One of the students at the school-for-magic-kids has been taken over by a scary demon with uncountable eyes who feeds on angst and hatred! What will the other kids do? Can they expect help from… Howard the Duck? Strange Academy #12, writing by Skottie Young, art by Humberto Ramos, colors by Edgar Delgado, letters by VC’s Clayton Cowles.
How do you feel about tentacled monstrosities? Are you into comics art that depicts cartoony kids doing battle with dozens of eyeballs, countless suckers and pseudopods, and light-horror villains with distant roots in Lovecraft, very much in the tradition of Chris Bachalo? Are you a fan of Humberto Ramos’s expressive, contoured, almost-excessive art? If not, why not?
If you are, you’ve got good reasons to check out the sorcerous battle that occupies almost all of Strange Academy #12. Last issue’s murder victim– the crystalline pre-teen Toth– has mostly been put back together, and his murderer identified. It’s the perpetually underrated, self-esteem-lacking, apparently-human, kid Calvin Morse, whose body and mind have been taken over (consensually or otherwise) by Mister Misery, a baddie from the Jason Aaron/ Chris Bachalo run of Doctor Strange. MM feeds on pain and despair and frustration and sadness. He made a deal with Calvin long ago to give Calvin magic in return for Calvin’s social-outcast pain, and he disguised himself as Calvin’s jacket, which Calvin never took off.
Together MM and Calvin are Misery Morse, and they have no re-morse: they’ve been gathering power and biding time, but Toth saw their true nature (thus the killing). And now they’re in a pitched battle with the rest of the Academy kids, and with Academy principal Doctor Voodoo, and with a certain largely useless cigar-chomping duck.
The battle’s almost the whole of the issue, and it’s not much conceptually, but it’s a beauty. Doctor Voodoo can’t quite hold his own against the crowd of suckers and eyeballs, and our gang has to prevent the winged pixie student Shaylee from harming Calvin in her attempt to defeat MM. Gus, the student who’s also a looming, towering, blueberry-colored frost giant, makes impressive hay against the dark adversary.
Then the well-meaning demon-spawn student Despair, nicknamed Dessy, drives MM away by feeding him her immense pain, which turns out to be more than he can handle. “Let’s see how he likes being hit,” she cries, “with years of daddy issues!” She’s the daughter of Limbo-villain S’ym, so she’s got lots of those: no wonder MM can’t take it– it’s as if he absorbed “all the suffering in existence!” Flames ignite themselves, doing battle with Misery’s miasma: Dessy’s horns and tail get prominent play, followed by her chompy, crunchy mouthful of teeth, as she consumes the sadness, pain, rejection, and resentment that Calvin couldn’t handle, freeing him from Misery’s control.
Dessy’s doing her best Illyana Rasputina impression, and at the end of the story, when the other students give the rescued Calvin a great big hug, they’re damaged pre-teens coming together as chosen family, doing their best impression of the OG New Mutants. Ever seen a sad kid get a big and very welcome embrace from a spiky crystalline friend he almost killed? You can here. Maybe you should. Ramos’s postures– hunched shoulders, and then open arms– in themselves tell the tale.
Strange Academy is no New Mutants. It’s no Teen Titans, no Academy X, no Power Pack. The kids’ decisions, feelings, and ties are frankly, so far, not deep, and almost never surprising. Skottie Young has been a wonderful artist on other books, where his way with kids’ looks gets free rein (check out his Oz adaptations). He hasn’t proven himself here as a writer: at least for adults (who aren’t the target audience), every story beat can be seen in advance. But it’s all worth it for Ramos and Delgado’s art. Comics are– we say this a lot– a visual medium: the eyeballs and the sharp teeth and the tearful reconciliations feel real on the page because they’re things we can see.
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.
