Life in New York is exhausting. Let’s dance. Good thing Dazzler’s in town. Score tickets somehow and queue for the show in NYX #6, written by Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly, penciled by Michael Shelfer, inked by Shelfer and Elisabetta D’Amico, colored by Raúl Angulo and lettered by Joe Sabino.
And we’re back: The mutants-take-Manhattan comic that crashed its first arc hard into a wall last time appears to have refound its footing, with a concert that’s mostly a social get-together and a fight that’s over almost before it begins. It’s a good thing, since it makes room for personalities, among them an old friend of Laura Kinney’s, “the oldest,” as Laura says. Fans old enough to remember the first two rounds of a book called NYX will have seen this one coming, though in-universe no one sees her coming — that’s part of her power set: She’ll disappear all year, or all day, and then come back, if she likes you enough, after midnight.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before anybody sees Dazzler, everyone has to get in the door. That means a delightful series of parallel panels that use the De Luca effect to get fans before, during and after the TSA-style scan-machine checks their bodies for metal or other bad stuff. Laura, of course, has a body full of metal: “pacemaker,” she quips. Fortunately the event staff, presumably hired by Dazzler, buys it, or rather pretends to buy it: In a neat joke, the ticket-takers and velvet-rope handlers, all of them, are Jamie Madrox. I like his power best when it’s played at least in part for laughs (see the version of Jamie from X-Men: Evolution), as here. He knows the NYX kids, but he’s the wrong generation to hang with them. Instead, he’s more or less friends with Dazzler, enough to go on tour and work for her, wearing the six-disc T-shirt version of his Multiple Man costume: heroic, but casual.
Michael Shelfer’s been working for Marvel on fill-ins, one-shots and an Infinity Comic since at least 2018, but this issue seems to be his first as top-billed penciler (a lead penciler would be something different, all about graphite). I hope it’s far from his last: He gets these characters, designing and drawing conversations and casual interactions full of motion, fun and light. Of course this speedy, fluid style fits a quippy, upbeat character like Ms. Marvel, around whom the rest of the cast ebbs and flows. The real genius comes when the style takes on characters we expect to lead darker, harsher lives: The effect is to give them a break, for once. Laura has a good day, and she looks like a feminomenon.
So does our mystery narrator, the figure who’s narrated, off and on, from the shadows since page one.
But I’m getting ahead of myself again. The Disco Dazzler deserves a comic book page full of vivid color, a swiveling, pivoting rainbow, and she gets those things here, thanks to Shelfer, D’Amico and Angulo, especially in the first pages. It’s a whole kaleidoscope.
That art team has turned in a comic that’s fun to look at, fun to reread, a show for a visual medium, one that looks even better compared to last issue’s sped-up nosedive. The comic color-codes its flashbacks, switching from barrel-fire orange to creepy deep green when the mood changes, and then to red wine supernova.
That’s not to say it’s all atmosphere either. There’s dialogue, when it’s needed, but no more than the story needs: Lanzing and Kelly know when to explain (or have Laura explain) and when to let the pictures do the talking. Check out our mystery narrator’s close-up eyes, the bright lights on the crowd, and then the darkness around our heroes as they get hot to go …
… find out who’s invaded the light booth and tried to take over the sound board. I imagine Dazzler would prefer to bring superpowered sound engineers on tour, but maybe she hasn’t been able to find them yet (good sound engineers are in high demand). So it’s no wonder our low-level antagonist, a technopath called Local (as in Local Area Network), can sneak in and take over and try to convert the concert into that classic Silver Age villain scheme, a rock concert that subliminally mind-controls the youth. It’s a ho-hum plan, and our heroes know it — more familiar than “Hotel California.”
Local himself seems almost bored by that plan. He’s more excited about encountering Laura, whom he knew (from her time in his clique) as Scratch. And Mojo, the mastermind behind the plan, who, as always, cares about his ratings, and about whether people keep watching, even more than he cares whether a given evil plan succeeds. Given the state of the nation, it’s a very good time to make your Big Bad Boss a guy from reality TV, and it’s an even better time to give us a fight that feels inconclusive, preliminary, live-to-fight-another-day, now-let’s-get-coffee.
That’s what happens with Local in the sound booth, though not before Mojo makes a horrifying show of reaching into him, via the Mojo-puppet called Mr. Friend, and taking temporary control of Local’s braaaaaiiins. Did you know Mojo could do that? We’ll learn more later. For now, watching him get temporarily beaten back is, well, a guilty pleasure.
This issue leads up, through that fight, to its big reveal, the formerly hidden narrator, who pops into full view not just for us but for the NYX cast of regular characters — Kamala, David, Laura and the rest. Especially Laura, because (did you guess?) it’s Kiden Nixon, the dimension-hopping street kid whose powers come with rainbow effects, last seen in NYX: No Way Home. I missed her, but not as much as her former camp-mate Laura Kinney missed her. The visual peak in the book comes not with a fight scene but in the first exultant, full-body, full-costume image of Kiden, looking very much as she did when dressed up (and not beat up) last time: i.e. half-naked in Manhattan.
Laura and Kiden go off into a pocket dimensional hangout, while the rest of our kids — OK, young adults — dig the show. Pick up this comic book for Laura and Kiden’s reunion, as well as for what the slender plot lets the art do. Maybe even follow the tie-in to the current Dazzler ongoing, if you’re feeling ambitious enough. Notice what’s up with Sophie, who wants to drop the name Cuckoo, now that she’s lost a lot of her telepathic abilities and all her connections to the five-in-one hive mind. Check out what Kiden, and Lanzing and Kelly, have to say about social isolation and the common need to belong: Take away young people’s sense of cohesion, support and shared future for long enough, and they’ll end up joining the manosphere. Or the Mojoverse. You can retreat from them all the way Kiden has: “Other people are a trap,” she repeats. Or you can try to create something better for them, and for all the mutants who want it. Good luck, babe.
X-traneous thoughts
- When was the last time we saw Laura Kinney happy? With a peer, rather than a mentor, a boyfriend or Gabby? On the other hand, has anyone seen Gabby? Anyone, anywhere, since Krakoa fell? Since X Deaths of Wolverine #5?
- David can do superhero stunts, because he’s learned high-level acrobatics. Sophie, on the other hand, has to stay back with Anole, trying to do crowd control. Fun to watch, but not quite a long-term future for David, who believed two issues ago that Empire State University would try to fire him. Anything come of that plot seed? If not, should he really be going to clubs with his students?
- It’s great to see someone draw Mojo as scary and creepy and taking up way too much space without relying on tropes around fatphobia. Instead, this version of Mojo-as-Mr. Friend is all cables, long fingers, terrifyingly broad smiles and too-big eyes. With dialogue to match: He’s true to the original Nocenti vision, and at least as grotesque almost 40 years on.
Buy NYX #6 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.
