Beautiful Mutants

Writers who spend more time posting on social media than writing actual books often refer to their writing journey, inadvertently using this massive cliché to provide some indication as to whether their notional work is worth reading. Beautiful Mutants isn't a journey. It's a beano. A beano is a traditionally working class outing whereby English factory workers took a train to Southend-on-Sea and spent the weekend drinking, smoking, f******, and fighting themselves into a stupor. Beautiful Mutants is a writing beano through the first twenty-eight years of Marvel's X-Men comics, taking in their world and their associates, up until the point at which writer Chris Claremont was unceremoniously retired and it all turned to grimacing s**** with too many lines all over its stupid f****** face. If you think Cable was awesome, or you use the word awesome in any context whatsoever, or you have blue hair and a cartoon Japanese animal as your social media avatar, this book almost certainly isn't for you. If, on the other hand, you remember when superhero comics weren't s***, or if anything in the above paragraph brought a bitter smile of recognition to your face, then - who knows - maybe you should give it a shot. May contain traces of agricultural language.