2024’s Fears And Hates is the first ​“graphic novel” (in the curious American vernacular for tankōbon) of Peach Momoko’s Ultimate X‑Men.

The X‑Men! Inspirational/terrifying/highly destructive champions of the mutant cause! And also completely irrelevant to this narrative as, due to meddling time travellers, the X‑Men never existed.

Not yet, anyway. And when they do appear, it won’t be in familiar form.

Hisako Ichiki is a perfectly normal Japanese school girl with perfectly normal social anxiety and depression and perfectly dreadful marks. Oh, yes. Hisako also has a stalker.

The stalker would be creepy enough in his actual form. Manifesting as he does as tangle of shadows, the Shadow King does not inspire confidence in his benevolence. Neither does the way in which he muses about Hisako’s late friend, Tsubasa, whose death haunts Hisako. Nevertheless, she accepts a small token from the Shadow King before she flees.

There is no way for Hisako to know this, but the Shadow King’s talents include triggering other people’s inborn — mutant — superpowers. The first inkling Hisako gets of this is when, while fleeing on her bike, she cuts off a car. Psychic armour manifests around her, protecting Hisako and totalling the car.

Aside from Hisako and the unfortunate driver, there was one witness to the wreck, Mei ​“Maystorm” Igarashi. Rather than expose Hisako, Mei befriends her. Why not? After all, Mei has her own mutant power, the ability to control the weather.

Who is the Shadow King? What is he up to? Hisako, Mei, and psychic pal Nico Minoru — the three forming a new ​“X‑Men” — are determined to find out.

_oOo

The mastermind1 responsible for reshaping history appears to have eliminated Charles Xavier, the man whose surname provides the X in X‑Men. The X‑Men team name for the new group also alludes to the other thing the new members have in common: terrible exam results.

The kids seem bright enough. I wonder why their marks are so bad?

We shall never know.

Eventually readers learn something about the how and why of the Shadow King… he’s an agent of the Children of the Atom. Why are *they *creating and triggering teen mutants? Whatever their purpose, it’s probably not good. I’m sure we will learn more in later volumes.

Some readers may want a heads-up for one scene; a brief one involving so-called compensated dating, in which middle-aged men pay schoolgirls for various services, the full range of which is left unclear. This is something that characters in the book appear to accept as something that just happens and cannot be stopped. They despise the girls who engage in this practice, rather than considering them victims. The character in this volume who is solicited shows firm boundaries enforced by a very casual attitude to homicide.

The comic is kind enough to explain the time-travel backstory, presumably for long-time X‑Men fans who might be confused by the fact that this comic appears to have very little in common with the regular X‑Men, aside from mutant powers and the title. However, someone entirely new to the X‑Men or superhero comics in general don’t need the explanation. This manga is very nearly stand-alone. There’s no danger of continuity-lock [2].

Volume One is constrained by the need to establish characters and the general shape of the mystery. As one should expect, there are far more questions raised than answers provided. However, the manga’s art is beautiful and the questions are intriguing enough to keep me reading.

Fears And Hates is available here (Marvel Comics), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Bookshop US), here (Bookshop UK), here (Chapters-Indigo), and here (Words Worth Books).

1: The big bad responsible is the Maker, an alternate version of Reed Richards2, who altered history to eliminate or co-opt other superbeings and make himself secret ruler of a world dominated by endlessly squabbling power blocks. The US was absorbed into the North American Union. USA delenda.

2: Fifty or sixty years of accumulated continuity can deter new readers.