John Sublime’s U-Men have captured our squad of mostly trans and mostly teenage mutants in his mostly creepy building, and point-of-view character Escapade has had a vision of her best friend Morgan falling to his death from Sublime’s creepy roof! Time to find out who lives and who dies in New Mutants #33, written by Charlie Jane Anders, art by Alberto Albuquerque with Ro Stein, Ted Brandt, Carlos Lopez, and Tamra Bonvillain, letters by Travis Lanham.
Liz Large: It’s the final New Mutants issue of the year, but will it be the final appearance of some of our New Mutants? I mean, probably not, but we can embrace the concept of high stakes for the holidays, right?
Stephanie Burt: We can embrace the concept of Charlie Jane Anders writing the characters she created (Shela and Morgan) again and again and again and again and again.
Up on the Roof (Reprise)
Liz: We pick up where we left off, with Morgan and Shela arriving at the roof where, according to the prophecy, Morgan will die. I’m going to be honest, this is the least compelling part of this arc for me. Obviously, it would be traumatic to see your friend die, and you would feel guilt— but mutant deaths are temporary, and everyone involved knows this. Morgan’s “I haven’t gotten to do anything yet” is something you would say if you know you’re not going to come back from the dead.
Stephanie: Hard same. It feels like neither Shela nor Morgan realize that they, as mutants, can get resurrected. To be fair, they may not know: the world now knows that at least some mutants can come back from the dead at least some of the time, but there’s no reason to think that Shela has had time to learn the details. On the other hand, we readers know that Morgan could take a bazooka to the brain and as long as the Quiet Council approved his resurrection, he’d be back on his city-loving, Krakoa-loathing feet in a week.
Liz: Shela, at least, knows for sure— and her not telling Morgan seems out of character for their friendship. Speaking of Shela’s friends, Cerebella and Leo are also in danger as they hide from the U-Men. Cerebella has the most to lose here, as John Sublime wants to use her powers for evil— and steal her body. I loved seeing their confidence grow as they plan to use their powers in sync and finally fight back against their enemies.
Stephanie: Me too! That growth was one of the many awesome things I totally loved…. last issue. Here we get… more of it. Go team?
Liz: Unfortunately, Shela isn’t quite as in control of her powers as she thought. Doing a double switch means that she and Cerebella are running on a countdown they don’t even know about. Of course, it comes at the worst possible time, as Cerebella ends up on a precarious-looking ladder and Shela ends up back in the fray, without any psychic abilities to protect her.
Stephanie: Oops.
Liz: Cerebella’s data page is another peek into her journal, and it confirms something I’ve always believed but never seen in canon: holding Storm’s hand will definitely make your troubles go away, or at least decrease.
The Worst At What I Do
Liz: Sublime is just the WORST. Give me a scenery chewing Arcade or a terrifying contingent of the Brood any day over this guy. He makes my skin crawl. Also, nobody should say “beast mode” this much.
Stephanie: John Sublime is like the Red Skull: a villain you have to hate, not just because he has no redeeming qualities but because he incarnates a real-life force for evil so perfectly. He’s the Will to Power in pumped-up humanoid form, and he will do anything to take power away from anyone he doesn’t control. He’s no fun, he has no rules and no moral code, and he doesn’t even wear a costume, just a V-neck T-shirt of death. It’s good for a comic book universe to keep such villains around, and I’m OK with him as the Big Bad here.
Liz: Wolfsbane is having such a terrible time. She’s gone into her multiple wolf form (which I will have to restrain myself from calling beast mode) and is still getting absolutely wrecked by Sublime. Even Cerebella’s destruction of the brain ball doesn’t seem to have an impact, as he simply moves on to his next target: Shela.
Stephanie: Poor Rahne. She’s still a supporting character in someone else’s story, and even when she uses her silliest, fiercest ability– becoming at least four wolves for the price of one– she’s no match for a top tier bad guy like Sublime. Please let her star in something soon? Also: props to Alberto Albuquerque, who keeps all these multi-character fight scenes dynamic and fast-paced, even in the panel with multiple wolves. I still think his inks are too bold, though: they look like stained glass.
Liz: Agreed. I am…not a fan of how any of the faces in this book look. I do really like Shela’s powers in a physical fight. Since she’s bad at fighting, all she needs to do is let the other side beat themselves up. It’s fun and effective!
Stephanie: Well, she does say she’s learning: “I’m no longer the worst at what I do.” Her snappy combat patter has improved, too, though John Sublime’s has gone downhill: when he nabs her he’s pretty much speaking the issue’s subtext. “Hm. So you’re trans and a mutant. Twice the angst, am I right? You crave a place to belong.”
Liz: Unfortunately, her swapping and running only serves to send her directly into the hands of Sublime and his goons. He’s aware of her powers, and has some undoubtedly evil ideas of what they can be used for. He’s so foul and threatening towards her here, playing on her identity to say that she doesn’t have anywhere to belong.
But Shela isn’t alone, and she does have people who understand her. Her friends are going to get her out of here, no matter what it takes. It’s highlighted with another email from Shela to Morgan, and a flashback to when they were kids. They’re family, and they love each other, and nothing will stop that— not a prophecy, and not an evil waffle maker.
Stephanie: Right. And we knew that’s where this issue was going. Shela and Morgan and the rest will defeat Sublime’s will to power through the power of found family. We can’t save ourselves alone, but if we get together and imagine ourselves in the place of others– again, Shela’s power just literalizes what good stories do!– we might be able to save one another. A lot of this ending feels super-predictable, honestly, compared to the beautifully invented set-up. But maybe it’s the kind of predictability that younger or more vulnerable trans readers need to see and hear. It’s not like we’re used to happy endings.
Scared Together
Liz: Sublime is rapidly losing control of this situation, and drags Shela to the roof to try and escape with her. But her friends are absolutely not going to let that happen! They give chase, attacking Sublime with their shared powers— but knock Shela off the roof as collateral damage.
Shela falls, and struggles to control her powers and not switch with Morgan as she does. She flashes back to childhood, as the two best friends decide that they’ll be scared together. Her acceptance of the situation solidifies her resolve, and she stays in her own body….only to be rescued from the plunge by the rest of her team. They’ve got her.
Stephanie: Are you sure she doesn’t switch? The glow around her body suggests that she switches, instinctively, and then switches back. Which would make Destiny’s prophecy technically true: for a moment Morgan in Shela’s place does fall to his death. But then Shela catches on and switches back.
Liz: I think you’re right! Good to know Destiny isn’t losing her touch. As the team recovers, we get a sweet bonding moment as they nerd out and Shela and Cerebella make up after their tense moment in the last issue. It’s nice to see that everyone— even Morgan, who absolutely got dragged into this— is going to survive the experience.
Stephanie: It is nice. The whole issue’s… nice. It’s the payoff for what Anders and Albuquerque and their team built up in the last two issues, and maybe it wouldn’t be fair to ask for more, when they’ve already given us so much. Would it? I’m not going to ask for more in the sense of literary originality, because this issue feels so much like they just needed to land the plane, so it could take off again and go elsewhere. Still, there’s not much here that we didn’t see coming. Sometimes Chekhov’s gun just has to go off.
I am going to ask for more, though, in a way that’s not about literary subtlety, and all about how powers work: unless his mutation comes with major limits we know nothing about, Morgan has a very powerful combat ability, even though he thinks he doesn’t. He saves the day by turning bad drugs to good chocolate, in a twist that I had hoped to see, but that’s just a taste (pun intended) of what he can do. Imagine breaking into a shady gun store and turning the firearms into chocolate. Or all the pipelines and the offshore oil rigs. Or, if you want to stay with classic superhero business, any villain who depends on technology or armor or a prop, like a magic wand, might come within Morgan’s reach and find their tools of villainy suddenly 60% cacao and zero precent effective. Morgan might not want to use his power that way, but he ought to know that he could.
Liz: That’s true. The collar that Sublime forces onto Shela could have been a snack instead of falling off for some unclear reason, and it would have made a lot more sense!
Shela still has one more task, and it is giving some meddling mutants a piece of her mind. It turns out that perhaps the vision wasn’t quite as dire as it was made out to be by Destiny and Emma Frost when they approached Shela. She absolutely lets them have it for treating her like this and tricking her, but in the end, they get what they want: Shela, angry and determined to master the full potential and use of her powers.
Stephanie: And, probably, on a Krakoa-based X-team, yet.
X-Traneous Thoughts
- Holy misleading cover, Batman. Three of the seven mutants pictured don’t even appear in the book.
- Time Archer, who can only shoot arrows into the past, sounds very fun. (He’s a character in a story that only the characters in our story can read, like “Camp Pining Hearts” in “Steven Universe.” But I want to read his tales too.)
- I continue to love Escapade’s costume, not so much for the yellow jumpsuit as for the tailored aquamarine blazer with white lapels that she wears over top of it. Not femme, not butch, all her.
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.
