Part of an ongoing series revisiting graphic novels and collected editions from days gone by....

Digging through a pile of old comics, I found this ancient introduction to a team of mutant superheroes to take place of the then-missing X-Men.

It was the first in a long, oversaturated line of X-Men spinoff books, but it doesn't carry its age well. The New Mutants introduced us to several characters who have become mainstays in Marvel's mutant universe, but their stories here just aren't very interesting.

Chris Claremont, rightly touted for his run with the X-Men, just couldn't craft a story here that made me want to learn more about these characters. (I've read interviews saying Claremont didn't want to write another mutant-focused book, so maybe his heart just wasn't in it.)

Problematic, too, is the art by Bob McLeod. It's stiff and uninteresting, and his teenage protagonists all look like they're in their 30s at least.

Kudos, though, for making the book a pillar of diversity, with its teenage heroes hailing from Scotland, Vietnam, Brazil and, from the U.S., a Kentucky miner and a native Cheyenne from Colorado.