This issue is as much a fifth issue of the Magik mini-series as it is another New Mutants comic. It brings her flashback story up-to-date and into the now. Illyana is a New Mutant from this issue on, and her set-up pretty much finalised.
She is the Ruler of Limbo, with the Mutant Power of creating Teleportation Circle but also armed with the Soul Sword. Belasco has been thwarted but not killed, and his henchman S’ym now serves Illyana. At least for now.
That’s a great character set-up and it could probably have supported a full-on Magik solo title. At least in terms of the scale of the narrative possible with the character, if maybe not sales. But instead she’s added to the roster of the New Mutants where, understandably, her story will take a back seat. If only for a while.
This issue also sees the start of a trend that’s going to run for a while now between the titles. They will feel muich more closely intertwined, with plotlines from one title carrying over into the other a few weeks later.
Since this isn’t being done under the umbrella of a “crossover”, the titles never get republished in collected editions that maintain this reading order. It is very much the definition of a first world problem but this does make things slightly annoying for the completist re-read like that. Having to drop one fancy reprint to pick up another just to do a completist reread is annoying. It’s probably too late to suggest to Marvel that they consider the “Complete Claremont” Omnibus collection.
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It’s a shame that Sal Buscema has not had much chance for visual scale or humour during his run as the title’s artist. But this moment does make me smile.
Back to the New Mutants, and its striking that this issue really feels like the title has found a voice. It knows what it is. It is a teen drama set in a school, with occasional powers.
Now that we live in a post-Buffy world, this format would seem a no-brainer – but back then it really feels slightly odd to be reading a comic that frequently wants to tell stories on such a low level. It’s teen kids struggling with their life, and thats the drama. With occasionally flashes of super heroic excitement.
So influential has Claremont been that re-reading this now feels incredibly like reading a pitch for a new TV show. And yet, back then, its hard to see that could possibly have been on Claremont’s mind. It seems like this was seen as a direction to take a comic in, a direction that feels suprisingly novel.
Of course part of that novelty is that comics have unlimited special effects budgets, and so its interesting to see a title exercising restraint. To enjoy itself telling stories of folk chatting in kitchens, or crying the bedroom because they don’t fit in.
Conversely without the scope to adapt it to a TV show, it would be interesting to see how the title was doing sales-wise. There’s a big change coming soon which suggests to me that it didn’t quite land as well as Marvel wanted. So they tried something else. Which is a slight shame when you have an issue like this one where things do seem to be clicking.
Of course, this being the inter-connected Marvel universe, even a title playing at this low-level student melodrama can’t help but drop in whats happening elsewhere. In this case big pulp sci-fi Jekyll & Hyde corrupted drug serum hijnks. The issue itself is worth a read, not least because its a development that the title is going to return to. But its also nice to see Cloak and Dagger, a duo that are based on a great concept that has never quite had a great realisation.
There’s also a slightly Product of its time moment in the Annual where we are told in no uncertain terms that Cloak and Dagger are the same age as the kids in the new mutants. I know they are meant to be young – but making Dagger that young, especially given her outfit, it quite a choice. Nobody seems to have told the artists this fact, given she’s drawn as a (disco-inspired) sexy woman. Contrasting her presentation with the female New Mutants alongside her underlines perhaps how atypical the presentation of the new X-team is being.
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That Don’t Make A Lick of Sense
Honestly, I get increasingly perplexed about what exactly I am meant to think about Rahne and her extreme religious upbringing. One moment she can barely bring herself to talk out of fear for irreligious disrespect, the next she’s comfortably dancing around in a very non-presbytarian outfit.
A character challenging and questioning her extreme religious faith is an interesting take – but it probably is something that would require the character to have their own title. A title the character just doesn’t seem popular enough to justify. A mini series where she eventually found a way of reconciling her faith with her modern lifestyle. But this whole aspect of her character gets short-changed by making her just one of a team, where we drop in and out of her religious turmoil as an aside during the team’s plot.
Any Googling
As a non-American, Moxie is the stuff of minor legend. As a fan of old films, the phrase “they’ve got moxie” is known to me and its fascinating to find out the expression was based on a fizzy drink that emerged on the market before Coca Cola.
Both the classic vernacular and this appearance made me very keen to try and drink some moxie. According to the internet, the company still exists, having been bought out by Coca Cola in 2018. But its hard to now quite whether it still survives and is available. And if it is, it does seem to be limited to its historic stomping ground in New England.
Sadly it does not seem remotely possible – or economically feasible to ship the stuff over to try some. Maybe one day!
On the other hand, googling Groat Chips suggests a process that makes animal feed. I’ll passon trying those!
The action switched this issue from high adventure in the deepest Amazon, to team melodrama in contemporary Rio. It’s a nicely drawn portrait of the city here, by Marvel standards. There are recognisable stereotypes, but we’re not talking the extreme examples of Scotland, Irelanc or Germany. The issue genuinely tries to portray a modern city, with modern city problems.
Problems that include Sunspot’s father – being set up here as a member of the Hellfire Club, The father/son relationship being presented here is interesting – contrasts that you feel could set up some fascinating storytelling. His father is ruthless, cynical but smart and measured. Sunspot is hotheaded but also an idealist trying to do what’s right. Reading this back it feels a shame that I don’t think its an antagonistic family dynamic they ever fully explored.
I do find it more interesting, though, than Rahne’s extreme religiosity. Her strict presbytarian upbringing only ever really seems to manifest it in her being shocked by the modern world, followed by lot of internal self doubt and loathing. Rinse and repeat. She does this again here, slipping into a Catholic church (!!) to pray. Making religious doubt central to a character feels like something that could work for the lead in a title but its a tricky thing to focus on in a team book, meaning the concept never gets fully explored. Whereas Nightcrawler’s positive Christianity can be a useful feature for the character and his role in a team dynamic – Rahne is just limited to how her strict beliefs can interplay with the others. Which just means seeing the same thing over and over again, without any interesting payoff.
Finally the issue focuses on Amara – a stranger in the modern world. Struggling to cope with both it and her new mutant powers. There’s some nice moments of mutant alienation that suit the title although its a slight shame that the storyline agains seems to head in the direction of woman becoming too all-powerful and that engendering corruption and disregard for life. We’ve already been here with Phoenix, Storm and Carol Danvers. This adds little new, especially as we still don’t know much about Amara yet.
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A great image of fantastical excess – not something Buscema gets a lot of chance to do on the title.
The pulp epic that is the New Mutants in New Rome comes to an end in this issue, sticking wholeheartedly to the b-movie template. There’s a big showdown with the villain, or rather with two villains. The threat to New Rome is defeated and the Vampire is seemingly killed – although tellingly nobody gets to see a body.
It feels slightly overstuffed at time, but in a good way. Reading it, I feel that loads more could have been made by so many different aspects of the story – for example Rahne as Roman God. But wanting more from a story is a pretty good sign of strong imaginative storytelling.
Amara seems to have joined the team at the end, which is intriguing. Such is the complexity of her backstory, its going to be interesting how committed the next few issues get with taking seriously the fact that her origins are so alien. Will she return to the mansion and within a few issues simply be the beautiful blond American teen?
I guess Claremont probably felt there was more mileage having such a character as an outsider as he was finding it possible to write for when it came to Karma. It’s also a lot easier to avoid stereotypes when your foreign character is from an entirely fictitious and fantastical foreign land.
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Every now and then its great to take time out when reading a comic and reflect on the image you’ve just looked at. And consider just how brilliantly barking mad it is. In this case, Girl who has just discovered her body can turn into Magma bursts in on her Evil Father, who happens to be plotting to make himself Emporer of a South American outposts of the Roman Empire hidden in the Amazon. Thereby thwarting his plan to poison a Boy who canfly by turning his legs into thermo-chemical energy.
Wonderful.
That Don’t Make A Lick of Sense
Selene is going to go on to have a part in the X-universe, but its worth considering just how insanely powerful she is. She can manipulate all inanimate matter. She can mind control. She can drain the life force from others to make herself stronger. And yet she always remains a minor tier threat.
None More Claremont
Claremont is back in his world of cosy comics-code-friendly Domination here. An older woman preying on an adolescent is already eye-brow raising so its interesting how far they go into defining the predation as full-on temptation and pleasure. On one level, Selene has been described as a “vampire” and this is all well within the scope of established Vampire storytelling tropes. But it feels slightly clumsy to then present it in this context, with the seduced being an underage girl in a bikini. The unbroken link described here doesn’t really become an element going forward, though. Claremont already had Magik to explore these ideas, so its probably a relief they didn’t go down this road with another teen character.
The New Mutants continue their adventure in dated pulp fiction Nova Roma. And yet again, Claremont just seems happy to mine the cliches rather than do anything new with them.
That doesn’t make the issue bad though. These cliches are repeated in these type of stories because they work. So as this issue introduce a bevvy of bikini beauties to be sacrificed to the Gods in the Evil villains Volcano lair. And its still entertaining stuff.
And after a few issues in Nova Roma, another issue becomes striking. We’ve been told that this is a city of exiled Romans, allied with local Inca. Except, well, they are all drawn as white. Like the films of the fifties this is a very Northern European Rome. Nobody looks Italian. Nobody looks Incan. They all look Scandinavian, with Amara the more Nordic of the lot.
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Another issue, another cracking cliffhanger that visually captures the excitement of the final twist.
An issue that delivers on the promise of the previous one’s cliffhanger. The team end up in Nova Roma, a lost Roman outpost in a mountainous valley near the source of the Amazon.
Everything you’d want from a Roman adventure is here. Gladiators, Senatorial intrigue, Chariots. This is all the great stuff you’d want to put in if you brought a superhero team to such a location.
If there’s one issue its that this story seems to have little interest in doing anything new with the Pulp Adventuring setting. The boys on the team become Gladiators, forced to fight in the arena. The girls on the team become, well, beautiful drugged women to be ogled. If such a tale had been told in the yellowing pages of a pulp fantasy novel, or a lurid technicolor b-movie of the fifties, this is exactly the steps the story would take.
It’s a shame that, so far, Claremont doesn’t seem to have any interest in doing something different with these tropes.
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Sunspot and Cannonball in the Arena leads to some great fighting action!
It was a Product of its Time
A bigger problem with this issue’s slavish devotion to the pulp cliches of yesteryear comes when we get some insight into the background of Nova Roma. It turns out that the city, founded by Romans, is now mostly people by Inca fleeing the Conquistadors.
Which is a neat idea but then Claremont has the story tell us that its these pesky Inca. With their backward concepts of absolute monarchy, they threaten to utopian Republic the new Romans built.
This reads just like the sort of colonial attitudes that you’d expect from the source material. The white Europeans represent a civilisation, always in danger from the “savages”. Amara, a good senator’s daughter, is hoping to fight against this. All of which makes her presentation as white and blonde, out to sabve her city from the Inca something of a regrettable cliche
While the X-men are revisiting the epic “Dark Phoenix” saga, the Sister title is heading up a river.
(Actually is sister-title a good way to describe it? Its definitely related, but as a spin-off it continues to be something that celebrates its youthfulness and smallness of scale. If anything it’s a Niece title.)
The core entertainment in this issue is its simple dedication to all the tropes of “Boy’s Own” Adventuring (Mutant’s Own?). The team are going exploring into the dark and mysterious core of South America. Travelling up the Amazon to explore brave new lands.
From that premise, no end of recognisable ideas get trotted out. Piranha in the River, Savages on the Banks of the River and Dodgy types on the boat you are in.
Alongside the effectively simple swashbuckling entertainment, the issue has time for some nice character moments for the team. While none of them feel like they have a huge amount of depth, smart writing makes it easy to quickly care about them.
And then, just as the rather dated fun feels like it most be overstaying its welcome, and the cliches are beginning to grate, it springs a great surprise and then ends on the pure pulp entertainment cliffhanger.
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Had to be that entertaining cliffhanger. Trust the New Mutants to get their own version of the Savage Land, but with Romans instead of Dinosaurs. Had Claremont been in charge of a third title, the mind boggles what awesome kid obsession would have been next. A secre lost valley peopled only by Monster Trucks?
And so the New Mutants lose a member. The last issue ends with a big explosion, and this one begins with the team looking back on how they survived, but that Karma is now missing. And then, almost immediate the New Mutants embark on a new Brazilian adventure.
It all feels rather abrupt and jarring. I guess there’s quite a lot of overlap to her power with what Psyche can do, which might explain wanting to write her out but her backstory has been explored quite a lot so far, seemingly setting up a story. Which is now kicked into the long grass.
(Speaking personally its Rahne in the team that on this re-read has been the one I’d have ditched. Her 1850s puritan persona just gets grating in these issues – her constant shock and belief that things the others are doing “ain’t right” never feel like anything more than when a non-English speaking X-man drops a word of their native tongue into their English speech bubbles. But, on the other hand, her power is more interesting.)
It then feels extra weird that the New Mutants just decide to get over it. And end up partying in Brazil. I do love these moments, the teens getting to grips with carnival season is well written as long as you can forget all the business with Karma. If these were carefree teens (or as carefree as mutant teens can be) then it all makes sense. But they shouldn’t be. They’ve just lost a friend! It feels weird.
As long as you can park that jarring feeling though, this is a strong issue. The commitment to low key storytelling mean that the antagonist the New Mutants face in this issue is a Big Guy With An Axe. Called Axe. It feels like the right level of threat, and it feels credible when they win. And after some scratchy art last issue, Buscema’s back to his best here. A nice, colourful dynamic issue.
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Sunspot taking down Axe is a lovely full page of simply, yet effective, comic book slugging.
None More Claremont
Claremont is famous for deliberately leaving loose plot strands dangling to come back to at a later date. And no doubt that was his intention with Karma and the dialogue on this panel.
But it really doesn’t ring true. The loss of a kid is a big deal. And if the narrative stresses that the level is so great that the New Mutants can’t handle this, only the X-men can – then I want to see the X-men handle this as a priority. Except I know they don’t. The X-men just continue having completely different adventures. And Karma is just, well, gone.
If Kitty had gone missing, the entire X-franchise would have dropped everything until she was recovered. The fact that after a few pages, the New Mutants have dropped their search for her, and Xavier alludes to an X-men hunt that never happens really feels like doing the dirty on the character of Karma. I can buy her being written out if Claremont felt her, and her powers, weren’t quite working. But not like this.
The New Mutants/Team America team-up continues – a comic book event so huge Team America yet again fail to get any mention or appearance on the cover.
While the New Mutants seeks to rescue Psyche from Viper’s clutches, Team America seek to steal a precious item to stop Viper killing her captive.
The end result is two underwhelming base attacks. Claremont is normally really good at these but there’s a lack of invention and tension to both missions.
Team America’s is especially daft. These Macho Macho men argue, rough house and successfully steal a diamond from AIM. Whose fortress then explodes. For no good reason. But Team America survive. For no good reason. Leaving a plot strand that we’re never ever going to see again.
The New Mutants mission is slightly more fun. Their diverse powers help keep things interesting. Before it ends with their antagonists fleeing. For no good reason. And then another explosion. For no good reason.
All of this isn’t helped by art that feels at moments like it’s up against a really tight deadline. Scrappy, small panels. And a real lack of dynamism.
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Despite my criticism, though, Buscema does a great opening panel.
The style of the New Mutants comic feels like they’re deliberately avoiding large showpiece panels to help sell the low-level nature of the adventures. But it’s good to have them occasionally.
As a title New Mutants continues to perplex. Last issue was an interesting exercise on taking what – in a super hero universe – would seem like a low key threat and taking it with real world seriousness. This issue is all about motor bike heroes, samurai and a hit evil chick in a sexy outfit. This doesn’t so much feel like a comic that has an absolutely rock solid vision and direction behind it, more that product of trying to cram in everything an eleven year old boy might want in a comic.
It trundles along nicely enough, with a servicable plot. But it feels like such a weird conconction of ingredients that it’s hard to get a handle on what type of comic this is. Mad stuff seems to happen that doesn’t really make much sense – Psyche is a secret masked bike-riding hero what?? – and it all slowly grinds to a surprisingly verbose and underwhelming cliffhanger and set-up for next issue.
Any Googling
Halfway through this issue, I think most readers nowadays would have one perfectly reasonable question. Who the **** are Team America.
It turns out they were a project Marvel took on to align with an existing toy range. It doesn’t seem like the editors were that enthused by the concept, but they launched a Team America title in January 1982. Reading about that title and the central concept makes a bit more sense of this issue of New Mutants, although it really doesn’t explain what they are doing here.
Not least because by the time they turn up to adventure with the New Mutants, their own title had been cancelled two months earlier with Issue 12. If this was intended to be cross-promotional, its one that had already missed the point by publication date. I guess its revealing that the cover makes no mention of Team America guesting in this issue becuase by the time they were bringing it out, what would be the point. The comic was dead, the toy range was winding up and the general public had clearly sent a message that they did not care for Team America. Reading this comic, you get the impression Claremont didn’t either.
The X Marathon 