Maybe that was a load-bearing hour...

My Youngest lives in Arizona right now, so he doesn't have to mess with time-changes, but I'm not sure I mind it: I was going to say I usually start work when it's pitch-black out, but looking it up, the average sunrise time around here is 5:09 AM. But, it's still overtime season, which I'm not loving: I'm not putting in the max, which feels like leaving money on the table, but I'm there long enough that my brain is fried after. So fried, I didn't read a lot last week; but we did get to a few! From 2021, Children of the Atom #5, written by Vita Ayala, art by Paco Medina, color art by David Curiel.

This was a mini-series, set during the Krakoa era, but despite the name, the kids of the new super-team Children of the Atom weren't mutants. They had found alien tech, which with some trial, error, and after-market touch-ups; they managed to create identities resembling X-Men. They spend a good chunk of the run trying to figure out how to get to Krakoa, since the teleportation gates would usually only take mutants; but they get captured by Orchis. More specifically, Dr. Barrington and the U-Men, who seemed like white supremicists that still wanted to steal mutant powers to improve themselves. Fortunately, one of the Children, Daycrawler Nighty-Nightcrawler escaped, and returned with several real X-Men! (The kid's costume made his hands and feet look like Nightcrawler's, but were really normal.)

Also in continuity at this point, was "Kamala's Law," basically forbidding teenage superheroes; so while the X-Men are grateful for the assist and flattered by the imitations, Cyclops also tells the kids to hang it up and go home. (Which is a load, since Cyke had been one of the original new Champions; which meant he had been a teenage hero himself, twice!) But one of the kids, Gimmick, is given an invite to Krakoa, since she was developing mutant powers of her own. Which then puts her in the awkward position of living la vida Krakoa, or staying with her friends...(Spoiler: she would appear again later!)

 I got five of the six issues from the dollar bin the other day, and it's fun, with probably more teen angst and drama than has maybe been in the X-books for a while.