{"id":4792,"date":"2019-10-05T20:22:36","date_gmt":"2019-10-05T19:22:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4792"},"modified":"2019-10-05T20:22:36","modified_gmt":"2019-10-05T19:22:36","slug":"new-mutants-war-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4792","title":{"rendered":"New Mutants: War Children"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Marvel’s 80th anniversary celebrations have spawned quite a few retro one-shots, ranging from the straightforwardly nostalgic to the barely fathomable. You certainly can’t dismiss it as a pure cash grab – nobody publishes a Ziggy Pig & Silly Seal <\/em>one-shot because they expect it to rake in the profits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the more welcome one-shots – for readers of a certain age, at any rate – is New Mutants: War Children<\/em>, which reunited Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz for what amounts to a missing New Mutants Annual<\/em>. Claremont and Sienkiewicz never did an annual during their run – New Mutants Annual <\/em>#1 has a Sienkiewicz cover, but he didn’t do the interior art. So if you’re going to revisit a very specific run, this is certainly the way to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Claremont and Sienkiewicz’s 1984\/5 run on New Mutants<\/em> was a remarkably odd publication at the time, and the sort of thing that the X-books probably got away with because X-Men <\/em>itself was doing so well. If you haven’t read them, then to get the full impact, it’s best to read some of the earlier issues first. It’s no disrespect to Bob McLeod or Sal Buscema to say that their art is fairly conventional for the period. It sets the tone you would expect for a comics about the X-Men’s junior team who aren’t ready for prime time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then Sienkiewicz comes on with issue #18, and the book suddenly looks completely insane. The first issue is relatively restrained, except in its total disregard for the house style of the period, but within a few issues you’ve got giant abstract bears and Warlock. Warlock is such a Sienkiewicz character that for years other artists seemed to struggle mightily to figure out what he even looked like <\/em>when rendered in somebody else’s style.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Appropriately enough, then, War Children <\/em>is a Warlock story. Or at least a Warlock-centred story. And let’s be blunt: this is a comic which seems content to target itself at readers who already have an affection for the run. There’s a token explanation of the plot, which is rudimentary anyway, but Claremont is assuming an existing knowledge of the basic elements of the period. And fair enough, really; it’s a nostalgia product. If you don’t have that knowledge, you’re probably not the target audience – though you really should check out the first half of the run on Marvel Unlimited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’re somewhere around the tail end of the run, with Warlock still panicking about his eventual fated showdown with Magus. The story pretty much boils down to Warlock having a panic attack and causing all manner of chaos with the transmode virus until the New Mutants manage to rein him in, with a bit thrown in about Mirage as a Valkyrie, and Magik’s demon side. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Judged purely as a story, there’s not much to it. But focussing too much on that would miss the point. It’s a greatest hits issue, one designed as a vehicle for Sienkiewicz to go nuts visually – as it should be, given the remit.. And even after 35 years, a Sienkiewicz New Mutants <\/em>story still looks unique. He isn’t even going for a straight retread of his old techno-organic techniques; this goes off in different directions even there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is it deep? Is it, even, especially coherent? Well, no. It’s got a climax that’s kind of obscure, and it could stand to be tightened up in that regard. But that doesn’t cause too much of a problem for it, because it does recapture the spirit of the original Claremont\/Sienkiewicz run – which it rightly regards as its priority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s a comic for people who remember a specific run from the mid-80s, but it’s one worth remembering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marvel’s 80th anniversary celebrations have spawned quite a few retro one-shots, ranging from the straightforwardly nostalgic to the barely fathomable. You certainly can’t dismiss it as a pure cash grab – nobody publishes a Ziggy Pig & Silly Seal one-shot because they expect it to rake in the profits. One of the more welcome one-shots […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4792"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4793,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4792\/revisions\/4793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}