Maybe I never liked comics. Maybe I just liked Chris Claremont's writing style.
Okay... they aren't bad, but the ones not written by Claremont kind of seem to miss the point of what these backup stories are supposed to do. The ones in the previous volume are there to develop the internal world of the characters. Let them monologue or share their thoughts on more nuanced topics. Storm talking to an author about creative blocks. Nightcrawler trying to cope with uncertainty while a loved one is in the hospital. One of my favorites the one where Jean and Misty are going to save a family of dolphins. Yes, it's silly, but this story both develops Jean's struggle with her powers (in a way showing her exploding into flames for the tenth time doesn't) and shows how she is handling her friendships during this time. Neither of which are things the medium of comics typically allow very well.
These new ones.... well first of all, the art is in a different style for many of them. They played a lot with distortion and more simplistic drawings. Maybe my standards are a little inflated after the last volume, which is some of the best comic art I've seen, but this felt lazy by comparison. I didn't like it when it was changed, but the few in the original style were really good.
The new writer, while I can tell she is very politically active (and cool that way) feels like she didn't grow up reading these characters and therefore understand them at the same level. Which normally wouldn't matter, but that's pretty crucial for these stories in particular. The way Scott takes roughly four seconds to cheat on Jean at a party is so out of character... he's the one whose whole thing is his rigid self control... TF? The same goes for Wolverine's whole creepy attitude toward Jean. There is supposed to be a love triangle, but in this version of said love triangle, Wolverine isn't trying to corner Jean weird places and get her to have sex with him, which is genuinely what one of the stupid stories is. The rest of the stories are more about him holding back and kind of holding a quietly simmering resentment for Scott and knowing he can't interfere. I miss Claremont's version of Wolverine, who had a moral code that wouldn't let him kill a deer. There are better ways to deal with these topics, and they aren't 10 pg. story material.
Sorry. I just thought I was getting forty more stories of Jean and Storm becoming close friends and Jean meeting Death. My bad, I guess.