Generation Hope #3

Review: After being spoken to by something resembling the Phoenix Force, Hope wakes up on the streets of Tokyo, surrounded by her teammates. They tell her that Lord Summers had decreed that the fifth newly-minted mutant was to be killed because he had gone too out of control... You know, I remember a time not that long ago when Cyclops would try to solve his problems with strategy, not murder... Anyway, Hope doesn't want to see the fifth mutant(Kenji)killed, so she tells her teammates to run interference with the X-Men while she makes mental contact with the out of control Kenji. Hope manages to get close enough to Kenji, while her teammates hold off the X-Men(uh-oh, Lord Summers will probably have them executed now!), and Hope manages to speak to Kenji mentally. It turns out he was already pretty crazy even before his powers manifested, so after a battle of wills, Hope manages to drain most of his powers and knocks him out with a punch. With that she collapses, ending this issue.

Thoughts: You know, I really want to like this series... I sincerely mean that. The problem I have here is there really isn't a character that I can relate to... Hope walks around telling people, “Let me be your Messiah” and since I have yet to be the Messiah for anyone, I just can't relate to a character like that. Then you have the two girls. One is from Africa and thinks she's possessed, while the other one is blue and has a bad attitude. Well, I can't relate to the first one, while the second one could possibly be kind of interesting. Rounding out the team is the two boys, one of which being for all intents and purposes an animal. That leaves ONE male member of the team! Meaning if you're a teenage boy, you pretty much have ONE character to relate to! I seriously don't get that... Why would you build a team so female heavy unless it's specifically a female-oriented team(like Birds of Prey)? Besides the out of whack choices of characters to build this team, none of them really have defined themselves very well... Sure, Kieron Gillen is starting to give the kids some personalities, but with the exception of Hope, I don't know ANY of the names of the other kids. They're basically Fire Girl(who doubles as Ice Girl), Blue Girl, Animal Boy and the Speedster... Take a series like Young Avengers... By the third issue of that series, I knew who pretty much everybody was, and the Young Avengers was a much larger team. They had codenames and distinct personalities, something I'm still waiting for here. I'm still holding out hope(heh-heh)with this series, and I'll be sticking with it through the long run, but Gillen should REALLY consider adding some more male characters and giving these kids codenames, pronto!

Score: 6 1/2 out of 10.Um, no thanks.