Thoughts

Spinning directly out of the Wolverine mini-series, the main title sees the team head to Japan to see their Canadian colleague get married. Only to get embroiled in the ongoing Japanese crime syndicate conflict. The Silver Samurai and Viper get to drop in on the action from the recent issues of New Mutants. The whole thing really feels like a nice exercise in pulling a whole load of ideas together. Not just plot strands, but also storytelling styles. Smith gets to have his own go at recreating the way Miller drew epic fights and does a fantastic job.

But he also excels at the personal in this issue. The best illustration of this is the moment that an awkward Rogue waits at the door. Faced with a hostile Wolverine and not sure if she’ll be allowed in. It’s a beautifully realised moment.

This is such a fun issue, full of twists and turns. On one level its quite low key, but everything feels like its building towards something.

Fun Panel

Another fun new team image.

That Don’t Make A Lick of Sense

It’s hard enough to try an work out what the plan was, if any, with the fact that Karma disappears off-panel between two issues of New Mutants. But this just confuses things. Karma is dead? That’s not the impression we’ve been given.

Especially since this is just a meeting of close friends, it doesn’t make sense to argue that this is the “official” line given the dangers Karma was said to be in. The earlier issues makes it pretty clear that the really the New Mutants are being fobbed off from finding Karma is because its a job for the X-men. Now the X-men are telling each other that she’d dead.

None More Claremont

The fact that this feels like a low-key issue in many respects doesn’t stop it foreshadowing something epic is coming.

In terms of the mythology of the relaunched X-men it still doesn’t get anymore epic than the Phoenix. Nowadays, the Phoenix is a regular returning concept in the mythos of the whole Marvel comics universe – but back then the hint of a return must of felt exciting and intriguing.

How could the Phoenix be back? Does this mean that Cyclops’ new partner is Jean Grey reborn? These teases all hint at endless possibilites at this stage. And as the ending of the Wolverine mini-series has already illustrated, Claremont doesn’t make the obvious decisions in resolving this.

Mutant Mailbag Mayhem

This issue starts the beginning of a short run where they answer the letters page in character, with different X-men taking it in turns to answer the letters. This managed to be both cringingly twee but quite fun at the same time.

And yes, I am such a giant nerd that it worries me how this could possibly be made to work in terms of the in-comics continuity.