This...this was not good. This was bad. This was very bad.

I'm usually a big fan of Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning's stuff. Love their cosmic stuff (Guardians of the Galaxy and Nova were my favorite books when they were coming out, and the Rocket Raccoon/Groot story in Annihilators was just awesome) and I love some of their more earthly stuff (Iron Man/Thor was a good, solid story. Heroes for Hire's been truly awesome from the beginning). I'm usually a big fan of the New Mutants. Loved Zeb Wells' run, and Mike Carey's Age of X dealings. But this combination...it's not good. Last issue was not great, but I was hoping it was just a transitional thing and that future issues would smooth that out. Things are not smoothed out. The abbreviated team feels lackluster, and aside from Cypher and (sort of) Dani, the other New Mutants were just there to fill in gaps. They had no personality. No emotions. No reason for being other than to ask the occasional question and help with the exposition. The character who got the most growth was Ronny, a former mutant who was given technological powers...then sent on a suicide mission (with the appropriate result). X-Man just hung around (literally), and Sugar-Man apparently needs to head over to Uncanny X-Force and talk to Dark Beast (why aren't those two working together, anyway? Don't they have, basically, the same goals? With the exception that Dark Beast seems to want to stay in the 616?). And the New Mutates felt ham-handed and pointless. Sugar-Man has lackeys. Woohoo...who cares (and, yes, I get the New Mutates/New Mutants gag. Assuming that was intentional. If it wasn't, then it's possibly worse)? And why were Steve Rogers and Victoria Hand hanging around disassembling equipment? Don't they have better things to do?

I'd give this issue a 1 out of 5, for legibility and clear, good (but not great) artwork. The artwork might have made it go higher if there'd been anything worth illustrating here. As is...this just plodded along, and should really have been done in half the space. Such a disappointment.