They Want Him Back
Generation Hope is not a good series. Not yet at least. It has a great deal of potential but for some reason has been pretty lackluster since the get go. After issue 6 I decided to drop the series completely. None of these characters apart from Hope have been particularly interesting or engaging (though I do kind of like Teon because he's kind of fun) and with the revelation that the sixth light is a baby able to mind control people I decided I was out. Yet, for some reason, when I was in the comic shop last week I went ahead and picked up issue 7 on a whim and figured I might as well finish out this kind of lame story arc. In the end? Lackluster as always but not horrible and from the solicitations I've seen this series might end up becoming a little awesome in the months to come.
Nothing really important happens in this issue honestly. In fact, the best part of this issue is page one where we get an amusing conversation between Kitty Pryde and Idie. Other than that there isn't much here. Basically, at the end of last issue we find the baby is mind controlling everyone in the hospital and trying to attack the team and in this issue we get more of that. Hope gets Kenji to tap into the mother so they can communicate with the baby and each team member takes a turn trying to convince the baby to calm down. In the end, they convince the baby that being born is a good idea and kaboom that's that.
I have discovered a couple problems with this series. One of those problems is Kieron Gillen but I'll get into that another time. I think one of my biggest issues is really with these characters and more so with their powers. Really, all their powers are about as vague as you can possibly get. Take Kenji for example. While he may be one of the more interesting characters here was exactly is his power? It seems he might be able to do pretty much anything. In this issue you have a baby that can mind control people and for some reason Kenji can use his Clayface powers to tap into people to shield them from vague powered baby's mind control? Doesn't make much sense. As big an issue as Kenji's powers are I think Hope's are even worse. I think her power honestly might be to add on secondary powers given to her by the writer for any given situation (her primary power being to calm down newly activated mutants).
When their powers aren't being all vague the others are just kind of boring. Gabriel is a running Nighcrawler. Idie is Iceman and Pyro mashed together. Teon is a not so smart Beast (though honestly he's just as fun to read). Add in the fact that I think they are meant to be an analog to the original X-Men team since this is all shaping up to be a mutant rebirth after Second Coming and it ends up being kind of lame which is sad because this team and that concept could be SO GOOD. With the solicits for issues 8, 9, and 10 (Teon's custody battle, a Light "dying", and Idie murderizing somebody) I think this series might pick up. Doesn't help that it seems to tie into Schism so I'll end up having to read it.