The X-Men travel to Africa to investigate the anomalous births of what seem to be infants with mutant abilities that are active at birth.
It’s been a long time since I was a regular reader of Marvel Comics, so it took a little while to get oriented in the convoluted history of their mutants, but once I had my feet under me I was…pretty underwhelmed. This was my first exposure to the work of Kaare Andrews and hopefully my last. I’ll give him credit for drawing the occasional priceless facial expression, but his art is to human anatomy what a dyslexic is to good spelling. His idea of sexiness in the female form consists of gargantuan gravity-defying breasts on emaciated bodies. The men are unwieldy muscle-bound clods. The story by Warren Ellis is okay. I know him by reputation, but this is the first time I have read him. There is some good dialog, but the straightforward plot is stretched thin and the setting is problematic. If you wish to appropriate African suffering as a backdrop for your story, you become obligated to treat it respectfully and seriously. However, the African characters are relegated to the background with the exception of a ruthless cyborg warlord who rules with an iron hand and emerges as a semi-sympathetic character.