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Feb 19

New Mutants #7 annotations

Posted on Wednesday, February 19, 2020 by Paul in Annotations

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

COVER / PAGE 1: The New Mutants on a parade float in the Shi’ar capital. Look, there’s Murd Blurdock and someone who might be Yondu on the left.

PAGES 2-5. Roberto recaps the plot – or rather, explains how the New Mutants defeated the Shi’ar Death Commandos.

Issue #5 ended with a cliffhanger, in which the Shi’ar Death Commandos blew up the New Mutants’ ship, in an attempt to assassinate Deathbird. The meta joke is that Roberto is so self absorbed that he’s oblivious to the fact that issue #6 featured the earthbound cast, and cheerfully regales us with a “recap” of how the cliffhanger was resolved, a story we’ve never actually seen.

“The do-nothing Gen X-ers.” Chamber and Mondo. It’s always been a little unclear what these two are doing in the series, given that they aren’t part of the original New Mutants team and barely know any of the other characters. From what little we’ve seen of them, they seem to have been wondering the same thing. As for Sunspot, whose whole agenda here is to get the band back together, he seems somewhat baffled by their presence too – and he looks down on them as minor characters. (Probably fair in relation to Mondo, but Chamber’s a more prominent character than, say, Karma.) It doesn’t play out in the course of this issue, but presumably it’s heading somewhere.

The Death Commando leader with the bird mask is called Black Cloak, not that it really matters. The “destructo birdspear” is his signature weapon.

Deathbird. Sunspot apparently imagines all these events as contributing to his romance with Deathbird which looks to be entirely in his mind.

PAGES 6-7. Recap and credits. The story is “Spoilers” by Jonathan Hickman and Rob Reis.

PAGES 8-9. Xandra, Gladiator and Oracle await the arrival of Deathbird.

Oracle’s dialogue is obviously ironic, given that she’s the traitor.

“Guardians die … but another is always raised to take the fallen’s place.” Hickman’s Avengers run established that there are plenty of reserves trained to take over the identity of any member of the Imperial Guard who dies.

PAGES 10-12. As the New Mutants arrive at Chandilar, they interrogate surviving Death Commando Sega, and learn about Oracle’s power.

Sega was described as a coward in issue #5, so it’s possibly no surprise that he’s so easy to break in interrogation. But who knows – maybe being turned into a liquid or solid form really would be a horrific form of torture for him.

Wolfsbane seems to have a really short attention span throughout this issue, which is out of character. It’s hard to tell whether it’s a plot point or just a joke that doesn’t land.

PAGES 13-16. Deathbird attacks Oracle on sight, and a big fight breaks out.

We get to see some more members of the Imperial Guard here, to even the numbers with the New Mutants. Oracle and Mentor have appeared in previous issues. The big guy in black and yellow is Quasar. The red woman in the white leotard is Hussar. The woman in black and white with the yellow cape is Manta. The data page suggests that Earthquake, Starbolt and Flashfire are here too, but I don’t see them.

PAGE 17. Data page. The rules for deciding which side wins the fight, if you really want to – though it doesn’t matter, since…

PAGE 18. Xandra stops the fight.

Pretty routine plotting here. Deathbird explains that she has a legitimate issue with Oracle. Oracle confirms that Deathbird is telling the truth. And Xandra demonstrates her rulership credentials by taking control of the situation – albeit in one of those totally absurd decisions that require you to assume some very unusual cultural factors at play. But for whatever reason, Xandra’s “punishment” for Oracle is to appoint her as a mentor. (We clearly aren’t finished with the Shi’ar – is it possible that Xandra was in on Oracle’s plans, and she’s trying to bail Oracle out now that it’s all gone wrong?)

Mondo has been carrying the flower (which is used to grow a portal back to Krakoa) since issue #2.

PAGES 19-23. With the Krakoa/Chandilar portal established, everyone comes for drinks at Sam and Izzy’s apartment.

Aside from the regular cast, recognisable guests at the party include Wolverine, Storm, Magneto, Nature Girl, Eye Boy, the Beast, Kid Omega and Cyclops.

Cannonball makes clear – entirely predictably – that he will not be leaving his job, wife and child to come back and join the New Mutants. But he does now have a direct link to Krakoa through the gates, so he and Bobby are now back in regular contact – and as we find out later, Bobby is sticking around. So while this scene plays as if we’ve actually been wasting our time for several issues, in fact several things have changed: the X-Men now have a direct link to the Shi’ar Empire; control of the Shi’ar Empire is shifting from Gladiator to Xandra, Deathbird and Oracle; and Sunspot has become infatuated with Deathbird and set up home in space.

Gladiator tells Cyclops that the Shi’ar owe the mutants a favour, presumably for preventing Deathbird’s assassination. Cyclops immediately calls it in by placing a Krakoan gate on Chandilore (“that island that looks like it’s floating in space”). I don’t believe we’ve heard of Chandilore before, but presumably it’s going to be significant. Gladiator reacts as if the X-Men have simply asked for a portal to a particularly attractive garden, but one attractive enough not to make it a waste of his favour – so presumably it’s quite special.

Xandra. She tells Wolfsbane that she has the power to turn into a ball of light. In fact, in Mr & Mrs X she was a more powerful psychic and illusionist, so she seems to be lying for some reason.

PAGES 24-26. Sunspot and Cannonball hang out and Sunspot reveals that he’s bought the building.

For whatever reason, Sunspot really does seem to be determined to press his case with Deathbird.

Bring on the comments

  1. Ben says:

    Yeah, I’m done with this one too.

    It’s not so much funny and fun as it is grating and boring.

    Once Wolfsbane started licking stuff it was all over.

  2. Michael says:

    I really wish that Hickman would go back and reread some classic New Mutants just to get the character voices back. Bobby is way too careless and self-aggrandizing, even for his normal swashbuckling kind of personality. Rahne and Sam both have lost their accents, and without them, feel sort of generic. (Not to mention Rahne felt completely off in this issue.)

    Still not sure what the point of adding Chamber and Mondo was in the first place. I’m hard-pressed to remember what they contributed to the plot.

    The entire conceit of skipping an issue’s worth of story and recapping it was just annoying–some of us might to have enjoyed seeing that happen! And the “roll a dice” to determine the outcome of the fight scene was clever but also really silly and a waste of a good combat.

    Really, when you can instantly teleport between galaxies, what’s the big deal about whether you live on Krakoa or in Shi’ar territory? It’s like commuting across the street to visit a friend.

    Also, how exactly does Bobby’s apparently immense wealth on Earth even translate to Shi’ar currency? Or galactic credits, or whatever he’s been using? What manner of resources does he have that would be worth something in an alien culture? What does his company even DO, anyway?
    I like this series, but at the same time it could be so much better.

  3. Si says:

    I don’t know about shiar money, but Bobby didn’t actually have any Earth wealth either last time we saw him. He sacrificed it all to own some bureaucrat at the end of USAvengers.

    Of course, rich people seldom become poor in real life, they still have all the connections and specific education that continues to cause the money to flow their way.

    We’re seeing more and more companies and organisations having an interstellar reach in the Marvel Universe these days. So why not Bobby?

  4. YLu says:

    Hickman did the “Earth rich is space rich” thing in his Avengers too, with Tony Stark contracting aliens to build a Dyson sphere. (Or just part of one? It’s been a while.) There was a brief explanation that he was paying them in rare minerals.

    I’m not sure how much sense that would actually make. Aren’t most ‘rare’ minerals only so because we’re stuck on a single planet but actually in ridiculously profuse abundance if you can access meteors and all the other space junk out there?

  5. Moo says:

    “Rahne and Sam both have lost their accents, and without them, feel sort of generic.”

    Good. Good riddance. Phonetically spelled accents in comics are fucking stupid.

  6. Adam K says:

    Not to defend it, but Mondo does have a role in this story: as a plot device. Not only did he carry the Krakoa flower from A to B, but he also still has the “King Egg” that they stole in issues 1 and 2. It’s visible in this issue when he takes out the flower. I would guess it’s a brood egg based on future solicits for X-Men and the data page from issue 1.

    So he did do SOMEthing, which is more than I can say for Chamber, Rahne or Dani.

    This book has its moments but overall it is some rough readin.

  7. Col_Fury says:

    Best issue so far. I laughed out loud at parts.

    I get the humor won’t work for everyone, but it’s working for me.

    Fun times in space!

  8. JCG says:

    This was the last New Mutants issue with Hickman as writer – all Brissom from now on – so whatever, if anything, he planned for the Gen X:ers will have to play out in another book.

    Unless it’s setup for Brisson.

  9. Michael says:

    “Good. Good riddance. Phonetically spelled accents in comics are fucking stupid.”

    Yeah, but it always felt like such a silly little defining trait of the X-Men and New Mutants that Sam, Rahne, Rogue, Kurt, Piotr, and so on -had- those accents. I miss things like “Ah’m nigh-invulnerable when blastin'” and “Och, the wee puir babies!” and so forth. 🙂

  10. neutrino says:

    Chandilore was described but not named in X-Men #2. The sea life is bioluminescent, so it looks like it’s floating in a sea of stars at night. He talks about taking Rachel there.

    Is Deathbird still considered married to Vulcan? Did his status as Shi’ar emperor come up? Do the Shi’ar know he’s alive?

    @Michael: That should be “Och, the puir wee bairn!”

  11. Moo says:

    I don’t recall Kurt and Peter being written with accents. I recall them occasionally say things in their respective native tongues (e.g. unglaublich, tovarisch) but that’s not the same thing.

    Phonetically spelled accents just irritate me. I can think of precisely one instance where I found the practice to be appropriate. That issue of Excalibur by Warren Ellis where Moira got drunk at the bar and the others couldn’t make out her words. In that case, Ellis wanted to make the point that her accent thickens with alcohol. That scene wouldn’t have worked had her dialogue been written normally.

  12. Krzysiek Ceran says:

    Kurt was written with an accent recently in Age of X-Man. Although, funnily enough, it wasn’t consistent – he vas saying things like zis in the Marvelous X-Men mini, but not in his own Amazing Nightcrawler one.

  13. Paul says:

    The problem with phonetic accents is that it begs the question of which accent you’re supposed to read it out in, in order to get to the intended result. (Claremont is writing a Scottish accent phonetically from the perspective of an American, which is a very different thing from, say, Irvine Welsh writing for a Scottish audience.)

  14. Voord 99 says:

    Generally agree with Moo here. It was part of the charm of Claremont long, long ago, but this sort of thing has its day.

    It is hellishly easy to do painfully badly, especially when people are basically copying other comic books so that it feeds off itself. I’m reading through the ‘90s X-books at the moment, and the ideas of writers as to how the Cassidys should talk are, ah, somewhat disconnected from reality.

    (I think that Scott Lobdell may have been unaware that Scotland and Ireland are different places. Either that, or he had a very expansive idea of the geographical range of Ulster Scots.)

    That being said, the Kurt/Peter thing of throwing in words in another language isn’t ideal, either. It amuses me that it’s so often really common words, like the words for “Please” and “Thank you” that this particular motif has characters who don’t speak English as their native language drop into, the words that in the real world people learn first and find it easiest to remember.

  15. Thom H. says:

    I honestly just find the phonetic accents difficult to read. They slow down the story for me. I do have some fondness for Sam’s accent since I’m from Kentucky myself, but it’s not worth slowing down the action.

    And it’s weird that some characters have accents and some don’t. Kurt, for example, probably should have at least a little bit of an ongoing accent. Learning the “w” sound as an adult can be difficult.

    I agree that “please” and “thank you” are funny words not to speak in the local language, but I enjoy the occasional “incredible!” or “unbelievable!” in German or Russian. It gave me the sense that the character was so shocked they reverted to their native tongue for a moment.

  16. Voord 99 says:

    Yes, that’s true enough. Bozhe moi! also OK, for the same reason.

    But one often imagines that in comics, English-speakers go to Germany and say things like “Thank you, yes, durch die Beobachtung von Verhalten, man kann vermuten daß es gibt verschiedene Beziehungsformen.”

  17. Chris V says:

    Based on how this book has gone, I think that Hickman wanted to include the two Generation X members simply for the sake of making a joke.

    Generation X was supposed to be a bunch of slackers.
    The generation I’m a part of, I mean, not the comic book.

    Then, at the end of this story-arc, Hickman calls them the “do-nothing Gen Xers”.
    See? It was all for the sake of making that joke.

  18. Ben says:

    Hickman Hilarity!

    It’s be even funnier if most of the cast didn’t stand around with nothing to do or say the entire time!

  19. Si says:

    One of the best ways I’ve seen a foreign accent done was in Fraction’s Hawkeye. Black Widow had a slightly Russian way of phrasing things, but her words weren’t spelt phonetically, and I don’t think she ever slipped in Russian words.

    I don’t know how many writers could pull that off, but it’s a great alternative to terrible written accents.

  20. ASV says:

    It’s weird that group would’ve even been called “Generation X” in-story by this point in the sliding timeline, since they’re all now late millennials.

  21. Dimitri says:

    Yeah, even when their book first came out in ’94, I remember thinking that the team was a bit young to call themselves Generation X.

    Mind you, that was back when teens of the mid 90s were considered a different generation. I’m actually kind of bemused that they eventually got folded into X. Anyone know when and how/why that happened? Or am I just misremembering it all? I was pretty young…

  22. Moo says:

    Did the characters actually refer to themselves as “Generation X” in their series? I thought it was just the name of the book.

  23. Dimitri says:

    Hmm. Good question.

    I don’t know if that counts, but I do remember their calling themselves Generation X on panel in some of the company crossovers with Image and the like. Then again, it probably struck me specifically because they don’t do it often (or ever) in their own book.

  24. Allan M says:

    M calls the team Generation X in #4 of that series, page 17, complete with logo in her word balloon. Doesn’t happen often, but that is the official name for the team.

  25. Chris V says:

    I think that was another joke. I think that the term “Generation X” was just so prevalent in the early-1990s, and mutants happened to have the “X-gene”, that they just decided to name the book Generation X as a pop-culture joke.
    The cast were a bit young to be considered part of the actual Generation X.

    It especially grew less relevant as the book continued, and they were graduating high school in the year 2000 (I think I remember them graduating in the final issue).
    That would have put them with the millennial generation.

    In 1994 though, the term “Generation X” would have resonated with a lot of people.

  26. Drew says:

    “Mind you, that was back when teens of the mid 90s were considered a different generation. I’m actually kind of bemused that they eventually got folded into X. Anyone know when and how/why that happened? Or am I just misremembering it all? I was pretty young…”

    You’re not misremembering. Until quite recently, after Generation X came (depending on who you asked) Generation Y/Generation Next/the MTV Generation. We were post-Gen X, pre-millennial. But at some point fairly recently, it became common practice to eliminate us as a separate generation and lump most of us in with the millennials, and the rest with Gen X. So now my wife is considered one of the youngest Gen Xers, and I’m among the oldest millennials. Apparently.

  27. Moo says:

    “I think that was another joke”

    I wouldn’t say as a “joke”. Think they just wanted to give the book a hip-sounding (for 1994) name. If they wanted to make a joke of it, having Tabitha Smith mentoring the kids would’ve been one way to go. A group called “Generation X” being led by “Boomer”.

  28. CJ says:

    Around 1994, wasn’t there a dispute between Image wanting to name their teen comic “Gen X” (later “Gen-13”) and Marvel’s Generation X?

    My main problem with rendering accents on page is that it often seemed a bit lazy, like a “search and replace”: “didn’t” becomes “dinnae” and bam, you’re done, you got yourself Moira’s accent.

    On the other hand, I still hear the X-Men having voices from the 1990s cartoon’s over-the-top accents, so Wolverine sounds like he’s gargling gravel and Jean on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

    If this had been the second arc for the New Mutants, maybe I would’ve liked it more. But starting off with a Shi’ar political drama mixed with some fourth-wall breaking humor just didn’t do it for me. Maybe Brisson will be better.

    Rahne licking everything seemed really out of character too. But on the bright side, I took Krzysiek’s advice and read USAvengers for a better take on Bobby!

  29. Dimitri says:

    Thanks for the info, Dew!

    @CJ
    Yes, apparently, some adverts in StormWatch 2 had already announced the Gen 13 series as “Gen X”. (I don’t know this firsthand. Got it from Wikipedia.)

    Considering how many Image books at the time just felt like X-Men with a new coat of paint (*ahem* Cyberforce *ahem*), it’s amusing that this is where Marvel drew the line.

  30. Loz says:

    So now it looks like the X-Men have got their bolthole in Shi’ar space that was mentioned back in HoxPox.

  31. neutrino says:

    No, that was Benevolence, which they already visited in the first issue.

  32. @Thom H.
    I’m a native English speaker, but regularly say Merci (French), Danke (German) or Go Raibh Maith Agat (Irish) instead of Thank You. Because I like mixing languages. I went to Irish-language schools and we were supposed to speak Irish all the time, so we used to mix languages up in the same sentence so that it sounded like we were speaking Irish, but were deliberately bastardising it.

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