Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad mutant Manuel de la Rocha staged a fight between his ally Julian Keller and Jersey City’s favorite do-gooder, Ms. Marvel, to provoke a crackdown on mutants, so that radicalized, even-more-oppressed mutants would support Manuel’s fake revolution. See whether his evil plan works in NYX #5, written by Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly, drawn by Francesco Mortarino, inked by Elisabetta D’Amico, colored by Raúl Angulo and lettered by Joe Sabino.
Yeah, no. Just no.
Four issues of solid character work, slow builds, fakeouts and heel turns seemed — to me, an NYX supporter until today — like they could build to a meaningful conflict, a difficult resolution, a modus vivendi for our troubled young-adult mutants, or a tough lesson learned.
Instead, this arc about New York City and policing, hate crimes and backlash, allyship and interest-group politics, students and professors, ends with a scene that belongs — alas — in the recycling bin of history. Bigotry, hatred and indifference to out-groups’ welfare? Political figures who take power based on hate? Social movements whose platform says we should incarcerate and expel the outsiders, who never belonged here anyway, who don’t even count as human?
Nothing to worry about, at least in the world of NYX: The evil comes not from history, habit, public opinion, human nature or inflation, but from one bad guy (with telepathic powers) and his (very beatable) scheme. Once he’s exposed (and depowered), human elected officials see the light, and sweet tolerance can return. Tom Taylor’s X-Men Red — which built to a similar optimistic conclusion — had the excuse of running in 2018-19. Lanzing and Kelly have had the misfortune to write a comic book that hit the retail racks in November 2024, in which an achingly well-intentioned woman named Kamala promises to bring Americans together on a mission of acceptance and tolerance to save the day. Talk about your bad timing.
Mortarino, D’Amico, Lanzing and Kelly open on Sophie Cuckoo, this issue’s narrator, contemplating the scheme she and her sisters and Manuel de la Rocha have hatched: “It’s practically a party in Manuel’s penthouse” as his crew of mutant supremacists “watch the humans fall right into the trap.” The trap being “deportation” and “mutant exclusion zones” and a government crackdown on mutants. Humans will “vote themselves into their own downfall,” Empath believes, by provoking a mutant revolution. “I should be proud,” Sophie thinks; after all, she’s the sister who befriended, and then betrayed, Kamala Khan to set the plot in motion. “But I just keep thinking about the ashes.”
In fact — as long, flat panels of crowd scenes show — Sophie’s thought so hard that she’s changed her mind: She’s “very, very sorry” she set Kamala up, and so she’s shown up where Kamala and her friends gather (David Alleyne’s penthouse) to telepathically disperse the anti-mutant mob. Sophie tells Kamala, in what looks almost like a love scene — they shine! they gleam! — that she’s “serious about switching sides for real.” And we’re on.
Kamala leads a public campaign (more bright, flat, crowded panels, with voiceover boxes) designed to “pull in every human with two brain cells in their head, to “let them know exactly what Empath’s planning … We’re gonna be loud. We’re gonna be bold. We’re gonna be fearless … And we’re gonna remind [Empath] just how big this city really is.” Even bigger than Jersey City (See Ms. Marvel no. 13, from 2016).
Kamala and Sophie even lead a parade, with a bullhorn and giant placards, in what must be Central Park. One placard reads “Human Mutant Alliance.” Another says “Mutants Are Humans Too.” One in Krakoan appears to say “Everywhere Is Krakoa Now,” although the art gets the Krakoan “N” wrong: Literally it says “Everywhere Is Krakoa Ow,” which feels about right. “Change can’t happen without critical mass,” says the normally prudent Professor David Alleyne, supporting the pro-mutant rally as it confronts the bigoted mob.
Then Sophie uses the telepathic bond she shares with her sisters to burn out Manuel’s powers, liberating the politicians he’s controlled. Some of the politicians then switch sides, too. “If we stand together,” Kamala says (through a bullhorn), “we can be a city for everyone.” And the anti-mutant bill in the City Council goes down, 22-29. Solidarity wins. Very quickly. Public opinion, apparently, changes in the time that it takes Kamala to finish a speech. Welcome to Marvel New York. (We do not hear from its mayor.)
Icing on the cake: Laura Kinney slices up a Purifier’s pistol, without harming the man himself. Obligatory not-everything-comes-up-roses moment: Sophie, in taking out Manuel, has lost her own telepathic powers. It’s almost like some kind of cosmic payback for how she misused them before. And of course, cape comics being cape comics, she’s going to get them back again. The last page even gives us an elegant sunset over a mutant-friendly New York, with graffiti art everywhere, as if the city really could become the sanctuary promised in certain songs. (To be fair, it’s still fun, and it still welcomes weirdos, but it’s not the metaphor for America that this comic implies, and it’s hard to celebrate now.)
For the NYX crew, there’s a next issue featuring Dazzler. I care about David, and Laura, and even Kamala, and the character work in previous issues, more than enough to stick around for that. Also I’d rather like comics than dislike them. (I thought about just not turning in this review. Then I decided that my favorite mutants — and their readers — deserve the attention, so that we could do better next time.)
As for those readers, in this world, as of this issue: We come to X-comics either for spectacle, adventure and escapism, or for solidarity, sympathy and a chance to see how our favorite characters navigate a world that (say it together now) hates and fears us. Previous issues in this very series offered both. This one gives neither, just a glib happy ending in which democracy, common sense and human decency prevail, and malefactors of great wealth are no sooner exposed than discredited and shown the door. Sometimes that happens. It’s happened before. But not this suddenly. And not this year.
Buy NYX #5 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.
