X-Men: Misfits is a shōjo-style retelling of Kitty Pryde's introduction to the X-Men written by Raina Telgemeier and Dave Roman and featuring sharp, clean-lined artwork by Anzu. The story is set before Professor Xavier's accident, and focuses on 15-year-old Kitty, whose mutant power is the ability to phase through matter—helpful when she wants to hide from nosey classmates, but decidedly unhelpful when she runs the risk of falling out of an airplane! Kitty has always felt like a freak, but when she receives a scholarship to Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters she discovers that there are other people out there with powers every bit as strange and disturbing as hers... and some of them happen to be super-hot teenage boys.

Telgemeier and Roman's take on this X-Men backstory features every shōjo cliché in the book: Kitty is the lone girl in a boys-only school, she is immediately befriended by a group of the best-looking and most powerful students, and she finds herself torn between half-a-dozen romantic foils. She's adorably klutzy, too (what shōjo heroine isn't?), although she falls through stuff rather than over it. Frequent manga readers might find such a derivative storyline irritating, but we suspect manga newbies will enjoy themselves—after all, there's a reason these plot elements became so popular in the first place, and this cute, girl-friendly title makes excellent use of them.

[Review based on publisher-provided copy.]

Labels: Book Reviews, Comics, manga, Retellings