Thoughts

Not too long ago, I blogged about the Wolverine miniseries. That comic was an almost perfect distillation of everything teenage boys at the time might want. Wolverine. Samurai. A romance where its all about the guy pining for a mostly silent woman. It knew its audience and it targetted them brilliantly.

Fast forward and I think it illuminates how the X-universe is changing that when the next miniseries comes along for Logan, the story adds front and centre Kitty Pryde. A thirteen year old girl off on spirited teenage adventures. Encountering all sorts of hijinks.

Issue one of this miniseries doesn’t mess about. This is wall-to-wall Kitty. And its great. This is all about the teenage girl getting in over her head as she tries to do the right thing. I’ve mentioned before how good Claremont is at pacing, and he’s in his element here as Kitty goes off on an adventure to Japan and discovers its not easy to go off on a headstrong whim.

The All Kitty All The Time plot does have one minor drawback in that Al Milgrom really seems to frequently draw her with the one facial expression, varying the size of the mouth only to denote different levels of shock. It’s distracting, but its interesting that she’s presented in very teenage terms. Hard to see a nineties comic telling this tale without undertaking the very dubious practice of sexing up the teen lead. You never get that icky vibe here, thankfully.

And, you know, sometimes Milgrom remembers his Dave Cockrum and manages to pull off a different facial expression.

Fun Panel

I mentioned before that Claremont has a knack with the X-men to keep things different and interesting for pretty bog-standard stories. His X-men attack any bases period was full of well-paced and inventive set-pieces. He translates that skill to here – Kitty’s ongoing hijinks constantly show her wielding her powers in fun and inventive ways. Not least in some striking sneaky skyscraper action!