Zeb Wells is doing an excellent job with the New Mutants. This story arc started out strong last month and has continued to progress with this issue. The New Mutants have been gathered by Illyana to do battle in purgatory. Sounds slightly similar to "Hellbound", only now Cannonball and his team must face a new team of mutants. Thus far, the new team has displayed some impressive power decimating some of the U.S. military in seconds. Things are sure to heat up in next month's issue. There is also a great scene with Danielle and Sam at the start of the story and it'll be interesting to see what develops here later. I also like how this issue exists as its own entity outside of the other X-titles. It's nice to get some X-men characters in a seperate story.
I have mixed feelings about the art. Some of the characters like Pixie work really well, but Cannonball came off somewhat distorted. Still this is a strong book and will certainly be an excellent lead-in to next month.