New Mutants #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers are for the digital edition.
THE NEW MUTANTS: This is, technically, the fourth volume of New Mutants. The first is the original series which ran from 1983 to 1991 and featured the X-Men’s junior team. The second ran from 2003-4 and featured one of the trainee classes from the Morrison-era school – it’s the one that introduced characters like Elixir and Hellion. Volume 3, a reunion of the original team, ran for 50 issues between 2009 and 2012 (very few of which, to be honest, have stuck in the mind).
There’s also a few minis, all of which also feature versions of the original line-up. The launch of New Mutants in 1983 was effectively the point where the X-Men became a franchise. It’s interesting that this is the X-book that gets its opening arc co-written by Jonathan Hickman, along with regular writer Ed Brisson – though it’s this week’s X-Force that gets the deluxe edition treatment and seems to have the more important plot points. Hickman previously wrote both Cannonball and Sunspot in his Avengers run which, to be honest, I still haven’t read. Hickman’s idiosyncratic style of emphasis is quite noticeable in this issue’s dialogue.
COVER / PAGE 1: The cast for this series, mostly comprising classic New Mutants characters from the original line-up. That’s Mirage and Cypher at the top, Karma, Chamber and Wolfsbane on the next tier down, and Mondo, Magik and Sunspot at the bottom. Chamber and Mondo both come from Generation X, a later trainee book. They’re a slightly odd inclusion here, because the New Mutants long since outgrew their original role as the junior team, and what holds them together these days is basically a sense of family from that period of their lives; Chamber and Mondo don’t form part of that family.
While Karma, Mirage and Wolfsbane are wearing versions of the classic black and yellow X-Men uniform, they’ve dropped the X-Men logo itself. Magik, always a slightly more tentative team player, sticks with her Chris Bachalo costume.
PAGES 2-4: Wolfsbane recalls being reborn into the Krakoan utopia.
Wolfsbane. Wolfsbane was one of the many characters killed during Matthew Rosenberg’s run, immediately prior to House of X – specifically, see Uncanny X-Men vol 5 #17. Naturally, she’s been brought straight back. For what it’s worth, the flashback we see here doesn’t seem to match the way the process was shown in House of X #5 – in that issue, the cloned X-Men emerge from their pods, and then Xavier downloads their minds back into them. Wolfsbane seems to emerge already formed. Chances are it’s just an error, or maybe Xavier has just continued to refine the process since HoX #5.
Krakoa. Once again, everything is for the best in this best of all possible islands. Since everyone seems to find the place wonderfully utopian, presumably this takes place before X-Force #1.
Karma. Xi’an Coy Manh was also last seen in the Rosenberg run, also as a member of the makeshift X-Men team. She quit in Uncanny X-Men #18 to spend more time with her family. Her prosthetic leg is from injuries suffered in battle in New Mutants vol 3 #12 (part of the Second Coming crossover), but it does make her an unusual example of a character on Krakoa who is carting significant amounts of technology around.
PAGES 5-7: The recap page and the credits, all as normal. The small print reads “Let’s go to space, good times in space.” The title is “The Sextant”, which is explained later in the issue. A sextant is a sixth of a circle, or a measuring device of that size.
PAGES 8-10: Cypher experiments with getting Mondo to commune directly with Krakoa, with mixed results.
Cypher. He’s been very prominent in the Hickman run so far, as the one character who can speak directly with Krakoa thanks to his language powers. Telepathy works on Krakoa up to a point, and Cypher has apparently built some interfaces for others, but clearly he’s hoping for a better solution.
Mondo. Mondo is an odd character with the power to absorb matter into his body and take on some of its properties until eventually he consumes it. He comes from the 90s series Generation X. However, the “Mondo” who appeared as a member of that team was eventually exposed in Generation X #60 as a duplicate created by Black Tom Cassidy; the real Mondo appeared prominently in that storyline, but it’s pretty much his only significant appearance aside from a few later cameos. He’s really being written here in line with the personality his impostor showed in earlier issues of Generation X. He has no previous history with the New Mutants, though you can see why Cypher might hope his powers would be useful.
Krakoa. Krakoa can manifest through Mondo’s body, though he “doesn’t like it very much” and considers it “a bad thing”. Since he still speaks his own language, and Mondo’s mind is locked out while Krakoa is control, this doesn’t achieve what Cypher was hoping for. But remember that in Powers of X we saw an older Krakoa occupying Cypher’s body, which seems similar to what’s going on here.
PAGES 10-14. Mirage, Sunspot, Magik, Wolfsbane, Chamber, Cypher and Mondo have coffee and decide to go into space to get Cannonball back.
The Akademos Habitat. We’ve seen this name before, and it seems to be simply a residential area of Krakoa. The identical houses are presumably grown from the pods we’ve seen mentioned before. This neighbourhood seems to be grouped into six parts, which might explain why it’s called the sextant. There’s some sort of public building in the middle, which might be important in the future. The New Mutants seem to be sharing a home together.
The sixth generation of homo superior. Mirage seems to mean this very figuratively (and really more closely linked to the narrative than to anything within the Marvel Universe). Her six generations of mutant society are (1) ancient mutants like Apocalypse; (2) the modern elders, like Professor X and Magneto; (3) the era of the Silver Age X-Men; (4) the era of widespread mutant numbers; (5) the first mutant communities, i.e. the X-Men’s school turning into a real large-scale boarding school in Grant Morrison’s run; and (6) Krakoa. Sunspot puts the New Mutants at stage 5, though surely they’re really stage 4.
Mirage’s claim here – in line with good Krakoan patriotism – is that the preceding incarnation failed because they were trying to build mutant communities using human institutions; mutants can only make real progress by building their own culture. It’s a mutant version of Audre Lorde’s “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” argument.
Cameos. We see a number of mutants in passing as Sunspot and Mirage walk through the Sextant. The clearly recognisable ones:
- Glob Herman, talking to some guy with a blue head and a stick.
- Monet St Croix, who we saw in House of X, along with two small child versions of Penance. These are presumably Monet’s younger sisters Claudette St Croix and Nicole St Croix, who have gained the power to turn into Penance at will in the same way that Monet showed in House of X.
- The blonde guy wearing a Hellions uniform and talking to a group of other characters is Bevatron. He’s about as obscure as X-Men villains get – he’s a late-period member of the original Hellions who debuted in New Warriors vol 1 #9 (1991), just in time for the entire team to be killed off in Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #281 (er… 1991). Evidently he’s been restored from back up.
- The woman in the niqab is Dust, who’s been shown on Krakoa before.
- The big rock guy is, of course, Rockslide.
Fauna. Credited here with making the coffee beans, Fauna is the green kid who was seen travelling to Krakoa in House of X #1. Quite why a character called Fauna has got flora-based abilities is less than clear, although maybe that’s what Mondo is hinting at in suggesting that there’s something dodgy about this stuff. It seems to taste good, though.
Chamber. Chamber was another casualty of the Rosenberg bloodbath, dying in Uncanny X-Men vol 5 #18. Evidently he’s been restored from back up, but it seems that this body, just like the previous one, couldn’t handle the amount of power it was trying to contain, and has blown a big hole in his front, covered up here by bandages. He still enjoys the smell of coffee.
Magik was in the X-Men at the end of the Rosenberg run, and there’s not much to say about her. That’s her magic sword stuck in a tree trunk.
Cannonball. The founding New Mutants were Mirage (as Psyche), Sunspot, Karma, Wolfsbane and Cannonball. Cannonball isn’t here because he married Smasher and settled down in the Shi’ar Empire during Hickman’s Avengers run. (By the way, the other characters who joined the New Mutants during their classic run – before they merged with the X-Factor trainees – were Cypher, Warlock, Magik and Magma. Cypher and Magik are here, Warlock is represented as a part of Cypher, but Magma is conspicuously absent. She was in the Age of X-Man crossover, so there’s no obvious reason for her to be missing.)
PAGES 15-18. The New Mutants hitch a lift to the Shi’ar Empire with the Starjammers. The Starjammers’ Krakoan gate is already causing trouble.
The Starjammers. We saw them visit the X-Men, and get their Krakoan gate, in X-Men #1. As previously mentioned, they’re interstellar pirates.
The Shi’ar Empire. Mentioned repeatedly in Hickman’s run to date, and evidently going to be important somewhere along the line – so this story may not be quite the side jaunt that it first appears.
Krakoa. More warning signs that all is not as it seems with Krakoa. Mondo finds it “itchy” to absorb bits of Krakoa and actively wants rid of it. Cypher has brought a gateway flower with him – presumably so that they can get back again, since the Starjammers are only taking them some of the way – and it seems to be magnetically drawn to the existing gateway. (Even allowing for this, it’s surprising that someone as important to the whole Krakoan project as Cypher was allowed to go into space – his absence, and the other X-Men’s inability to communicate with Krakoa Prime, might matter.) More worrying yet, the Krakoan gateway wants to terraform the garden around it, and it’s killing the Starjammers’ other plants. Not sinister at all! Mondo absorbs the return flower in order to keep it safe, in the broadest possible sense of “safe”.
PAGES 19-21. Everyone watches Magik sparring with Raza, and she cuts off his robot arm.
They’re pirates, this is the kind of thing they do. Although as we’ll see at the end of the issue, the New Mutants are starting to seriously annoy the Starjammers by this point.
PAGE 22. The Starjammers arrive at the Benevolence space station.
We find out more about Benevolence in a couple of pages time. It seems to be new. EDIT: As pointed out in the comments, Benevolence was mentioned in Powers of X #1 as the place where around 8,000 mutants were living in the “Year 100” timeline. It was described in that issue as “a converted transit station located on the fringe of Shi’ar space where it has long served as a buffer between the Empire and the wild space spawning grounds of Brood breeding territory.”
“A very reputable space lawyer.” More of this guy at the end of the issue.
PAGE 23. Data page in the form of the Starjammers’ wanted poster. The members are listed bottom left – Cr’reee, the one with the tiny price on his head, is Ch’od’s pet. The comedy list of crimes is self-explanatory.
“Assault (Phermonal)” presumably has something to do with Hepzibah, whose people communicate by smell. The name Hepzibah was supposedly given to her by Corsair, because he couldn’t pronounce her real name (see: communicate by smell). It’s a reference to the character of the same name from the Pogo comic strip, the idea being that they’re both skunk women.
PAGE 24. Data page about Benevolence. Contrary to what the Starjammers are telling the New Mutants, it’s a repository for material too dangerous to be allowed anywhere near the Shi’ar Empire proper.
The King Egg. A ludicrously over the top piece of foreshadowing (which is the joke, of course). In particular, the King Egg should apparently be kept clear of alien biomes (like the Starjammers have) and “interstellar pheromone production” (which is presumably what Hepzibah does, I guess). “Superguardian protocols” means calling out the Shi’ar Imperial Guard, which is where Cannonball might come into all this.
PAGES 25-35. The New Mutants ignore the Starjammers’ instruction to stay behind, go exploring, and realise the Starjammers were lying to them. The Starjammers have completely lost patience with these clowns, so they take the King Egg and dump the New Mutants with the Shi’ar authorities.
Largely self-explanatory, this. Part of Corsair’s miscalculation is that in trying to trick the New Mutants into staying on the ship, he tells a tale so awful that the New Mutants, as good little heroes, feel obliged to try and help. The Starjammers, meanwhile, are actually acting like the pirates that they’re always claimed to be, even though in practice they’re usually closer to swashbuckling heroes. They also seem to be in something of a rush to meet their employer, which is another reason why they leave the New Mutants to it. Their destination, Pshor Prime, is new.
“Judgy fundamentalists.” Corsair seems to make up this nonsense on the fly, after asking the New Mutants what the worst thing they can imagine is, and getting this answer from Wolfsbane. It’s a reference to her extremely religious upbringing in the Western Isles, which was played on extensively in the original New Mutants series. (Corsair also throws in the “four arms” answer given by Chamber, and the New Mutants still fall for it.) Corsair is probably plucking the names Nuwabi’ka and Kaliwaki out of the air.
Sharra & K’ythri are the well-established gods of the Shi’ar Empire. They actually showed up in Thor a little while back.
PAGE 36. Data page on Sunspot’s “really good space lawyer”, in the form of an advert. The art is taken from Rocket #2 (2017), and this is Rocket’s lawyer from that issue, Murd Blurdock. At least, he would have been Rocket’s lawyer, if only he hadn’t had to run off and fight ninjas instead.
Murd is an Echomelian – a race of blind reptiles who make brilliant trial lawyers because their echo-senses let them read everyone’s heartbeat. Now, those things on his face might look to you like eyes. But according to his partner Froggy Nelson, they are in fact “scars” from when he was “struck by radioactive originium as a child and lost his echo-senses – forever!” Despite this, Murd is “still a great lawyer – supernaturally good! Almost as if he can tell the expressions on a jury’s faces through some unknown ‘visual sense’… But that’s crazy talk! The only Echomelian with that ability is the violent vigilante known as Seeing Being – the Sentient Without Self-Preservation!”
Oh yes… the place names in the bottom right.
- Chandilar is the Shi’ar Empire’s capital world.
- The Aerie was the Shi’ar’s original homeworld.
- The Maul is a ring of inhabited asteroids, previously seen in Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #277.
- Timor is Ch’od’s homeworld.
- M’Kraan is presumably the location of the cosmically-powerful M’Kraan Crystal.
- Chr’yllalisa is the homeworld of the Starjammers’ medic, Sikorsky.
PAGES 37-38: The trailers. The Krakoan reads: NEXT: LAWLESSNESS AND DISORDER.
I liked HoXPoX a lot, but seeing Murd at the end of this issue made me happier than any other part of the Hickman run so far.
Benevolence was, I believe, mentioned in Powers of X #1 as the place where most of the remaining mutants live in the X2 timeline.
I suspect you would really enjoy a lot of Hickman’s Avengers/New Avengers. There’s a superb Beast-and-Xavier scene near the beginning of New Avengers #3.
Good catch. I’ll add that to the post.
It’s curious that Dust is allowed to keep wearing her niqab, in light of the whole “rejecting human culture” thing. (Also note that she was last seen as a member of the Champions – with Cyclops’ blessing, yet – who definitely don’t seem the sorts to like isolationism)
I really liked that Zeb Wells run from Vol. 3! It was pretty underrated, but did a lot of legwork in rehabilitating Magik and Cypher as usable characters (partly because they were previously dead or just revived). If this new run is anything like that previous one then I’ll be perfectly happy.
The Abnett/Lanning run that followed it wasn’t quite as good but still basically fine.
Boo for Dust being on the island and not with the Champions, yay for Murd Blurdock.
Cannonball’s one of my favourite characters, but I kind of like the idea of him being a dad in space for a while, even if that means he’s not in the comics. It suits the character. Anyway, all he does lately is cite catchphrases and fly dramatically in the background of group shots and fight scenes.
Well, it was no Classic X-Men #27’s back-up strip, but I liked it. 🙂
I really did like this one. It felt like the characters were talking with each other, not at each other. And they sounded like different people, instead of different looking characters all talking the same way. I loved that Roberto and friends decided to take a road trip to visit and surprise Sam instead of just calling him up (but also, to give him a Krakoa flower so he could visit whenever he wanted). I thought it was great how obviously lying Corsair was. I really liked how annoyed the Starjammers were at the New Mutants. Really good character stuff. Thumbs up.
Also, this book has my favorite art out of these launches. I generally would probably prefer Leinil Francis Yu, but Rod Reis and his invoking of Bill Sienkiewicz is just such a GREAT FIT for these characters and the tone the book is going for. Really really good.
And hey! Some people are starting to get odd warnings/feelings about Krakoa. Maybe it’s not all sunshine and rainbows?
How great is it that Murd is going to be in this book? Really great, is the right answer. 🙂
As I mentioned in the wrong thread, I’m still a little confused about Monet and her sisters. It’s probably just as simple as Paul suggests, but I still have to go re-read some Generation X comics.
Also, I really enjoyed the 50-issue New Mutants volume. I might just be partial to these characters, but I liked that Cannonball and Moonstar finally explored a romantic relationship in that one.
Out of the Dawn of X titles, New Mutants just might be my favorite so far, depending on what the next few issues of X-Men does. But as far as first issues go, New Mutants wins for me.
Not into this one. Scans like a comedy but one with, bizarrely, no actual jokes. The Starjammers kicking the kids off the ship could have worked but the character justification wasn’t there. Also, like many HoxPox books, does a terrible job actually introducing its characters, but it’s all the more glaring here because most of them have been off the board for a while.
I really liked this book. This and X-Men are the two books I can see myself continuing to read, although I’ll give Marauders and X-Force a chance.
I complained about the fact that Excalibur had zero to do with the Krakoa status quo, and you could argue the same for this New Mutants issue, but I really enjoyed the writing and story.
This was a X-Men spin-off comic that I could see myself reading before the Krakoa relaunch.
It really did remind me quite a bit of memories I have of first reading Claremont’s original New Mutants comic.
I had a lot of fun reading this issue.
Also, unlike Team Zissou (above), I have a lot of fond memories of the Abnett run on New Mutants, while I found the Wells’ run to be just ok.
If there were a New Mutants run after Chris Claremont that I would recommend, it would be the Dan Abnett one.
Like many, I have a fondness for the original team, although I stopped reading it during that first series. I also like the DeFillipis/Weir run, brief though it was.
I was not expecting this to the comedy book, as such.
Still wondering how we are going to go the place that matches up with that Hox/Pox variant cover involving Sunspot.
I liked the issue, but I find the plot a bit off-putting. We’re going into space in the first issue? There’s a lot of opportunity to explore how younger mutants feel about their leaders’ sudden change in direction (not to mention allying with villains–is M really okay with Emplate around the corner?). Maybe that will come.
Always happy to see Cypher and Sunspot.
Even Mondo. But that’s because I randomly remember the 2 issues from 20 years ago where this guy actually appeared.
This issue was the strongest of the launch titles for me. I enjoyed the art. The main cast characterization is good although I thought these were all adults that have aged in the franchise. Why are they being written as teenagers? The comedy fell flat for me but I can overlook it to see where they are going. Overall, it felt like a PG-13 X-Men version of Saga.
Like Chris, I think the starting point seems bizarre and sudden. In the midst of a resurrection and a new status quo replete with cloning, soul storing, new drugs and everything else, the new mutants want to go off into space? It seems every writer is going out of their way to avoid dealing with Krakoa directly for now. It is a bit jarring.
It is also odd that Cypher is going when he seems so central to the Krakoan setup. And he has problems with Krakoa and cannot figure it out? What has he been doing all this time since he was left on the island alone? You would think his sense of foreboding would have grown great enough to at least protest where all this was going from the start.
And why would giving him a plant be considered any safer than the pod people infiltration mission on Orchis? He is going into space to be dropped off in the middle of a hostile, unfamiliar star system. Getting to Cannonball seems to be a make it up as we go along plan. Wouldn’t this be as risky and potentially endanger the security of the island?
And are you seriously telling me that you can open a gate to Krakoa from a distant star system. It is all a bit deus ex machine hocus pocus but I can look past that if this is going to do something interesting.
I promise I’ll stop harping on this eventually, but thank goodness that all of my beloved New Mutants are back after the dumpster fire of Rosenberg’s run… especially Rahne and Roberto. I hate that they died at all, but at least their return was quick.
I love that we’ve gotten indications that the original Hellions are coming back as well–I expect they were high on Emma’s To Do List, seeing as how their senseless slaughter inspired her to join Xavier’s dream fulltime and start the Generation X class of students. Their deaths always weighed heavily on her, so their return is much appreciated. I can only hope that the students who died in the wake of M-Day will be next on the list.
The inclusion of Mondo really is weird. When Generation X was introduced, he was played up as a new and interesting character (another one of those who played to Bachalo’s artistic strengths and style, I guess) only to be absolutely forgettable compared to characters like M, Husk, Penance, Skin and Synch. And of course the whole “plant clone” and “evil” thing didn’t help much. So he’s a really oddball choice for this title… but a blank slate for the most part. I wonder if he was a package deal when they recruited Black Tom Cassidy.
I wonder how all-inclusive the resurrection protocols will be: will they bring back dead time travelers like Fitzroy or those random guys who came back in time with Bishop? What about Shard? Will we see all of the dead Morlocks, down to Annalee or Tommy?
And, as a friend pointed out, what about the ultimate in obscure dead mutants… Larry Bodine, who killed himself out of fear of discovery? (alternately, which writer should I try bribing…)
“Hickman’s idiosyncratic style of emphasis is quite noticeable in this issue’s dialogue.”
I wonder if any of that is because of Brisson trying to copy that style for the sake of consistency. The credits list them as co-writers, but the dialogue stays pretty consistently of that nature every page.
Actually, on that note, did anyone notice how Wolfsbane goes back and forth here between “ah” and “I”? Even in the same word balloon once? Is that supposed to be some characterization bit about when her accent gets stronger, or is it just the consequence of two writers?
‘and “interstellar pheromone production” (which is presumably what Hepzibah does, I guess).’
That’s not how I read it. It sounds to me like it’s saying the Egg will produce interstellar pheromones, attracting a swarm from light years away. Largely because I don’t see how Hepzibah’s pheromones would be considered “interstellar.”
“We’ve seen this name before, and it seems to be simply a residential area of Krakoa.”
Surely the name implies it’s also a site for education? Noticeably, everyone we see in the background is from the younger generations.
“Quite why a character called Fauna has got flora-based abilities is less than clear, although maybe that’s what Mondo is hinting at in suggesting that there’s something dodgy about this stuff.”
Cypher does have a line in the Quiet Council meeting about how Krakoa is fauna, not flora. I don’t think that’s defining those terms the way most people would but there you go.
I like the art, some panels remind me of Bill Sienkiewicz.
If I were Karma, I would volunteer for a kamikaze mission so that I could come back in a cloned body with all limbs intact.
Hickman also wrote a Cannonball & Sunspot strip for one of the iterations of Marvel Comics Presents (his first X-work, I believe), so clearly he’s got a lot of fondness for those characters.
(It was a comedy strip where they were forced to work for Mojo ; you can clearly see the parentage with this series’ tone.)
I like this one a lot, even though it’s weird how Hepzibah treats the heroes as children, considering they’ve been written as being in their mid-twenties for many, many years now.
Also it’s a shame that we’re apparently losing Ewing’s (and even Hickman’s, to a point) ‘mastermind schemer’ take on Sunspot. Unless this issue’s happy-go-Lucky schmuck persona is a fake-out.
But at least we get Ewing’s space lawyer.
Bevatron is back! I look forward to reading his dialogue.
Like Team Zissou above, I liked the Utopia-era young-people-living-in-a-house-together New Mutants, and I’m appreciating it more now that I’ve read X-Force and can really get how NM vol. 3 was positioning growing up as the polar opposite of guns and posing.
In fact I thought the DeFilippis/Weir series was also pretty good. Both revivals are foregrounding the question of what do you do with the characters who used to be in the coming-of-age story after they’ve come of age. It’s an obvious take, but sometimes things are obvious because they’re good, and it’s better than just blending them into the mishmash of X-Men.
I’ll be curious to see if any of this works for me in the same way — both of those earlier revivals stressed a certain normality in the lives of the former New Mutants, either as twentysomething housemates versus living on Utopia or as teachers and mentors of young students in a comparatively realistic school story.
I wonder how well the New Mutants will work among all this weirdness? There might be something about them that benefits from being a little more grounded than the Krakoa era as it’s developing lends itself to being.
The back-to-teenagers vibe, especially with Roberto who has lost his white-haired temples and overall growth from Ewing’s stories, could almost suggest that they’ve been reset by Krakoa’s process, although it’s hard to keep track of who has died and might have been brought back as an earlier backup (did Sunspot? I lost track during Rosenberg). But there’s not much textual evidence that this is going on.
The Krakoa resurrection setup could be a useful way of handwaving all kinds of continuity issues — an in-universe mechanic to explain characters growing and reverting, dying and coming back, sliding timeline problems. Appealing from a continuity-fan perspective… but this sort of thing often tanks in practice (c.f. Superboy punching reality).
“…ran for 50 issues between 2009 and 2012 (very few of which, to be honest, have stuck in the mind)”.
I liked that run. There was the opening Legion return arc, Necrosha part, AOA Blink joining, Second Coming parts and the Journey into Mystery mini-crossover.
Yes, the issue where Magma goes on a date with Mephisto is my favourite story from that series. So good.
Sunspot died in Rosenberg’s run (might have been the War of the Realms tie-in miniseries), though he already didn’t have the white streak in his hair there.
Magik turned into a mindless demon toward the end of Rosenberg’s run, if I recall. I’m not holding my breath that it will be referenced again any time soon.
I don’t know if Jono and Shan have already gone through the rebirth process – for all I remember they did not yet need to – but they sure remind me of a few unanswered questions.
First and foremost, obviously, is why they are still missing limbs if they have gone through the process. I expect that Xavier will try to have Leech around at just the right moment to try and save his face whenever Jono has to. That would make him a considerably different character.
Also, how are Forge and Madison Jeffries coping with this technology-adverse environment? That would be interesting to learn.
Ok, so every consequential series has launched (I don’t think anyone ever expected Fallen Angels to last more than 12 issues) and I think I can say I think this line is going to be a huge disappointment by HOXPOX standards. There’s about 80% of this that I don’t like in terms of the style and philosophy of this reboot, but I think they’ve made enough mistakes that this will ultimately be a major misfire. Hickman does well enough with his audience and the types of projects he’s done so far, but it’s a different animal to have him direct a sprawling line of comics based around this one, rather bizarre, central idea.
Maybe sales will be a bit better than they have been in recent years, but I don’t think these books are going to be big sellers. X-Men might for a while, but ultimately I don’t see anything to get excited about here.
The crux of the problem, I think, is that the narrative insists in ALL CAPS that Krakoa is a perfect utopia, and of course they keep dropping subtle hints that everything isn’t as perfect as it seems. Only it’s clearly been screaming “somehing is very off here” since literally the opening page of HOXPOX. Most of the discussion I’ve seen about it has been about the eerie, creepy nature of Krakoa, to what extent everyone is being mind-controlled. I feel like that speculation and the bold changes really fueled all the excitement, and now we’re just waiting to see how the downfall of this island eventually comes. Is this really sustainable?
At this point, there is a major disconnect between what the narrative insists and what is coming across the page. And it’s not the kind of tension or dramatic irony that you can stretch out for years across an entire line of comics, at least I don’t think. A book like Excalibur should have no problem selling at least as well as Mr. and Mrs. X, but after HOXPOX
I think X-Men will sell, definitely.
I think the bigger problem is that the current comic market isn’t able to handle sprawl, yet that’s what Marvel insists on doing with the X-line.
It can’t just be one or two X-Men books. It has to be an entire line of X-books.
There aren’t a lot of readers who are interested in buying the C-list X-titles each and every month like they did back in the 1990s.
Marvel need to realize this.
They never are though, because they think that flooding the market with their comics is the best way to keep afloat with ever-dwindling sales.
In some ways, yes, that does work for Marvel, as they end up as the #1 comic company year after year, even though their sales on most individual titles are declining.
They publish so many more comics than any other publisher that the total amount of sales can still net them the top spot.
It’s not a sustainable model though.
oops my last sentence got cut off, I was saying that after HOXPOX I think the numbers are going to be a huge letdown and won’t even be what they hoped for before HOXPOX sold so well.
I think sprawl can kind of be alright at times, and I think the X-Men characters can certainly carry 6+ titles per month. I just think this whole thing is very ill-conceived. I won’t go through all the problems, but at a minimum there needed to be more synergy between what the narrative insists (this is a perfect utopia) and what the final product delivers (this is all wrong). I don’t think you can get away with dropping these hints that something is off when everything is clearly very far off. It feels more like an alternate universe than a continuation of what came before.
I made this point earlier, and it wasn’t interpreted well, but I’ll try to make it again. This story insists upon itself (to borrow from Peter Griffin). You have to abandon so much logic it’s insane. Nothing we’ve seen so far actually makes sense, the retcon doesn’t fit with the story we’ve seen so far, etc. Which doesn’t combine well with sprawl. So if you’re not buying whole hog into the, frankly pretty silly and half baked premise itself, there’s a lot of incentive to skip the whole line. I think you can get away with a lot more sticking to the broader themes (sworn to protect a world that hates and fears them) and the sheer strength of the characters (which is clearly diminished when they’re all fully on board) than what they’re going with.
And, near as I can tell, what they’re going with is either “this is the new status quo. Let’s explore it” and/or “let’s wait and see which of the many ways this time bomb inevitably will explode?” I don’t understand how either one would excite any reader. I understand mileage varies, but it’s hard to even wrap my head around. It’s all just so uninteresting and most of it has been done before, and the new stuff seems surprisingly not well thought out.
Hickman has noted that characters such as Chamber resurrecting with physical flaws is intentional and a source for further stories.
https://www.adventuresinpoortaste.com/2019/10/14/x-men-monday-32-jonathan-hickman-answers-your-house-of-x-and-powers-of-x-questions/
Let me put it this way. HOXPOX sold great, many people liked it and it got people talking. On its own it was a great success. But entire purpose of the epilogue, one of the major RED issues (the important ones), was to cast some doubt over Krakoa and its origins. Like this is the spot where the reader should begin to question the premise. And of course, like I said earlier, the premise was always questionable from the opening panel where the X-Men crawled naked out of pods to a smirking Xavier dressed up like The Maker. This is clearly a narrative failure, along with every little clue they try to drop that something might not be as perfect as it seems. It never, ever seemed anything remotely like perfect, my dudes.
re:Dazzler
I see what you’re saying, but maybe look at it this way:
The audience can realize something before the characters realize that same something. When you’re watching Friday the 13th, the audience knows all but one of the camp councelers are going to die, but even after one or three of them goes missing the rest don’t realize they’re going to die just yet. Watching from afar it’s plainly clear, but the characters in the middle can’t see it.
So Krakoa is Camp Crystal Lake and the X-Men don’t realize that Jason’s coming for them yet, even though we do.
I’m reminded of Alfred Hitchcock’s bit about the difference between surprise and suspense:
“We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let’s suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, “Boom!” There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o’clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: “You shouldn’t be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!” In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed.”
Though I’m not so sure there’s meant to be in this case. Hickman had a podcast interview a while back where he said a lot of writers were now pitching him “and now things start to go wrong” stories for the X-line, as if they’re just taking it as a given that the other shoe’s meant to drop. He was saying they’re wrong and there’s no other shoe.
Who knows if that’s truth or just an attempt at misdirection, though.
Well, if the shoe only drops in a generational sense, what suspense is there to be had? We know things go bad for the X-men in the future, of course, but if we have to wait until X-men Year 100 to see any delivery on that so-called premise, then the author is giving us a very long runaround.
re: YLu
Much better said. Thanks!
re: Alan L
I don’t think we’ll have to wait that long.
We’re getting “things aren’t entirely great with Krakoa” hints in the first issues (Corsair’s comments to Scott, Kitty not being let into Krakoa, Logan thinking the island is making everyone complacent, Doug discovering that Krakoa is aggressive). Also, Hickman has said in interviews that these books were planned to run 12 issues and then have a weekly crossover between them. So we’ll likely find out (something) at the 13th issue mark, probably with more hints along the way. Maybe. I could be totally wrong, but I’m willing to give Hickman the benefit of the doubt.
On the other hand, I think that there’s not another shoe to drop with Xavier; I have the feeling he just drank too much of his own Kool-Aid.
Right, but the characters all have to be complete idiots not to see all the creepiness. You’ve reduced the best cast of characters in comics to a hive mind cult of clueless dopes in order to serve a pretty dumb premise. That’s why it doesn’t work for me on that level. The Friday the 13th comparison is apt because the victims in those movies are vapid idiots who deserves to die and do. That’s the new model for the X-Men in this new golden age.
@Dazzler – well said. I agree.
But I am still hoping for some decent stories even within this ridiculous premise. It’s a shame though. This could have been a great idea for Xavier in particular. How a man’s desire to realize his dream can corrupt him with some X-Men sitting in opposition to the cloning, cult thing and some in support. I think the promise in this premise was lost by not examining how everyone got here and on board. Or adopting the much more sensible approach that everyone would not be on board. Cloning, consciousness and the concept of the soul and its replication are great themes. Unfortunately, it is all just window dressing right now.
@Ylu – Thia is a great Hitchcock quote but what does that have to do with Hickman’s storytelling? There is no missing information that the audience knows that the characters do not. The story has actually been silent on what anyone knows and far too much is left unsaid with respect to the set up. For me, that is the problem. No scenario has been presented where all these people (villians and heroes alike), with their various histories, could ever plausibly get together. Even worse, to so casually be on board with cloning, mind copying, random resurrection and an unknown previously hostile island. There are only two scenarios in this Krakoa situation since Hickman has bypassed all the characterization and events necessary to make this thing plausible. The first is that everyone is on board which means it is ridiculous in the context of the history of the franchise. The second, that people are being overtly or subtly manipulated through mind control or Krakoa. The latter is equally silly and absurd considering the calibre of a lot of the X-Men and villians. The only card that Hickman can play to turn this around is if this is not actually the 616 timeline but an alternate one. I do not think Hickman explicitly stated that timeline 10 was current 616. But if he has, well there goes that idea.
“Quite why a character called Fauna has got flora-based abilities is less than clear, although maybe that’s what Mondo is hinting at in suggesting that there’s something dodgy about this stuff.”
The most prominent fauna involved with coffee production are the Asian civets that poop partially digested beans, which are then collected and made into particularly expensive coffee. If that’s the case here, I’m with Mondo.
The stupidest part of all is that they could have fixed a lot of the problems I have with this story with a little editorial guidance. It didn’t have to be this stupid and far-fetched; it certainly didn’t necessitate such an extreme retcon where this idea somehow goes back to year zero despite really not fitting in with continuity. (“Wow, how Grand and Important!”) And I think they really needed a strong voice of dissent somewhere given that Krakoa is so antithetical to what the team has always been about.
And that’s all aside from the lack of character and personality that’s actually come through on the page. At this point it’s been a lot of issues with precious little meaningful characterization and still no plot. We’re just kind of exploring this stupid island concept, emphasis on “kind of.”
Col. Fury-The problem with that is that the books are stuck spinning their wheels, telling another story, while waiting for a year to pass so Hickman can continue the story he started in House/Powers.
This is especially jarring when the majority of the books seem to be doing everything they can to try to work around the big concept of Krakoa.
The “Dawn of X” relaunch boils down to “business as usual” for the X-books, while being forced to participate in what is seeming more and more like a cross-over event (much like Axis or whatever cross-over Marvel editorial is foisting on the Marvel line for that year).
Then, in one year’s time, it seems there will be another kinda, sorta relaunch spinning off of the next big event.
I don’t think this is what anyone expected when they heard about Hickman’s huge plans for the X-books.
I think everyone expected a new status quo that writers could build off of and move the X-Men in a new direction again.
Asking readers to wait for an entire year to see the next chapter in Hickman’s grand vision is asking a lot of the comic market in 2019.
It seems like the other writers have been forced to not feature any drastic plots in their books, because none of those books really matter.
They’re just filler, so Marvel can continue the flood the market, until Hickman’s next revelation unfolds in one year.
Adrian-If this isn’t the Life ten time-line, then what is even the point of printing these comics?
Marvel might as well have just turned “Age of X-Man” over to Hickman and decided that was the status quo for the X-books for a few years, until they decided to bring all the mutants back to Earth-616.
What we’ve seen of Life ten, it’s close enough to “our” Marvel Universe that there still needs to be some sort of explanation for why events are happening.
It’s still horribly shoddy story-telling.
That first line should read “If the Life ten time-line isn’t the current Marvel Universe,”.
Oh, also Al Ewing mentions Krakoa in the newest issue of Immortal Hulk.
So either Immortal Hulk is part of Hickman’s plan, the current Marvel Universe also has a mutant island-nation on Krakoa, or the Life ten time-line is the current Marvel Universe.
@Chris V
“I think everyone expected a new status quo that writers could build off of and move the X-Men in a new direction again.”
I’d say that’s what we have now. Of the titles out so far, the one closest to business as usual is, ironically given Hickman’s involvement, NEW MUTANTS. At least so far. And even that is exploring the ‘how’ of Krakoa through Doug and Mondo.
The other three books are all explicitly about mutantdom’s new status as a world power. MARAUDERS is about their drug trade and bringing mutants into the country. EXCALIBUR is about the development of one aspect of mutant culture — magic — now that it has the opportunity to grow. And X-FORCE is apparently going to be about the Krakoan equivalent to the CIA.
I’m not sure how magic is a part of mutant culture.
It was always more extraneous to the concept, and just in there because Claremont wanted to use some fantasy plots in New Mutants.
There are very few magic users who are mutants.
When you think magic in the Marvel Universe, you think of characters like Dr. Strange or Son of Satan, not the X-Men.
Excalibur seems like more of an aside in the middle of Krakoa.
I could see that series popping up as a random X-title at any point in the X-Men’s history, just because a writer wanted to write an Excalibur comic and set it firmly within Arthurian myths.
Marauders has promise, although I’d like to see it deal a lot more with the issue of trade.
What we saw in the first issue was mostly something we could’ve seen at any point in X-history.
Some mutants are being persecuted, so other mutants go to rescue them.
X-Force does deal with the concept much more strongly, but it’s a step backwards.
In the first issue, we already see the mutant hating bigots being able to invade Krakoa and start killing mutants.
Just replace Krakoa with the mansion or Utopia and it’s a story we’ve seen a hundred times before.
Krakoa is supposed to be a paradise where mutants no longer have to live in fear.
“I really liked that Zeb Wells run from Vol. 3!”
*Agreed, that was one of the best X-universe comics of recent years, for my money.
@Chris Oh, I was not trying to suggest that life ten not being 616 would be a good plot twist. On the contrary, it would be rather unnecessary in my view. I just do not think it is out of the realm of possibility.
Oddly enough, Excalibur’s Apocalypse feels like the Age of X-man one. This is in stark contrast to his portrayal in House of X.
What YLu says about that interview with Hickman also suggests something potentially detrimental to the way some fans have been attempting to enjoy this series. Because if Hickman isn’t chronicling the fall of the great mutant utopia, then what happens to all this talk about people not acting like themselves? What if, rather than the X-men being dragged into this experiment against their free will, they are really just agreeing to the idea and going along with it? That might suggest that Hickman actually writes all these characters as stiffly as he has been in HoX/PoX and beyond without any trace of irony or foreshadowing.
The character voices were the first problem I had with New Mutants this week. None of the New Mutants I feel I know from years of reading sound anything like themselves here. What’s more, all their dialogue seemed so artificial. Someone back in the thread suggested that maybe Brisson is writing most of this, but the dialogue, the thematic interests, and the awkward way with scenes are all so clearly Hickman at his granular worst. His plots are impressively complicated, but whenever Hickman gets into the scripting of an issue, his most underdeveloped skills come to the fore, and the result is dispiriting. As a tactile writer, Hickman is as clumsy as has been seen in professional superhero comics. Every moment in this issue brought another cut, part of the thousand that caused this issue to bleed out it’s promise, its life, it’s potential for enjoyment.
Roberto and Dani walking through Krakoa “ruminating” about the history of mutants felt like they were in that cloning walkthrough video in Jurassic Park, or in an after-school special. Their speech is stilted and clumsy, and clearly not for one another’s benefit so much as it is being delivered directly at the reader. As usual, Hickman wants this idea of where the New Mutants fit into the general milieu of mutantdom foregrounded as quickly as possible; rather than building a scene in which this theory of their place in the new world gets hashed out in a naturalistic presentation, or by plotting out an issue that illustrates the New Mutants place in the new scheme of things, Hickman the threadbare modernist vomits it all out as almost a parody of the prosaic introduction. But there is something prescient about the weird way the artist has Roberto and Dani shuffle along through Krakoan tableau––the New Mutants will continue shambling along through this very shaggy-dog-like story all the way through it’s final page.
This is a very tricky type of story to stick, especially when you have characters built for action. But Hickman has another agenda waiting in the wings. He seems to be harkening back to classic New Mutant tales of the Claremont era, where the team often went on vacations or accompanied Professor X to meet somebody, or otherwise stumbled into adventure. The Nova Roma adventure begins this way, so does the introduction of Legion. There’s one that involves Sam and Ilyana busting into an airport immediately from a pool party, there’s the slumber party where they meet Warlock, and the classic of the subgenre is probably the story where the New Mutants take a trip to Kirinos to decompress after Karma becomes a gangster and almost kills them all, and then they get kidnapped and taken on an adventure to Asgard. So in the first issue of their new book, they decide to take a jaunt into space so they can share their delicious coffee with Sam. The whole coffee bit is pretty strained in several different ways. Most importantly, it features Hickman’s annoying sense of dialogue flow, where characters say things appropriate to the flow of conversation, but not appropriate for what the character knows and had been clued in to previously. So when Mondo says he saw how the coffee was made, Illyana asks “with sincerity?” and Rahne asks “with innocence?” This works in the sense that it calls back to a previous part of the conversation, where Chamber says the coffee was made with innocence and sincerity. It creates what Hickman seems to feel is wit and flow to the scene. The only problem is that Rahne, who asks if the coffee was made with innocence, didn’t arrive at the scene until after Chamber made that comment. So she didn’t hear the in reality very labored “innocence and sincerity” line. Hickman could have––should have––given the line to another character who was present when Chamber first introduced the line, but instead he just lets it slide, and so we have to as well. It’s a small detail, but it shows how much care Hickman is available to invest in individual characters––and New Mutants is a title that has always been filled with very particular, strikingly individual characters. But this is a new day, and maybe everyone on Krakoa is mind controlled, after all. So bigger things are always afoot. This is a great way to defray criticism––like when Eric Rohmer claimed he made his 6 “Moral Tales” films a series, partly because it would then make it harder to criticize any one film when it was actually part of a 6-part series. This is one of the ways Hickman manages to maintain a very high reputation in spite of very bad tactile writing. His errors, even his general lack of skill in the scripting of his grand ideas, can all be forgiven if it’s leading to something bigger.
Other odd things about the coffee bit include the general fetishization of the coffee––which I think goes waaaay over the top and is not at all funny––and also how Chamber makes two pots of the stuff, even though HE SAYS HE CAN’T DRINK IT. What the hell? If he only likes the aroma, he doesn’t need two pots of it. The idea he would make it for the smell is okay as a small sprig of character development, but I’m pretty sure we’ll never see this detail repeated or developed in future stories. All signs point to Chamber being at the back of this character lineup, and the coffee bit will likely never show up again. It has no thematic resonance, after all, and it’s not a great jumping–off point for this story. And though this is Hickman attempting character detail, his premise is shifty like sand shifting under his feet. It’s also evidence of Hickman’s sniper-like approach to such attempts to make us intimately close to characters. Ilyana is crazy about the coffee––much of the alleged humor of the scene is invested in this bit of characterization––but it’s characterization that emerges pretty much out of nowhere. We’ve never seen Ilyana fiend for coffee in previous stories, to my knowledge (I didn’t read the Jeff Lemire stories, though? maybe there?), and it seems just plainly out of character for someone who grew up in a rocky hell dimension with virtually no civilization at all. Where did she develop this taste for coffee? This isn’t a character detail Hickman is using to prove anything, either; he might make this relevant by describing how, once she realized what it tasted like, Ilyana wished she had it when she grew up in, you know: a medieval hellscape. Even though she’s been around for a while now, maybe Ilyana is only gradually growing accustomed to things the rest of us take for granted. That could tie the sudden interest in coffee to her unique past experience, and give it relevant context. But to make up a detail like that would be writing the comic for Hickman, and in point of fact he didn’t write such a detail in. He won’t ever revisit this supposed character development except in the context of a protracted joke, anyways. In fact, the character trait Ilyana demonstrates in this scene that Hickman will actually follow up on is her savagery when she refuses to let Roberto sip her jug of coffee (“Don’t make me cut you,” she growls, and later on she’ll lose her temper with Raza and cut off his arm in a similar rage). And in point of fact, all the characters gush about the coffee, and the whole vibe of Krakoa––as in the other titles, the gushing is awkward and forced––and it leads to what is so far the series’ call to adventure; let’s see what Sam is up to in deep space.
This isn’t an exclusively bad premise for the story, though it could be more exciting with some low-key suspense attached to it. The New Mutants could get a message from Sam implying an ambiguous, possibly dangerous situation, or something to that effect. Those memorable Claremont stories that Hickman is referencing with the pace and pitch of this adventure all had stakes to them––there were goals to accomplish, there were almost always threats with a timer attached to them. But this new series begins with a much simpler premise; Krakoa is really nice, brah; Sam should be here. Hey! Let’s go see him. Hickman does have a little more going on here, however; as with his first issue of X-men, he has supplied a theme.
The dialogue in this comic is often very painful to read, but the theme Hickman is setting up in this issue is the most frustrating thing about the issue itself––even as the very obviousness of the theme kind of gives the game away as it emerges. This basic theme is that the New Mutants are immature. This is why they shamble around like a bunch of high school students trying to surprise their friend at football practice a galaxy away. This is why the Starjammers each get pissed at them and decide together to strand them in enemy territory (as the saying from “Y Tu Mama Tambien” goes, “play with babies, you end up washing diapers,” and the Starjammers are apparently sick of it real fast). This is why they get into trouble, chasing after heroics and good deeds in a situation too complicated for them to really work out (this conceit is more redolent of the Louise Simonson era on New Mutants, where the team was always blundering into scrapes with the best of intentions, pissing off their headmaster, Magneto; the master of magnetism had more patience with these apparent children than the Starjammers do). Their decision to just go get Sam is taken up on a whim, and Sam isn’t brought in to consult on the matter; the inconvenience the New Mutants will provide for the adults around them is something they don’t perceive at all. They crash through the Starjammer with the oafishness of tourists, wrecking a habitat and cutting off Raza’s arm, drinking Corsair’s bourbon and telling Hepzibah to shut up while they watch Ilyana fight. Like children, they have no tact. They’re new at this, you see. NEW Mutants.
A lot of comic characters have their ages regressed frequently, but the New Mutants have a genuine textbook case in their past, where Louise Simonson takes over the writing from Claremont and under editorial direction (and I believe I recall also in response to fan mail that the characters seemed too mature) regresses the team by two or three years. This change wasn’t very organic, and it kind of futzed around with lots of the character development Claremont had done with the team. Suddenly the New Mutants seemed anarchic and horny, unable to process their emotions and brashly ready to jump into trouble. This change never bothered me the way it bothered readers at the time the book was coming out; I read all of it later on, and both eras had exceptional high points (Simonson’s Inferno stories more than made up for the change, to my eyes). But I know lots of readers at the time felt betrayed by the regression. Well, it’s happening again, and this time it bothers me a bit. I don’t like losing the characterization of the last two decades. The New Mutants have grown up in that span, as Roberto says in the first issue of Zeb Wells run. The team has even broken apart and gone on to feature in a bunch of other teams. They’ve lived apart from the whole X-men project and come together again and split apart again, developing their own sets of individual experiences, philosophies, and goals. They are clearly adults, who have not only graduated from Xavier’s school, but who have gone on to teach younger generations of students themselves. But Hickman is writing them like he intends to ignore all of that character development––because they’re supposed to be immature. They’re kids. He’s putting the “NEW” back in “New Mutants.” This gives him his theme, his new positioning for the title (integrating them into the Krakoa status quo, but in a wholly arbitrary way). On top of that, the whole thematic direction is very forced in terms of the other characters in the issue, as well. The Starjammers seem conspicuously off-brand. Corsair’s beloved son has asked him to take these mutants with him, and he turns around and leaves them to die? It doesn’t seem like the Corsair we’ve seen in the past. And when you start adding up the havoc the New Mutants have supposedly visited upon the Starjammers ship, nothing seems appropriate to make the buccaneers all so ticked off with the kids. In each interaction the Starjammers are angry for no valid reason. Ch’od says that after Mondo hides the Krakoa flower he picks up no reading of its contaminants, and then says that this is “good, but that doesn’t make me happy.” Why can’t he be happy about that? The whole point was that the flower was messing with the biome. if it’s no longer messing with the biome, what’s the problem? It seems childish of Ch’od to carry this grudge. Childish, or extremely forced. Then the Starjammers all appear to be angry that Magik slices off Raza’s robot arm. Not only does Raza get it back in the next scene, but the New Mutants repeatedly question the ferocity of her sparring match with Raza. Raza says he’ll have her “spitting teeth soon enough.” When told that bets are being taken on whether one of the combatants will die in the sparring, the New Mutants are distressed, but the Starjammers are completely into it (“What’s life without living, little boy?”). They do as much as they can to provoke Magik’s retaliation, and then they somehow hold it against her. Corsair is totally game for this bet he and Sunspot make over the fight, but then he is nigglingly sore about losing the bet later on––mind you, this is all over a bottle of bourbon, and even though it’s hard to get out there in deep space, perhaps, he could just go through that Krakoa gate, or get one of his kids to walk through and bring him a bottle. Jeez, is this dumb. Corsair has no reason to pout about this bottle of bourbon. It makes him look like a real tool. Bottom line, Hickman’s Starjammers are terrible hosts for this trip the mutants are taking. It seems gratingly off on their part, and they’re only acting this way because Hickman needs a way to strand the New Mutants in space, so that their adventures there can begin. Rather than having the New Mutants hitch a ride with someone actually LIKELY to abandon them in deep space, Hickman proceeds in the straightest line possible; grab the spacefaring characters he wants, and change their characterization until they are suddenly liable to abandon these children in outer space. Never mind that, as I said before, Corsair’s beloved son asked him as a personal favor to take the New Mutants with him. How is Corsair supposed to face Cyclops next time he meets him on the moon? “Where are the New Mutants?” “Oh, I left them to die. They were assholes.” This is not plausible, but for the weary writer with grand ambitions––and a lot of issues to write––it certainly is convenient. Still, the lack of attention to details like character plausibility is telling. It gives us a good sense of where Hickman’s priorities lie. And it’s bad news for a book whose interest so far rests more on character interaction than any of Hickman’s previous X-books has.
But the story has the advantage of being more high-spirited than most Hickman joints. And so it features generous helpings of Hickman’s withered funnybone. Some of the scenes demonstrating Hickman’s unique brand of “humor” are scenes I’ve gone over already, but there are more moments that just stop the story dead in it’s tracks. It’s weird because Hickman actually has a very playful side to his writing; it just manifests itself in what is absolutely the wrong way, repeatedly, at very odd moments. The scene where Corsair tries to scare the New Mutants off following the Starjammers on their alleged “pirate business” is a case in point. Corsair is, as Paul noted, clearly riffing on what the New Mutants tell him is the worst thing they can imagine, in order to build a story to frighten them. It’s the kind of thing you’d do with very young kids, and it beggars belief that Corsair thinks this should work. On the other side of the coin, when Corsair asks what the worst thing they can imagine is, the New Mutants provide him with the stupidest answers possible. Rahne claims “judgy fundamentalists” as her “worst ever.” Of course, lots of early issues of Claremont’s New Mutants portray Rahne as a bit of a “judgy fundamentalist” herself. And of course, Rahne was raised by the abusive Reverend Craig, who we learn in the Kyle/Yost X-force was actually her father, and whom she eventually killed. So that answer would make some kind of sense, except A) it’s delivered so glibly. “Judgy” doesn’t honestly characterize Reverend Craig’s relationship towards Rahne. He was more than judgy. He was a brutal sadist. However, Rahne fought to be free of his influence, and ultimately put it behind her in the most definitive way available to her. Having her last memory of him being that she eviscerated him, though, would she really be inclined to characterize him as “judgy?” But then, B) In Peter David’s X-Factor, Rahne gave birth to a magic child and her teammate Guido betrayed her by killing it in order to become ruler of hell. I don’t think we have to split hairs over this in order to determine which experience is more traumatizing, and more immediately available in Rahne’s recent memory. Oh, and she died and came back to life even more recently. But “judgy fundamentalists” are apparently worse. Who’s to say different? Perhaps Hickman is showing us that the New Mutants know that Corsair is pulling their leg with this story, and because of that they give him glib answers to his condescending question, except that on the next page they’re all ready to go in guns blazing and stop the torturing done by these made–up adversaries. So no, they all bought into Corsair’s ruse. It’s not a part of the joke Hickman is struggling to construct. It’s just another bit of character development that is vague and poorly–gauged, typical of all of Hickman’s character development. Rahne hates judgy fundamentalists most of all. Not losing her child. Not her friend’s betrayal. Not the cold sleep of death. It’s another example of how Hickman ignores where characters have been with a wave of his hand. Steve Englehart used to write notebooks full of detail on all of the characters he was writing, so that their choices in the narrative made sense to him, and so that the direction of their character progression was clear to the readers. Hickman takes characters he liked when he first read them and floats them vaguely within his plot––even when he’s trying to do character first, as in this book, the plot is the clearest thing, and the characters are A) without plausible motivation, B) not acting like themselves, and C) doing things regardless of their consistent characterization, just to move the plot forward. This is not Brisson at work. This is a miserable consistency throughout Jonathan Hickman’s entire comics ouvre. There is this powerful dissonance in all of Hickman’s writing, where the plot surges forward regardless of how the characters act, or the character are simply pushed around like paperdolls so that the plot can move forward, unobstructed. Some may find the dissonance bracing, but it gives off a clanging sound in my head which I find completely overwhelming. It’s the dissonance of a writer whose large ambitions are grating noisily against very limited writerly finesse, and when Hickman does this––and he does it all the time––it makes for frustratingly mediocre writing. Yet it’s writing that people seem to love, and which editors seem willing to give Hickman carte blanche to perpetuate.
Certainly the HoX/PoX premise is huge and complicated, and full of potentially rich ideas. If Hickman were telling the whole story himself, it might make for something more consistent and interesting––if Hickman were somehow a more graceful stylist than he’s ever demonstrated. But the new status quo Hickman has laid out isn’t a status quo, so much as it is a story. It’s a story with a lot of articulated parts that have to work in concert. I think in the last few weeks many here have been let down by other writers trying to integrate their voices into this story, and make these articulated parts have some kind of harmony and plausibility in the grander matrix of story Hickman is advancing. That most of these writers sort of fail at the attempt could mean they’re just not gelling with the premise, but I think the problem more frequently is that the setup delivered by HoX/PoX demands a much more articulated story development than any of these other writers can produce on these titles. “Mutant who can recall her past lives forms the X-men in a particular way so that it can resist evil robots from the future by making a defensible island paradise and creating a pseudo-rich culture there that secretly serves some other secret agenda she has” isn’t as great a premise as it seems on the surface. It’s not a workable status quo––there aren’t any easy footholds on this hill for other writers to climb alongside Hickman.
“The government decides to regulate mutants” is a status quo. “The X-men become outlaws in the US” is a status quo. “The X-men out themselves to the world and create a mutant identity politic” is a status quo. “The mutants of the world get depowered by magic and are mostly defenseless against their foes” is even a status quo. In each of these premises there is potential for dramatic conflict, but not any specific plot pieces or long narrative sections that have to fall into place in order for the stories various writers introduce to work. There’s space for creativity, and the appeal for readers becomes how the various writers flesh out the broad premise with interesting and varied specific scenarios for their individual stories. Hickman’s complicated outline has severely limited other writer’s opportunities to tell discreet stories of their own. At the center of all these books is this running story, with its different working parts, which all have to run like clockwork. What’s more, the running story has high stakes and the premise is centered around what happens in it, making stories that don’t address that central running storyline seem unnecessary or too loose to adhere within the larger conceit of the status quo. If the stories in the separate books conform tightly to that central narrative Hickman’s pushing, then those books seem to be more necessary to us. The books that don’t have so much to do with the central narrative (i.e., Excalibur, which many in here thought of as completely detachable from the HoX/PoX continuing story) seem discordant, or poorly written, because they’re not advancing the central narrative. I think this is largely because the parameters of what is an acceptable narrative within this complex story Hickman wants to tell are too narrow, and the other writers playing a part in this endeavor are too boxed-in as a result. So far this grand narrative of Hickman’s has demanded a lot of imaginative and logical concessions and lapses in writerly craft across the board in order for the setup to work; well–known X-men are behaving wholly out of character, for…reasons? To advance the plot, people have to make choices their experiences in previous continuity make less than believable. Events trundle forward whether or not characters seem duly motivated to participate as they are written to do. If you are a writer of one of the books affected by this so-called “status quo,” just how are you supposed to deliver on this thicket of potential errors and competing story demands? How, especially since Hickman writes all these characters in a manner no one else has ever written them? Hickman fills his issues with flat, prosaic dialogue. He integrates plot and character motivation with no grace or fluidity. His sense of humor––which he somehow has begun to feel he ought to provide us––is clunky and disruptive (The first big joke in New Mutants––Magik threatening to cut Roberto if he sips her coffee––is actually a guileless recapitulation of the same joke Hickman told in X-men a couple of weeks ago––in that comic Wolverine vows to fight Vulcan because he grills Wolverine’s steak too much––It may be that Hickman only has a few jokes available, and it might be instructive to be on the look out for the “Apes with PhDs” nugget to resurface in another comic soon, polished like a diamond). He motivates characters through plot agendas rather than evolving character progressions. The New Mutants need to act immature in order for the theme he has lined up for them to work, and in order that they end up marooned in deep space; so Hickman simply disregards decades of character progression for all of them and has them act regressive and childlike, annoying their hosts until they get booted off the ship. Nonetheless, the characters don’t quite make it to that regression point on their own, so Hickman bends the Starjammers from noble rogues into stiff martinets, policing their ship and counting up imagined infractions against their mutant guests (how passive-aggressive would these Starjammers have been for all the years Lilandra and Professor X stayed on their ship with them? The couple would have been airlocked for sure if this is what the Starjammers were really like), and also callous cutthroats, who leave Corsair’s son’s friends––in some sense Cyclop’s charges––to take the fall for their successful heist. The writing is awkward and tone-deaf, and it must be very hard on any more skilled writers to try and work within such parameters. What moves are acceptable under this regime? How much of writerly style and skill will prove objectionable in this restrictive status quo? Is there any way to successfully massage what Hickman has produced, or to work with him?
If this series were isolated, a la Whedon’s Astonishing X-men, it would better serve the various writers engaged in it––because then they could ignore it. Hickman should write the whole thing, as one book. It’s his story, however complex, however arid. But it’s not a very workable jumping–off point from which other authors can build their own stories. And for my part it would be great to have Hickman isolated in his own bubble, where he couldn’t monopolize the rich tapestry of the X-men in the way he’s done. He is not a writer who plays well with others. And the last time Marvel entrusted him with one of their large–form narratives––Secret Wars––he created something very similar to what he’s doing with X-men now. Secret Wars had what was potentially a very broad remit for other authors––they could jump in from all sides and populate Battleworld with their inverted recreations of better stories from the past. But the results were not stellar. Those titles didn’t last, few of them caught fire with readers, and a lot of readers jumped off the books they’d read for years when they all got cancelled in favor of these temporary titles, many of those readers didn’t return to the books when Marvel relaunched them. I think Hickman is intent on being generous with his setups when he creates them––like he’s providing other authors opportunities to go to town with the world he’s made for them. But in both Secret Wars and X-men what he really seems to be doing is creating an alternate version of the world the characters inhabit, where he can write what he wants and Marvel has to simply reset afterwards and slog along, hemorrhaging fans. In each case, the story contains some key which only Hickman can ultimately provide––only he knows how these stories must end, and what key plot points need to be set in motion to bring about that ending; and so he holds us hostage, chaining us to his frustrating stylistic deficiencies and to his painful disinterest in character as a basic concept as he spins out his baroque plots with whichever franchise Marvel has given him permission to rough up. The resulting books are mostly bad, no fun to read. Either brutally serious or awkwardly grabbing at humor; either filled with characters novocained to Hickman’s liking or bent to fit the needs of his plots; or, they are written by others, trying to fit their writing to a mysterious and yet very particular chain of plot details, often without knowing where it is Hickman is ultimately going. And even though the X-men now have a strong purpose, we’re accessing that purpose through writing that mostly features no great tactile skill and preponderance of joy to be read. And it’s a strange trade-off to have to make, and to be happy about.
@Chris V
“I’m not sure how magic is a part of mutant culture. It was always more extraneous to the concept, and just in there because Claremont wanted to use some fantasy plots in New Mutants. There are very few magic users who are mutants.”
It absolutely was never a part of mutant culture previously, but that seems the point. The premise is that, now that mutants finally have the luxury to truly develop their own culture, they’re developing all the aspects of culture — and in a superhero universe, that includes a culture’s traditions of magic.
Granted, this notion was much more prominent in the issue’s infographics pages (by far the best part of the issue, IMO, for much that reason) than the story pages.
So yes, mutant magic is a new, but that’s the point. It’s addressing the question, “What’s mutant culture going to be like now that Krakoa is giving it its fullest opportunity to grow?”
I’d also say that Apocalypse as a teammate and having to deal with a resurrected, notionally reformed Jamie Braddock are plot elements that are fairly strongly engaging with the possibilities in the new status quo.
@Chris V
“What we saw in the first issue was mostly something we could’ve seen at any point in X-history. Some mutants are being persecuted, so other mutants go to rescue them.”
It’s still a superhero comic. I think it’s safe to say a heavy chunk of X-Men will always be about bashing the heads of people trying to persecute them, no matter how wild anything else gets.
Meanwhile, everything in the issue outside the fight was exploring the characters adjusting and reacting to the new arrangement (albeit sometimes in weird ways that don’t seem to make much sense, like Wolverine not having access to alcohol even though there are all those gates right there.)
The plot doesn’t make any sense to me.
If they have a portal to and from the Starjammer ship, why do you have to stay on the ship during all the travel to the Shi’ar Empire ? Rahne is complaining she needs to stretch her legs, but that’s her own fault.
And by the end of the issue, couldn’t they transform the flower inside Mongo into a portal and flee ?
Maybe I’m completely misunderstanding how the Krakoa portals actually work.