We’re welcomed to The Wild Hunt in New Mutants #14, written by Vita Ayala, with art by Rod Reis and letters from Travis Lanham.
Stephanie Burt: I am so excited to start the first Vita Ayala-written New Mutants issue that I have to take a deep breath before I start.
Liz Large: I know what you mean– I’ve been waiting for this new direction for the New Mutants since it was announced. I can’t wait to see the different direction they take this book in.
New New Mutants
SB: Rod Reis’s opening pages are lovely: fairy-tale settings with lots of browns and tans and no caricatures. I thought of the Gabriel Hernandez-Walta art for Majorie Liu’s Warbird story [Ed. note: from her Astonishing X-Men], also set in North Africa. And then I thought of “Demon Bear”.
And then I said, “Oh, crap. It’s my least favorite Big Bad from the entire Claremont Run. Has anyone ever told a Shadow King story that’s not Orientalist?” I guess we’ll see. Similar worries about Dust, who has always deserved better. If anyone can do it…
LL: I think that there’s a lot of characters in the X-Men world with so much potential and depth who rarely get to show it in the actual books. For me it’s Karma. She always seems to get the short end of the stick when it comes to the books, shunted to the background in favor of the (also great!) Magik and Dani. I really hope this series will give her the attention she deserves.
SB: Bingo about Karma. She never had enough in common with the other OG New Mutants to really become a close friend to any except Dani. And she’s still interacting mostly with Dani. That’s a lot of narrative weight for Dani to lift, though I guess our Valkyrie is used to it.
Hey, you know where Karma got to play a role other than “victim of psychic villain” or “endlessly cleaning up after blood-relative baddies?” Mekanix! <record scratch>
LL: Did someone say Mekanix? Because I’m just saying….please give Karma a girlfriend, and not a subtextual one who simply spends all of her time with her and holds her hand and helps her take care of her younger siblings. Speaking of kids, the older New Mutants have realized that the lack of any official school or schedule for the younger ones is leading to emotional and educational issues. They’ve sent a letter to the Council about it, and Xavier’s response is essentially “thanks for volunteering!”.
SB: The minute I saw– pre-X of Swords– that the youth of Krakoa live in an environment where “all are students, all are teachers” I hoped that the potential and actual teachers on Krakoa would figure out why that educational philosophy most often doesn’t work. Most kids want structure of some sort, though not the sort Earth-1218 schools provide. [Ed. note: that’s our Earth designation number which, fun fact, is derived from Editor Jordan D. White’s birthday!]
LL: The school aspect has always been such an integral part of X-Men, and it’s been a little weird to me that it wasn’t included in any of the current books. New Mutants has been the closest, but it was mostly covering the young adult mutants and older teens. I’m really interested to see what this group–none of whom had a traditional schooling experience– brings to the table as teachers.
SB: I love school stories but it’s not just schools. My heart leaps up every time I see an element of Krakoan storytelling that’s about post-revolutionary state- and society-formation. You won: what next? You’ve got a means of external defense, and an economy built for export, and a post-scarcity economy internally (needs get met): you don’t need cops but you probably do need teachers. Including early childhood teachers, once you start Making More Mutants. Is Vita Ayala gonna tell us a story about how to start a delightful, soul-nourishing school? Does Professor X know jack about that?
LL: I think a lot of the X-Men have turned out okay, considering the circumstances, but it might mostly be due to luck. The Professor has some good ideas, and some terrible ones, but on the day-to-day he isn’t my first option for raising a healthy and well-adjusted mutant.
SB: He’s a jerk.
Mutant Synergy
SB: Before we learn about the school they build we’re gonna get to see these post-teenage OG New Mutants share trauma, in ways that take advantage of their Very Emotionally Charged powers. I am very here for that. Ayala and company understand these characters. I trust this team. (I’ve trusted Reis with these characters since the space plot of the Hickman issues, which I also loved.)
LL: This scene was such a delight. I love getting to see more domestic moments, especially in our new Krakoan status quo. Dani using her powers to help Xi’an figure out what’s causing her sleeplessness and fear is a great way to show how recent events have impacted everyone. This ties in both to X of Swords and to the team’s previous adventure in Carnelia, and I appreciate that Ayala is putting in the connections to the recent past here. New Mutants has been the series with the most creative shake ups, and keeping some narrative threads really makes the series feel cohesive.
SB: The more excitable quarters of X-Twitter might feel disappointed that Dani and Xi’an aren’t canon dating. Yeah, fans saw preview art of Dani touching Xi’an’s hand and decided that they Must Be Together, and that’s not what we get, but it’s not ruled out: as usual with queer subtext in New Mutants stories, you can read in the romance pretty easily but you can also skate right over it if you don’t want it there. (At this point I’ll be happy if Karma dates anyone. Well, almost anyone.)
LL: It’s me, I’m excitable over these gals being pals! And it’s not just me– when Warlock and Illyana show up and interrupt the conversation, she also seems to imply they’ve interrupted something more.
SB: Warlock fans and Illyana fans should be ecstatic. Of course Warlock is a morning person technarch. Of course Warlock had to be told, explicitly, that no one should talk to Illyana before she’s had coffee. And of course Warlock feels left out when Doug and Bei are intimate with each other. Are there poly-friendly therapists on Krakoa? Who should Warlock ask about how to navigate this sort of thing? Could it be…. Illyana?
LL: All the New Mutants are displaying a remarkable amount of…maturity? emotional intelligence? this issue. After Xi’an leaves, Rahne explains to Illyana that Dani has been helping her and Xi’an when everything gets too intense for them. Illyana immediately gets it– everyone on this team has figurative and literal demons. It’s a nice moment of support and love between this group of friends.
SB: I cannot overstate my joy at the way Reis draws Warlock. The technarch should look deeply nonhuman, full of circuit boards and wires (not too curvy nor too biomorphic), super-changeable from moment to moment, and fun (rather than threatening). That’s a tough ask. Reis gets it.
LL: Absolutely! Warlock imitates a lot of the poses of the other characters, but still always looks distinctly himself and completely alien. It’s really amazing to see James and Warlock making the same face.
SB: Reis also gets the mixed expressions on the faces of the Earth-born mutants. Rahne looks surprised to see just how hunky James Proudstar looks in his new “uniform,” actually a tank top that takes him well into himbo territory. Illyana looks amused at Rahne’ mixed feelings. And she drinks…. Is that a half-full carafe of her special coffee? Is it cold brew?
LL: If I had to teach a bunch of mutant kids what is essentially phys ed, I would also be chugging cold brew (if not fleeing in terror), so that was a very relatable moment to me.
We All Have Demons
SB: And now for the school business. Students practice fighting in teams! We haven’t had a Danger-Room-style scene like this one since, what, Jason Aaron’s run on Wolverine and the X-Men? If then? And Gabby hasn’t been on a team since ever. [Ed. note: maybe Uncanny X-Men: The Exterminated #1]
Extra points go to this creative team for noticing the age range of the original Academy X and WatXM kids: some are adults now (like Laura) and some are not (like Dust). They’re like the high school seniors who sometimes end up in classrooms with the first-years. And they get a series of dynamic and uneven panels, because it’s a fight scene, after several pages with rectangles showing people talking. “We’ll show you how it’s done” is Illyana (of all people) talking about how New Mutants work together in battle, but it could just as well be Ayala and Reis and their team showing us how to make a New Mutants comic.
LL: It’s a great combo, in both respects. There’s also an emphasis here on working together with mutants with different power sets that mimics the concept of “mutant technology” we’ve seen in the other series recently. Another great example of working together between the entire X-Office.
SB: Petra is correct to describe the staged fight between the two sets of New Mutants as awesome. Awesome to see– the armor that Warlock gives Warpath puts Warlock’s head somewhere else; they don’t merge the way they would merge if they were Douglock– and awesome as pedagogy, showing us unfamiliar pairs.
Wouldn’t it be nice to know that Ayala and Reis had seen the New Mutants movie before they made this comic, so that “one wolf goes in…. Five wolves come out” would be a conscious riposte to the movie’s Two Wolves nonsense?
[Ed. note: I have to just jump in right here and point out that this is, in fact, a reference to the secondary mutation Wolfsbane developed when she was exposed to a mutagen from the Ultimate Universe called Mothervine during the X-Men: Blue tie-in to Secret Empire. It was seen once and never referenced again. Comics are wild.]
LL: There’s so many wolves inside each of us. Speaking of duplicates… Gabby Kinney, one of my favorite clones, is on the team now. She’s asking the hard question I’ve been worried about since Hellions #4: if she dies, will she get resurrected?
Madelyne specifically wasn’t brought back because she’s a clone, and Evan (a clone of Apocalypse) hasn’t been brought back yet. It’s great to see Gabby bring this up– during training, the kids are specifically told to explore the limits of their powers, since they can just get brought back if anything bad happens. But for her, there’s no clear sign that that’s guaranteed. Illyana says it’s because Maddie was evil, and Evan could still be in the queue…but as Gabby knows, evil doesn’t seem to be preventing some people from holding positions of power on the island.
SB: That’s a very good point about clones– I had forgotten that Evan was one. I’m still worried for Xi’an. $10 says the Shadow King is causing Xi’an’s nightmares. $20 says we’re gonna get a callback to that time when the Shadow King controlled Xi’an, a.k.a the absolute garbage fatphobia plotline (New Mutants #31-34). I am assuming that in 2020 this creative team knows better than to revisit Claremont-era fatphobia (one widespread prejudice that Claremont Run X-Books encouraged and exacerbated rather than attempting to address). I tend to make optimistic assumptions.
LL: I think you’re right to be optimistic after such a promising issue! There was a lot of setup for future storylines, but the issue also gave me what I want out of a book like this: the New Mutants being a family. The whole issue has a heavy emphasis on the team caring for each other, and extending that care to the younger kids who are where they used to be. The second data page, where Dani talks to James about keeping a journal, is such a good example of this.
SB: Dani’s letter to James Proudstar is just perfect: it’s the sort of thing you give a friend who’s new to tabletop role-playing games, and on a meta-comics level it goes hard at the failure to characterize James (other than “he’s a ball of rage”) that marks some earlier appearances. Better yet, it gives us two indigenous characters who talk to each other. More of that please.
Overall I love this issue absolutely to death. I also think it’s the kind of low-conflict, slow-build, slice-of-life issue that made people like me love the OG New Mutants… and that made people who aren’t much like me scratch their heads: where were the high-stakes fights? Where were the villains? (They were always there, in the wings.)
LL: I agree. The slow build of people who were brought to Krakoa in the hopes of a new start making the decisions to either change or not has been coming for a while. People switching from villain to hero has been a part of the X-Men for a long time, especially if you consider how often people are mind controlled, possessed, or tricked. I understand the initial impulse to start with a clean slate, but now that everyone’s comfortable and settled in, it’s an ideal time for someone to cause problems.
SB: What do we get at this point? We get a whole start of school story, almost too sweet to make up a whole X-Comic, and we know that the sweetness is not gonna last: indeed, some blameless, guileless younger students are in league with the fez-wearing incarnation of Orientalist suspicion whom we (but not, apparently, Anole or No-Girl, and surely not Cosmar) know to be the Shadow King, a Bad Dude. What will he set them up to do? Will he possess them? Will Xi’an– our local expert in possessing people– notice? Is the Shadow King behind her headaches, possessor to possessor? Will Dani step in?
LL: The New Mutants have a lot of experience in this area, so it’s good to know that they’re the ones looking after these kids. Or hey– maybe I’m being overly suspicious, and the Shadow King has changed and just really, really loves bonding with kids over how their day has gone. Stranger things have happened!
SB: We also know that this run of New Mutants will be a School Comic, with one plotline following the teachers (who have angst all their own: students must never know) and another following the students (some of whom are secretly in league with adult enemies of the school). That’s how the first half (the Weir-DeFillipis half) of Academy X worked, and it’s how parts of WatXM worked, and I am very much down with that kind of story. Even if it requires the Shadow King.
LL: Having a school book back in the lineup is going to make a lot of people (myself included) very happy. The dual plotlines are perfectly positioned to tie together, and I’m really excited to see where this goes.
X-Traneous Thoughts
- I’m so excited that Cosmar is still around, and that her character design is still so awesomely weird.
- Liz, is it me, or does Petra’s costume look too much like Jean Grey’s old duds from X-Factor? Also, remember when Sprite was Kate Pryde’s codename? That was a hot minute long ago. (Even before there were New Mutants.)
- I love the idea of Krakoa letting the kids wear whatever costume they want– speaking of old school Kate, maybe someone could pull out the roller skate costume.
- Warlock and Magik being the only ones still interested in swords after the crossover is precious.
- If you want the only good Shadow King content ever, just watch Legion
- Krakoan reads “RAGER”
Liz Large is a copywriter with a lot of opinions on mutants.
Stephanie Burt is Professor of English at Harvard. Her podcast about superhero role playing games is Team-Up Moves, with Fiona Hopkins; her latest book of poems is We Are Mermaids. Her nose still hurts from that thing with the gate.
