Welcome, dear readers, to another week of comics and commentary at Comics! The Blog! We kick things off, as always, by handing out awards for the Best of the Week - beginning with two Award postings, followed closely later with this past week’s Best.

There are a lot of things to love about the X-Men: the political subtext, the soap opera dramatics, the ridiculously huge and increasingly diverse cast and, you know, their tendency to solve their problems with eye lasers and knife hands. These are all things I am 100% in favour of, if I’ve declared myself as running in a political race and you’re reaching back into the C!TB archives to find dirt on me (it’s on Twitter, by the way.) But that’s not my favourite part of the X-Men. To me, the series is at its best when it’s focusing on the mutants of the Marvel Universe not just as superheroes, but as people. This can involve the already mentioned elements, but Uncanny X-Men #15.INH takes it to its extreme: it is a comic about some of the female faculty and students at Cyclops’ School for Mutant Rebels going on a girl’s night, complete with shopping, food and shit talk.

That’s a dangerous premise right there - if not done correctly it can veer into bad stereotypes quickly - but to Brian Michael Bendis and Kris Anka‘s credit, they pull it off successfully. The premise is quickly established with a certain level of self awareness. We know this can be a bad stereotype, but Jesus, we are starting to stink and this “kitchen” used to be a grotesque lab, we need to get out of here and be normal.

And with that, the stage is set for an issue that is filled to the brim with great humour and remarkable character work. With all the Battle of the Atom fallout and lingering post-Schism developments, it can be easy for the less primary relationships to get shunted off to the side while Sentinels show up or an entire new race of non-humans springs up less than overnight, and this issue reiterates that what makes the X-Men work so brilliantly is the interactions, like Jean Grey vs. mean girl Stepford Cuckoo politics or the inestimable humanization and development to Magik. It frequently had me in stitches even as I marveled at Anka‘s incredible attention to characterization through fashion and appearance. It was a classic Claremontean/Byrnesian bit of work, told amidst the X-Line at its healthiest and most exciting in years. Despite the intrusion of the new Inhumans and AIM at the end to move a new arc forward, the bulk of the issue is full of fine, smaller character moments, and Bendis and Anka work together to show them subtly and whimsically. It’s a great reminder of why the X-Men are so great, and it wins this week’s Mean Girls Award for High Schooliness.