Escapade, Scout and Cerebella are trapped in a bad guy’s mansion! Morgan and Rahne may or may not be trapped in the Morlock tunnels under New York City! Dani, Galura and Xuân may or may not be trapped in someone else’s story! Find out who escapes in New Mutants: Lethal Legion #3, written by Charlie Jane Anders, penciled by Enid Balám, inked by Elisabetta D’Amico, colored by Matt Milla and lettered by Travis Lanham.
The Beautiful Ones
The science fiction novelist, critic and editor Charlie Jane Anders has seriously — or not so seriously — come into her own as a writer of comics, or maybe I should say New Mutants comics. Her first arc of New Mutants stories got the serious, and Claremontian, part of the comic right, with a new cast (Escapade and Morgan) and literal trans representation (Escapade and Morgan) and big teenage feelings about a grown-up world that keeps on trying to kill us. What she couldn’t quite get right — ‘cause it’s tough! — was the banter: the goofy, fun part with the Silver Age callbacks, the moments when our heroes appear to be having fun.
Now she’s got it, and so do her characters. She’s also, not by coincidence, brought to the story more legacy characters. Dani and Xuân, the two most together/mature of the OG New Mutants, have come to Count Nefaria’s mansion to look for the mischievous missing mutant teens. They’ve also brought Galura, Xuân’s winged girlfriend. OG New Mutants fans may still see Galura as a bland and necessary substitute for the earlier ships we had for Karma, but Karma herself is happy, and that’s what matters, right? (Right?)
The three of them chat, and Galura says, “You get less boring the more I learn,” with a heart in the speech balloon, and my heart skips a beat too, and then we’re on to lighthearted, fast-paced action. Enid Balám has proven herself exactly right for this gig: expressive, loose, not quite goofy but sometimes close. In New Mutants terms, she’s the heir of Bret Blevins. I’ll take it.
Also Scout falls out a window, and Escapade “borrows” Scout’s claws and her healing factor, and Escapade’s three-color hair is for sure a trans flag. There’s nothing like literal representation, is there? (Also: props to colorist Matt Milla! Everything pops, including Shela’s hair, and nobody looks whitewashed.)
When Mutants Cry
One of the running jokes in Lethal Legion casts Count Nefaria as a self-serious, over-the-hill Silver Age villain obsessed with displaying his powers, and the New Mutants (including the adults) as modern age heroes who don’t take him seriously. Here those jokes land. This issue Dani (last issue it was Escapade) does her best Squirrel Girl impression, trying to defuse a fight before it starts: “Nothing’s happened here that we can’t take back!” The Count’s not having it, but he won’t get his fight right away either, because Dani stops for a phone call: It’s Rahne, who’d really like to join the party. Where’s the party?
Also the Count hates mutants. And, in this book, straight-up anti-mutant bigotry isn’t just murderous: It’s also boring. It bores the New Mutants. It should bore us: We have to stand up against it, of course, and if someone’s a dangerous hate dude, it’s definitely OK to punch him back. “I underestimated how much I’m going to enjoy this,” says Dani, and then she projects his deepest fear: old age. He counters by making Silver Age villain speeches and firing literal lawn darts: “You will regret giving me fuel!” It’s a wonderful piece of ridiculous Superhero Business, no less so because — like everything else in this comic — it also works as allegory: If various cishet white grownups were not literally afraid of people like me, if they did not use their own fears as political fuel, I might be able to visit Florida. But they did, and they do, and I can’t.
I wish I could punch back. Instead I can knock on doors, and be Publicly Visible(™), and see Dani do it. And I can watch Charlie Jane Anders thread the needle: on the one hand, lighthearted humor-driven fights; on the other hand, reminders that they really do want to kill us. Those reminders come as this issue wraps up the series’ B-plot: Rahne and Morgan make their way through the tunnels where — as Morgan finally learns — the Mutant Massacre took place. The duo say goodbye to a friendly reptile, then say hello to a robot with a looping video of J. Jonah Jameson, as Rahne gives a much-needed speech.
“That’s the thing, Morgan: So many people want to kill us. But also everywhere we go, we see reminders of all the times people tried to kill us before. It makes me happy to see young mutants like you. Who don’t need to carry that burden of the past. I sincerely hope you never become like me.” I’m not crying. You’re crying. Why are you crying?
Take Me With U
While Rahne’s been educating Morgan and Dani and friends have been fighting a senior bad guy, Escapade — Shela — has been trying to process her crush, or attachment, or something, to the redoubtable and newly embodied Cerebella. Since there’s no time — there’s never time — during a mission, Shela has drafted, but never sent, an email. No matter how often they try to kill us, we’ll still find time for crushes, and smushes, and romance (unless we’re aro), and that’s part of the point of this issue, too.
Shela’s actual email makes another point: We laugh, and seek Silver Age-style escapist stories, so that we don’t get crushed by the weight of the real. “I’m always scared that if I don’t keep the jokes going,” Shela admits, “people will see me and hate me. … Definitely not sending this email ever.”
I wish she would send it. But not right now, because Cerebella’s busy: She’s discovered a very modern (in comics terms) artifact, a suitcase bomb in Count Nefaria’s vault. Not just a bomb that goes boom: a weapon that could scramble reality, left over from the AXE: Judgment Day storyline. “It’s unstable, and it could tear the whole island apart.” Also, “That weapon is messing with our phones.” Teens without working phones!
What can they do? “We’re on our own,” Escapade thinks. Maybe Escapade can never “make Martha feel better … Maybe I blew my one chance to get to know her.” These thoughts come to us in sad rectangular text boxes over a picture of Martha brooding, looking at her own face in a car window, with falling green leaves. Subtle? No. Effective? 100%.
And then Count Nefaria’s team of costumed baddies — the Lethal Legion: It’s right in the title! — stops the moving car. Be still, my heart, and wait for the next issue. This one might be the best one yet.
X-Traneous Thoughts
- The Lethal Legion now includes the Unicorn, who began as an Iron Man villain. Between that bit and the video clip of JJJ, Charlie Jane Anders is trying hard to tie X-continuity back to other corners of the Marvel Universe. And why not?
- The Weird Engine (the suitcase weapon) comes from “the Zra,” who travel backward in time. Shades of the alphabet pun in Al Ewing’s Defenders.
- Gabby (aka Scout) really likes being called FistiCuss. I wonder if she’ll change her codename again.
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.
