It’s time for some Hard Lessons– but who’s teaching who? Find out in New Mutants #22, written by Vita Ayala, art by Rod Reis, letters by Travis Lanham.
Liz Large: This! Issue! Is! Wonderful! I know we say this a lot, but WOW, the Ayala/Reis combo is outdoing themselves every single issue and I simply cannot handle it. What about you, Stephanie– did this live up to your expectations?
Stephanie Burt: I expect this comic to be the best title going and one of the best in X-history, despite my misgiving about the Shadow King as a baddie (I’ll get to that). So I guess it…. almost did?
It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way
Liz: We open with some truly horrific sights. Fires rage and corpses pile up at locations around the island, in what I initially assumed was an Inferno tie-in. But alas, no, this is worse: we see every possible enemy approaching the New Mutants, from the Brood to Sentinels to AIM.
Stephanie: With the island literally on fire and a horde of Sentinels descending, plus Nimrod, I also thought initially that I was seeing some kind of tie-in. Which would have hella consequences: no one knows right now whether Inferno means the end of the Krakoan experiment or a bump in the sea-road. But once I saw S’ym and Belsaco I knew it was just a dream. Or a dream-vision. Or maybe a Dani Moonstar-style vision, meaning that someone’s really gonna die. That’s how her Valkyrie powers work, right?
Liz: The team is so ready to fight here, even against impossible odds. But unfortunately they’re outnumbered and overwhelmed. We get a look at all of the ways this ends, none of them good. It’s really brutal, to the extent that we see as Rahne is ripped in half by S’ym. The art on this page really makes the reveal work– once you’ve looked at the small circles of horror, you realize that looming behind all of them is the face of the Shadow King.
Stephanie: That page is an Achievement. The circles themselves amazed me, and then the background, which becomes the foreground once you see it’s That Guy… In terms of innovative composition and expressive linework, we’re reaching “Demon Bear” levels here. Reis is the best.
Liz: The next thing they know, they’ve been dumped in the Cairo market. The team is depicted in black and white, while the market and the Shadow King are in full color. He’s in control here, as he’s brought the New Mutants into his mind. They, expectedly, do not react well to hearing that.
Stephanie: World’s worst involuntary Middle Eastern vacation. Speaking of which…
Liz: The Shadow King is doing such a clear acting job here as the welcoming host, but it’s what he’s saying that’s throwing the New Mutants off here. He claims they’ve entered his mind of their own free will, to obtain information from him. What he’s giving them is his vision of the future if the mutants don’t change their ways.
Stephanie: That vision’s the one Apocalypse used to retail: only the strongest survive, and mutants need constant threats and fights and combat scenes in order to be the strongest. Again, this whole nightmare scenario from Mr. King (or should that be Mr. Shadow?) gains resonance from Inferno and from the predictions in House of X/ Powers of X: what if Krakoan, peace-loving mutants really are doomed, and Apocalypse got it right the first time?
Liz: He’s so certain that the current Krakoan way of life is going to fail. The kids are confused– how does torturing them with their worst fears help him save mutantkind? But no: these are his fears, and he basically wants to toughen them all up. He also thinks he’ll be able to follow in Apocalypse’s footsteps, except better. I’m not sure who he thinks he’s going to convince at this table.
Stephanie: Maybe Rahne. Maybe Warpath. Neither of whom do much in this issue. Certainly not Dani, Xi’an and Illyana, all of whom tell Mr. King to his (enormous, nightmarishly looming, mustachioed) face that they can’t trust a thing he says.
Liz: What do you think of the data page? Does this mean that there’s a chance the Shadow King isn’t fully in control?
Stephanie: That page retells the Shadow King’s first appearances in the light of the origin he has now: an entity called the Shadow King came to collaborate with, and then to control, an Egyptian boy, Amahl Farouk, once Amahl’s psionic mutant powers emerged. In Cairo, the combined Shadow King-Farouk tried to waylay the young man Charles Xavier and an even younger Ororo, but allowed Charles to take Ororo away. Amahl, however, remained in the city, under the Shadow King’s control.
I suspect this plot ends with the New Mutants coaxing the boy out of the entity, or teaching him to resist the entity. I’d be… OK… with that ending.
Liz: Over tea, the kids are just laying into him about this plan. This is the strongest mutants have ever been, and they’re stronger than anybody Dani’s ever seen, and Rahne has no time for listening to his ideas about a future he hasn’t even actually seen. I love this point. The New Mutants know so many people who’ve visited to or from dangerous futures. A villain’s kooky theory isn’t going to hold weight here.
Stephanie: Given Inferno, he might be right that things are going to hell, but he can’t possibly be right to think (as Apocalypse once thought) that constant, potentially fatal combat would help the species survive. Mr. Shadow spouts riffs from Carl Schmitt, the Nazis’ favorite political philosopher, who developed an entire system around the idea that all peoples and nations were enemies who had to be fought and subdued.
Liz: This is a really great summary of Krakoa. They don’t want to simply be strong and powerful with the goal of pushing other people around. They want to grow beyond the simple feuds and brute force of the past, and evolve. They really want to change the foundations of the world.
Stephanie: Mutant nationalism meets liberal internationalism! We’re all in this together, the Krakoan model says, and we’re only stuck in a zero-sum game if we treat it that way.
Liz: We get a gorgeous page of the Shadow King showing them the horrible futures he sees if they don’t listen to him. The panels are contained within the silhouette of his head, and it just looks so fantastic. They’re trapped inside of his head now, and that means they see what he shows them.
Stephanie: By contrast with the prophecies and dark futures of House of X, Powers of X, and Inferno, these pages show stuff the Shadow King’s just making up. Visually they’re astonishing, a tour de force of one-page panels that reminded me of All-New X-Men #25. Emotionally: eh. We already know the dude tells mean, dark stories, and there’s no reason we as readers should take these stories seriously. Our New Mutants know better, too.
Liz: The Strategies & Tactics data page is really interesting. The Shadow King isn’t just torturing the New Mutants aimlessly. He’s running what are essentially supercharged Danger Room sequences– throwing a million attacks at them, evaluating how long they lasted and what went wrong, and trying again. It’s sad to see some of the details and implications in them.
Stephanie: This issue has the simplest narrative structure since Vita Ayala took over the title. A-plot (teachers) and B-plot (students) converge within this issue. That means the whole Shadow King’s story is coming to a head soon. It also means it’s time for me to take a beat or two to talk about why I still dislike this villain, and why I have reservations about this issue, even though I want Vita Ayala to write this title forever.
The Shadow King is an enormous, soft, unmanly expression of scary North Africanness. His models include Sydney Greenstreet in Casablanca and Jabba the Hutt (himself modeled on Sydney Greenstreet). He’s a big guy with a fez who rules through nefarious market manipulation, wiles and mind games. He’s got a history of taking over women (especially women of color) and using them non-sexually, like the bad eunuch in an Arabian Nights tale. He loves carpets, luxury, cafes and Cairo and coffee. He’s literally an ancient Middle Eastern threat to Western civilization.
In other words, he incarnates almost everything I dislike in the entire Claremont run. (As five minutes with me will prove, I love the Claremont run almost without reservations: these, plus parts of “Japan,” are the reservations).
You can’t tell a Shadow King story without massive Orientalism. Nor can you tell one– at least, nobody has– without a callback to the fat-shaming and fat-phobia that marked, alas, the entire Claremont run, and that struck such a false note amid the generally empowering and thoughtful vibes that 17-year run gave off. He’s even got psychic tentacles that reach out and control his people, like puppets, which is an anti-Semitic and anti-Arab visual trope!
Ayala and Reis do the best they can with this bad guy, making his bulk a kind of psychic imposition,with an attached political philosophy (albeit a dumb one). Still, though, imagine a big, round, Muslim boy reading this comic. Is he empowered? Is he surprised? Is he still looking for someone who looks like him in a superhero comic who’s not a scheming, exotic baddie? Should he stop reading New Mutants till this plotline ends and read Ms. Marvel– or Hellions— instead?
I would like Xi’an, Dani, Kamala Khan and Fred Dukes to team up and punch the Shadow King into the sun forever, so that he never appears in a Marvel comic again. That said, given that they are telling a Shadow King story, Ayala and Reis are doing it almost perfectly. I love everything about this comic when the Shadow King isn’t on-page.
Yeah, I Forgive You
Liz: In the real world, the young mutants – No-Girl, Cosmar, Rain Boy, and Anole– are so sweetly nervous about going to see the newly-resurrected Gabby. They want to apologize, and they accept if she doesn’t want to see them after that. I like how mature and kind they’re being here. Gabby invites them in, and seems pretty chill in the face of their deference, but the story acknowledges that her being mad and refusing to see them would be a valid option too.
Stephanie: Yes! We see all the kids at their very best. They’ve learned from their mistakes, they love their friends, and if we, the readers, harbor any lingering grrrr against them, we hear that grrr in Jonathan, the Actual Wolverine. (I missed that fuzzy guy.)
Liz: This apology hits all the right notes. They explain what happened from their end, but they don’t expect their reasons to automatically make up for their actions. Gabby does forgive them, and she does so by acknowledging that even though they hurt her in this specific way, they were there for her in a lot of other ways. She mentions some of her specific anxieties, and how they’ve directly gone against them.
Gabby sets a clear boundary here–that she won’t be able to be friends with the others if they also hang out with the man who killed her. They’re overjoyed that she still wants to be friends with them at all, and she’s delighted that they were already planning to cut the Shadow King off. This hug is so sweet!
Stephanie: I knowwwww! Did you notice Jonathan the Actual Wolverine warming to the other kids when it’s time? He tried to hug Cosmar’s leg, and possibly to hug Martha Johanssen too…. but only when Gabby proposed a group hug first.
Reis does his own colors, and look how he uses color! Red gold and black for the Shadow King and the teachers, blue and green for the kids, throughout the issue– and then, here, where they reconcile and we see a group hug, Reis makes the background white, then (for one panel) lavender, because this kind of calm and reconciliation and warmth are something new. *dissolves into a puddle that is also, somehow, a liquefied Rod Reis fan club*
Liz: Of course the kids want Laura or Daken to escort them to see the Shadow King. I do not blame them for wanting back up on this at all, and honestly, maybe more than just two people! Conveniently, Gabby lets them know that the New Mutants went to go speak to him– they’re going to lay down the law on things that he shouldn’t do even if they aren’t technically against the law.
Stephanie: Krakoan “law” has no provision against kidnapping or mind control of a minor. Of course they could just kill the guy and not resurrect him. At this point I’d be OK with that, though I’m still betting on an ending where, instead, the boy Amahl breaks free from the S. K. entity.
Liz: The New Mutants have told Gabby to stay home, and avoid confronting the Shadow King so soon after everything. But maybe that’s not what Gabby needs. I love that she decides that she’s going to do what’s best for her, and what’s best for her is yelling at the Shadow King herself.
Stephanie: What’s best for her is speaking up for herself, even when she puts herself in danger. Gabby has almost no sense of physical danger: she can’t feel pain, and in pre-Krakoan stories her fearlessness made humorous plot points. Also remember– it’s easy for me to forget– that while we, reading X-books on Earth-1218 [Ed. note: our world], regard Scout as a fan favorite, out there on Earth-616 she’s often felt like comic relief, like a useless sidekick. She says as much: before she had this friend group (her first-ever friend group!) everyone saw her “like I’m an add-on to Laura, or like I’m the worst Wolverine clone.” No, sweetheart, you are tied for the best Wolverine clone. And you have an identity of your own. (And an Actual Wolverine.)
Liz: They’re all so supportive! The Shadow King is terrifying, but they’re going to join hands and walk off to confront him. It’s a little bit Wizard of Oz, which I like. I think these kids have plenty of heart and courage (could do with some more brains!), but maybe if they face their fears they’ll find their way to home.
Stephanie: Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
The Magic Mountain
Liz: These kids are so brave! They approach the terrifying fairytale-style mountain, which is surrounded by lightning and has an unnatural purple glow, and hesitate, but push on. The coloring in this scene is mostly gloomy grays and blues, but it makes the accent colors really pop out.
Stephanie: Yeah, and when one panel in the middle of a page turns red instead? Thrills. And chills. I’d call it classic, except that in art historical terms it’s Romantic (Caspar David Friedrich to the white courtesy telephone, please). –Did you notice how the kids’ expressions change on the second to last page, from determined and unified (“it looks like the New Mutants need backup”) to stunned and terrified (“Holy…”)? That’s a writer and artist working together. That’s the Ayala-Reis team.
Liz: The kids really fall into working together as a team. Once they decide to go in, Gabby takes the lead to make sure they’re quiet, Anole helps get Cosmar up the mountain, and No-Girl seems to be a sort of safety net behind Rain Boy as he climbs. It’s nice to see that their training has actually been showing results when it counts!
Stephanie: Even nicer when we reach the last page and the Shadow King casts himself as the New Mutants’ teacher. “You will all learn.” Have our kids learned enough from Dani and Illyana and company that they’ll be able to resist whatever the Shadow King tries to do next?
In other words (a question that has driven the entire Ayala run so far), can the kids, should the kids, do the kids, trust their teachers, their designated-as-trustworthy adults? I think they can and they will– but only once the right adults learn to trust them. And (one more theme Ayala’s been pushing throughout) given the chance, kids want to trust some adult: they do not want to remain on their own. If they don’t get a well-meaning adult they can trust, they’ll find an ill-intentioned one instead. (Who did the OG New Mutants trust? Not Chuck and not Magneto: no one, consistently. But Kitty had Storm and Wolverine.)
Also there’s gonna be a big boss fight where kids discover the strength of their own bonds, because that’s what’s supposed to happen in a New Mutants book. I can’t wait.
Liz: Seeing the New Mutants unconscious at the feet of the Shadow King is such a cliffhanger! They’re not awake outside, but according to his notes, Shadow King lost track of them inside his head. Throughout the scenes in Shadow King’s mind, we occasionally see an eyeball peeking in from the side. Is this just a cool view of the mind, or is it a sign that someone else is inside?
X-Traneous Thoughts
- Krakoan reads FALL OF THE SHADOW CHILDREN
- The captions call where Gabby lives The Kinney Residence, but I think we need to change it to Snikt Family Residence.
- Claremont-era Illyana’s Soulsword dispelled magic; Claremont-era Illyana’s mind could not be read. Will those powers help her fight the S.K.? Does anybody remember them?
- That STRATEGIES & TACTICS page really expands when reread: what Other Presence does the Shadow King sense? Could it be No-Girl? Or… the boy Amahl?
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.
Liz Large is a copywriter with a lot of opinions on mutants.
