New Mutants #57-#58: Who is the Mysterious Bird Boy?

New Mutants #57 has our kids dressing up Bird Boy - who they still haven't managed to talk to yet - in some clothes and taking him to the mall. They cause a scene at the Malt Shoppe, and see House II, which is a plug for Marvel's adaptation of that film, produced by New World, who had purchased Marvel Comics in 1986. It has a 0% fresh rating on rottentomatoes, but a 5.1/10, so it's probably a terrible terrible film that they'll like because they're kids who don't know any better. Curiously, although given a 15 certificate by the BBFC, it was rated PG-13 by the RIAA, which means they don't need to sneak in.

What they thought of it, we'll never know, because Bird Boy tries to eat a pre-movie advert. This causes general chaos, and then finally Cypher tries to talk to Bird Boy, which he'd previously thought was impossible on account of it being hard. Some progress is made. In #58 the kids try and teach Bird Boy English, which works, after a fashion. Soon he acquires enough English to make simple orders at McBurger's. With the full moon approaching (something he is concerned about - apparently it is the "time of testing"), he flies away to the North Atlantic ("thousands of miles away" from Westchester, apparently, rather than the few km it really is to Long Island Sound), with food for his friends.

Who is he? We still don't know. He's clearly been experimented on, although what or who he was before is another matter. But what matters is he has friends to help, and those New Mutants are going to go with him.

New Mutants #58 has a piece of card bound in, promoting the upcoming launch of Excalibur and the Fall of the Mutants storyline. It also contains a competition, being a slightly creepy "Mutant Registration Form". Fill in your mutant name, send it in with your name and address, and win the prize of appearing in a subsequent issue of New Mutants. Genius.