I love boarding school stories.  Dead Poets Society, A Separate Peace - if a story has boys learning about life and tragedy in a boarding school setting, I'll consume it eagerly.  So when I realized that this miniseries was going to be a boarding school story starring one of my favorite underappreciated X-Men, Warren Worthington III, I was thrilled.  I'd enjoyed Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's comics before (his Young Avengers Presents issue, and his work so far on the Fantastic Four Secret Invasion tie-in), and the previews of Adam Polina's art blew me away.  I thought my love for this comic would be a virtual guarantee.

Indeed, not a bad word can be said about Polina's art.  I've never seen anything like it in a superhero comic, and the hyper-stylized quality lends an otherworldly and slightly creepy air to the comic, which is perfect for the story being told.  He's also the first artist I've ever seen who has drawn Warren's wings as if they could actually hold up a body of Warren's size.

Unfortunately, my high hopes for the writer and the boarding school setting have not been so brilliantly fulfilled.  The problem isn't that this is a bad story - it definitely isn't - but that it's a story that's been told a million times before, in a million different media.  Every character other than Warren himself is little more than a stereotype, from Warren's disapproving, distant father and society-obsessed mother to the jock who hates him and the dorky roommate who worships him.  The pedophile priest story also seems headed to the land of cliche, though I'll be very happy if I'm wrong.  And while the parallel story about the man attempting to kill mutants for religious purposes is slightly more interesting, it still doesn't seem to frame that trope in an especially new or creative way.  Warren himself is mostly well-written, and there have been moments about him in these issues, especially moments focused on his wings, that have been truly fascinating.  But for the most part, he's floating adrift in a world of cliches and stereotypes, trapped in a standard-issue poor-little-rich-boy role that doesn't entirely fit him.

Also, although I realize that, as a Marvel Knights story, this miniseries isn't necessarily in continuity, I can't for the life of me figure out why Warren's mother has a different first name than her in-continuity counterpart, or why the obviously WASPy Worthingtons would send their son to a very religious Catholic boarding school.  And why can't Warren's roommate be Cameron Hodge, who could easily be made to fit the archetype Aguirre-Sacasa is using with Andrew?

I really want to love this comic, and it's possible that the final two issues will blow me out of the water with twists and turns and make me take back everything I've said.  But at the moment, color me disappointed.