Hellions #4 (of 4) - Marvel (2005)

This was a fun miniseries. The title is a reference to Emma Frost's team of "anti-New Mutants" from the '80s who were somehow cool despite the fact that their powers totally mimicked those of the New Mutants.

This miniseries really has nothing to do with the original Hellions other than the fact that they are all mutants and Emma is an authority figure to them. They are students at Xavier's school and for the most part, their powers are original and cool. Hellion (he's the one on the cover above) is a powerful telekinetic. Dust can become her namesake and gets really cool cloud effects when she moves. Wither kills anything he touches; he's the Rogue of the group without all the "y'all"s. Mercury is composed of liquid metal which allows her to do T-1000 type things.

I listed all of the powers above because they are the ones that don't knock me out of the story. The remaining two members of the team have powers that seem like Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir, the writers, were just trying to come up with something different for the sake of difference. Tag is not a mutant graffiti artist. Instead, he has a form of mind control which allows him to touch someone, making the target "it". Others are compelled to run from "it". And Rockslide looks like your garden variety brick à la the Thing but (get this) he can fire his fists at you! Just like a Shogun Raider.

The story carries no surprises but it is a very nice "be careful what you wish for" cautionary tale with a slight twist. I like the bad guy a lot. It's nice to read a self-conatined story in which the conflict doesn't decide the fate of the world. I'm not going to go into details about the story because there's little I could say that wouldn't give large parts of it away. Suffice it to say, it's a good story, well told. The characters are distinct and don't fall into the stereotype trap.

The art is clean and fits well with the tone of the story. Clayton Henry did the pencils which were inked by Mark Morales and Jay Leisten. Will Quintana, the colorist, deserves special mention. He really made the panels sing whether he was muting things or zapping bright reds and oranges around.

This will make an enjoyable trade and you don't need to know any of the convoluted X-Continuity to understand it.