In Jonathan Hickman and Rod Reis latest New Mutants tale, our heroes find themselves enjoying space until Shi’ar politics ruin their fun.
Zach Rabiroff: Huh. That was weird. Feels like we’ve been sitting very quietly in space for, like, a month for some reason. Wonder what that was all about. Well, anyway, we’re back with another adventure of the good old classic New Mutants. (That’s right, kids! It’s the lineup you know from the New Mutants movie, coming to a theater near you in April, 2020 April 2021 shortly after Disney’s 2023 acquisition by Yum! Brands, Inc., any day now, we promise!) And while I think we reached a consensus that the adventures of Glob and the gang weren’t the worst thing in the world, I have to admit that it’s nice to be back with our team of oversexed space babies again. And yes, I am instantly regretting that choice of phrase, thank you for asking, Allison.
Allison Senecal: I MISSED THE SPACE KIDS ISSUES BUT MOSTLY *SCREAMING INTO THE VOID* ILLYANA IS FAIRLY EXPLICITLY QUEER SO I DON’T REALLY CARE ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE. I mean, so is Hypernova now, but she isn’t as high profile. ANYWAYS. SPOILERS? WHATEVER. Let’s talk about stuff that isn’t that, I guess. Lemme do my breathing exercises while you type.
ZR: Oh, we’ll get to Yana’s big moment, believe you me. But first: space politics!
West Wings & Bird Wings
ZR: Last time around, we saw tantalizing glimpses into the backrooms of Shi’ar politics, as Gladiator held the empire in uneasy balance through his advisors Mentor and Oracle. As it turns out, “uneasy” was putting it somewhat lightly, as this issue opens with Oracle going behind her majestor’s back plot the assassination of Deathbird, whose arrival would once again hand power back to the (rightful) Naramani dynasty. [Ed. note: The Xavier Files Media Empire does not condone imperialist monarchies as a moral form of government]
This, of course, is exactly what Gladiator wants: the entire purpose of Deathbird’s slightly ill-advised recruitment was to prepare the princess Xandra to take her place on the throne. And in retrospect, it’s telling that Gladiator’s first instinct in the face of a looming war crisis was to get someone else on the throne. As far back as Realm of Kings, we’ve seen him chafing at the responsibilities of imperial rule, and longing to return to his natural role as a warrior and commander. But it’s pretty clear from this issue that at least one of his political cronies isn’t going to let him off the hook quite so easily.
AS: I really wanna know Oracle’s motives here. She’s always been (at least to my knowledge) fairly pro-Lilandra at least, so I’m curious what beef would she have with the Neramanis. I guess this is the joy of jumping back into Shi’ar politics. Who the h-word knows? We know from solicits that the New Mutants bring this trouble back home to Krakoa, but I’m personally game for another few issues exploring the politicking. And you’re right, Gladiator isn’t particularly good at politics so I’m not too surprised he’s getting taken for a ride here.
ZR: My read on this situation is that Oracle, unlike her higher-ranking colleague, just isn’t thrilled with the prospect of releasing her hold on imperial power. Gladiator might not feel like politics are a warrior’s rightful place, but that’s apparently not a universal opinion among the Imperial Guard. Honestly, for a West Wing fanboy like me, I could guzzle down these cloak-and-dagger imperial plots like cans of Mountain Dew [Ed. note: Official soft drink of the Imperial Guard, if I’m not mistaken].
I do have to admit, however, that there’s something claustrophobic about seeing such elaborate politics telescoped entirely through the lense of three political operatives, as if it were a stage drama that couldn’t afford the rest of its cast. I know that it’s a matter of dramatic economy, and we’re probably better off for the fact that Hickman hasn’t overstuffed his plot with dozens of faceless bird-senators and the like. Still, it does make me somewhat wistful for the enormous, Tolstoyan Shi’ar epic that we might someday receive. Ah, well. One plotline at a time, I suppose.
AS: We might actually be better off if *cough* we didn’t have the issues with Beak & Co. on off weeks, but here we are.
ZR: The hit squad recruited by Oracle to put the kibosh on Deathbird and her escorts are the Death Commandos, first introduced in the somewhat notorious Death of the Greys story line by Chrises Claremont and Bachalo, wherein over the course of a single evening [Ed. note: 24 seconds actually], they massacred all but one surviving member of that titular family. Perhaps because of the fraught reputation of that story, I get the sense that these characters have never been particularly popular among X-Men fans, but I’ve got to admit I find them pretty cool. As the off-the-books wet-works squad behind the Shi’ar government, they’re something like the X-Force to the Imperial Guard’s mainstream X-Men. Or Force Works to their Avengers. Or Rob Liefeld’s Youngblood to Jim Lee’s WildC.A.T.S. I may have lost the thread here, but you see my point.
AS: And no new Death Commandos, right? Just the usual suspects…I was wondering when they’d show up…
The whole (brief, let’s call it what it is) fight sequence between the New Mutants and the Death Commandos reminded me a bit of those social media polls asking you who would win a fight, the Justice League or the Avengers. You, an intellectual, obviously respond “the real question is who would win a fight, the Justice League or the X-Men?” I mean, who will mess with Krakoa if a Shi’ar Death Commando squad gets their butts so thoroughly handed to them and this quickly? And arguably not even by the A-team. This is a good early show of Krakoan force. And one that my main girl, Magik, gets to head-up as Captain.
ZR: Well, true, it’s brief, and no, there was never really any doubt how this thing was going to go down, but as a set-piece fight sequence, I really did enjoy this — and that’s speaking as someone who would happily read a 12-issue maxi-series about the New Mutants ordering brunch without any villains even showing up. I’d say, in fact, that it’s one of the best action sequences I’ve seen Jonathan Hickman pull off, and I think a lot of that comes down to Rod Reis’s phenomenal art, which is as gorgeous and striking here as it has been in previous issues. But more than that, it’s impressively clear and coherent when it comes to showing action and movement between panels. Heresy though it is to say so, it’s an area where he actually exceeds his obvious spiritual inspiration Bill Sienkiewicz. Sienkiewicz at his best was a brilliantly and inventively expressionistic artist, but that often meant that his pages read more like still frames than active scenes. In contrast, Reis’s use of clear, rectangular panels means that his stylized images never distract from the story they’re conveying. And as a result, Hickman’s script ends up feeling much more fluid than it otherwise would. In a lot of ways, they’re the ideal writer-artist pair.
Magikal Moments
ZR: But let’s talk about some of the pretty great character moments Hickman gives us during that fight scene. Specifically, let’s talk about Yana’s Big Moment, hmm?
AS: FINALLY. Magik is OUT. And in my opinion this was pretty explicit. I still desperately need see her kissing a lady on-page in the next six months before I die of bitterness, but I can’t very well look [Ed. note: Stare] at panels of Illyana Rasputin asking Hypernova and Offset if they wanna make out and say “Oh no I still can’t tell, she needs to tell me she’s queer.” I could wax lyrical about this for pages, but I won’t, so honestly just thank f-word. Illyana is a character who has been implicitly queer for decades, and to have it fairly out there is a cherry on top of this week’s issue. I’m so used to being cynical about how so many X-ladies remain only subtextually queer, and I still am, but to me there is no naysaying that page, so there.
We also, much less importantly, finally get some confirmation-in-action of a Krakoan Captain’s role, with the battle vs fight line. And we get to witness the clear limits of the new Krakoan laws. None of the Commandos are human, so I guess we’ll see if any made it out of this alive.
I’m going to go cry in a corner for a week.
ZR: Yes: this was a pretty great moment, for all of the reasons you said. Just by way of context, for those newer to the New Mutants scene, Illyana has been pretty strongly coded as queer all the way back to the Chris Claremont days (most famously in the oft-repeated statement that she and roommate Kitty Pryde were one another’s soulmates), and that subtext was carried on by subsequent writers including Brian Michael Bendis and others. Asking three adversaries, two of whom are female (and one of whom, a Skrull, is by definition non-binary), whether they want to make out is about as explicit an indication of Yana’s sexuality as we’ve seen, however, and props to the creators for putting it out there.
You’re probably thinking that this is where I pivot to a hand-wringingly ambivalent counterargument, though, and I’m sorry to say that I’m totally going to do that. Because the structure of this scene, in which Illyana’s question leads up to the (admittedly very good) “@#$& or fight” punchline means that it’s just possible to say that it’s all joking trash talk, and not something canonical about this character’s sexuality. Our colleague Nola Pfau has elsewhere written brilliantly about the tendency of DoX comics to encourage fan speculation about queer sexuality without ever confirming it in a way that would alienate more conservative readers (or corporate owners). And there’s a part of me that does feel like that’s what Hickman is doing here: giving is a gay-ish line of dialogue that stops short of actually saying or confirming that anyone is actually gay. It’s good, but, to my mind, it’s still not nearly good enough. Uh, not to harsh your mellow or anything.
AS: No, that’s entirely too valid, unfortunately. I think it’s explicit enough but that’s what I mean by I still need to see her kissing a woman on-page within six months. If there’s no follow-up, heterosexuals get to forget about it happening or completely invalidate it and no one likes that, especially not me. What I definitely won’t do is pat Hickman on the back for it. This is long overdue.
This was more explicit than Cyclops and Wolverine and their open floor plan. And better than Jean handing Emma a can of beer, paired with a deleted Hickman tweet. In comparison, it’s strong.
Mix Papa A Space Drink
ZR: In between the fights and avian squabbles, as has become the norm for this book, we get some quieter moments of character development, starting in this case with Roberto’s in-character recap page of the previous issues. I’m slightly of two minds about these recaps. On the one hand, it establishes the book (despite its major story ramifications) as pretty pure comedy. Maybe too much comedy, in fact, in a way that actively casts aside whatever depth Roberto DaCosta might have accumulated under other writers in favor of his retrograde persona of goofy, none-too-bright horndog. On the other hand, as we’re reminded in the very first panel, Roberto is explicitly the one telling us this story, and that makes him a narrator of very dubious reliability — perhaps the shallow Berto we get here is just the Berto he wants us to see? I know that sounds like I’m pretentiously overthinking this, and I absolutely am, but recall that Hickman does love playing with the conventions of diegetic narration: think of the way he revealed that the computer data pages in his Fantastic Four run were actually notes from Valeria’s iPad, for instance. So I wouldn’t put this past him.
AS: I’m of the same mind re: Berto’s exposition. I like it, but I don’t. It’s fun, but then there’s zero depth to it. I opened the comic and was hit in the face by a wall of text. I didn’t sit down to read a novel-length word vomit and we wouldn’t “need” this exposition, as semi-fun as it is, if we weren’t alternating arcs in this series. I yearn for the extra two pages plus of storytelling we could be getting in place of Whimsically Goofy Bobby content. I find myself annoyed by it, but then feeling like a party pooper.
ZR: Beyond that, this issue gives us some of the better Hickman downtime scenes I’ve witnessed (emotional character development not being, to put it lightly, his strong suit). The bonding moment between Chamber and Mondo in particular charmed the space-pants off of me. We both mentioned when writing about previous issues that these two team members seemed slightly uncomfortable and out of place alongside the disarmingly bloodthirsty high school reunion going on around them, and we get a nice view of their bonding over that discomfort here. Let those savage little Xavier School kids beat the living daylights out of every freaky space monster they meet. Mondo and Chamber will mix up some space drinks.
AS: I also really adored the Mondo and Chamber moment. I know fans joke a lot about the New Mutants being the spooky horny kids even among the X-Men, but this really drives that home in a charming way. And Chamber is a Generation X member, for God’s sake. He’s been around the block. [Ed. note: Yes Mondo appeared in Generation X but he wasn’t a member, we explain later.]
I also really loved seeing Karma getting to have her fun fight moment, beating the crap out of Shell, or rather having him beat the crap out of himself. Good food.
ZR: Oh, for sure. Say what you will about that fight scene, I think we can all agree that Xian forcing a murder-monster to punch himself like he’s her little brother in the back seat of a car, while Rahne blissfully checks her nails atop an unconscious body, is pretty great. One other interesting thing to note is that, so far in this series, all of the big battle moments have gone to women on the team, while all of the quiet, emotionally-rich conversations have gone to men. It’s an interesting inversion of typical dramatic stereotypes that fits this team pretty perfectly. Yet, at the same time, I do wish we’d have a few more beats to get some depth to the New Mutant ladies beyond tough, mean, butt-kicking machines. Anyway, our editor is going to yell at us if we let this go on much longer, so final thoughts on this issue?
AS: That actually summarizes my feelings on this series in general pretty well. There have been some great emotional beats (but mostly played for ultimately humorous effect- and as you said, between the dudes on the team), but this is thus far a shallowly fun book for me. I’m enjoying it a ton, do not get me wrong, and I absolutely love Reis, but I really need more emotional meat on these beautiful cosmic bones. And I’d love to see how Hickman handles the women on the team beyond battle quips. We’ll see where it goes!
X-Traneous Thoughts
- “Go ahead, search for ‘daddy.” I dare you.”
- X-Tra Fact: even though it seems like Jono and Mondo have a long history together as fellow Gen X-ers, the original Mondo was actually some kind of weird dirt-clone created by Black Tom Cassidy, and the actual Mondo was subsequently revealed to be an unapologetic villain who had never met Chamber in his life. So these two are hanging out for the first time ever!
- I have a personal theory that Roberto has never actually kissed another human being in his life. Prove me wrong, Hickman. Prove me wrong.
- Hickman has now used two different villains with the name “Devo” in his X-Books
- Krakoan teaser reads: Boom
Allison Senecal buys books professionally and comics unprofessionally.
Zach Rabiroff works daily at a charity, and is also a freelance writer and editor. He reads a lot of comics.
Zach Rabiroff edits articles at Comicsxf.com.
