From Marvel Comics, Marjorie Liu, Mike Perkins, Andy Troy.

Short answer, its a fine X-Men comic but does nothing for the new readers the gimmick is trying to bring in.

To elaborate.  This team of X-Men are trying to solve mysteries involving their old bad guys the Marauders and some dead bodies and things like that.  Black Widow appears, because she’s in the Avengers movie and the mainstream should be well aware of that by now.  Black Widow’s casual dress reflects her costume.  Same with Northstar’s t-shirt.  I would definitely buy a line of Marvel comics based clothing that looks “normal” yet reflects various super hero costumes.  It would be like one big public in joke.  Normal people would see a regular shirt.  Comic book fans would see kindred spirits.

Anyways, back to the book.  For long time comic book readers everything works.  Mystery, time and place jumps, mind control, it all makes sense within the familiar rules of comics.  I hadn’t read the previous issues and yet had no trouble following everything here.  Also, get rid of any unified Marvel continuity because this doesn’t reflect AVX, Avengers Assemble, or anything else happening at this time in other books.  Its easy to keep up though.  I don’t think I ever saw Warbird before, but I’m familiar with the Shi’ar and had no trouble accepting this character.

BUT!

If I were to, oh I don’t know, only hear about this comic book from watching The View I would be lost.

http://teamhellions.com/2012/05/24/marvels-announcement-on-the-view-and-whats-missing/

Wolverine would be familiar.  Iceman and Gambit slightly so.  Karma would be an unknown.  Warbird is beyond an unknown, because I wouldn’t have a clue what a Shi’ar is.  Worst of all, I wouldn’t know who or what Northstar is!

Lets look at it from a non comic fans perspective.  Hey, this is the gay character.  He has pointy ears.  Is he like Spock?  So he can fly and punch hard.  Can Spock fly?  I don’t remember pointy eared people having the powers of flight or hard punching.  If pointy ear flying man is actually incredibly rich and losing 10 million is “just money” then why does he have a cell phone from five years ago?  I’m not rich nor do I live in a world of flying people, but my cell phone is still better than that.  Also, if the whole point of buying this issue is to celebrate the engagement of these two gay characters then wouldn’t it be great if they actually got engaged?!

Now in the next issue Kyle and Northstar need to get officially engaged, plan a wedding, and apparently have that wedding.  Also, the X-Men in this issue need to be healed from mind control, stop the bad guys, head back to headquarters, change into nicer clothes, invite their mutant and super hero friends, and then attend some wedding.  All of this in 22 pages?  One if not both stories are going to get shorted.  Either the mystery wont matter, or the wedding wont.  No matter the outcome, it ultimately means that one or both stories in the next issue will be shit, because they will be rushed.

Yay for gay wedding, and truly showing diversity in the Marvel Universe, and in all of comics.  Full credit to Marvel for having the issue and wanting to promote it.  However, as a comic book for fans or to bring in new ones, it fails.