New Mutants #64: Dead Means Dead

What do you call the New Mutants in issue #64?

Douglas.

After two fill-in issues, it's finally time for his funeral. The mood at the end of #61, where the team donned their graduation costumes and seemed almost about to strike out and leave the school has gone, and instead they are worried about Magneto's opinion all of a sudden.

They view the body and meet Doug's family, who have had to be lied to (they think it's a hunting accident). There's going to be a police investigation too, most likely, so they need to get their story straight.

The main plot is Warlock's reaction to his friend's death. It's suitably done, with Warlock showing the complete lack of comprehension that you'd expect. This reaches almost Monkey Paw levels of horror, when Warlock takes Doug's dead body around on a tour of his family and friends, to try and persuade him to absorb lifeglow. The Mutants just about manage to get the body back before anyone notices it's missing. The entire thing is bookended with Magik studying the tapes of Colossus's death and preparing for the next issue of Uncanny.

This is the story we needed immediately after #61. It's a shame about the gap, but that's publishing.

New Mutants #46-47: In Limbo

So, while the main team in Uncanny were out rescuing, the New Mutants were left with strict instructions to stay at the mansion.

They of course do no such thing, and by the end of Uncanny #212 they are missing, presumed incinerated. What happened to them?

Well, Karma tried to call her siblings at their Manhattan flat, and they didn't pick up. This is worrying. Magik and her check it out, only to be greeted by an exploding bomb (which is taken to by the Marauders, although I don't think there's any actual evidence). When they don't return, the other New Mutants go looking for them, via that Manhattan-Westchester tunnel. They go straight to Karma's, skipping any Morlock interludes, and find the fire brigade attending a burning apartment building and Xi'an and Illyana safe and sound. No sign of the younglings, though.

Then Warlock goes a bit crazy and Magus turns up, which is possibly not the best timing ever. Happily, there's a 'porter on the team, so they all wake up in Limbo. Wait, did I say happily?

This is possibly the longest extended time that the non-Russian members of gang have spent in Limbo, and it is not to their liking, especially as Bobby and Amara's elemental powers don't work very well there. And worse, they're not even safe: Magus breaks through the dimensional barrier, somehow. So they 'port randomly away again. This time to somewhere in Europe during the Scottish War of Indepenence, where they do the superhero fight-truce-teamup thing, only with Robert the Bruce. Which is at the very least novel.

Meanwhile back at the mansion (there should be an HTML entity for that, I have decided), Moira is worrying about the kids (particularly Rahne) still being missing, in between moments caring for injured X-Men and Morlocks. Magneto makes sure she eats properly, possibly the most leaderlike thing he's done in 23 years. But no action is taken by anyone. I suppose Cerebro isn't what it used to be.

Uncanny X-Men #190-#191: X-Manhattan

Uncanny X-Men #190 is another fantastically weird one.

New York has gone a bit odd. Specifically, it has been turned into a giant Ren Fayre, by the wizard Kulan Gath (who escaped from a piece of jewellery in #189), with the Morlocks as minions. Buildings, people. Outside, in DC, they're having a crisis meeting about this, as people in DC tend to do. Val Cooper is forced to put her faith in those people in brightly coloured costumes and capes.

But the heroes are affected, too. Well, most of them. Not Spider-Man, and not Warlock (making his first appearance in Uncanny only a few months after being introduced in New Mutants). Storm and Callisto are able to escape to New Jersey (not a phrase anyone uses much), and are contacted there by Selene, who has hijacked Rachel's powers, and wants to stop this madness as much as anyone else.

Together, those that remember anything persuade those that don't that Kulan Gath needs overthrowing, while they remain suspicious of Selene's motivations. And so the X-Men are included in that rallying call: "AVENGERS ASSEMBLE", and help defeat the evil wizard.

It's just the X-Men's luck that they were an essential part of the solution which winds back time so that none of this ever happened, and nobody remembers it. Not even Val Cooper, who was looking like she might be turnable. Captain America is going to remember it, though. Shouldn't he be doing something against this anti-mutant hysteria that's being whipped up? Mutants must lead the struggle, but they need allies, especially when they are in such urgent danger. Topical!

New Mutants Annual #1: Homesteading the Dyson Sphere

Today's second post is New Mutants Annual #1. The New Mutants are going to a Lila Cheney gig, in New York. Lila Cheney's look is seemingly based on Joan Jett.

Amara hasn't seen anything quite like the venue, the closest thing being the "Coliseum" at home in Nova Roma (a term that specifically refers to the one in Rome, by the way. How authentic is Nova Roma, anyway?) Bobby is able to use his rich-kid privileges to get backstage passes, so they can skip the queue and watch the sound check. Sounds thrilling. Unfortunately, they just can't have a normal day.

So, a Vrakanin bounty hunter is trying to assassinate Cheney. Firstly, by sabotaging a stack of speakers (Sam saves Lila and gets a kiss, which makes Bobby rather jeallous) Then, during the gig itself, they attack in person. The New Mutants do what they can. This gets out of hand, and the band (and Sam) suddenly vanish, through a stargate, apparently created by Lila's guitar playing.

Lila and the band (and Sam) arrive at Lila's home away from home: an abandoned Dyson sphere, that she's taken up residence in.

In order to get the full ludicrousness of that concept, you need to understand what a Dyson sphere is. In the form portrayed here, it is a solid sphere of matter around a star, in the "habitable" zone, which therefore captures all that sun's energy. If you built a Dyson sphere in our solar system, with the radius of Earth's orbit, it would have 550 million times the surface area of Earth. There could be quintillions (short scale) or trillions (long scale) of people. Lila thinks it's otherwise empty, though, which is a trifle arrogant of her.

Warlock reopens the gate, and they end up 'porting. To space, frustratingly, but he's able to save them by transforming himself into a spaceship himself. They catch up to the sphere, and someone find our people on its vast surface.

There's some nonsense about Cheney being an intergalactic thief who is going to steal the Earth for no clear reason (she's taken lessons from the Daleks, then). Who is going to want to buy the planet anyway? Because of some damage during fighting, the Earth-moving device is going to end up destroying the Earth instead. Until Cypher saves the day, with his reading-alien-languages-and-therefore-the-instructions power. Anyway, for some reason all this doesn't mark her as a supervillain. Well, the "some reason" being simply that she's romantically interested in Sam. They kiss, and she even makes him dress up, and the way that the scene cuts away after that I think we can add this to the Shag Chart.

They all get home courtesy of Cheney, who it turns out has some innate teleporting ability - over interstellar distances only. This is sufficiently useful that it has to be hobbled by the restriction that she can only reach places she considers "home" - in this case London, making possibly its first appearance in an X-Men comic (her being British was implied earlier, when she called Sam "luv"). Not clear how she got to the Dyson Sphere in the first place though.

I'm generally all very keen on the genre-mashups that we see in the pages of these books, but this strikes me as a mash too far. Sam now has a girlfriend. Fair enough. She's a rock star. Who looks like Joan Jett. And she's space thief. And resides on a Dyson sphere. At some point it crosses that line from interesting fiction to absurd levels of wish fulfillment. If this carries on, our New Mutants will cease to be ordinary characters with the twist of their powers, and start being as well, comic booky, as the X-Men proper.

New Mutants #21: Party at Xavier's

So, I'd called that Starjammers appearance a couple of issues back wrong. Something is coming, and it lands in New Mutants #21.

That something is Warlock, who arrives at the X-Mansion (a coincidence? or not? there has been a lot of alien activity around there, maybe he picked something up) in the middle of the a party at Xavier's. Rahne, Dani and Amara have invited a couple of their local friends over, with Xavier's permission (perhaps he's trying to forestall the rising tide of prejudice, win the neighbours over before they start with the pitchforks). In a running gag, people keep assuming Amara is from Rome, New York, and expect her to act like it.

Our new character, Warlock, is a techno-organic creature, from a distant world. He feeds on lifeforce, rendering organic creatures inert masses, but can also subsist on electricity. He's unable to communicate with the humans: the breakthrough is supplied by Doug Ramsey, Kitty's friend, who has the mutant ability of hyper-communication. To involve him means outing themselves - and the school.

When Xavier gets back, they have present a new candidate for admission to the school: Warlock, who is a mutant of sorts and can now speak a kind of English. I don't know if they're actually going to admit the thing about Doug - they offer to tell the whole story to Xavier but he brushes them aside.