Escapade, who can switch bodies with anyone (temporarily), has moved to Krakoa (maybe just temporarily). Cerebella, who now has a body (maybe permanently!), feels bored and sad. How about they do a caper together? The New Mutants return with a new creative team in New Mutants: Lethal Legion #1 by writer Charlie Jane Anders, artist Enid Balám, inker Elisabetta D’Amico, colorist Matt Milla and letterer Travis Lanham.
Liz Large: It’s been months since we last saw our newest mutants. Stephanie, are you excited about this relaunch?
Stephanie Burt: Very much so. I knew Charlie Jane Anders from her exciting science fiction stories, and from her book about how to write fiction without punching yourself in the face. She created Escapade and Morgan, who make up two-fifths of this new team, in the last arc of the last volume of New Mutants, so I know what we’re getting in terms of the characters. Enid Balám drew the Kate Bishop miniseries we covered last year. I’m expecting a good — and whimsical — match.
Liz: Another thing getting me excited is that this issue is titled “Vampire Heist,” which feels like two great things that will go great together.
Adventures in Moving
Liz: The U-Men are back! I for one have NOT missed them as much as I missed the kids over the break. In their last appearance, the U-Men had kidnapped the New Mutants to use in their ongoing plans to steal mutant powers for themselves. But in the course of their escape, the team managed to get information about additional bases the U-Men are using to capture and torture other mutants, and so it’s time for a mission.
Stephanie: New series and new teams are best introduced in action, against foes who let them demonstrate their powers, and their teamwork. This opening scene checks all those boxes, plus they’re bad guys everyone hates, and they’re bad guys whom Anders has written before. Low degree of difficulty here, but high execution score. I’m having fun.
Liz: I know the team fails their stealth check pretty spectacularly, but it means we get to see Rahne become multiple wolves, which is my favorite use of her powers.
Stephanie: It’s her silliest power. It makes no sense for a non-magical mutant. Liz, should I go read the arc where she acquired this power? I’ve been warned against it.
Liz: I think this is an instance where ignorance may be bliss.
Stephanie: On the other hand, I’m admiring the detail work from Anders and from Balám, D’Amico and Miller. The U-Men facility (U-Hall?) is called Halcyon Academy, which may or may not refer to the teen superhero role-playing game Masks, which takes place in Halcyon City (We’re covering it next on our podcast!). Escapade’s narration boxes feel spot-on: Anders gets her voice. And Balám draws a well-paced fight in a facility, with diagonal cutaways, architectural diagrams and dynamic group scenes.
Liz: Cerebella is having a tough time, and sort of beating herself up for it. It’s a really relatable moment — when something awful ends, sometimes it can feel like you’re meant to just get up, move on and be happy that it’s all in the past. But that’s not how trauma, or the brain, works. Considering that, like she says, Cerebella is also dealing with having a body (and all the hormones and impulses that includes) for the first time in a long time, it’s gotta be even harder for her.
Stephanie: Cerebella’s getting better and better as a character, honestly. Her thing was not having a body for so long that having a body became her goal. And now she has one, and Escapade wants to cheer her up, which turns out to be unexpectedly hard. How does it feel to get what you want and discover it’s not a panacea? Escapade is canonically a trans girl, of course, but she also brings out trans metaphors whenever she interacts with another New Mutant. In this case it’s dissociation and derealization. Once you start living in your body, owning your memories and acknowledging your sensations — when you’re used to not living in your body, to feeling like it doesn’t belong with you — you find you have a lot of work to do. Pain is real. Your heart beats. Your eyelids go up and down.
“I keep forgetting I need water,” Cerebella says. I can relate.
Shopping Is Fun
Liz: Being a member of a hero team is cool, but it absolutely sucks to be a non-hero in their life. If you’re not getting kidnapped or attacked, you’re getting ignored in favor of saving the world or whatever drama some other spandex-clad jerk is starting.
Stephanie: Morgan never asked to be a mutant, never asked to be transmasculine, never asked for anything other than Shela’s unflagging loyalty as his best friend. Now Shela’s on Krakoa, and Morgan’s feeling understandably abandoned.
Liz: I really feel for Morgan here. The text messages he’s sending Shela, only to get zero response, are really sad. I know she’s busy (see below for how busy!), but come on. At least tell your friend you can’t talk right now!
Stephanie: I agree — though to be fair to Shela we don’t get a time stamp on these texts: Morgan’s got enough anxiety in him that maybe they all arrived in one 10-minute span.
Liz, what do you think of Balám’s figure drawing here? I honestly don’t like it. Rahne’s busty and tall, and Morgan’s got a squared-off chin like Dick Tracy, and he could pass for a white guy, which I’m pretty sure he’s not — he had darker skin in his first appearance. Great wardrobe, though. Bow ties!
Liz: I agree — but I do really like the outfits. On a positive note, I like seeing this side of Rahne. She’s been all over the place lately, for justified reasons, and seeing her check in on a younger mutant who’s having a rough time is really sweet.
Stephanie: Hard agree. She used to be the youngest, and the most troubled, or the most self-defeating, member of the original New Mutants. So she’s the ideal go-between or ambassador for young mutants now who are struggling with who they are and who else they can be.
“When did you last go outside?” That’s the right question. If you can — and sometimes you can’t — get your sad friend somewhere out of the house!
Liz: Poor Morgan, he just wants to pick out some cool outfits but ends up dragged into the sewers, known home to all manner of beasties. Rahne, meeting a sewer reptile is not everyone’s idea of a fun, relaxing day!
Stephanie: She never promised relaxation. She’s also got a hidden agenda: show Morgan that he can do something in a fight. We’ve talked before about whether he’s got powers that he could ever use in combat. I say yes, and he says no. Nor does he use his chocolate creation this issue. I think Rahne wants to show him he can get something done, even if he chooses to do it entirely and only in the United States, where he chooses to stay — and Rahne’s sense of action, power and potential has to do with superpowers, not with Morgan’s own point of pride, his cyber-skills.
Liz: Morgan makes some very valid points about Krakoa, nationalism, and how fighting and dying and being resurrected for more fighting, forever, is basically hell. (Hey, that’s a pretty good summary of being a character in comics!) What do you think of his stance here, versus Rahne’s “life is fighting” stance?
Stephanie: I respect and I disagree with them both. Morgan’s clearly been reading advanced-left political thought of some kind. So has Shela, who wants to undermine private property: They’ve started a two-person book club. Good for them. I think Morgan thinks that national identities and nation-states are always bad, per se, and it’s worse when the nation-state’s always under threat, because ethnic and national identities and self-defense — which really means constant preparation for counterattack — all get bound up together. Rahne counters that mutants can’t “have a peaceful life anyway,” no matter how much they assimilate. If you don’t want pogroms, you just have to fight back. As we’ve said here before, it’s Zionism vs. anti-Zionism, right down to “nobody else speaks your new/retooled language,” except that Krakoa has no Palestinians to displace, mistreat, segregate or exclude.
I support Rahne’s position — mutants need a safe space, which means a defensible space. I also think she’s a bad debater. Krakoa has who knows how many mutants living there now — tens of thousands? Millions? — and most of them aren’t on combat-based teams. There’s no military draft. Morgan could move there tomorrow and never lift a finger to defend himself if that’s what he wants. But he’s against the very idea of the place. So he’s planning to stay in the United States, where the state can’t defend him. No wonder Rahne wants to equip him with weapons and armor.
Romantic Heist for Two (and a Friend)
Liz: Shela is focusing her supportive energies on Cerebella, in the other storyline of this issue. It starts off delightfully awkwardly, and I like seeing Shela’s inner monologue panic over HOW to show she’s actively paying attention. Listening is harder than talking, she’s right! (Talking is also hard.)
Stephanie: Especially if you’re talking about yourself, and you’re not yet used to having a self.
Liz: Their heist fantasy is really cute, and the escalation from “let’s frame Captain America” to “we’ll have to do a spy-movie style dance while I whisper in your ear” definitely takes it into date territory.
Stephanie: As Shela says, they’re totally gonna date.
Liz: But you know what doesn’t make for a good date? Gabby Kinney tagging along. I love her, but girl, read the room. Things quickly transform from date to disguising themselves as aspiring goons for Count Nefaria, who’s holding not-suspicious-at-all tryouts.
Stephanie: OK, first, I love Gabby too, but nothing in her history of hijinks, heroics and tagalong kid-sister antics makes me think she has ever read a room, unless she’s attempting to steal something from said room. And what’s a better first date than helping the world’s most enthusiastically violent tween in a game of dress-up? “I want shoulder pads. And a skull face.” Yes!
Liz: The dressing up is one of the best and most important parts of any heist!
Stephanie: Second, we should do a Count Nefaria primer. I never think about him unless I must, but he’s appeared in a lot of comics. He began as a Silver Age villain who fought the Avengers and then the X-Men during the Roy Thomas/Werner Roth era — nobody’s favorite. Recently he’s appeared in a ton of Spider-stories that I absolutely would read if you paid me. X-fans know him best, or worst, perhaps, as the figure responsible for the death of John Proudstar, Thunderbird, in X-Men #95, plotted by Len Wein and scripted by a very young Chris Claremont. So there’s some history. Anders treats him, so far, as a ridicule-worthy bad guy out of Mystery Men, an excuse for an over-the-top masquerade. I think the rule for this series is that the quiet moments of conversation among mutants will stay serious and consequential, and the action sequences are going to be mostly goofy Silver Age nonsense. I like it.
Liz: I enjoy every tidbit we get from Shela about her previous time as a criminal. She’s an expert at dressing up as a caterer and sneaking into places, and as anyone who’s watched a heist movie knows, that’s the number one skill you need to sneak in somewhere!
Stephanie: I would counter that the best thing you can bring to a heist is plot armor. Maybe that’s not a skill? I love everything here. Especially the dress-up sequence, which counterpoints with Morgan’s would-be shopping expedition. He wishes Rahne could take him to Dapper Boy, instead of fighting a giant alligator-dragon at a neglected lab full of costume tech. Scout wants all the costume tech she can get. She ends up with leather shorts, spiked leather sleeves and an Iron Fist-style mask. Escapade dresses up as some kind of cross between a Power Ranger and Stryfe. Balám and, especially, colorist Matt Milla push all the right buttons — you have to see it to disbelieve it.
Liz: I love an outfit montage, and the disguises of “Blaster Dame” (Shela) and “Fisticuss” (Gabby) are very fun. Like Cerebella says, there is absolutely no way this can go wrong. Unless there is, as we learn that the next issue in this arc is titled “TERRIBLE DECISIONS.” But surely that can’t mean this plan, right!
X-Traneous Thoughts
- “Count Nefaria does not reimburse mileage” is EXTREMELY funny to me. I enjoy the whole henchman tryout poster, actually.
- The X-costume closet scene — a full-page panel, the final art page — comes with all kinds of in-jokes strewn about: Laura Kinney’s very first, tooth-necklace costume (I think, though it’s on a male mannequin); Scott’s Bronze Age visor; Scott’s bandolier from the 1990s/Animated Series costume; and, on the floor, Jonathan the actual wolverine. I hope we’ll see him again and again.
- Speaking of which, does anyone recognize the yellow jumpsuit with the black cat, or wolverine, over the left breast? I guess it’s a Laura Kinney uniform, but where and when did she wear it?
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.
