Anthology comics are up-and-down affairs, and this issue is no exception. The first story has the Exiles crossing over with the Spider God from JMS and JR Jr.’s Amazing Spider-Man, only it’s all alternate reality stuff (’cause of the Exiles), so it’s out of scope for my blog.

Next, we get an X-Statix story by Mike Allred and Nick Derington. At the time, Derington was a complete unknown–but a few decades later he’d work on Doom Patrol with Gerard Way. Doom Patrol and X-Statix have lots of similarities in the ways they portray offbeat, misfit characters in dark stories told with humor. It’s a cute story where the team meets Tike’s white grandpa.

The team literally put on a show for an audience (I didn’t realize they did that!), which leads grandpa to form an opinion:

The final story also has creators new to Marvel: Jamie Delano and Neil Googe. Delano was making waves by creating Hellblazer for DC/Vertigo–a hugely popular book. Googe came across the pond after working on Judge Dredd, but would go on to partner with Gail Simone on the brilliant Welcome to Tranquility. They give us a neat little story about a mutant whose pheramone powers that get his teacher all hot and bothered and then, at a rock concert, inflame the crowd to the point that they kill him.

It’s dark, but it’s a great read.

Setting the main story aside as just average, the second story is a solid C+ and the third is a B. Overall, then, I’m giving this issue a B-.