Young X-Men is a 2008 comic book by Marvel Comics, written by Marc Guggenheim with art by Yanick Paquette. The series replaces New X-Men: Academy X, which was canceled after the Messiah Complex event.
The series features a random collection of characters from New X-Men, along with other young mutant characters like Blindfold and Wolfcub, from Astonishing X-Men and Uncanny X-Men. Finally, three new characters were introduced – Ink, Graymalkin and Cipher, though only Graymalkin had any staying power.
The series ended after 12 issues.
Young X-Men provides examples of:
- And I Must Scream: Greymalkin was buried alive by his abusive father roughly 200 years ago. The trauma caused his mutant powers to appear, and it just so happens that said powers are superstrength and invincibility in total darkness. The poor guy was buried alive, immobile, for 200 years until he was freed. Beast comments that it's amazing he kept his sanity.
- Art Imitates Life: Ink's tattoos. However, he's not actually a mutant at all.
- Back from the Dead: Dust very briefly dies due to cellular degeneration after being turned to glass. Ink used the power of his Pheonix tattoo to bring her back to life, although the effort put him into a coma.
- Buried Alive: Greymalkin was subjected to this by his own father after he was caught kissing a boy. Fortunately, he survived long enough to be unearthed years later, but the experience understandably left him with PTSD.
- Bury Your Gays: Literally — Greymalkin's father's response to finding him with another boy was to curse him for being born and bury him alive.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: Left catatonic after healing Dust, but he eventually recovered.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Greymalkin was unearthed after two hundred years, so he has difficulties communicating with modern people.
- Human Popsicle: Greymalkin's powers allowed him to stay alive in complete darkness while buried for decades.
- Intangible Man: Intangible Girl
- Invisibility: Cipher's abilities include full spectrum invisibility and complete stealth, able to mask even her psychic imprint from most telepaths.
- Killed Off for Real: Wolf Cub is murdered by Donald Pierce during the Young X-Men finale.
- Last-Name Basis: Greymalkin doesn't really have a codename, so he's usually referred to by his last name.
- Naïve Newcomer: Greymalkin. Considering he was buried for over a hundred years, not surprising.
- One-Steve Limit: Cipher shares her codename with Doug Ramsey of the New Mutants. Thankfully their codenames have different spellings to avoid confusion from readers.
- Power Tattoo: Ink. However, in this case it's not the tattoo that gives him his powers, but the tattoo artist.
- Remember the New Guy?: Cipher is introduced not a new character but actually a secret Xavier Institute student originally known only to Cyclops and Jean Grey. Eventually she joined the training squad after assisting them behind the scenes for months.
- Straight Gay: Greymalkin doesn't have any stereotypically gay mannerisms thanks to his very different upbringing.
- Undeathly Pallor: Greymalkin's completion and subterranean based powers definitely give off the impression.
