Who Are? What Are The Children Of The Atom?

The mysterious and long awaited CHILDREN OF THE ATOM are here! Vita Ayala, Bernard Chang, Marcelo Maiolo, and Travis Lanham introduce us to the newest round of X-Kids in Children of the Atom #1.

Kenneth Laster: After (checks watch) almost a year? Children of the Atom #1 is finally here! Cassie, have you been amongst the many eagerly awaiting these new X-Babies (Teens)?

Cassie Tongue: Look, I’m not saying I consume expanded X-Canon to stay alive, but I will say that being teased with a whole new group of characters who care about classic X-Men heroes as much as I do and then experiencing a prolonged period of participation may have left me a little parched. New takes on this world are one of my favourite things – I am more than ready to dive in.

New Kids on The Block

KL: If there’s one thing I’ve learned from having Vita Ayala on two X-Books right now, it’s that they are gonna give some deep thoughts to their new creations. The amount of lore that they dropped online to their new kids in New Mutants is just as on display with these new kids. What were your initial thoughts on these New New *Mutants*?

CT: This issue wasn’t an easy read for me – Bernard Chang’s art is jarringly busy, and it’s hard to know where to place the eye, and the words have a deliberately restrained quality – but for purposes of review, that’s not the worst thing; when you work harder to get into a book, You spend more time with it, get to know it a little better. 

Introducing a collection of new characters – even or especially characters that pay obvious homage to well-known and well-established heroes and more general character archetypes – comes with a certain element of risk. Anything too new can bump against our internal knowledge base; anything too similar could feel derivative. Strictly in terms of character, these misfit teen nerds who are totally obsessed with mutant heroes are easily understood. There are best friends Buddy and Carmen (Buddy, AKA Cyclops-Lass, updates all the MutantsUnmuted articles on mutant history and trivia; Carmen, AKA Gimmick, makes all the hero-costumes); there is also Cherub, Marvel Guy, and Daycrawler. They’re trying on crime-fighting to emulate their heroes and because they want to make meaning; how else do you figure out who you are when you’re a teen, you know? 

But this is an issue that doesn’t want us to fall in love just yet. This is a coming-of-age story at its very beginning, and it feels like this is a story that’s going to play out slower than we’re ready for after a year of waiting; this issue has more questions than answers about our new heroes – if they even are heroes – and I’m not just talking about the setup of a classic love triangle. What was this first meet-cute-ish like for you?

KL: I agree with you about Chang’s artwork. I think he’s a great fit with body language, and acting, but that opening fight scene was very difficult to parse. I’m curious how it will go over in print as occasionally digital review copies don’t do double page storytelling justice, but the action, while nice to look at, was hard to read. 

As for the kids, I think there’s a lot here to get us invested. One thing I think Ayala does incredibly well is give these kids very real connections. Buddy’s friendship with Carmen feels just as real as her crush on Cherub, and I feel like that kind of established love triangle out the gate feels almost rare with a lot of cape comics figuring out those romantic dynamics on the go (i.e how many times has someone dated the Wasp for drama). That choice in itself along with Buddy’s narration really ground it in that “coming of age” feel that you described. Following the bombastic superhero fight entrance, I think the slower pace was nice. Sure there are a lot of burning questions that go unanswered, but having Buddy and Carmen just sitting and talking casually was a nice way to just get to know these two and that choice of spending time with these characters is novel in a way that could get lost in a more forward moving book. I don’t know if I’d want every issue to take its time like this but I enjoyed this slower opening.  Thoughts?

CT: I don’t need action, battles, or big power displays to sell me on a comic; I want to feel for a character before they blow something up; I want to care about why something needs to be blown up and why this person, specifically, is the one to do it. Which means I absolutely appreciated drinking in the details, and we’re given enough to make these kids feel real – Buddy is dealing with money problems and Carm is constantly helping others in a way that hints at hidden insecurities. This feels like a good way to handle a drip-feed of information: give us enough to flesh out something new, but hold back on bigger truths.

KL: And these character details don’t just stop at the newbies!

Pool Table Politics 

CT: One of my favourite things about the Krakoan era thus far is how it re-contextualises those classic X-Men debates about ethics and philosophy. They take place over drinks at the Green Lagoon, or — as is the case in this issue — over a friendly game of pool at the Summer House. On the moon. As you do. Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm, Wolverine and Nightcrawler are blowing off steam while they discuss whether they should bring our new band of mutant freedom-fighters to Krakoa, even though the kids told Magma, Pixie and Maggott earlier [Ed. note: My boy!] that they weren’t ready to set foot on the new island nation. This debate is here to ground the issue in a kind of moral uncertainty; what did you think about the X-Pontificating?

KL: I enjoyed it on a characterization standpoint mostly. X-Men playing pool on the moon is always going to be a plus for me, and Ayala is just so good at characters hanging out. I particularly liked Scott never missing a pocket as well as Storm and Jean’s bonding. 

As for the conversation itself, I like that there’s not an easy answer and Ayala’s not really pushing a specific choice as the right one. Jean really calls out the nuance to it when telling Scott there are steps in between “non-interference and all-out war.” I’m not sure if the decision in the end is necessarily the right one, but narratively speaking it is the one that has the X-Men we know show up in this title more. All in all, a nice scene to debate what these kids’ deals were and what Krakoa should do about them, if anything. Any other thoughts on this scene?

CT: Only that this book continues a background runner from this era that I find entirely delightful: Domestic Cyclops. Here he is preparing a tray of refreshments: a teapot and two cups (for Storm and Nightcrawler), and two beers (both appear to be for Wolverine). This guy has trouble with the realm of moderate action, like you noted, but he sure does seem to thrive in his new home. Ayala’s voice shines here: there’s a suppleness and mutability to their character notes that means each of these iconic X-Men feels markedly alive and themselves. Ayala has the range.

Children of the Atom or Children of Some Guy Named Adam?

KL: Not all is as it seems for this new group of “mutants”. There are a lot of clues in this first issue that these kids aren’t exactly mutants. In fact it’s almost pretty clear. The immediate leap here is to wonder if the book is having our teens engage in mutant cultural appropriation, but I have an inkling that there’s more going on under the surface. Your initial thoughts on this semi-mystery, Cassie? 

CT: I feel like this issue is doing a few things – it’s working to get us invested in that mystery while giving us a clear premise for it; like you say, we can see the holes in these kids’ stories quite quickly. But that is clearly by design and that makes me think it’s somewhat of a red herring. I suspect something bigger and more complicated is on its way. It might have been hinted in the form of a classmate who returns to the basketball court suspiciously strong after a devastating injury; it might have been signposted on a more interior level; our narrator Buddy is suffering some serious alienation. While cultural appropriation seems top of mind (and a great counter to many writers’ tendencies to stretch the ‘mutant metaphor’ way too far), that can’t be the whole story. Vita Ayala is too much of a restlessly thoughtful writer to work only one angle.

KL: I agree with you. This book is based on a pitch from a Black editor, written by a non-binary Afro-Latinx author, and drawn by another person of color. Representation isn’t necessarily an immediate correlation to a story being an unproblematic darling, but needless to say I trust this creative team a hell of a lot more to tell this story a hell of a lot more than anyone else in the X-Office. 

There’s definitely been a narrative undercurrent of mutant reverence in a lot of the X-Books of this era, and it’s not a stretch that these kids are the next step of appropriating mutant culture. However, I do agree with you, that there definitely seems to be more to the story. This issue really makes me think of the original Young Avengers run. So many of those characters’ histories are so well accepted into Marvel lore, that it’s easy to forget that nearly all of their backstories were a part of the story, revealed over time. Wiccan went by Asgardian and was presenting himself as a young Thor, Hulkling had nothing to do with gamma, Iron Lad was assumed to be just some kid in some Stark armor and not…literally Kang the Conqueror. 

Now I’m not saying any of these kids are going to be Kang the Conqueror (unless…), but there’s more than meets the eye. There has been so much care put into these characters from the jump and this creative team of primarily people of color are far from ignorant of the messy conservation of cultural appropriation, so this is all to say…I am trusting that there is more under the surface. 

X-Traneous Thoughts

• Krakoan Reads: “Only Humans” so, there’s that
• We learn that Dazzler’s new single features Lizzo: talk about a dream collab.
• Corbeau Prep is an excellent nod to Super Doctor Astronaut Peter Corbeau
• Jay is an excellent nod to Jay Edidin
• Gimmick gets the gold star for best code name of the group.
• Happy that Maggott got multiple panels to explain his slug gut situation.

Kenneth Laster

Kenneth Laster is a critic, cartoonist, and cryptid with a movie degree.

Cassie Tongue

Cassie is an arts and culture writer living on Gadigal land in Australia. For 10 years she’s been working as a professional theatre critic, and is delighted to finally be writing about her other love: comics, baby.