Jon & Rod are back with New Mutants #7, a comic that laughs in the face of any reader expecting a conventional story. The team pretty neatly solves all the issues with the Shi’ar and then plants a Krakoan Gate while Sunspot decides to buy Cannonball’s apartment building so that he can stay close to his best friend.
Zach Rabiroff: Hey, Allison. It’s the last Jonathan Hickman issue of New Mutants, so I say we take a page from his playbook this time around, break down the fourth wall, and yell directly at this “Ed.” character who’s been leaving notes in all of our columns. What do you say? [Ed. note: No.].
That ought to show the power-hungry jerk. [Ed. note: It won’t.] From now on, we’re taking control of this website, and making sure we’re treated with the dignity, respect, and critical recognition we deserve. [Ed. note: He’s literally writing this review in a Rescue Rangers t-shirt and no pants.]. Anyway, we rejoin the New Mutants, Classic Edition, for the climax of their space-faring adventure this time around, and after a couple weeks buried in a basement in the American heartland, I am ready for it. How about you?
Allison Senecal: I’m tired, Zach, including the fourth wall breaking. Please, I beg of you, put me out of my misery before you leave this column. I mean, yes, let’s do this.
And Now For Something Completely Different
ZR: New Mutants is a farce. I mention that up-front because until this issue, an innocent reader may have been under the impression that they were reading an X-Men comic, or a sci-fi story, or even an integral part of the ongoing Dawn of X narrative. And, to be fair, this arc is probably all of those things, too. But more than anything, it’s been Jonathan Hickman’s outlet for zany comedy, a release from the very serious rules of storytelling he’s been obeying over in the flagship X-Men series during these past months.
And that becomes clear right off the bat in this issue, with Roberto’s “recap” of a story that never happened, followed by his fourth-wall-breaking conversation with Dani. Yes, it’s a clever (if somewhat frustrating) way to advance a story that seems to have not quite gotten as many issues as it needed. But it’s also a warning shot to the reader that what we’re about to see shouldn’t be taken too seriously, or judged with too straight a face. So, naturally, we’re about to spend a thousand words analyzing it at length. Allison, do you feel like this gambit worked? And even more importantly, was it funny?
AS: No, and also no. Maybe for one issue, yeah sure, go nuts. Three issues? Please, no. I give Hickman kudos for going all-in and drawing more attention to the terrible formatting of this series, which has annoyed me since the initial announcement. Now think about if we had three more issues of space stuff, with no need for the recap pages (three issues of them), and wherein we actually get to see more of the action we are simply told about? Probably also more fun for Reis, but I won’t put words in his mouth.
ZR: Here’s the thing about zany humor: even though it seems like it’s about breaking all the rules, it’s actually the rules that make it work. If the story is grounded in its characters or its emotions, the escape into goofiness feels liberating without losing its heart. But if the the scaffolding of those character beats isn’t there, then the jokes just float free in empty space without anything to tether onto. And Jonathan Hickman’s comedy stylings really can fall into either of these camps. When it works well, we get something like the sharp, off-the-wall satire of Manhattan Projects. When it doesn’t, we get 20 pages of horticulture puns.
Up to this point, I think that New Mutants has fallen into that first category. We’ve had jokey narration from Berto lampooning his own story in recap pages, and we’ve had cameos from lizard space lawyers, but they’ve all been in the service of a space epic that really did feel like it had consequence for both the universe and the characters in it. But with this final issue, all of this seems to take a back seat to the joke itself. This comic is about the joke, in a way that almost seems to smirk at anyone who’s been taking this story too seriously all along. And while it makes for a charming Monty Python-esque sketch, it can’t help but feel like a disappointment to anyone who’s become invested in the story that’s been unfolding.
AS: I can not help but think about this arc with the exact same plotting, but someone else scripting. Some jokes, yes. But not four issues of them. Some more gravitas. Space for the humor to breathe. Rahne getting to do something besides….lick stuff? Plenty of my other favorites are getting time to shine genuinely in other series. And then over here we have…anything meaningful beyond that initial Rahne resurrection scene? Just a lot of jokes, and month-plus-long waits between issues.
I love that things are going so well for mutants that the New Mutants can have a largely no stakes action arc to themselves. I don’t love an entire team of my favorite mutants getting written in service of an arc-long joke about how Krakoa would be better with Sam there. Which, is there any acknowledgement of Husk dying and coming back? Did that get lost in the catch-up conversation? Was there anything about Sam’s dead brother Josh and where he is in the resurrection queue? *throws hands up* [Ed. note: The price for being the driving character in “She Lies With Angels” is sitting in the back of the resurrection queue.]
ZR: Of course, all of that said, there really are bits of this issue that are genuinely funny! Roberto’s recap of an issue that never happened is a blast, even as it reminds us that we really could have stood to actually see this story, instead of joking about how it all happened off panel while we were busy watching Beak escape from a basement in Iowa. To pair this series up with an earthbound sibling is understandable, if distracting. But when it starts cutting short the more interesting half of the series we’ve been reading, it feels like a bridge too far.
AS: I did chortle at a bit of it, it’s tough not to, but the big picture just makes me so tired. I think all the Doug bits are actually quite hilarious. The torture aside about him made me chortle. I loved he and Karma’s good-cop-bad-cop. “And if I’m really a bad boy…”
I do not find the arc pairing understandable, Zach, but more power to you. [Ed. note: As the resident Glob fan, I also don’t understand how this series was laid out.]
Fight! Fight! Fight!
ZR: Meanwhile, after seven issues of intergalactic sturm und drang over the future of the Shi’ar empire, the conclusion here is…well, is there a conclusion here? Having secretly plotted to assassinate a princess of the royal blood and undermine the authority of both Empress and Regent of the empire, Mentor’s fate is a gentle chastisement that lasts all of two panels.
On a character level, it works, I suppose. Xandra proves herself to be a more merciful ruler than the bellicose Gladiator, while still showing the steely resolve it will take to make her a successor to her mother and aunt. But in terms of story, it effectively reveals this entire scenario to just be a big, fat, cosmic MacGuffin to get the New Mutants crew out into space. Nothing in the Shi’ar status quo is changed, no events of import have been recorded in the space annals. It was just a spacefaring sitcom all along, and it ends with the equivalent of a cheesy freeze frame and the Happy Days theme song playing over the closing credits.
AS: *head in hands* Consider the teaser cover we got for Powers of X #6 with Bobby sitting on what appeared to be the Shi’ar throne. Is that still in the cards? Was that nothing? It seems Hickman simply wanted to build up to his next X-Men arc, which…fine, but oy.
ZR: I did, however, really enjoy the fight scene, absurdist fourth wall break and all. The role playing game data page is an example of comedy that really does work in this issue, since it points up the time-wasting pages of fight panels that most comics end up including just to reach their reader-mandated quota of kicking per issue. And if we all don’t start screaming “DEATHBIRD” at the end of every role playing game fight from here until eternity, I feel we’ll have let down ourselves and society.
And at the same time, the sequence still somehow finds room for Rod Reis to show off the amazing artwork he’s been producing throughout this series. I’ve said before that in some terrible, heretical way, I enjoy his art even more than that of Bill Sinkiewicz, if only because Reis combines his angular weirdness with clear, concise storytelling chops. And we see that that exemplified here, as he somehow manages to pack as much narrative action into three panels of story-free brawling as other artists would struggle to get into four or five pages. It’s a master class in engaging, distinctive comic art, and a reminder of how much Reis has elevated this series with every issue he’s been on.
AS: I could always go for more of Reis’s art, which was my complaint with the data page. His RAHNE IN THIS WAS STUNNING. Very funky, very fun, and almost made me forget there were a whole two panels of her licking stuff. I think his is now the definitive Wolfsbane for me. Reis has been an absolute delight on this series month in and month out.
That said, the TTRPG data page was one of my favorites from Dawn of X thus far. Very different from the usual stuff we’ve had, just a good time, and actually clever. It would have landed even better for me if Hickman hadn’t padded this entire arc with humor and more attempts at humor. Imagine that page getting to stand on its own a bit more in a less zany issue.
Sam and Berto: A Love Story
ZR: The issue closes with what I think is the most emotionally genuine moment of the entire series: a conversation between Sam and Berto, in which Berto decides to stay in space alongside his best friend (BIRD EMPEROR BERTO CONFIRMED, KIND OF, NOT REALLY), and the two of them admit, at long last, to the honest love they feel for each other. It’s a pretty typical Hickman exchange, getting close to a moment of acknowledged homoeroticism (“You know I love you, too, right?”) without allowing the text or the characters to have any open recognition of a sexual component to what’s on the page. That’s disappointing, in ways that we discussed last time around with regard to Illyana, and it’s doubly so now that we’ve had a genuinely cathartic moment from Mystique in the most recent issue of X-Men.
But in fairness to Hickman, I think there’s a way to read this as making sense for the characters involved, both of whom are frozen in a sort of perpetual frat-boy mode of social interaction that would never allow them to acknowledge a mutual attraction to themselves, let alone to each other. Whether Hickman finds this problematic, comedic, or merely a reflection of how he thinks most men relate, I can’t honestly say. But I can buy into it for the characters, even as I don’t love what it indicates about sexuality in comics on a larger level.
AS: Imagine that scene but scripted by someone else, Zach. I agree on all these points, though. When taken together with the Magik scene, it’s kind of… magnifying how much potential queerness is played up for the joke in this series. I hate reconciling this Hickman with the Hickman that wrote the last issue of X-Men because imagine if neither of those scenes had been played for the joke. If he actually gave us a heart-tugging inarguable coming out scene for Illyana. His Mystique issue was truly beautiful. I just wish he could have brought the same level of heartfeltness to this series in some way, even if not that specifically. (Thanks, Marvel Corporate.)
ZR: There’s always an “on the other hand” for this stuff (well, for me there is, anyway), and in this case it’s the fact that the Sam/Berto story ends up coming at the expense of the rest of our cast. I worried at the outset of this story that this was going to become another Sunspot and Cannonball buddy comedy, which is a genre that Hickman clearly loves, having explored it at length in both his never-to-be-spoken-of-again-on-pain-of-exile Mojoverse one-shot [Ed. note: Some of us think it is a fun, but flawed, tale, but go on], and in his Avengers run. And while those two characters come out of this with some amount of visible growth, everyone else is mainly there for set dressing at best, and bizarre comic relief at worst. What on earth is he doing with Wolfsbane, for instance, whose entire role in this issue is a series of gags about licking things, punctuated by bizarrely off-voice dialogue. There was so much hinted at the outset of this series we never got to see: the outsider dynamic of Chamber and Mondo juxtaposed with the clubby friendship of the old New Mutants crew; the natural leadership role of Dani overshadowing her colleagues; Illyana’s coffee preferences. Maybe Ed Brisson will find time to dig into this more with the characters he inherits. But I wish that Hickman had found the space or the desire to care a little bit more about the whole cast he assembled.
AS: Well, we can surmise from upcoming covers that Illyana and Berto are at least jumping off to do other bigger things in the service of Krakoa. But, if nothing else, I generally prefer Brisson’s dialogue to Hickman’s, and now that he’s free of the weird filler arc, I’m curious to see how he’ll combine the New Mutants with the other Newer Mutants. I would always like more for Dani and Xi’an and this series has disappointed me in regards to both so far, so I hope Brisson will take the baton and run with it.
In defense of the Sunspot and Cannonball focus, Berto at least has rarely received any real focus in the actual New Mutants series! Avengers stuff recently, yes. X-Force, yes. So this was nice in that respect at least. I just wish we could have had anything more about Sam’s siblings. Good God. And less fourth wall-breaking Berto content.
ZR: So, when all is said and done, I have mixed feelings about what we’ve seen in this arc. Reading back over our previous reviews, I can’t deny that I’ve enjoyed most of these issues, taken one at a time. The interactions have been fun, the plot has been bouncy, and the art has been drop-dead gorgeous. There are also a number of plot elements introduced (albeit not resolved) here that we’re sure to see play out in other books down the line: King Eggs, Brood spawning grounds, and more besides. But taken as a whole, it turns out to have all just been a shaggy dog story, an amusing, slightly long-winded arc that really didn’t signify much at all. Maybe that’s just a synecdoche for superhero comics generally, and maybe I’m just the goofball who’s taking his X-Men way too seriously. But to go back to a metaphor I used way back at the beginning of these reviews: the chocolate ice cream was good, but I already feel hungry ten minutes later.
AS: Taken as a whole, I did not love this arc. I was going to say “I did not LIKE this arc” but the Reis art is more than half of it and I did sure adore that. Glimpses of things I really loved, yes. Hints at interesting things that could have been, sure. Some really great ‘Yana fight scenes. Pretty good Doug stuff, but nothing even hinting at more follow-up from HOXPOX. The Rahne resurrection scene. Coffee. This started as my most anticipated Dawn of X title, and has now, at the end of the first two arcs, landed firmly in the middle of “It’s Fine” Land. Like I said above, I am happily sticking on for another arc to see if it calms down and lands somewhere quite good now that the strange back-and-forth narrative structure seems to be over with.
And let’s have a round of applause for Zach! He’s leaving me on this beat after this issue. Sad to see him go but also he may be making a fortuitous escape. We’ll see! [Ed. note: We will miss him but we are excited to have Liz Bethanne picking up the torch.]
X-Traneous Thoughts
- Berto hasn’t yet learned about object permanence when he’s not on panel, and this feels completely right to me.
- Cyclops’s faux-casual “oh, by the way” request to put a Krakoan portal on the vacant planet of Chandilore was surely the stealth aim of this mission all along. For what purpose, though, remains to be seen.
- DEATHBIRD!
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.
