X-Men: Misfits Book

It's great that the X-Men franchise has made its way into the manga world again after a brief brush in Wolverine: Logan. However, seeing it re-packaged in such a cheap fashion leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

Granted, re-making any story from popular source material is a difficult task, especially when it's re-tooling an action-drama like X-Men into a shojo drama. No one can expect to get there without bumps along the way, but this X misses the spot.


X-Men Misfits tells the story of the pre-Wolverine X-Men plot from Kitty Pryde's perspective. What compelled me to read the manga in the first place was the fact that the under-appreciated Kitty Pryde was at the center of the story, as opposed to more popular characters like Wolverine or Professor Xavier.

Of course, other, more notable characters like Iceman, Cyclops and Pyro make an appearance, but they are nothing more than generic girly boys who are indistinguishable from one another. Heck, I'm a comic book buff and still couldn't recognize some of the side characters because they look just like Forge or Gambit (or was that Gambit?). It doesn't help that they are shojofied with Ouran High School Host Club-style uniforms, with the personalities to match. As it is, they remain in a perpetual one-dimensional purgatory of blandness.

Though the manga was meant to be light and fluffy, the lighter-toned story doesn't suit the X-Men universe. Recalling the original storyline of X-Men, racism is the main theme. Allegorically, mutants are treated as ethnic minorities and humans are seen as the privileged Caucasian. While this underlining theme was given some token lip service, the struggle between humanity and mutants just doesn't come off as believable here.

Given this general environment of oppression, one would expect Kitty to be more confused and perhaps more angst-ridden. Her struggle with being herself and saying what's on her mind could have gone beyond a tiny square of text in a corner. Alas, those ideas are dashed as soon as any given pretty boy jumps into the picture.

As much as I want to say that I appreciate Anzu's attempt at illustrating this new story, the end result is utterly incomprehensible. For all the various skin tones, all of the boys look the same and the layout of certain pages throws off the flow of several scenes. Beyond that, the backgrounds can get so busy that readers have to play "Find Kitty" while still needing to figure out whether the pretty boy next to her is Angel or Iceman.

Good news, though. The artwork is on the same level as the story-telling. Who needs top-notch artwork when the story sucks?

The story is written by the husband-wife team of Dave Roman and the distinguished Raina Telgemeier, who is perhaps best known for her work on the comic adaptations of The Babysitters Club. This previous work, jokes aside, managed to capture the agony and joy of the loves and friendships that teenagers go through. Surprisingly, Telgemeier could not transition her experiences of writing for angsty adolescents into manga, ironically the format of choice for angsty adolescents. As a matter of fact, there were many things done by the characters that caused me to roll my eyes in incredulity.

Okay, we know that Kitty wants to fit in (who doesn't?) but is it necessary to make her so reserved when she's got a million and one questions? Don't teenagers shoot their mouths off when they get the urge? (I know I did). They sass back, resort to violence to reclaim some sort of emotional or mental semblance, and get F's in math.

Here however, Kitty internalizes everything without unleashing it in the usual teenage ways. Instead of lashing out whenever she gets angry, she just crosses her arms and huffs and puffs. It feels more like some idealized portrait of a teenager than the actual reality of a teenager. Compound this with the whole idea that this is a world of people with literally world-shaking powers and the mind boggles even further. Just why is everyone so darn nice to each other here?

But there is another bright side to all of this: X-Men Misfits is a short read. As sour as the taste it leaves, any of this misfit manga's residue won't stick for long on your mind. Better yet, save yourself the trouble. This cross-marketing gimmick is one-size-fits-none.