{"id":7357,"date":"2021-12-01T22:51:19","date_gmt":"2021-12-01T22:51:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7357"},"modified":"2021-12-01T22:51:19","modified_gmt":"2021-12-01T22:51:19","slug":"new-mutants-23-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=7357","title":{"rendered":"New Mutants #23 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>NEW MUTANTS vol 4 #23
\n“The Truth Shall Set Them Free”
\nby Vita Ayala & Rod Reis<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong> The New Mutants looking down on us as scary dolls.<\/p>\n

PAGES 2-3.<\/strong>\u00a0Lost Club enter the Shadow King’s<\/em> mind.<\/p>\n

The previous issue ended with Lost Club arriving at the Shadow King’s home to find him standing over the unconscious New Mutants. We’re not told how the Shadow King wound up unconscious, though the art\u00a0seems<\/em> to suggest that Cosmar zapped him.<\/p>\n

Once they enter the Shadow King’s mind, the art goes crazy, and stays that way for much of the issue. Rob Reis’s art on\u00a0New Mutants<\/em> is clearly influenced by Bill Sienkiewicz’s seminal run on the original\u00a0title in the early 1980s, and that’s particularly clear here. The general thrust of the story (enter a mindscape and rescue the lost-child core persona) also seems like a homage to the first Legion arc from\u00a0New Mutants<\/em> vol 1 #26.<\/p>\n

No-Girl, normally a disembodied brain in a jar, manifests on the astral plane with a body (albeit with a visible brain). Her psychic form is wearing a standard X-Men uniform, which presumably means she sees that as an important part of her persona despite the criticisms she’s made of Krakoa in this arc. Rain Boy and Cosmar also both look more human here, though not entirely so.<\/p>\n

PAGE 4.<\/strong> Data page – an exchange between Amahl Farouk and the Shadow King persona, written as a play. The “Act 2, Scene 3452” presumably indicates that they’ve been playing out this routine many, many times. I’m not sure if the play title has any particular significance –\u00a0The Boy and the Beast<\/em> was the name of a Japanese animated film from 2016 about an orphan boy who winds up under the tutelage of a mythical beast, which seems at least tangentially connected to Amahl’s story here.<\/p>\n

The Shadow King is described here as “an echo of the beast”. Later references in the issue also seem to confirm that we’re not dealing here with the psychic entity normally known as the Shadow King; rather, this is the impression that the Shadow King has left behind in the mind of his long-time host. This would explain why the Shadow King was accepted onto Krakoa. I can kind of see why they didn’t want to explain this too directly at the outset, but I think it would have been better to clarify somewhere that we’re meant to be dealing with the former host rather than the Shadow King himself, if only to make sense of the way other characters reacted to him.<\/p>\n

PAGE<\/strong>\u00a05.\u00a0<\/strong>Recap and credits.<\/p>\n

PAGES 6-7.<\/strong>\u00a0Lost Club make contact with the New Mutants.<\/em><\/p>\n

Last issue, the Shadow King was putting the New Mutants through repeated illusions of the destruction of Krakoa by invaders (here, the Brood), ostensibly to make a point that Krakoa was bound to fall in the end, and that its inhabitants needed to be trained and ready for it. That process continues here, though the New Mutants are only hazily aware of things not being quite right.<\/p>\n

Lost Club are apparently able to contact them in some form resembling Rain Boy’s water droplet. The snatches of dialogue come from Lost Club’s dialogue on the next page – other than names, which are presumably Lost Club calling out to the New Mutants just before we join their scene. The other words that get carried over are all words describing Amahl Farouk’s emotional state.<\/p>\n

PAGES 8-9.<\/strong>\u00a0The New Mutants and Lost Club are drawn together.<\/em><\/p>\n

A bit of Dali, a bit of Escher. Very pretty.<\/p>\n

The portrait on the wall of the Escher castle shows young Amahl with his father (who we previously saw in a flashback in issue #14).<\/p>\n

“This feels so much like my nightmare sphere.”<\/strong> Cosmar is referring to the reality-distortion area that she was creating around her in her sleep in issues #10-11.<\/p>\n

PAGE 10.<\/strong> Data page. The New Mutants and Lost Club engage in expository dialogue. Normally I’d query doing an essential scene in this form, but given the dreamlike tone of this issue I think it works, since it avoids putting a very prosaic piece of plot in the middle of the issue (and it gives it a bit more distance). I’m not sure “Heroes & Shadows” references anything in particular. It seems to suggest that Lost Club are serving as a mirror to the New Mutants, though they don’t seem to map on to one another as individuals. The low scene number would also imply that they’re at a relatively early stage in this relationship.<\/p>\n

Broadly, Lost Club take the line that Farouk was genuinely trying on some level to help them (by taking them under his wing in earlier issues), and therefore isn’t all bad (even if his approach is warped). Magik very firmly rejects that; the other New Mutants seem to be more pragmatic, arguing that it’s an issue they can worry about later. The Lost Club are taking the more traditionally heroic role here.<\/p>\n

“As someone who has a lot of experience being trapped in a liminal space being tortured and manipulated by its ruler…”<\/strong> Magik is referring to her backstory, most fully shown in the first\u00a0Magik<\/em> miniseries, where she grew up in Limbo after being abducted by Belasco.<\/p>\n

I’m not entirely sure what Magik means by “liminal” here (which is to say, I’m not sure if she’s using the word wrongly or if I just don’t quite get what she’s saying about this landscape).\u00a0The word “liminal” basically means “threshold-like”. In a literal sense, a “liminal space” is just a location whose defining feature is that it provides a transition between two other places – a doorway or a corridor, say. In a figurative sense, it’s more like a place of transition between two states. Being “in limbo”, in the sense of stuck without resolution between two possible states, is a liminal state in a sense. Magik’s dimension of Limbo isn’t all that liminal in itself, though it was the location of Magik’s personal coming of age story. Calling Amahl Farouk’s own mindscape “liminal” seems a bit of a stretch to me. I do kind of wonder if the word is just being misused to mean “dreamy and non-linear”, since she later refers to herself as an “expert in navigating liminal spaces”.<\/p>\n

Despite loudly asserting her expertise throughout this issue, Magik is the member of the team who is most emphatically and comprehensively wrong. Presumably it reflects her own refusal to accept that she too might have an uncontaminated core personality within.<\/p>\n

“[S]omeone who knows what it is like to be trapped in her own mind and manipulated to do horrible things…”<\/strong> No-Girl is referring to her first appearances as a prisoner of John Sublime in\u00a0New X-Men<\/em> vol 1 #118, when she was being forced to work for him.<\/p>\n

“[W]hat the Shadow King did … to Karma, and Rahne, and [Scout]”.<\/strong> The Shadow King possessed Karma for an extended period in\u00a0the original\u00a0New Mutants<\/em> (mostly off-panel). He manipulated Rahne over several \u00a0issues of this series, and he killed Scout in issue #19.<\/p>\n

PAGES 11-14.<\/strong>\u00a0Rahne is separated from the group.<\/em><\/p>\n

At least some of the echoing dialogue comes from the Amahl\/Shadow King data page earlier in the issue; some comes from page 15.<\/p>\n

There’s a little Magik doll sitting on one of the Escher steps, which seems to be the basis for the cover.<\/p>\n

Wolfsbane’s “Five-into-One secondary mutation”, believe it or not, is a real thing. It was a power she picked up while working for the government of the mutant enclave of New Tian in\u00a0X-Men Blue<\/em> #7, and I don’t think it’s been mentioned since. In\u00a0issue #14, Magik and Wolfsbane were shown combining their powers so that one Wolfsbane went into a portal and five came out, but the implication there seemed to be that Magik was using the weird time physics of Limbo to produce five Wolfsbanes from slightly different points in her timeline. (If it was just Wolfsbane’s secondary mutation, what was Magik contributing?) But… yes, it is canon that Wolfsbane can turn into a pack of wolves, and apparently we are no longer politely pretending that never happened.<\/p>\n

I have some difficulty with the idea that you can just “form a mutant circuit” with any old mutants regardless of powers, as opposed to using powers synergistically, but I guess it’s the astral plane and everything’s symbolic.<\/p>\n

Dani and Rahne’s psychic connection is an idea that goes back to the earliest days of\u00a0New Mutants<\/em>.<\/p>\n

PAGES 15-21.<\/strong>\u00a0The New Mutants and Lost Club reach Amahl.<\/em><\/p>\n

The New Mutants attack on sight, Lost Club want to rescue Amahl. The Shadow King persona takes the opportunity to seize control and fight back, and we get the old standard of the New Mutants being confronted by frightening things from their past (all of which they brush aside). In Dani’s case, it’s the Demon Bear which was her arch-enemy in early\u00a0New Mutants<\/em>; Warpath is presumably meant to be reminded of his brother’s death; Illyana sees herself as a demon. I’m not\u00a0entirely<\/em> sure what the art is meant to be showing for Karma, but I suppose it’s probably her brother.<\/p>\n

The art is absolutely bananas in the sequences shown from Wolfsbane’s viewpoint, which I’m all in favour of.<\/p>\n

The Shadow King is trying to manipulate Wolfsbane by reminding her of the subplot about her missing son Tier. Tier was supposed to have died in\u00a0X-Factor<\/em> #256; Rahne didn’t “let” anyone kill him, but it’s a generic guilt trip.<\/p>\n

I would never have picked this up without a steer from the discussion of this issue at ComicsXF.com<\/a>, but No-Girl’s enhanced “Giga” form is the temporary body that she had in\u00a0Generation Hope<\/em> #14.<\/p>\n

PAGES 22-23.<\/strong> Amahl Farouk rejects the Shadow King.<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s a fairly standard moral about Farouk accepting that he can be the master of his own destiny, but the art’s spectacular. I like the fact that we’re apparently left with an arrested-child Amahl persona in the body of the Shadow King.<\/p>\n

PAGE 24.<\/strong> Trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: WHAT IS DESERVED.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. NEW MUTANTS vol 4 #23 “The Truth Shall Set Them Free” by Vita Ayala & Rod Reis COVER \/ PAGE 1. The New Mutants looking down on us as scary dolls. PAGES 2-3.\u00a0Lost Club enter the Shadow King’s mind. The previous […]<\/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-7357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7357","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=7357"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7359,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7357\/revisions\/7359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}