The old New Mutants are trapped in the Shadow King’s mind, and the new New Mutants are trying to rescue them. But is Amahl Farouk, the Shadow King’s first host, his accomplice, or his victim? The Truth Shall Set Them Free in New Mutants #23, from Vita Ayala, Rod Reis and Travis Lanham.
Liz Large: This issue takes us to the climax of the Shadow King arc, and honestly, how does this comic keep exceeding my expectations?
Stephanie Burt: It’s a stunner. I’m not sure it exceeded mine? The ending was IIRC what both of us predicted. But getting there…. what a ride.
All In Your Head
Liz: When we last left our new mutants (now going by the Lost Club) and the New Mutants, the former had found the latter unconscious in the Shadow King’s hideout. Faced with this absolute nightmare of a situation, these brave kids immediately combine their powers and venture into the unknown.
Stephanie: Into the Unknooooownnnn…
“Kids have to save the adults” is always a good launching pad for a mutant story, and it prefigures other reversals: we’ve seen Gabby divided from her Lost Club friends over the Shadow King’s influence (before he killed her), and this issue we’re going to see the youngest, most feral among the OG New Mutants, Rahne, divided from her friends and peers over what to do with the Shadow King too.
LIz: These interactions and mirrored situations work so well here. This issue as a whole offers some truly amazing power combinations, and I absolutely love it. Ayala has really thought about the permutations available with this crew of mutants, and they’re using them really effectively from both a narrative perspective—as the kids’ bond has grown, the synergies have gotten more impressive—and from an artistic perspective—Reis is taking these possibilities and running with them.
Stephanie: It’s psychedelic, in a good way. It’s also one hell of a callback: if you have, as Reis and Ayala appear to have, total recall for the Claremont-Sienkiewicz New Mutants, you will remember the celebrated story in which two generations of mutants have to join forces and enter somebody else’s mind in order to disentangle and disarm that dude’s warring personalities, in a landscape itself psychedelic and constantly shifting. In other words: this issue reads like the end of a Shadow King story, but it looks and feels like a Legion story.
Liz: As they enter into the Shadow King’s mind, the Lost Club find themselves in a desert. Gabby and Anole appear as they did on the outside, but Rain Boy, Cosmar, and No-Girl have all changed into different forms. No Girl is now in a full body, Cosmar looks like a slightly more (though not fully) human version of herself, and Rain Boy has a full head of hair. Are these the forms they wish they were in? It’s not stated, but considering how often it’s come up, I wouldn’t doubt it.
Stephanie: I wouldn’t doubt it either. Cosmar looks like Cosmar, definitely not human, but also older, more confident, with smoother curves: less squat, less defensive, happier. I suspect we’re looking at her stable form going forward, especially since her psyche, her dream-life, can affect her appearance. What happens to No-Girl after this issue, though? Does she get a body? Which one? Also, can we see smiling, talking blobs and clouds and drops of water a lot from now on? Love that for Rain Boy.
LIz: The first data page of this issue is titled “The Boy & The Beast — Act 2, Scene 3452”, and consists of dialogue between the Shadow King and Amahl Farouk. I’m a little conflicted about this. I love how the title shows that this is one of thousands of moments of conflict between SK and Farouk, but at the same time, I almost wish this was just a regular page and not a script page. The art is such a huge part of this book, and I would have liked to see what Reis would have done with this confrontation.
Stephanie: I see what you mean, but I wouldn’t. I’ve seen enough Ancient Near East Orientalism for one series, I’m afraid, and I’d much rather Reis save his pencils and brushes for the present-day psychomachia.
LIz: That’s a good point! Speaking of the present-day, the New Mutants are still trapped within the Shadow King’s false world, with enemies approaching. They can tell something is off, but are torn between fighting off the Brood or investigating the weird voices and feelings emanating from this place. It’s a great example of how they each react to a crisis. Xi’an immediately investigates a weird bubble, while Illyana is more on the “having a sword, going to use it” side of things. Dani and James are more in the middle, but ultimately, the team takes a break from fighting to get sucked into the talking bubble. As you do!
Stephanie: The talking bubble is the water-based psychic defense space created and shared by the Lost Club by combining Rain Boy’s, No-Girls and maybe Cosmar’s powers. This issue is gonna get some very serious annotations once fans get hold of it. The way that HoXPoX did (and the way that a number of other current X-titles, well, won’t). Did you think the adults, especially Xi’an, look younger and more cartoony than they did in previous Reis issues? I like the choice, if it’s deliberate– it really fits the atmosphere.
Liz: The location gets more fantastical by the minute. As the Lost Club wanders, we get glimpses of this mental world. In the desert, the sun itself looks like the Shadow King (and reminds me a bit of the angry sun in the Mario games), while crystals hang in the air around an open-mouthed statue of the Shadow King. What else is there to do but go inside?
Cosmar feels like they’re within her nightmare sphere (from all the way back in New Mutants #10), and wonders aloud if the Shadow King was once like them. These kids haven’t gotten all of the behind the scenes information we have, but they’re piecing the clues together and getting an idea of what’s going on.
Stephanie: It’s like they’ve read the first Legion story. Or any other story where you have to go inside a powerful projective psychic’s head in order to rescue their captives. I absolutely love the way the word balloons work: it’s worth re-reading the issue just to figure out who’s saying what, and who’s hearing what, and who figures it out and when.
LIz: This is when things start to get even weirder. We see that the voices the New Mutants heard earlier are actually things the kids have been saying, and they’ve been connected to each other. Through the combination of their powers, the Lost Club has managed to pull the New Mutants out of the Shadow-King-directed area of the nightmare and into this less managed area.
Stephanie: The up-is-down Escher staircase makes a good staging area for the debate we’re about to hear about whether the Shadow King and Farouk are truly separable, and whether Farouk is the Shadow King is a villain who needs to be taken down(the position Illyana and Xi’an will take: the one they have to take, given their own experiences) or whether Farouk is a victim as well as a bad guy and can be built back up (Gabby’s position, as you would expect from a Wolverine clone).
LIz: This is the crux of this arc: how to balance the need for protection and safety against rehabilitation, the ability to change, and the correct assignment of guilt.
Stephanie: Which is also… the crux of the Krakoan project in general: if Krakoa is for all mutants, what do you do, what should a just and welcoming society do, with the mutants who have done and seem likely to do, for understandable reasons, terrible things? It’s not just about crime and punishment, about whether the Shadow King or Farouk as his accomplice and host “deserve” to be punished or killed or expelled: it’s about whether the Shadow King, and Farouk as the Shadow King’s somewhat willing host, are likely to endanger mutants right now.
LIz: Everyone here is making valid points, informed by their experiences. Magik is right—she’s suspicious because she’s been trapped and manipulated before, and she doesn’t want to condemn herself or these kids to go through it again. On the other hand, No-Girl is also right—she’s been trapped in her own mind and forced to do horrible things, even though she fought. Dani just wants to make sure that everyone is safe—and she feels that responsibility for both the kids and her team. But is that responsibility going to extend to the other potential victim in this situation?
Up the Down Staircase
Liz: They have to figure out what’s really going on here, even if it’s just as a step on the way to get out. The scene is so disorienting—the MC Escher style stairs, the dark shadows creeping in, the echoes of voices, and hints of the New Mutants trapped in corners and paintings are all deeply unsettling.
Stephanie: Rod Reis loves loves loves drawing non-Euclidean, nonsensical, dreamscape castlelands. Look at those off-center panels, with thick sketchy borders.
Liz: Though it’s confusing (and gorgeous), Rahne is sure she can use her powers to help them figure out which way to go, but the others don’t share her confidence. They’re going in circles, and Illyana decides that as both a war captain and an expert at liminal spaces, it’s time to follow her lead. Step one in her plan is to use their powers and make a mutant circuit. Unfortunately, Rahne isn’t going to let that happen.
Stephanie: She’s convinced that she needs to protect a kid, so he doesn’t die like her child Tier did. Or the Shadow King has possessed her wolf form. Or both! I think it’s both, since the Shadow King works through offers and illusions as much as he works through brute force…
LIz: Rahne’s multiple wolf power means that she can take on many of her teammates at once, and they’re at a huge disadvantage because they don’t want to hurt her. Dani can sense that Rahne’s not in her right mind, and is being controlled by the Shadow King. Dani’s reactions here show the depth of the relationship between the two of them—Dani, usually the smartest and most level headed of the team, almost runs through a portal after Rahne. It would have been a terrible choice, leaving her in an unknown location, separated from the group, and with no way to get back, and yet she was willing to risk it all. Fortunately, Xi’an is able to get through to her. They need to work together on this, and they will.
Stephanie: Exactly.
LIz: The Shadow King has been keeping Farouk trapped inside a gray cityscape, inside a box, inside his mind. It’s grim, and such a contrast to the rest of the world inside here. He’s just a boy, excited to see a dog [Ed. note: well, Rahne] and impressed by how beautiful the astral fusion of the mutants is. But this is shattered as soon as the child starts crying a dark liquid and turns into a giant monster. The Shadow King has arrived, and it’s going to get ugly.
Stephanie: Can I stop for a moment to yell about just how good the colors are, throughout the issue but especially here? There’s the rainbow power background when Cosmar uses her powers, and then, when things get scary again, that dusty yellow-tan…
LIz: YES! The color is so great in this issue. And this whole fight scene has some amazing moments. The Shadow King attempts to frighten the New Mutants with some representations of their fears, but they say, as one “we are beyond this!”.They’re moving beyond their old fears, and what may have been a threat in the past isn’t something they need to worry about anymore. This is growth. You love to see it.
Stephanie: Not just their fears (we already saw the Brood): the antagonists here (in small panels, off center and covered with creeping dark vines!) are the figures each adult New Mutant fears most, and in each case they’re doubles, evil or deathless alternate selves. Illyana sees the Darkchylde, Dani the Demon Bear, Xi’an her brother, and Jimmy sees Thunderbird. And then as soon as the adult New Mutants defeat their doubles, the Lost Club kids turn into theirs: not the doppelgangers they must defeat, but the symbolic futures their bigger selves will become.
Completing the Circuit
LIz: Cosmar uses her powers to send the Lost Club into GIGA mode. They turn into huge creatures—Scout as a giant honey badger, Anole as a Godzilla type creature, No-Girl as a luminous giant, and Rain Boy as a huge tentacled water blob. It’s very cool, and exactly what a bunch of kids would want to do if given the opportunity.
They’re using their giga powers to try and stall for time and stop the New Mutants and the Shadow King/Rahne from fighting each other. They just want to convince the adults to stop and really think about what’s happening here. They all saw the child that was trapped in here. They just need to allow themselves to admit that there’s an innocent involved in all of this, hidden behind their enemy. The Shadow King mocks their empathy, but they’re getting through to Xi’an.
Stephanie: To be fair, “disguise yourself as a vulnerable child and then destroy your enemies by revealing your true, ineluctably demonic nature” is a classic horror move. I can’t fault Illyana Rasputina for expecting it.
LIz: You’re….not wrong. And Xi’an, of all people, knows that the Shadow King has done horrible things. But she also knows how easy it is to beat someone down and make them submit until they give up, leaving them hopeless and accepting their fate. Xi’an wants to break this horrible cycle of people being hurt, and her authority is enough to get everyone else on board.
Stephanie: Illyana’s the tactical war captain but Xi’an’s the real captain: she’s the one whose psychological insights we trust. She gets it. She’s also the resident expert on Amahl Farouk. And that story she tells about circus elephants… it makes a good guide to action if you, or your friends, or your colleagues, grew up in a traumatic household in the real world. Kids learn, alas, that resistance is futile.
One of the remarkable things about Illyana’s time in Limbo is that, whatever she learned, she didn’t exactly learn that. Also, while I’m on the callback train, do you see any callbacks here to the Asgardian saga (Xi’an has to face her worst self and trek through a desert), and to the epochal Magik mini-series, in which a young Illyana also has to fight her way through a shifting hellish wasteland? But this time, as the late Stephen Sondheim put it, no one is alone.
LIz: This series is so steeped in history of these characters that I don’t think the similarities and callbacks are accidental. And the Shadow King knows the New Mutants, and their weaknesses. It’s easy to get Rahne to fight to protect an innocent child against creepy monsters—and all he needs to do is make her friends look like monsters. These versions of the New Mutants are deeply unsettling. They’re almost like drawings a child would make, with odd proportions and an unsettling emphasis on teeth.
Stephanie: I’d love to see Ayala’s script for these panels! They’re amazing and also very Sienkiewiczesque and now that I’ve read them for the third time I think they make a thematic point: if you’re been through certain kinds of trauma it’s all too easy to see how your friends could be monsters, how you yourself could turn into a monster, It’s harder to see how you, or your friends, or your enemies, could change back.
LIz: Once again, Dani and Rahne’s connection is able to save the day. Dani asks Rahne to look into her heart, and tells her that she loves her. It’s lovely—Rahne goes from snarling to smiling and resting her head on Dani’s hand in just a few panels. It’s beautiful.
Stephanie: (swoons) Yep.
LIz: We get a double page spread of the Shadow King and Amahl Farouk confronting each other. The art here is gorgeous. We see the transition of the child Farouk crying as the Shadow King threatens him, to him standing up for himself and speaking back, to an adult man standing up to a monstrous looking Shadow King and ultimately, fighting him.
Stephanie: So good. I’m sold. I’m especially double-sold– given how hard I’ve been hitting the “Shadow King stories require fatphobia” button when we discussed previous issues– by the way in which, once he’s separated himself psychically from the Shadow King, Amahl Farouk isn’t a thin healthy dude or a typically-bodied, able-bodied child: he’s a big guy, the same size and shape as he was when he embodied the Shadow King. And the Shadow King, for his part, isn’t the Spirit of Threatening Fatness: he’s a creepy demonic power spirit from beyond time who happened to take over the body of someone whose genes meant he’d grow up to be a big dude.
Liz: Yes!
Stephanie: We might have known the story would end here: Rahne addresses her grief over Tier, everyone makes a power circuit together, a book about rescuing kids from their own mistakes becomes a book where the kids save adults and they all save a former kid from the demon that owned him. I love everything about the way it ends.
LIz: And when Farouk wakes up, tears streaming down his face, he’s a whole new man. The New Mutants are ready for a fight, but it won’t be necessary. Things are going to be different now. What are the next steps? Generally, victims of mind control are seen as victims, and aren’t punished for what they’ve done. But as No-Girl pointed out, that doesn’t mean the guilt and mental weight of what you once did doesn’t stay. Farouk has been trapped in his own head for an extremely long time. This adjustment won’t be easy.
X-Traneous Thoughts
- This cover? Menacing. I love it. We love it. But it’s the only appearance of Warlock. Where is best selffriend?
- When the New Mutants appear for the first time the caption box reads “The Green Lagoon, Krakoa?”, and I really like that touch of confusion spreading beyond the characters’ experience and into what the readers see.
- This issue feels like the planned ending for a trade paperback. Fortunately it’s NOT the end for Ayala and Reis on this series. People are gonna be studying this run the way we study and reread, well, the ones this run keeps referencing.
- Fun little callbacks for No-Girl, her astral plane form is a Black Brain Telepath from Powers Of X and her Giga form is the body she had in Generation Hope
- Krakoan reads WHAT IS DESERVED
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.
