Finally, X-Men: First Class returns for an ongoing series, after a whole... er, month away. 

To all intents and purposes, this is First Class #10, and if you liked the previous miniseries, you'll like this.  It's a series with simpler, lighter stories likely to appeal to the younger and more traditional readers.  There's something a little odd about running an all-ages X-Men book based on a line-up from forty years ago, but it does work, perhaps because it allows Jeff Parker to write the X-Men as children.

That's particularly obvious in this story, as the Professor decides that Jean could do with a female role model and sets her up with the Invisible Girl.  In her early stories, Jean was indeed a token girl.  There's some nice material in here about her self-consciousness in an all male team, and how the rest of the team take her for granted.  There's also an unusual dynamic in having Jean Grey as a teenage girl with Sue as her mentor.  The story benefits from the fact that we know how Jean turns out.

The superhero material is mainly in the background, but Parker still gets in some fun action sequences, and Roger Cruz has turned out to be a perfect match for a book of this sort.  By this point, you probably know whether you're interested in First Class or not - but this certainly keeps up the level of quality that Parker and Cruz have established.

Rating: A-

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