New Mutants #98-#100: No New Mutants

For all that I waffle about comics, I don’t talk about comic art much, which is a habit I am trying to break.  So, let's talk about the art of this final arc of New Mutants.  As I have been reading more of this era I am starting to appreciate what artists like Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld (who is the guilty party for New Mutants #98-#100) were trying to do.

Before you start up the flamethrowers, let me clarify.  Yes, they did not have the anatomy and often ended up drawing ridiculous contorted poses, but the generation of artists before that were not trying those poses at all.  They are doing stuff with perspective and angles and dynamism and action and composition and people coming at you from the weird directions and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but whatever happens it’s always new and different.  If we treat panels as shots in a film, they are an exciting wave of cinematographers.  (And that’s precisely how they were treating the panels.)  They were very raw but I can see why people got so into them.  They (well, most of them) got better at it, too, and them and the next wave, of people who have refined their techniques are responsible for lots of great comics art today.

What else do we have here?  Well, the cover for New Mutants #98 promises us three new characters!  Excite! These are a rather more heavily built Spider-Man lookalike called Deadpool, someone with a domino pattern on her face called... Domino.  And some chap called Gideon, who, with a name like that, is clearly going to be a major player in the future.

Deadpool has been sent by a Mr. Tolliver to assassinate Cable (who I will note he addresses as Nathan - I don't know whether that is a new thing or not though, due to not having been bothered to read the intermediate issues of New Mutants).  Deadpool is immediately a mercenary with a mouth on him, something that I think it's worth pointing out was a novelty at a time given the prevalence of the taciturn grim villain/anti-hero.  The fight is truncated by the arrival of Domino, an old friend of Cable, who has the pouches to prove it.  They send Deadpool back to Tolliver by mail.

Domino sticks around to help Cable recruit: the team has lost Warlock and Wolsfbane due to the recent crossover.  All previous New Mutants (Rusty, Skids, Xi'an, Amara, and Dani) are ruled out due to alignment or in some cases their faint hint of rubbishness.  While he's off headhunting John Proudstar from the Mass Acad, other students are evaporating (not literally - it's good to clarify that in a superhero comic), as Rictor goes off back to Genosha and Sunspot inherits his father's business, due to Gideon's machinations. (Gideon, by the way, turns out to be an old family friend of the da Costas.)  He just lets them fuck off, which annoys some of his team but not enough for them to fuck off too.

#100 introduces another couple of characters: Feral, an escaped Morlock who I am forever confusing with Wolfsbane, and Shatterstar from the Mojoverse.  Cable and the New Mutants protect these folks from their respective enemies and accepts their assistance in return for same.  At the end we get a few pages of cutaway to Stryfe, leader of the Mutant Liberation Front, who is on the last page dramatically revealed (I presume, it's oddly structured otherwise) to look quite a lot like Cable,  What a mystery!

Although clearly these issues are going to be important, they're also quite shit,  The plot is paper-thin, the characterisation subtle (in the sense, barely there, rather than that it's clever), and coming back to this series after a few issues doesn't make me worry about having missed anything good.  The end of the New Mutants is effectively arbitrary: it's already been X-Force for a while, but it's at this issue - apparently for no other reason than that they've finally got to issue #100, that they make a symbolic break, by leaving the basement of the mansion, and taking on the new name.

Incidentally Cannonball and Boom Boom clearly have a quick one in the woods between pages 33 and 34.  And by that I don't mean a pint.

X-Tinction Agenda

X-Tinction Agenda (Uncanny X-Men #270-#272/New Mutants #95-#97/X-Factor #60-#62) is the model X-Men crossover.  Several different teams come together to fight an existential threat towards the X-Men, something bigger than usual.  Mutant Massacre had kind of tried this but the interlinking was weak; Fall of the Mutants was basically only a thematic crossover, and Inferno had too much weird stuff going on.

X-Tinction Agenda has a nice simple premise, and then throws 9 issues at exploring it, giving ample time to its regular line-up of characters.  It has the "X-" pun, which would go on to become a vitally important part of X-Men storyline nomenclature, even to the point where it didn't make sense ("Avengers: X-Sanction").

So, what's this about?   The Genoshan government finally goes a little bit too far, by abducting some of the New Mutants (and Storm) from Westchester and forcing them to become slaves.  This allows the various teams of X-Men in existence (Cable and the nascent X-Force, the Gambit/Forge/Banshee X-Men, X-Factor, and the Wolverine/Psylocke/Jubilee group), to openly retaliate, with the backing of the US government, and endorsement from their superhero mates such as Reed Richards.

I was a bit sarcy about this on twitter. It seemed like the X-Men comics were finally taking the brave step of attacking apartheid in 1990, just as Nelson Mandela was released.  But then I kept reading, and discovered that the ending is not just that the X-Men are able to recover their friends, but that the Genoshan regime has actually been overthrown.  Change can happen.  Life is not stuck in the status quo.  It's worth pushing, as if you don't you're never going to make a difference.

There's changes to characters, too.   Warlock changes to dead, for example.  Wolfsbane and Storm were enslaved and brainwashed (I don't know that there's a word in English strong enough for what happened to them), and Havok, who had become a Magistrate on Genosha because of the Siege Perilous, is released, and stays behind to rebuild.

I'm sure it won't last, but for now the X-Tinction Agenda is the X-Men's greatest victory for mutants as a whole.  Everything they've done is firefighting of one sort or another.  They've defeated evil mutants from carrying out evil plans (Magneto and Mystique stand out), they've defended mutants from humans carrying out evil plans (sentinels), and they've protected the Earth in general from threats.  But this, despite the losses, is a victory to be proud of.

New Mutants #86-#89: Cable

New Mutants #86 starts the run by a new, up-and-coming artist, Rob Liefeld (he'd done fill-ins and annuals for the X-Office before). Simonson is scripting him, at first.

There's no immediate stage of Liefield writing Simonson's plots: the book is changed from day one. If we look back at New Mutants so far, it can be divided into three main eras. Firstly, there is the period from #1 to #34, which is the original format of the New Mutants having wacky adventures while attending a school run by Professor X. From #35 Xavier went into space and was replaced by Magneto. The New Mutants then engage in increasingly outlandish adventures which they handle with aplomb, marred only by the killing of Doug and the loss of Magik, while evading the tyrannical Headmaster Magneto. This era ends when they decide to quit the school and join up with X-Factor (#75).

However, the problem that was present with the setup during the Magneto era is still present with the ship and X-Factor. They've had adventures while X-Factor were out on missions, and have got trapped in parallel dimensions. One team can't very well mentor the other when they both want to be off doing their own adventures. Eventually, the franchise will figure out how to do this reasonably acceptably, by swelling the student numbers and having the adult team as peripheral characters who can't give the juvies their full attention (i.e. copying the format of Buffy back). But for now, this is stagnant. It's the third attempt at this, and despite changing location this time, it still doesn't work.

Enter Cable. He turns up out of the blue, with a big but not yet ludicrous gun, looking to defeat Stryfe and the Mutant Liberation Front (who are violently protesting against the capture of Rusty and Skids by Freedom Force.) By issue #89 he's graduated to using weapons he can probably only carry because of his telekinesis. But it's not all just ridiculously stupid violence. There's also ridiculously stupid character scenes, as well (mind, the page or two where Rahne is looking at her mementoes are great). Oh dear. Cable's introduction and adoption as the team's mentor here is just so clumsy and rushed. Sigh.

I think my attempt at Reading All The X-Men ends here. Although there was no way I was going to read all the 1990s material, I'd hoped to get as far as X-Force proper. I can't. It's April now, and I'd started to draft the entries for this era in January, and I stopped. In part this was due to poor health, but there was also a component of not wanting to have to write about Rob Liefield pissing on the corpse of New Mutants. So, we'll concentrate on Uncanny, X-Factor and Excalibur only from now on...

New Mutants #81: Of Gods and Mutants 2

New Mutants 81 gives me cause to revisit Of Gods and Mutants, the post I made three months ago about how it was probably, on balance, a good thing that Dani's Cheyenne gods did not walk on page.

What I didn't note was that there was another member of the New Mutants who worshipped gods that definitely have been part of the Marvel universe. Amara, a.k.a. Magma (for her lava powers), is from a lost Roman colony in Amazonas. I called the story that she was introduced in profoundly offensive racist garbage, and I continue to stand by that. This story, while working with elements previously introduced, sort of understands what's gone wrong with them and seems to make amends. Claremont (for it is he, this is a fill-in issue set before Amara left the New Mutants, but with a hastily added extra three pages to make it a flashback) in the first page acknowledges the atrocities of actual European colonialism done in the name of Rome.

Magma, for all that she's supposed to be a product of a Rome/Incan hybrid culture, has instead been essentially treated as a time-displaced person from Ancient Rome. This story goes definitely takes that line, being about about what happens when someone comes face-to-face with one of their gods: it needs to be Hercules she believes in, not some syncretised version. She doesn't believe Hercules - who comes to her when she prays - to be him. It could just be a superhuman pretending to be a god, after all. Especially as Zeus plays the role of trolldad, by refusing to allow them to go to Olympus to show off. Amara eventually recognises Hercules. And although it's mostly played for laughs, Amara's underlying faith in her gods is treated with a profound respect, something that it would be easy not to.

New Mutants #79-#80,#82-#85: Return to Asgard

Have you ever had one of those days when all you've tried to do is get some medical attention for your colleague who is a young mutant originally with the power of manifesting illusions, which lately have been actually solid, you end up in a fight with a government-sponsored mutant strike team where you have to defend another teammate from being taken away back to the naval prison you broke him out of, before you are then teleported, without warning by a surgeon-cum-sorceror, to Asgard? Yeah, me neither.

This story (New Mutants #79-#85, except that #81 is an unrelated fill-in issue) seems to go on far too long, though, and I'll have to confess that I kind of skimmed most of it. In what I flicked through there's a nice dynamic between the ex-X-Terminators and the original New Mutants. I imagine that's why they did the Return to Asgard story now, because it provides a background for the New Mutants to show off their otherworldliness to the X-Terminators.

New Mutants #77-#78: Strange

New Mutants #77 finally gets round to sorting out the Illyana problem. They never did address, on-panel, anyway, the issue of Illyana's family and her premature Limbo-caused ageing, so she can be dropped off in Siberia quite easily without any awkward conversations (other than the "oh, here's your daughter back after a year and change, oh and you son is dead or in hiding or whatever")

That's the first three pages, anyway. So, back to New York. Dani has been getting these headaches. I quite sympathise. Ship recommends she goes to a doctor, which is quite good advice. Doctor Strange. He's spending the year dead for tax reasons, or something, but he still manages to help out in a multi-page mystical battle. Which is nice.

#78 then deals with another member of the New Mutants who really oughtn't be there: Rusty, who had surrendered himself to the Authorities at the start of X-Terminators. Freedom Force have come to arrest him (despite his pardon - Destiny says it's important and when Destiny actually makes a specific prediction that you can act it you should probably listen). There is a general fight and the New Mutants win/escape. And then suddenly they end up in Asgard, for reasons to do with Dani and Hela and Strange. Next up in New Mutants will be an excessively long Asgard story.

New Mutants #76: Union

What next for the New Mutants? Well, it's obvious, isn't it? They're going to join up with X-Terminators and live on the Ship. They may not have said so in the pages of New Mutants yet, but in Excalibur they invited Kitty Pryde with them. At least it only takes them until page 4 of New Mutants #76 to remember this.

Meanwhile, on the ship, the adults are out, and the X-Terminators are bringing weird shit from the sea aboard in the form of a horn, which summons an enormous sea-monster when blown. Bloody typical. Also typical is the fact that the New Mutants arrive just at that moment, followed moments later by Namor. It's like Piccadilly Circus around here. ¹ There is a Team-Up. Then, the adults of X-Factor (Scott, Jean, Bobby, and Hank) arrive back, and ask what's going on. Skids introduces them, and then Cyclops is all "we've met! Oh, and we were totally going to find you one of these days and invite you to join." They found out the students were being taught by Magneto in what, #1, if not before? *cough* bullshit *cough*

How will this new team work? Will they have personality clashes that they will gradually be able to overcome and work as a fully integrated team? Will Bobby punch things? Will Illyana know English or not? Will X-Factor fail as spectacularly as mentors to the New Mutants as Xavier and Magneto did? Onwards!

1. One of the best things about working near to Piccadilly Circus is the way I can be all "It's like Piccadilly Circus around here" when I spot people I know on the way between the tube station and the office.

New Mutants #74-#75: The Morning After The Nightmare Before

New Mutants #74 starts the morning after Inferno. New York is getting back to normal, after its collective trip. It's a lazy come-down Sunday, I hope; and the X-Terminators and New Mutants have bonded. The X-Terminators invite the Mutants around to their place. Ship is a bit skeptical about Warlock, but agrees after sufficient analysis that he's a mutant of his kind. Little Illyana is accepted as a latent mutant, but Ship takes a harsher attitude to Gosamyr, thinking she can't be trusted. Gosamyr agrees, and Ship provides another ship, to take Gosamyr somewhere where she might learn self-control.

Meanwhile, at the Hellfire Club, Magneto and Shaw argue, with bonus punching. Shaw blames Magneto for the events of Inferno, which on the one hand is a bit harsh (he never asked for the job). But I kind of see Shaw's point. Magneto has been weak and ineffectual: he was brought in so the Hellfire Club could work through him to form an alliance with the X-Men and the New Mutants; and now what?

The New Mutants have decided to abandon Magneto and possibly join X-Factor permanently, and so turn up at the mansion to give him his notice. Unfortunately, it's been destroyed, as we find out in #75. They rescue a survivor from the wreckage: Sabretooth, which is a bit of an unlucky catch for them. Soon enough the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club turn up. Magneto's first wants to find out what's going on with Illyana. Given his previous experience as a baby it's no wonder he quickly accepts that she has become a 6-year-old.

Shaw continues angry, and him and Magneto continue their "discussion". Magneto makes all sorts of outlandish claims to try and get Shaw on side, like saying he was in charge of the X-Men (he really wasn't), and that the reformation was just an act and he had been plotting to use the New Mutants as minions. I'm not sure how much of this is nonsense he's making up on the spot, and how much is a real undermining of Magneto's purported change of heart. The discussion here is notable for being the first mention of Genosha in Magneto's presence : the fact that it is a mutant-based economy is taken as read by everyone.

Fighting comes to a standstill and the matter is decided by the votes of the White Queen and the Black Queen, who both stab Shaw in the back: Emma ostensibly because she'd disagreed with the Sentinels project (fair enough, but bit too late now!); and Selene because she wants a free hand in South America. Shaw flees, vowing revenge, and the club decide not to elect a new Black King. Instead, Magneto becomes Grey King, representing new morality (even though like the Black and White was nothing to do with that, but whatevs). It's hinted that he and Emma will seek to depose Selene eventually. Magneto then accepts the resignation of the New Mutants, wishes them well and hopes they will join him in the coming race war.

And cut.

RussWatch

Illyana says "Нет, мие зто ие иравится". Joe Rosen (or possibly whoever fed Joe the text) has made a mistake here: it should be "Нет, мне это не нравится" - i.e. he has substituted и (I) for н (n). This means "No, I don't like it". She also says "Меня зовут Illyana", which does indeed mean "My name is Illyana".

New Mutants #71-#73: Inferno

New Mutants #71-#73 shows us Inferno from the perspective of the New Mutants and their new buddies the X-Terminators.

First issue we spend mostly in Limbo, and Magik gives us a tour of her backstory for those of you who had followed my colleague SpaceSquid's advice and stayed well away. Specifically: the bit about the dead X-Men littering Limbo (to your left is a bit of Nightcrawler's foot; on your right you can see Kitty Pryde's skull). I'll reply to some of SpaceSquid's points here (he hasn't done the thing for #4). So, SpaceSquid reads this as a morality play about ends vs. means, and he regards the idea (expressed by Storm and Magik) that using imperfect means - such as dark magic - to save - can possibly be described.

But it's not just a morality play. It's about actual demons and actual souls and actual dark magic. If you accept that logic of that using dark magic - even if for a beneficient end - can corrupt and deprave - then the rest follows. The soulsword is not a metaphor for the atomic bomb, and Magik is not President Truman. She is someone who is literally losing her humanity, her ability to empathise with others, and afraid to show herself to her friends, because of the acts of self-abuse she is committing. Whether or not it her actions are morally acceptable in their own right is besides the point. They come with a cost: can she live with it?

The answer here, of course, is no. She, the blonde girl imbued with magical powers and who has been fighting a very powerful figure who wishes to open a rift between dimensions so that demons might invade Earth, must commit one final action, of self-sacrifice, to close the portal, in the culmination of a long-running storyline. Her devoted sibling makes one last-ditch effort to talk her out of it, but fails. Oh, and the issue in question is called "The Gift". I've mentioned how Buffy-ish New Mutants is getting at this point, but this is uncanny.

Buffy died, but Illyana didn't take quite such an extreme measure. Instead, she survives, as if she'd never been to Limbo, had never spent those years there. ("The Gift" of the title, I think, rather than the Gift of death that the Buffy episode is referring to.) With that done, the portal closes and all is saved? But there's a back-up plan, shenanigans involving Baby X (Chris/Nathan/whatever) and Maddy Pryor.

Inferno the first proper complicated inter-title crossover that the X-franchise has really had: the massacre prelude was fairly minor; the Massacre didn't have any substantial shared scenes (you can't sensibly trace the comings and goings of the Marauders between series - I tried); and the Fall of the Mutants was just a parallel of unfortunate events (with oblig watching events elsewhere on telly). The meeting with their contemporaries from X-Factor plays out completely differently to the version in X-Terminators - and not just in the dialog and timing but different things happen. And this despite Louise Simonson writing both issues! I daresay this is due to the Marvel method: Blevins and Bogdanove must have gone different ways from Simonson's plot.

It would be an intersting exercise to steal panels from the four or five main titles here (changing dialogue where necessary) and see if you could put together a coherent Infero miniseries, to which the others are merely tie-ins. Artistically it would be an abomination, of course, but it'd have made my life easier, and that's really what counts, isn't it?

New Mutants #67-#70: The Master of Magnetism

New Mutants #67 starts with Sam begging to be allowed to go attend one of Lila's gigs. He promises not to use his powers. This comic is getting really predictable now, and the relationship with Magneto is stultifying. For all that Simonson is Claremont's approved successor and all, she's not doing anything like what he did with the character. He's mostly just there as an authority figure.

In this, once the Mutants go AWOL again (to rescue Lila from space aliens, during with there is interpersonal drama and peril), he dresses in his classic red-and-purple duds (for the first time since Uncanny #199 - in 1985 - well unless you count X-Men vs. Avengers which so far Claremont hasn't acknowledged once), and visits the Hellfire Club for a special meeting regarding the Weird Shit that is happening all over the city as a lead-in to Inferno. There they call him "Magnus", which is I think the first sighting of that name in the present day? Shaw considers him to be a rather lax disciplinarian, which isn't exactly how I'd have imagined Magneto, but yeah, that's where he's at. He, like the government with its Mutant Registration Act, makes decrees that he can't possibly hope to enforce, and the Mutants have no reason to cooperate with.

If Xavier were around, he'd sack him.

New Mutants Annual #4: The Evolutionary War

The Evolutionary War was a 1988 crossover that ran over eleven annuals. The name refers to the High Evolutionary, who despite the name had little to do with the X-Men: he was originally a Thor villain. His backstory would eventually become a little more sinister, but in 1988 he has little other than a thematic link with the mutants, never even appearing as a villain to them. So, it's about time.

Our entry in to this from New Mutants is Magma, who has been captured by the High Evolutionary's Purifiers (not to be confused with Stryker's Purifiers, obv). They want to stop her being a mutant, on grounds of public safety, and frankly they have a point, as it turns out she had gone spare after the events of New Mutants #64, having had a severe case of reverse culture shock.

Amara's dad complains to Emma Frost; who then summons the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club. Including Magneto, who specifically forbids the kids to leave the mansion while he's gone. They arrive at Wyoming before he does. They've got Bulk and Glowworm, too, which indicates that they really are targetting particularly dangerous mutants. The rescue mostly works, but Dani gets caught in the power-removing machine, leading them to think she's lost her powers (like they'd do that!) But that's not what happened: it's triggered what Grant Morrison will later call her secondary mutation (the third to be artificially triggered in an X-man, I think, after Lorna's magnetic powers in X-Men #50 and Hank's change of appearance in Amazing Adventures #11). Her mirages are now "real", and start eating everyone. Fortunately, she can only have one outstanding mirage at a time, so is able to cancel the angry multi-toothed red monsters by calling up a spear instead.

At which point the Hellfire Club turn up. The Mutants put the goons into Limbo, and sneak back to Westchester, leaving Amara back in Nova Roma. Magneto arrives there eventually, explains what happened (yeah, had to save Amara, she just got teleported away mysteriously to Nova Roma when we were about to reach her, how weird), and presumably Illyana looks guilty as hell. But he says no more? He knows he has nothing to teach them, and can't control them... What is the point.

New Mutants #65-#66: She's Lost Control

New Mutants #65-#66 (July-August 1988), as we discussed last post, came out too late. But it's not just that Uncanny #231 is set after it; it also features an appearance by Shadowcat, setting up her situation in Excalibur Special Edition #1 (cover dated April).

Magik wants to kill Forge. Magneto refuses to get help, and grounds all the kids. I'm not even sure why he bothers to say that at this point. Magik goes to Muir Isle to check in with Shadowcat, who has got quite a bit better and is now able to turn solid if she can concentrate. Shadowcat declines to get involved in the killing-Forge plan. And then finally we get that bit from the end of #61 where the New Mutants dress up in the graduation costumes and agree to defy Magneto.

The Mutants teleport to Dallas, where Freedom Force are conveniently waiting, on Destiny's instructions (they must have spent Christmas there). There's a fight. Destiny seems to prophecise Inferno. Magik and Forge then proceed to a solo fight for #66.

Plotwise it's not as deeply connected to Uncanny #231 as I had expected from the latter. The flashback in that was to events between the two stories. But certainly Magik's attitude towards her brother's death follows a through-line that starts here (or rather, in #64) and continues in Uncanny.

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 #63: 1 x magik story, past use-by date

New Mutants #63 is a clear case of an inventory story, if ever I saw one. Even if it weren't for the split credit (plot: Claremont, script: Simonson), or the fact that it wasn't dealing with the aftermaths of Doug's death yet, then the unusual structure would give it away. The entire issue is a dream sequence, in which Illyana recalls events that took place around the time of New Mutants #21, which in turn involves time travel to before she became Magik.

Simonson has done what she can to contemporise the story: the outer narration sets it after Illyana heard about her brother's death on the television. But it ends up a mess. Nothing happens that matters and we don't have any new insights into Magik. But then, an inventory issue in these circumstances was never going to do that. Let's just be happy that it was scripted by Simonson with about as much deftness as was possible, and move on...

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.

Fall of the New Mutants (#59-#61)

Fall of the Mutants runs in New Mutants #59-#61. Really, there are two stories here: the story with Bird-Brain and the Ani-Mator in #59-#60, and then #61.

The first part is a relatively standard New Mutants story at this point: they skip school to go on a mission. Specifically they are going to investigate Bird-Boy's origin story. We find he was created as an experiment by the maddest scientist of recent years: the Ani-Mator. The Ani-Mator has been hired by Cameron Hodge and the Right to investigate a mutant cure but instead has done a double cross, and is splicing together human and animal parts to create a new race of Ani-Mates (not to be confused with the Ani-Men). He'd quite like to study the New Mutants, as well.

The battle soon becomes a three-way when Hodge and The Right turn up, angry at having been deceived by the Ani-Mator. There is general confusion, but the New Mutants eventually win. But there's a price. Douglas.

Douglas's death is curious. I knew he was going to end up dead at some point, but I thought the transmode virus was going to be involved. It seemed like such a natural thing to do. Instead, Warlock's absence (he and Bobby arrived late, from being in Fallen Angels) was the problem. Yay cliche avoidance?

The reactions to this, and to telly coverage of the other Fall of the Mutants stories, are the focus of #61. There is plenty of self-blaming, as you might expect. And having let one set of friends die, surely they should go to Dallas and help Illyana's brother (she tries but can't get there due to a gridlock in the omniverse). They decide to defy Magneto, one last time. And not without reason: the scenario of these kids being in a school has really fallen apart since their jaunt to the future and to space. They can't be confined so easily.

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.

New Mutants #56: When Outside Rome

New Mutants #56 starts immediately after #55. The issue's main plot are attempts by the New Mutants and the Hellions to rescue Bird Boy (who I figure is probably the source material for the Weekly World News's character Bat Boy.)

The teams clash without having any real dispute, it's just their usual setting for interaction. The Mutants end up taking Bird Boy home: we'll find out more about him later. But that's calling that the A-plot is like saying whatever scientific expedition the Enterprise is on that week is automatically the A-plot.

What this issue is actually about is Magma, who Claremont spent so much time setting up and then has mostly ignored. She's far more foreign than anyone else there, having grown up in a culture that was completely isolated from the "modern world", even by reputation. But in practice she's not been the one who has been getting the culture shock, and beyond a rivalry (if you can call it that) with Selene and being handy in a fight may as well not have been there.

She's had a letter from her dad saying that her letters have been very useful but that she should come back home now. She likes Empath of the Hellions (this was teased a bit in #53-#54), and she wonders whether she wouldn't be treated better at the Mass Acad. So, assuming that Emma's offer is still open, she decides to transfer. Perhaps she's thinking that'll keep her dad happy. All a bit sudden, though. And that Selene, she's still Black Queen. Has she thought about this much?

New Mutants #55: A Very Special Issue

New Mutants #55 is written by Louise Simonson. Yes, we reached Peak Claremont. Well, the first stage of Peak Claremont. Subsequent supplies of Albertan Claremont stories are being developed and are expected to come on stream in 1988, which will lead to another Peak Claremont period around 1990.

Er, what was I going on about?

Ah, yes, New Mutants #55. First up, the dialogue style is immediately different. Simonson has the characters much closer to saying actual things that people might say, and her New Mutants use language to manipulate, to cajole, to deceive and to flatter; rather than just provide a running commentary on their internal state. So that's good.

Sam and the New Mutants are going to a party hosted by Sam's space thief rock star girlfriend, Lila Cheney. After a suitably lengthy sequence of "oh noes what are we going to wear" (and having been sternly informed by Magneto that they must be back home by one), they end up there. Our Plot comes in the form of some aliens who want to get Cannonball out of the way so they can do an evil scheme the precise details of which I have forgotten already, but probably involve Lila and some thievery.

To do this they give Sam some pills and tell him to take them as they will make him cool. Yes, it's that subtle.

There's a little wrinkle in the denouement, though, as he gets away with pretending to have been drugged, rather than having succumbed to the "drugs will make you interesting" message. That's a bit off-code, surely.

So, in conclusion, not a terrible auspicious first issue, but certainly shows signs of doing things that Claremont wouldn't, in ways he wouldn't, which is certainly what this title needs.

New Mutants #53-#54: Pleased To Meet You

New Mutants #53-#54 is a two-part story set in one night. The gang have been grounded for weeks, Sunspot and Warlock have run away, and Magneto thinks he has just the idea to cheer them up: a party at the Hellfire Club, which the Hellions have also been invited.

This is not one of Magneto's better plans. And some of his have been real doozies.

It actually turns out surprisingly OK. Everyone gets little character moments. Wolfsbane and Catseye bond; Cannonball and Jetstream develop their rivalry; Magma discovers that Selene might be her ancestor (a distant very-great-grandmother - so I think we're supposed to believe that Selene actually is the Roman moon goddess at this point); Karma goes snooping for intel about her brother and sister; and Moonstar and Thunderbird face off about their respective teams. They end up in a challenge to find out who had sold a dodgy copy of a statue of Selene to a Hellfire club member; the Hellions win, by pointing the New Mutants at the early levels while the Hellions go straight to the boss fight. Sneaky.

Cypher and Roulette end up in bed together (after Cypher got lucky), where they are caught by the other New Mutants. This might possibly warrant adding them to the chart, except that the dialogue seems more pre-coital, so it will remain unadjusted.

And, while they were having all that fun, they've been basically driving off Karma, who has now left the team (again), on a quest to find Leong and Nga. According to the letters page in New Mutants #65, this was to have been a plot in Fallen Angels 2, which never did happen for various reasons...