Despite concerns about the X-Men’s “From the Ashes” relaunch regressing the franchise from the heights it reached on Krakoa, the line of X-books tried something new by organizing itself around a trifecta of flagship titles. The ‘Uncanny’ and ‘adjective-less’ titles returned to the X-Men along with a new, third series, Exceptional X-Men. In Exceptional X-Men by Eve L. Ewing Vol. 1: Duty Calls, collection editor Jennifer Grünwald assembles the first five issues from creators Eve L. Ewing, Carmen Carnero, Nolan Woodard, VC’s Joe Sabino and Travis Lanham, and Tom Brevoort. Uncanny explores the X-Men by way of southern gothic horror, while X-Men focuses on sci-fi intrigue for Cyclops’ band of refugee radicals. Completing the triad, Exceptional‘s scope is more grounded, mixing classic New Mutants’ storytelling with millennial and Gen Z attitudes.
Kate Pryde has lived many lives since joining the X-Men, but the one thing she hasn’t tried? Living a normal, non-mutant life. She’s burnt out, overqualified, underpaid, and the world outside her window doesn’t seem to be getting any brighter. Left with a mess of feelings after Fall of X and the ascension of Krakoa, her main coping strategy is to stay overstimulated and hyper-exhausted. The only part of her life pushing back against this malaise is another new thing Kitty’s trying out: dating women! Still, the former heroine’s retreat to hometown civilian life isn’t working. Staying too busy to feel is only a stopgap for real treatment, and Kate can’t help but find herself helping new mutants in need, despite trying to live stealth.
The new mutants in question are Axo a.k.a Alejandro “Alex” Luna, Bronze a.k.a. Trista Marshall, and Melee a.k.a. Thao Tran. Each of the Chicagoan teens finds their powers at odds with some part of their personality. Axo, think Axolotl–the color shifting amphibian native to Mexico, is a visual mutant. In addition to his mutant empathic powers, his skin has the passive trait of changing color in response other’s emotions. These effects all directly oppose his punk preferences of black leather and flying under the radar. Trista is a nerdy, hyper-femme Black girl: she loves anime, K-Pop, glitter, and styling her magenta braids with pink and purple bows. Her desire to be soft and gentle feels threatened when her X-gene gives her the ability to shift into a bronze from that features whip-like cables that extend from her wrists. In contrast, Thao would love an offensive power, and as a biracial Vietnamese-Native American teen, her focus tends to be on direct action to resist bigotry and systemic oppression. Instead, her ability to phase and become invisible have thrown a wrench into how she understands the fight.
Ewing, Carnero, and Woodard have injected this trio with so much personality, each of these characters feels lived in, and carefully considered aspects like their ethnic backgrounds read like natural extensions of real teenagers with lives outside the pages of Exceptional. Spending time in their homes, giving them the turn to monologue to the reader, and peeking into how the three of them develop friendship with one another costs significant page space. However, it pays off in building these Gen Z new mutants into characters that we root for as well as casting them as the perfect counterweight against Kate’s millennial-coded slump.
Marvel
As Duty Calls serves as a collection of Exceptional‘s opening arc, the five issues gathered mainly tell the story of two things. One, who are Axo, Bronze, and Melee, and how were they all drawn together. Two, how does Kate Pryde find herself as their informal instructor. After intervening in each of their lives largely by accident, Kitty briefly attempts to disentangle herself from the teens’ growing journey as new mutants. This fails pretty much immediately, and the final nail in the coffin is the prospect of leaving the young trio solely in the care of Emma Frost. Not that Emma Frost is a bad teacher! But part of Kate knows that these kids will be better off if Emma is not their only teacher. Between the two of them, Emma evokes the shiny exciting new life that can come from mutantdom. Kitty balances this out with realism, trying to avoid some of the teaching malpractice she experienced with the X-Men. The volume then rounds out with the arrival of Bobby Drake. Iceman’s entrance accidentally leads to the group’s first real hurdle, which is learning about the blood that Kate has felt so suffocated by as of late. However, Bobby’s presence also opens up the opportunity for each teen to have more specialized mentorship based on their power sets.
If Duty Calls is limited, it would likely be argued that it has a limited scope of action. Trista gets to knock a big monster out of her school and back where it came from. Other than that, the book’s conflicts are smaller, more frequently dealing with human bullies. Technically, the group’s only team battle is shortly revealed to be a surprise psychic exercise from Emma. I understand the argument that cape comics need a level of spectacle. At the same time, part of the point of this story is not immediately throwing these untrained kids into the deep end of the X-Men experience. This arc is about building a foundation, and month-to-month readers of Exceptional are sure to know that the level of super hero adventures in these kids’ lives is already sharply increasing.
In terms of character work alone, Exceptional X-Men by Eve L. Ewing Vol. 1: Duty Calls collects one of the best books to emerge out of the From the Ashes… relaunch. The frantic sense of rush that has been pointed out in other current X-titles isn’t here. Instead Ewing, Carnero, and Woodard take their time building out the cast of this book and fleshing out their setting. The relationships, be they new teen friendships or the long, messy bond between Pryde and Frost, feel real and have stakes. All the while, groundwork for the second arc is being laid. Ewing’s insight into the social media “wellness culture” pipeline into eugenics is the most salient point being made about the world outside our windows by any of the current X-books. Something sinister is coming for these fledgling X-Men, but the story of Duty Calls ensures that they aren’t facing it alone.
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