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NYX: No Way Home (Marvel Comics, 2008; #1-6)

  • Just as Kiden and friends* have found some stability, someone kidnaps Ms. Palmer and sets the kids up as her attackers.
  • This puts them back on the streets as they try to decide whether or not to save her—and how.
  • And just to make things more difficult, the Superhero Registration laws are in effect, so S.H.I.E.L.D.’s around to rain on their parade.
  • This volume of NYX benefits tremendously from having Marjorie Liu as its writer: she maintains the desperation and brutality of the previous run, but without the fridgey overtones and gendered slurs.
  • Andrasofszky, Pichelli, Pérez, and Rauch’s art is in line with the first NYX series’s style, but with more detail and depth; Rauch’s colors go a long way toward maintaining a consistent visual style across artists.

If you're up for a brutal, street-level comic about a group of mutant teens trying to find their place and move past trauma, then NYX might be for you.  I wouldn't start with "No Way Home," though; I'd go back to the first arc to understand the characters and their relationships.

* Minus X-23.  I don’t know where she went, but she isn’t here.

Collected in

  • NYX: No Way Home (#1-6)
  • NYX: The Complete Collection (#1-7; NYX: No Way Home #1-6)

Credits

Writer: Marjorie Liu | Pencillers: Kalman Andrasofszky (1-5), Sara Pichelli (3-4, 6) | Inkers: Kalman Andrasofszky (1), Ramón Pérez (2-5), Sara Pichelli (3-4, 6) | Colorist: John Rauch | Letterer: VC’s Joe Caramagna with Chris Eliopoulos (4) | Covers: Alina Urusov | Assistant Editor: Michael Horwitz | Editor: John Barber | Group Editor: Axel Alonso

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Sunstone: Volume Two (Image Comics / Top Cow Productions, 2012; OGN)