Wednesday 6 February 2013

New Mutants #62: Rome Sweet Rome

New Mutants #62 drops the ball from #61. It seemed like they were about to do something decisive and defy Magneto; but instead they are grieving (fair enough), and reading a letter from Magma.

What's she been up to since she joined the Hellions? Well, she gets to be teased by a different set of people now. Progress of a sort. You'll remember that she transferred to the Hellions partly because of Empath but also partly because her dad wanted her back in New Rome. Her attempt at enrolling at the Mass Acad is possibly a last-ditch effort to continue to be of value in acquiring intelligence. It doesn't work. Dad wants her back anyway. For extra joy there is the prospect of an unwanted arranged marriage.

Empath goes with her - on Emma's suggestion. And then, since there has to be an adventure, their private plane crashes (sabotage?) Magma won't use her setting things on fire power because she's worried about burning down the entire Amazon and depriving the air of oxygen. She uses her survival skills to get them through the next few days, before they are found by her father and his troops.

I don't have much to say about this issue. It looks like it's a fill-in: Blevins, who is the regular artist on the article now (hey, don't I know that surname from somewhere) had to do a double-length #60 and won't be returning, with the main plot, for #64. And it's difficult to do a fill-in when you're in the middle of changing your status quo: your only options are the Flashback Adventure or the Meanwhile, Here's What Some Other Characters Are Doing. Same problem that Uncanny had around the same time.

And far from being a start of new storylines, Magma is being more or less written out of the series now. She won't be a regular on a series for a protracted period again until the 2000s. Good-bye Amara. Your potential was wasted.

1 comment:

  1. Magma is being more or less written out of the series now.

    She still gets a starring turn in a Claremont-penned inventory-turned-even more ill-timed fill-in in issue 81 or thereabouts, when the New Mutants are stuck in Asgard again, but yeah, this is pretty much the end of Magma as a series regular anywhere for decades.

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