{"id":6023,"date":"2020-12-16T21:48:29","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T21:48:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6023"},"modified":"2020-12-16T21:48:29","modified_gmt":"2020-12-16T21:48:29","slug":"new-mutants-14-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=6023","title":{"rendered":"New Mutants #14 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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NEW MUTANTS vol 4 #14<\/strong>
“Welcome to the Wild Hunt”<\/strong>
by Vita Ayala & Rob Reis<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1:<\/strong> Scout, Karma, Mirage, Wolfsbane, Warpath, Magik and Warlock, apparently just finishing off a session in the “Wild Hunt”. The Wild Hunt was shown in the map of Krakoa in House of X<\/em> #1, but this is the first we’ve heard of it since then; evidently it’s some sort of woodland sparring area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 2-4.<\/strong> The origin of Amahl Farouk.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amahl Farouk first appeared in X-Men<\/em> vol 1 #117, in an extended flashback to a young Professor X’s first encounter with an evil mutant. For years, that was all there was to know about him, but in the late 1980s he was retooled as the Shadow King, an all-purpose embodiment of psychic malevolence. The suggestion that the Shadow King is a possessing entity, and that Farouk used to exist independently of him, has come up before but has never really been explored. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

This is the first time we’ve seen anything about Farouk’s personal history, and it turns out that he’s 500 years old or so. It’s not clear whether his long lifespan is part of his own mutant powers, or whether it’s something provided to him by the Shadow King.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farouk was shown among the psychics living on Krakoa in Empyre: X-Men<\/em>, but that was so offhand as to suggest that it might be an error. In this issue he does indeed seem to be living on Krakoa, but there’s some ambiguity about how many people know about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Egypt Eyalet” (or the “Eyalet of Egypt”) was the name of Egypt when it was a division of the Ottoman Empire. That narrow the timeframe slightly<\/em> beyond “the sixteenth century”, by placing the flashback somewhere after 1517.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reis’s art on this scene – and indeed many scenes in this issue – seems to be consciously referencing the style of Bill Sienkiewicz’s highly influential run on the original New Mutants<\/em> series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 5.<\/strong> Recap and credits. Like most other X-books, New Mutants<\/em> has shifted to this new design coming out of “X of Swords”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 6.<\/strong> Data page – an exchange of letters. Dani Moonstar, Wolfsbane, Warpath, Karma and Magik flag up that “the residents of the Akademos habitat” – the teenagers, in other words – are flailing around rather directionlessly. Back in issue #3, a data page claimed that the Akademos was “an education center and training facility, where the young mutants exchange ideas and learn from one another, forgoing formal classroom studies and student\/teacher relationships. All are students. All are teachers.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The New Mutants’ letter is saying that this experimental-education approach is failing badly. Professor X responds by telling them that they’ve volunteered to put something more structured in place. This looks distinctly like an attempt to impose some direction on a series that was rather lacking it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note that only Magik signs by her codename (despite a general encouragement on Krakoa to use mutant names). I’m not particularly wild about the lettering here, which is very obviously not hand-signed. Does that really<\/em> look like Warpath’s signature to you? Dani and Xavier’s signatures are in the same font, too…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 7.<\/strong> Xi’an talks to Dani about her nightmares.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Xi’an has been having nightmares ever since being trapped in Cosmar’s nightmare sphere in issues #9-11. As seen in those issues, Cosmar’s power is – or at least includes – warping the surrounding reality to reflect her nightmares while she’s asleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Otherworld”, and “what happened there”, refers to the “X of Swords” crossover. Xi’an wasn’t particularly involved in that storyline, but she was among the characters who showed up along with Cyclops for the climax.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 8-9.<\/strong> Xi’an shows Dani her nightmare.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dani’s power always used to be defined as the ability to make an image of somebody else’s desires, fears or so on; I assume what’s happening here is meant to be along those lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Xi’an’s dream relives the final battle from X of Swords: Destruction<\/em> #1. The young man she sees in the dream isn’t immediately recognisable, but it could presumably be a young Amahl Farouk. Her connection with him comes from the original New Mutants<\/em> run, where she was possessed by Farouk \/ the Shadow King for a while, and became grotesquely obese as a result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 9-11.<\/strong> The other New Mutants arrive.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Warlock has generally been posing as Cypher’s techno-organic arm until now. With “X of Swords” that seems to have been dropped, and we’ve still really had no explanation of why he and Cypher were doing it in the first place. Cypher is absent with his new bride Bei, who he was forcibly married to during “X of Swords” – despite the circumstances, the two of them seem to be getting on very well indeed, at least if Warlock’s account is anything to go by.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dani is apparently in the habit of helping the other New Mutants to deal with their mental health problems, but has never had this discussion with Magik. Perhaps Magik’s just not approachable enough for that sort of conversation; she has a pretty well defined act that she doesn’t drop easily, even though she’s being relatively normal in conversation with Rahne.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Warpath effectively rejoins the cast here. We’ve seen him around on Krakoa before, but he hasn’t been doing much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 12-14.<\/strong> The Ferals and the Elementals spar.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The characters fighting here are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  • Anole<\/strong>, the lizard boy introduced in New Mutants<\/em> vol 2. He was a prominent character for a long while, but seems to have drifted nito the background of late.<\/li>
  • Fauna<\/strong>, a kid who was seen arriving on Krakoa in House of X<\/em> #1. We also saw him in Cable<\/em> #1, where he had to get rescued.<\/li>
  • Nature Girl<\/strong>, most prominently used in the last run of Generation X<\/em>, and still wearing her school uniform.<\/li>
  • Scout<\/strong>, the younger clone sister of Laura Kinney (X-23 \/ Wolverine).<\/li>
  • Petra<\/strong>, the rock-controlling mutant from X-Men: Deadly Genesis<\/em>. Per that series, she was part of a makeshift team of X-Men who were sent to rescue the real team from Krakoa in Giant-Size X-Men<\/em> #1, and got themselves killed before any of the rest of the X-Men even found out about her. We’ve seen her in X-Men<\/em> hanging around with her teammate Vulcan.<\/li>
  • Sprite<\/strong>, a long-time background character who debuted in Avengers vs X-Men<\/em> #12 as one of the wave of new mutants whose powers emerged in that issue. She was a student at the X-Men’s school in Wolverine & The X-Men<\/em>, but she’s never done anything very significant.<\/li>
  • Dust<\/strong>, a character first introduced in Grant Morrison’s New X-Men<\/em> and later added to the school roster.<\/li>
  • The staggeringly obscure Rain Boy<\/strong>, a student from the Peter Milligan \/ Salvador Larroca run, whose only previous appearances were in X-Men<\/em> vol 2 #171-174, fifteen years ago. He’s meant to be living water in a containment suit, but perhaps he’s got better control of his powers since then.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    PAGES 15-19.<\/strong> The New Mutants demonstrate synergy to their students.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The idea that mutant powers working in tandem can achieve even more impressive feats has been an increasing theme in X-Men<\/em> and S.W.O.R.D.<\/em> In addition to the two squads we already saw, the crowd here includes Cosmar<\/strong> (with the distorted face), Armor<\/strong> (with her usual armoured force field) and Icarus<\/strong> (with the wings).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Scout raises a question about the resurrection policy on clones, which picks up directly on events in other books. Scout is a clone of Laura, and she clearly thinks that the resurrection protocols don’t apply to her. She has every reason to think that. As she points out, not only have the mutants chosen not to bring back Evan Sabah-Nur (a clone of Apocalypse), in Hellions <\/em>#4 the Quiet Council decided not to resurrect Madelyne Pryor (a clone of Jean Grey). In that issue, Cyclops specifically cited the fact that Madelyne was a clone; the resurrection protocols don’t want multiple versions of the same character running around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The New Mutants don’t know that that was the reason for leaving Madelyne un-resurrected, and they clearly disagree with the decision. Magik reasons it away – at least for public consumption – by blaming it on Madelyne’s crimes, but Scout is obviously right to say that Madelyne is no worse than some of the people who are in positions of authority on Krakoa. Scout is clearly unpersuaded, and rightly so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    PAGES 20-23.<\/strong> Four of the students go to visit Farouk.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The floating brain in a jar is No-Girl<\/strong>, a character introduced in the Grant Morrison run. She’s a psychic, and her condition is nothing to do with her mutant power – her brain was removed from her body by the organ-harvesting U-Men. You’d have thought she might be up for a bit of resurrection, but evidently not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The kids seem<\/em> to be under the influence of Farouk, given that they become very bouncy and lose their trepidation when they’re near him. No-Girl is a psychic, but she’s nowhere close to Farouk’s league.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    PAGE 24.<\/strong> Data page. Dani writes to James, encouraging him to start a diary. Dani and James had some degree of romantic tension back in the original New Mutants<\/em> series, which never really went anywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    PAGE 25.<\/strong> Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: RAGER.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. NEW MUTANTS vol 4 #14“Welcome to the Wild Hunt”by Vita Ayala & Rob Reis COVER \/ PAGE 1: Scout, Karma, Mirage, Wolfsbane, Warpath, Magik and Warlock, apparently just finishing off a session in the “Wild Hunt”. The Wild Hunt was shown […]<\/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":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6023","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=6023"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6025,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6023\/revisions\/6025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}