Despite the destruction of the Krakoan dream, Professor David Alleyne — codename Prodigy — finally has something he wants to keep: tenure at Empire State University, where he’s teaching recent mutant history to a mixed, and suspicious, class. In that class: the redoubtable Kamala Khan, New York City’s most sympathetic (and only public) mutant superhero. In the streets: the mutant menace calling himself the Krakoan. On the table: the normal life David holds dear. Will he give it up to save his peers? Find out in NYX #4, written by Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly, drawn by Enid Balám, colored by Raúl Angulo and lettered by Joe Sabino.
NYX looked at the start like a Kamala Khan vehicle, and it’s kept on following Kamala: Jersey City’s favorite Inhuman-and-mutant now attends Empire State University, part of a student mutant minority, while protecting the city at night, checking in with her non-super birth family and wondering whether her post-teenage life will ever take her anywhere new. Like Spider-Man (Peter Parker) decades back, or Spider-Man (Miles Morales) recently, or Spider-Gwen right now. She’s made friends with a morally dubious classmate — in this case, the telepathic Sophie Cuckoo — who’s secretly working with her enemies, in this case a destabilizing terror gang of mutant provocateurs, led by the grumpy Hellion (Julian Keller), dressed up as The Krakoan, an agent of vengeance. And she (Kamala Khan, not Sophie Cuckoo) has uncovered Keller’s next plan to damage Manhattan infrastructure. She’ll spring into action to stop him once again.
So far, so much fun, and so much in the wheelhouse of Enid Balám, who at this point specializes in drawing plucky young women with an eye for danger (See his work on the recent Kate Bishop series). Balám’s still improving, too: The characters here, and the cityscapes too, feel more solid and more confident, less distractingly cartoony, than they did in his earlier books, especially in the reliably fun, and visually varied, fight scenes.
But NYX isn’t really a Kamala vehicle. Nor is it a solo book on the model of all those continuing series for Spiders. It’s the kind of series — or miniseries; we’ll see how it sells — that focuses on one character per issue. Last time out we got Anole, who barely shows up in this one. Now it’s Prodigy, and if Lanzing and Kelly keep writing him this well, he’ll soon be one of the few male pop-culture characters in whom I see myself, alongside Scott Summers (sometimes) and Kermit the Frog. This book gets him — his hesitancies, his scholarly bent, his need for a partner (a hot one, with a rough, dark beard!) — just right.
David’s mutant power involves learning, or “borrowing,” other people’s knowledge and skills: If he’s standing next to Sabrina Carpenter, he can write songs like Sabrina Carpenter, and sing them with her vocal skills, although he won’t possess her voice. If he’s standing next to Nightcrawler, he can’t teleport, but he’ll be able to do acrobatic circus stunts, in combat or under the Big Top. (He’ll also know a lot about Errol Flynn.)
David could have made a post-Krakoan living as an adventurer (see also: Taskmaster), but he’d rather be a professor, teaching the stuff he’s actually researched and thus knows even when nobody’s nearby. What stuff? Mutant history, with a side of mutant biology and mutant political theory. That’s what he lectures on; that’s what he thinks about. Xavier’s dream of coexistence, first in the closet, eventually in the open? Doesn’t look great right now. Magneto’s sometime goal of mutant rule? No thank you. The Krakoan ideal of a separate nation? Fun while it lasted. Now what? Hatred and fear. “If we fight for ourselves, we’re an evil brotherhood. If we fight for humans, we’re a defunct dream.” Alleyne, in character, writes these ideas down; the captions show scraps from his notebook. In theory, there’s no solution to this dilemma: no way for mutants, together, to stay safe and live.
In practice, and after some dithering and digressing and thinking he’d rather just stay safe in his ESU office, David decides to join the fight. In a heroic uniform, with neato yellow goggles. Lanzing and Kelly remember — attention, Academy X fans! — that Keller and the Cuckoos and Prodigy went to school together: This particular fight keeps up their old school rivalries, and the banter reflects them. Local news covers it this way: “ESU professor confronts mutant massacre?” Note the question mark. Is he a hero? Has he violated academic freedom, or academic neutrality, or academic something? Will ESU take away his tenure and fire him (as he expects)? (Speaking of which: Is ESU public, like CUNY and SUNY, or private like NYU, whose real-world site ESU shares?)
Balám draws a wonderful set of fight scenes, in the rain, as projectiles ricochet, Manhattan’s verticals turn into tilting diagonals and the floating heads of the telepathic Cuckoos confront David with their own psychic speech balloons. After the fight we watch a discouraged, conflicted Sophie and a frustrated Kamala and a forever troubled political environment, even when (for now) the good guys win. “We’re back in the binary,” David writes to himself. “A trap set by ‘evil’ for ‘good,’” “designed to ensnare any mutant who tried.”
Isn’t that always the way? And yet. The fights go on. Before you can disassemble the structural trap, you have to defeat the immediate threat, the people who want to cause riots, or take down a city, or make a point by outlawing or killing or expelling you and your kind. So David realizes, leaving his office to fight, and leaping bravely through the air between the buildings despite his lack (as Julian says) of real powers. David’s made up his mind to do what he can. In public. To set an example, work with whatever allies he gets, “and reignite the dream.”
I write this review of a superhero comic book on Oct. 31, 2024. The fights we believed had ended just keep going on, and not just in the Marvel Universe. If you’re not sure where to vote, or whether you’re registered to vote, or whether you can register to vote on Election Day (which some states allow you to do), you can find out here: iwillvote.com.
Buy NYX #4 here. (Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, ComicsXF may earn from qualifying purchases.)
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.
