While it's nice to see Northstar being used at all, and even cooler to see him with an actual boyfriend for what may be the first time ever, I'm still really disappointed in this scene. While I'm glad to see any character get page time in this book who isn't Emma Frost, Cyclops or Colossus, there's a difference between using B-List characters and using them well. JP really just seems like a simplified caricature of himself.
I mean really this scene is pretty damn boring and it seems to drag on even more so than with usual decompressed writing. it could have been told in a lot less space. And the art while tolerable is really distracting in some parts.
The reasoning for his rejoining is very weak, it's not like the X-men don't have speedsters. Like colonel_green said both Surge and Cannonball are generally very fast, and once Hellion was able to fly from Texas to the Mansion fast enough that he was accompanied by a sonic boom. While none of them are as fast as JP, they'd be good enough. Heck Nightcrawler should be good enough. And why do they even need a speedster? I thought the reason they were losing against Empath was because he was psychically dominating them, not because he was outrunning them.
I just can't help but think that the reason Fraction is using Northstar has less to do with actually liking the character himself and more to do with fanservice, which would be fine if I believed that this would lead to JP being used as anything more than wallpaper once this arc is over.
He's just going to stand around and look pretty, not really getting much character development.
Also insulting Alpha Flight is in really bad taste considering the team was brutally murdered as cannon fodder for a mediocre villain.