We return to our other New Mutants, captured by a drug cartel on a Nebraska farm. Boom Boom helps them escape and the Bohusk family relocates to Krakoa, but at great cost. Beak’s parents are killed in the fighting, not that anyone would remember. Manon and Maxime rewrite the memories of Angel, Beak, and their children to forget everything, causing a new moral quandary for Armor.
Zach Rabiroff: Welcome back to another installment of What’s New Mutants. Not the kind of installment that deals with our gang of twentysomethings floating desperately in space, though. Those guys will just have to hold their breath, and show some patience like grownups, because Johnny Hickman has other things to write this week. Anyway, this time around, we’re back with Ed Brisson, Flaviano, Carlos Lopez, and a squad of teenagers trapped by cartel terrorists in a Nebraska basement. Allison, are you ready to break out of Pilger, at long last?
Allison Senecal: Yeah, baby, let’s get the heck outta Nebraska. I can feel my brain already trying to drag my body into February so we can get to more space plot. I still can not for the life of me figure out why this series was structured the way it was. Why? Seemingly merely to aggravate me.
Pilger Problems
ZR: When we last left these kids, the scene in Pilger had descended into chaos, with Manon and Maxime convincing two of the cartel gunmen to (fatally) turn their guns on each other, and Boom Boom arriving (only slightly intoxicated) just after the nick of time. This time around, Brisson turns up the brutality, spending most of the issue on an extended breakout that ends up taking the lives of all the terrorists, along with both of Beak’s parents. Allison, how did this sequence hit you? Do you feel like it earned the bloodshed?
AS: I think it would be weird of me to say the wave of ultraviolence over in X-Force is working for me and this isn’t? This isn’t an X-Force book by any means but the pages of bloodshed do end up giving Manon and Maxime room for their development at the end. I thought this couldn’t be their first real chit-chat with an adult about abusing their powers, but I guess it is! [Ed. note: To be fair, their main role model so far has been friggin’ Ahab] Lucky Armor. By the end of the issue, I think the creative team has earned this sequence. And Krakoa has earned another new longterm enemy in the Bohem cartel.
ZR: As much as I have reservations about gratuitous violence as a storytelling crutch, particularly where it concerns the casual murder of someone’s parents as we see in this issue, I’m inclined to agree that Brisson has at least attempted to earn this sequence. That said, I’m a little torn about Glob’s role as the figure of reason who tries to coach Manon and Maxime into turning away from their violent instinct. There’s a bit of controversy among the, uh, Globular fandom about whether that character’s turn from nihilistically violent bully in Grant Morrison’s “Riot at Xavier’s” storyline to lovably hapless doughboy in, well, everything Ed Brisson has ever written has been sufficiently earned. To be honest, I don’t really have a dog in this fight. I’m fine with the notion of character redemption, and while Glob isn’t the most interesting mutant available on the roster, there’s no inherent reason that a writer couldn’t tell good stories about him. But there’s something to be said for keeping a character believably consistent, and it would have been nice to at least acknowledge that ol’ Globert himself once possessed a streak of murderous violence, before he became the instinctive pacifist he’s painted as in this issue. [Ed. note: Look, he did a drug and had a real bad trip. He is clean now.]
AS: As far as Glob is concerned, I am more than fine with the showing with no telling. I know newer readers may not be aware of Globert’s past but I’m also not a huge fan of interrupting a sequence to be like “Ay, I used to be a bully but I’ve learned a bit so now I’m going to choke you out”. If there was a time for that, it was likely months and months ago. It was a fine Glob moment. Good for him. I noticed he’s not been in the last couple solicits, so I don’t have to reach for compliments much longer.
ZR: Oh, Hickman is just moving him up to a permanent spot in the flagship book, no doubt. As much as I’m suspicious of the way Brisson handled Glob here, I’m pleased to see that he has a fine handle on our dear, kick-splode-ing Tabitha. I was concerned last issue that he might have been leaning a little too much into the easy comedy of a hard-drinking ditz, without making use of any of the very substantial growth this character has gone through over the years — from guarded, streetwise runaway, to trained soldier in Cable teen paramilitary brigade, to geefull practitioner of ultraviolence in the somehow-in-continuity Nextwave, and back again. Here, I think she takes on the role of a seasoned vet in the face of these kids who are in over their heads. She’s the graduating senior in a farmhouse full of overwhelmed freshmen, and she can still single-handedly take down a half-dozen soldiers while being too drunk to fly a jet. Boom Boom, in short, rocks.
AS: *CHEERS* This reminded me very much of the recent Marauders issue where Storm just puts an absolute physical (and pointy) beatdown on that Russian dude trying to use a power dampener on her. Not only do we get the point that Boom Boom is clearly the adult of this situation, but it sells the idea that most mutants who have been field operatives probably don’t even need their powers to put a wallop on any of the non-superpowered Avengers. I know everyone says they don’t want AvX 2.0, but like…don’t we? A little? With some financial warfare thrown in? Just a little? And make it realistically the one-shot it would be. [Ed. note: Allison, no!]
ZR: Give me a Storm/Clint Barton showdown, and I’m sold. Anyway: visuals. I’m not wild about the art in this issue, and I think a lot of that comes down to Carlos Lopez’s colors. Last time around, I said that I actually enjoyed the cartoon-ier style of these issues as a contrast to the angular Siekiewiczularity (it’s a word, Editor, don’t try to google it) [Ed. note: k] of Rod Reis’s issues in space. But as the brutality of this issue amped up, the bright, hyper-saturated colors of Lopez’s palette started to feel more and more out of step with the story they were trying to convey. That said, I think Flaviano actually did a nice job with his linework here, giving it a scratchier, rougher texture as the sequence grows more violent. The panels showing a closeup of a raging, tearful Angel Salvadore almost look like John Romita Jr. or Klaus Janson, and it’s an impressive change from his bouncier style earlier in the issue. It’s just a shame the overall look of the art can’t live up to it.
AS: I like Lopez’s colors, but then I’m always whining loudly about how muted so many of Marvel’s active colorists are, so it is what I want more of. I think he works super well with Flaviano. I thought of the combo as…here we are on a sunny day in Nebraska. Birds chirping in the distance. Apple pie baking down the street. And several people getting shot in the head just over yonder. I’d argue that it works for the story they’re trying to convey! I reallyyyyyy love Flaviano’s Boomer. Gosh, she’s neat. The pages towards the end with Armor and the twins were fantastically acted. Loved some of Armor’s facial expressions, and the big, liquidy contrite eyes on the twins really sold the energy of that sequence.
Manon, Memory Off
ZR: The climax of this sequence is interesting and troubling, in ways both good and bad. Emotionally, it takes us to a level of darkness and brutality I’m not sure I expected to see in this teen-focused book. Thematically, it takes us back, in a pretty shocking way, to the notion of mutants as a perpetually hated and feared race. In some ways, that feels like a regression: exactly the sort of tired, played-out story that this optimistic era of X-Men was supposed to escape. Yet at the same time, it justifies the existence of Krakoa in a truly convincing way. The mutant nation has to exist, precisely because mutants will never really have a home in the diaspora, no matter how much they believe themselves to be acculturated. I think it works on that level, and it’s also pretty relevant to the way quite a few diaspora communities are feeling in this country (and others) here in 2020, whether or not that was Brisson’s intention.
AS: Zach, think of some of the truly @#%$ed up things we’ve seen in Kyle and Yost’s New X-Men and so many other teen-focused books. I do agree that this cements the need for Krakoa. No place outside is truly safe for mutants, even with their new global status. A nice touch was the lack of fingers pointed at Armor, Glob, and the twins (and that even before the memory wipe!) for the entire debacle. Remember that Angel did initially blame Armor for the humans finding them and attacking her kids in the first place, but now blame rests squarely on the humans, as it should.
ZR: Oh, for sure we’ve seen this kind of undeniable justification for mutant nationhood in past runs, Kyle/Yost very much among them. Hell, I was on Team Magneto before it was hip. But I think this is the first time we’re really seeing it in the Hickman era, and it felt powerful to me.
Beyond the action beats, though, the biggest theme of this issue is Manon and Maxime’s decision to mind-alter Beak and Tempest so that the trauma of Beak’s parents’ murder is erased from their memory. It’s an interesting philosophy question, as far as the ethics of mutant powers are concerned. Even if we grant that meddling non-consensually with another person’s brain is a major wrong, is it right to restore their painful memories and experiences equally without their consent? Is that consent ever possible once the memories have been taken away in the first place? These are the questions that Armor is left to deal with in the aftermath of the issue, and I think it’s a reasonable bet that we’ll be seeing them come up again in this series. What did you think of this, Allison?
AS: I think Hisako handled it as well she could have in the situation, and I agree with her not wanting them to replace the memories again after the fact. That makes everything even messier and more complicated somehow with the lack of consent in regards to either process. The way she’s left it, if Beak and Angel find out later, they can confront Maxime and Manon about it and won’t have such emotional whiplash, but can still hash it out. And as she said, people always find out about these things. Chekhov’s gun…loaded?
ZR: On a character level, this does quite a bit to flesh out the twins, whose personalities have been fairly one-dimensional since Brisson first introduced them. It’s pretty clear that they really were trying to take Glob’s chastising to heart, and to make up for their kneejerk, violent instincts that led to so much death in the first place. Why not use their powers to bring emotional peace rather than anger and trauma? You could probably say that this is the downside to, you know, not having any kind of structured teaching environment, emotional mentorship, or adult supervision of any kind over the rising generation of young mutants on Krakoa. But, you know, brave new world and all that.
AS: I wonder if they could find a healthy niche in Krakoa down the line in the resurrection process, helping to ease painful memories or bring memories back if the upload timing is slightly off. With permission of the resurrected, of course. Would they theoretically be able to give Shinobi back his memories of his death or do Manon’s powers have limits with stuff like that? Would someone like Sinister possibly abuse the twins’ powers with his weird resurrection experiments? I have so many questions.
ZR: All of that said, I have to admit that the emotional beats of this issue didn’t really land for me. A lot of that, I think, is the result of the unbearably decompressed pacing of this arc, which somehow spent two and a half issues moving its characters from a basement into a front lawn, while squeezing the emotional turning point into the final four pages. It’s a structural misstep that was compounded by the odd nature of this series, which has bounced between two completely different teams over the course of the past months. So while I understand the idea of this story as an effective plot development, the execution was ultimately unmoving, even though it should have been profoundly affecting.
AS: This was easily my favorite of the Brisson issues so far. I don’t think it fully worked for me still, but I wasn’t entirely stone-hearted for the whole thing. Flaviano’s art really helped with this, especially towards the end. Some very visceral emotions were conveyed fairly movingly. I also don’t find the twins boring anymore so hey!
Bringing It All Back Home
ZR: Well, that brings us to the end of our first arc of Ed Brisson’s half of New Mutants. And when all is said and done, I thought it was…fine. It hasn’t been the worst series in the world (heck, it hasn’t even been the worst series in the X-Men line), but there just hasn’t been much here to place it above the sort of generic adventure that we might have gotten in just about any X-Men era prior to this one. And I think that’s a problem insomuch as the defining spirit of this DoX era is supposed to be innovation. Even when I haven’t liked other series running right now, there’s been no shortage of bold ideas and interesting concepts to mull over and consider. But this series? Well, I wouldn’t hesitate to read it if I just wanted some superhero adventures to pass the time. But I also think comics can do (and are doing) a whole lot more.
Brisson was in a pretty unique position with this series, in that he was able to split his title with a very high-profile (and hotly anticipated) Jonathan Hickman run at the same time. That’s an incredible sales boost, and major megaphone for any creator. And it would have been awfully nice to see that opportunity given to an up-and-coming creator, or a woman, or a person of color joining the X-Men line for the first time, several of whom have less visible series working to get visibility right now. For the chance to go instead to a creator who has had more than a few previous chances to sustain an X-Men series of his own, and for him to use it on a plot that feels obligatory and uninspired at best is, frankly, a real disappointment to me. So while I certainly didn’t hate this series, and I think there’s some real potential for its cast, I can’t say I’m thrilled with what we got, either.
AS: I have tried to give the non-space issues of this series a fair shake, and I definitely don’t hate them, I just super-duper don’t care for this format and scheduling. I maintain that if these issues had been a separate series, I’d probably have enjoyed them quite a bit more. I want to think that going forward Brisson may have more freedom to do his own thing, with Hickman’s issues out of the way. I’m curious about his voice for the OG New Mutants who will be joining Armor and Boom Boom (judging by the cover for #10 anyways) since I often find Hickman’s dialogue more than frustrating, but generally have faith in Brisson’s ability to write believable human beings (or mutants, but you know what I mean).
If anything, I think splitting the series with Hickman has…hurt Brisson? Not for some things, but how are you going to compete conceptually head-to-head with the Head of X? So I don’t quite agree with that assessment. Being part of Dawn of X, period, is really its own reward for creators and I’m glad that folks like Howard and Hill have had their own space to breathe. I think this arc has been very “meh” but not awful by any means and I’m staying onboard for whatever the future holds in the hopes that with his own breathing room, Brisson will replicate the highs of his Extermination and Bullseye series for me.
X-Traneous Thoughts
- So, uh…these Krakoan field trips aren’t going so hot, are they?
- “I’ve been on black ops teams since I was like 12.”
- “You really think I need my bombs just to kick your ass?”
- “I eat low-level clowns like you for breakfast.”
- Boom Boom is like a screenwriter for ‘80’s Schwarzeneggar movies, and I mean that in the best way.
- Krakoan tease reads: Bird Of Prey
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.
