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

NEW MUTANTS vol 4 #31
“The Sublime Saga, part one: Fate & Consequences”
Writer: Charlie Jane Anders
Artists: Alberto Alburquerque with Ro Stein & Ted Brandt
Colourists: Carlos Lopez with Tamra Bonvillain
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad

COVER / PAGE 1: Escapade as all of the New Mutants, while Emma Frost rolls her eyes.

PAGE 2. Obituary for Tom Palmer

PAGES 3-5. The New Mutants try to teach creative writing, and Emma comes to talk about Escapade.

This is continuing with the main theme of Vita Ayala’s run, with the New Mutants taking on the role of mentors for the younger generations of teen mutants. The depiction of an actual classroom is new for Krakoa; at the start of the Krakoan era, we were told that the place was running on some sort of experimental-progressive education model where everyone taught one another. That apparently didn’t go so well, leading to the New Mutants moving in to give the place a bit more structure – and now it seems we’re back to regular classrooms and English literature classes.

Teaching the class are Dani and Xi’an, but alongside them is Pyro, formerly of the Marauders. He’s here because he’s a published novelist (even if Gerry Duggan presented his romance stories as pretty bad). Interestingly, he seems to have got rid of the skull tattoo on his face. Perhaps he’s been resurrected since we last saw him, or he just found a mutant to cover it up.

The mutants taking the class are an assortment of supporting characters and background characters from the Ayala run. From left to right in the main panel of page 3, they’re Rain Boy, Cam Long, Anole, Scout, Kappa (not really recognisable here, but we see her more clearly on the next page), Monica Sellers and Galura. Sitting behind Galura is Fauna, who can be seen talking to Pyro on the next page. Galura’s inclusion seems like an error, since she’s dating Karma and is meant to be an adult.

Krakoan literature. Dani quite reasonably thinks that if Krakoa is going to be a society then it needs to have its own arts, and the starting point of that is… well, this. Emma doesn’t particularly disagree with this, she just has no interest in it whatsoever. Karma makes the case that this is all central to national identity, which in turn is central to Emma’s schemes… though that might not be the most laudable of reasons for having a national culture.

Escapade. Escapade debuted in a story in Marvel’s Voices: Pride #1 (the second one), which is essentially the first chapter of this arc. Since it’s an Escapade story in which the New Mutants don’t appear, it would have made a rather odd issue of New Mutants, though I do have some reservations about putting the first chapter of an arc in a ten dollar anthology. Mind you, it’s on Unlimited by now.

In the Pride story, Escapade is a smalltime thief aided by her best friend Morgan Red and by assorted tech which they’ve picked up remotely. Unknown to Morgan, Escapade is approached by Emma Frost and Destiny, who show her a vision of a future in which she uses her body-swap power to change places with Morgan and get them killed. Destiny tells her that “This is a fixed event that will absolutely occur. Unless you find a way to change your path.” Escapade then breaks into the decommissioned Helicarrier of Hawthorne Rayne, “tech billionaire and small-time cult leader”. Unknown to Morgan, Escapade is looking for an “onyx needle”, which she apparently thinks will alter this course of events, but turns out to have already been sold to someone in Madripoor. She then relents and accepts Emma’s invitation to be trained in the use of her powers.

It’s made pretty clear that neither Morgan nor Escapade wants to go to Krakoa – Morgan doesn’t follow even though he’s a mutant too, and Escapade initially dismisses it as a “eugenics army”. Later, she says “I don’t like what you’ve become. All of you. You act like you really think you’re better than everybody else, just because you can do some cool tricks.” So basically, if you think the Krakoan era has too many characters wandering around insisting that mutants are going to build a grand, improved culture just because they’re mutants, then Escapade agrees with you.

The story doesn’t make clear why Escapade is such a priority for Emma and Destiny, but strongly implies that Emma thinks Escapade’s powers could be Very Useful Indeed if only she could learn to use them reliably. So Escapade is probably right to be suspicious of her.

PAGE 6. Recap and credits.

PAGE 7-11. Escapade with Lost Club.

From left to right in the second panel, that’s Scout, Anole, Escapade, Cosmar, Cerebella (formerly No-Girl), Leo Eng and Rain Boy.

“Martha was just a brain in a globe until recently… They even gave her a mean nickname, ‘No-Girl’, like it was funny to them.” Martha debuts in New X-Men #118-120 as a brain in a jar, having been harvested and enslaved by John Sublime and his U-Men. The name “No-Girl” seems to have started as a misreading of a scene in New X-Men #135, where Grant Morrison clearly intended it to be the name of a completely different, probably non-existent character who the other members of Xorn’s Special Class insisted was in the room even though nobody could see her due to her non-existence powers. Somehow the name wound up being attached to poor Martha instead. The idea that Martha resented the name comes from issue #20. She was finally resurrected with a full body in issue #24.

Escapade’s powers. Some of this was more clearly explained in the Pride one-shot (which also has a Handbook profile for her that spends a paragraph trying to explain how this works). Basically, Escapade can swap places with people within a very short range, but she can also swap attributes with them. The swap wears off after a few hours (or earlier if she wants), and the more complex it is, the harder it is to make it work. On a straightforward level, she can swap powers with someone, or swap her injuries onto someone else (though she’ll get them back in the end). When she says that she could make it so that she won a contest, what she means is that while the swap is in effect, everyone else will accept her as the person she’s replaced (or as having that particular quality of them). The haziness of all this fits with the idea that Escapade herself doesn’t quite understand how this works and can’t do it consistently.

In the Pride story, Emma specifically asked Escapade if she could use her powers to become US President for several hours, and she said that she believed that if she pulled it off, everyone would accept her in the role. She very pointedly gives a much more inoffensive example here.

Escapade’s vision. The details of what Escapade remembers seeing in the vision are new, I think. The Pride story just shows Morgan falling. Lost Club rightly point out that since Morgan is a mutant, he ought to be resurrectable anyway – but he’s a trivial background character, so who knows how far down the queue he’ll be?

PAGE 12. Data page – an exchange of messages between Escapade and Morgan.

PAGES 13-17. Lost Club are captured by the U-Men.

It’s not immediately obvious who’s organised this “Welcome Young Mutants” event – we don’t see any organisers, and the audience seems 100% hostile. Ostensibly it’s thanking the mutants for their part in saving the world from the Progenitor in A.X.E.: Judgment Day (which this series didn’t tie in to), but there doesn’t seem much enthusiasm for it on anyone’s side, really.

“I keep hearing how Magneto died for all of us.” Magneto died fighting Uranos in A.X.E.: Judgment Day #4. Considering that Escapade mainly hangs around with the dissatisfied youth of Krakoa, it sounds as if his heroic sacrifice has (understandably) bolstered his image with them.

Hibbert, the flying turtle, was in the Pride story. Other than Escapade describing him as a “Genetically engineered flying turtle”, no explanation was given for him. Evidently Morgan has no concern about bringing him out in public.

Young Shela & Morgan! These strips also appeared at the bottom of various pages of the Pride story.

The U-Men have actually managed to steal the powers of at least one mutants. They’ve occasionally been shown doing this successfully, including in their first story, but for the most part their track record consists of them stealing mutant organs, attempting to graft them on to their bodies, and failing miserably.

PAGE 18. Data page – the first page of Cerebella’s journal. This is the same exercise that Dani asked Warpath to do at the start of Vita Ayala’s run, in issue #14. Specifically, they’re the three questions that Warpath answered on a data page in issue #16.

Martha running away from her family and leaving a note left in her own luminous blood comes from a news report in New X-Men #118. The bit about her helping Emma and making Sublime jump out of a window is from New X-Men #120. (Strictly, she didn’t make Sublime jump from a window; she made him stop holding on to Emma so that he’d fall to the ground. But it makes little difference, and this version gets the point across more easily.)

PAGES 19-25. Wolfsbane, Escapade, Cerebella & co as prisoners.

“One day with the X-Men and this happens.” Morgan isn’t just being flippant; he was opposed to getting involved in Krakoa for precisely this sort of reason.

“[T]hey’re all about challenging binaries, except when it comes to the mutant/human binary…” In the U-Men’s introduction, Sublime’s public image clearly has overtones of being a trans allegory. He’s written a book called The Third Species and he’s the “spokesman of the transpecies movement”. The official line is that the U-Men simply use surgery and genetic modification “to release the mutant within” – essentially, they’re posthumans – but he also refers to “my own … tendencies, and those of others.” Since Sublime turns out to be a sentient bacteria motivated mainly by its concern that it needs to get rid of mutants because they can’t be infected, it’s a fairly safe bet that Sublime is simply appropriating the language for his own purposes, though individual U-Men may well have believed it.

It’s not especially surprising that Sublime is alive, since “Sublime” is whichever host the bacteria happens to be speaking through at the time. The man shown here doesn’t look especially like the original Sublime that Martha dealt with, and it’s not entirely clear whether he’s meant to be the same body.

PAGE 26. Trailers.