and being alienated from and disliked by normal society. These kids are on their own, but together, they form a community to protect one another. Unlike X-Men such as Beast, Angel, and Iceman, they aren’t exchanging a happy or stable family life for the Xavier School; for them, it’s a rough mutant life or no life. The runaways all seem to know that only someone who has dealt with similar traumas can understand what they’ve been through.

Everything else in NYX, though, is misguided. Marvel does get points for giving new female characters a starring role in a miniseries and assigning a high-profile creator to the story. But that high-profile creator is Quesada, who is a great artist but an inexperienced writer. He recasts X-23, NYX’s best known character, as a near-mute child prostitute who isn’t even named in the story; even her pimp doesn’t know her name. By an extreme coincidence, Kiden, the protagonist, is given a chance to confront the man who killed her father, a police officer, when she was a small child. Readers are never sure what motivates X-23. Quesada mixes up names. Tatiana, the third runaway, is introduced halfway through the story, too late to feel like anything but an afterthought.None of the characters are compelling or likeable, although Kiden’s struggle from immature brat to responsible leader eventually makes her almost sympathetic.

Artists Joshua Middleton and Robert Teranishi tend toward the exploitative in their depictions of female characters. Kiden wears a bikini top and sucks on a pacifier on the cover of #1; inside the book, she’s shown sitting on the toilet with her shorts around her ankles and a pill in her hand. The following pages have several drawings of her in a t-shirt and panties. X-23 is dressed in lingerie and fishnets the entire series. There are prostitutes flaunting their wares everywhere. Tatiana is the subject of a (non-revealing) upskirt illustration in another scene.

NYX used Marvel's mutant universe to explore big issues like the plight teenage runaways, prostitution, gangs, and gun violence, but NYX never convinces me Quesada, Middleton, and Teranishi are treating these sensitive subjects with the consideration they deserve. Additionally, the mutant universe fell apart soon after NYX was published, taking away any long-term implications of the story. Without showing the respect those issues need or allowing the story to affect anything in the Marvel universe, everything else falls flat.

I picked up this book as a new and avid fan of the X-23 character, and in an attempt to have a complete log of her appearances in comics, the internet sent me after this book. As is the case with most X-23 related stories, this is a bit of a downer as far as subject matter is concerned, i suppose. It follows several inner city youths whose powers are manifesting and shows the reader the effects their new abilities have on their lives. The 'main' character, Kiden Nixon, spends a good bit of the book seeing just how bad her situation can get. There are some awkward scenes given the age of the characters, but the story itself remained compelling in my opinion. A great 'guest spot' from X-23 here as well, as we're introduced to her days as a prostitute for an overbearing pimp who really ties several of the characters together. The ending is more than a little anti-climactic and I have yet to read the 'Wannabe' follow up, but overall this was a pretty good book. Some of the art probably could have been better, but I didn't have any overwhelming complaints. If you're a big X-Title fan or you're looking to fill in some gaps in the X-23 chronology like myself, this book is worth your time.