The Quest for Magik begins with a bang, all the students except Hellion and Surge ends up in Limbo, abducted by Belasco who is Super-Pissed because his pet Magik is missing. She's actually been dead for a couple of years, but Belasco doesn't know that and furthermore he smells her on some of the students who encountered her in an altered reality (House of M), don't ask me how that works. It's less confusing in the comic...

Anyway we get to see all the current students, although many only has a single panel appearance, we get to see Loa using her powers for the first time and we get to know Nezhno's codename and super-power, though he doesn't use them in this issue.

The kids end up in two groups, one group is held captive by Belasco and company. The second group who are Rockslide, Anole, Blindfold, Wolf Cub, Pixie and Match end up in some other place surrounded by demons. They turn to Rockslide for leadership as he is the only 'New X-Man' in that group, but he doesn't really know what to do, so Anole takes charge before... [spoiler]. It will be interresting to see where this developes in the future.

The art by Skottie Young is quite good, a bit too cartoony in some places, but not as much as his usual stuff. Particulary his Rockslide looks good. The writers have a really good grasp of the characters, Blindfolds awkward pattern of speech, Mercury's reaction to being held captive again and Rockslide continues to have some really funny lines. However the line spoken by X-23 to Trance seems like it would better fit Prodigy or anyone else.

New X-Men is better than ever, and the writers have said that no students will die during this arc so no more dead favourites hopefully, altough one kid get his/her heart ripped out in this issue. Figuratively or literally? Read it yourself.

Chris Claremont's first Exiles issue.

It was better than i thought, but it has some inconsistencys. The storytelling was a bit hard to understand at places too, especially the last pages - Why would Sabretooth lunge at Psylocke like a maniac if he wants to say 'Hello and welcome to the team' and wasn't he critically injured the previous page?

Also they showed the Panoptichron from the outside when they stated in Exiles (71?) that it has no outide.

And Heather is a mutant now?

I'll give it 2 blorts of 5, it's not too bad but could've been better, great art as usual by Paul Pelletier.