{"id":8637,"date":"2022-12-28T22:34:10","date_gmt":"2022-12-28T22:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8637"},"modified":"2022-12-28T22:34:10","modified_gmt":"2022-12-28T22:34:10","slug":"new-mutants-33-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8637","title":{"rendered":"New Mutants #33 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 #33<\/strong>
\n“The Sublime Saga, part 3: Let It Burn”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Charlie Jane Anders<\/strong>
\nArtists: Alberto Alburquerque with Ro Stein & Ted Brandt<\/strong>
\nColourists: Carlos Lopez with Tamra Bonvillain<\/strong>
\nLetterer & production: Travis Lanham<\/strong>
\nDesign: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen<\/strong>
\nEditor: Sarah Brunstad<\/strong><\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1.<\/strong>\u00a0Head shots of four characters who are in this issue plus three regulars who aren’t. Given the glowing eyes on the three regulars, you do have to wonder whether this cover was actually designed with a different story in mind.<\/p>\n

This is the final issue of the current run of\u00a0New Mutants<\/em>. The trailer page advertises\u00a0New Mutants: Lethal Legion<\/em>, which is a five-issue miniseries by Charlie Jane Anders and Enid Bal\u00e1m, beginning in March.<\/p>\n

PAGE<\/strong>\u00a02.\u00a0<\/strong>Stan Lee tribute page.<\/p>\n

PAGES 3-4.<\/strong>\u00a0Morgan and Escapade react to finding themselves in the location of Destiny’s vision.<\/em><\/p>\n

I’ve covered this in previous issues, but in\u00a0Marvel’s Voices: Pride<\/em> (2022), Emma Frost and Destiny showed Escapade a vision of a future in which she uses her powers to swap places with Morgan and gets them killed. Issue #32 ended with them running onto this rooftop as they try to escape the U-Men, and finding themselves in that very recognisable location.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Morgan<\/strong> didn’t really seem to react at all in the previous issue, but evidently that wasn’t the idea. He makes the point, though, that it was Escapade who decided the vision was so clearly reliable that she should go to Krakoa and start training to control her powers. Her control over her powers\u00a0has<\/em> increased, and besides, there’s no obvious reason why she has to use her powers\u00a0at all<\/em>, which would be enough in itself to avert the prophecy. (In fact, that’s what Escapade was trying to do in\u00a0the\u00a0Voices<\/em> story – just not use her powers.)<\/p>\n

Martha<\/strong> yelled at Escapade last issue that she was more interested in being seen to do the right thing (by dodging responsibility) than in actually helping others. That ties back to be the prompt for Escapade to stand up to her destiny and try to meet it head on rather than trying to duck it.<\/p>\n

PAGES 5-6.<\/strong>\u00a0Leo and Cerebella fight the U-Men.<\/em><\/p>\n

Like Escapade and Morgan, they decide that the best course of action is just to fight the U-Men rather than keep hiding from them – they have useful powers, after all. (Leo is a telekinetic and low level telepath, if you were wondering.)<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, it turns out that the consequence of doing a swap within a swap – as Escapade did last issue – is\u00a0not<\/em> that they both wear off when the first swap runs its time, but that the second swap reverses separately on its own timescale. So Escapade and Cerebella find themselves swapping places in mid fight.<\/p>\n

PAGE 7.<\/strong> Recap and credits.<\/p>\n

PAGE 8.<\/strong> Data page. Another of Cerebella’s diary pages, as seen in the previous two issues.<\/p>\n

Storm<\/strong>‘s speech to Cerebella comes from her resurrection in issue #24. The description here is accurate, but gives the impression of a private conversation when it was more Storm making a public speech (in the way that resurrections used to be depicted in the earlier days of the Krakoan era).<\/p>\n

Martha completely rejects the relevance of good intentions, which is understandable given her track record.<\/p>\n

PAGES 9-12.\u00a0<\/strong>Wolfsbane fights Sublime.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the same map that Wolfsbane found in the previous issue, the significance apparently being that the red dot showed Sublime’s target to be the Akademos Habitat (the teens’ home).<\/p>\n

A rare outing here for Wolfsbane’s little used power to change into a pack of wolves, which comes from\u00a0X-Men Blue<\/em> #7, and has been mentioned occasionally in this book. But if you’re not going to retcon it out, I guess she probably should be using it all the time.<\/p>\n

Kick<\/strong> was the drug that Sublime used to infect and control mutants during the Grant Morrison run; it was also mentioned as part of his plan last issue.<\/p>\n

PAGES 13-15.<\/strong> Escapade and Leo fight the U-Men.<\/em><\/p>\n

Turns out they’re perfectly capable of beating these bozos anyway.<\/p>\n

Sublime is intrigued by the possibilities for abusing Escapade’s powers, in a way that very obviously parallels the apparent interest of Emma and Destiny.<\/p>\n

PAGE 16.<\/strong> Data page. Shela replies to the email that appeared on a data page in the previous issue (which already mentioned the waffle iron stolen from a villain).<\/p>\n

The crow story that Shela mentions is “The Crow and the Pitcher”, one of Aesop’s Fables. The crow reaches inaccessible water by throwing in stones to raise the water level; it’s a fairly straightforward illustration of ingenuity outdoing raw power. Crows really can work this out, apparently.<\/p>\n

PAGES 17-19.<\/strong>\u00a0Morgan thwarts Sublime’s plan.<\/em><\/p>\n

By using his powers to turn the Kick supply into chocolate. It’s previously been presented as a completely useless power, but obviously it’s got plenty of useful applications. He can disable guns, force locks, sabotage machines, etc.<\/p>\n

PAGES 20-22.<\/strong>\u00a0The vision plays out.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sublime gets psychically zapped while trying to bundle Escapade onto his aircraft, he leaves her behind, and she falls from the roof. This time she resists the temptation to save her life by swapping with someone nearby (which would have killed Morgan), and allows herself to die. This only really works as a sacrifice because she’s still not convinced of the genuineness of resurrection (and has a feel of a plot point that was designed without taking resurrection into account, if I’m being honest). Anyway, Leo saves her.<\/p>\n

The art isn’t very clear about this at all, but since he’s missing in the next scene, presumably Sublime escapes on his aircraft. The idea seems to be that the blast from the engines is what sends her through the balcony but it isn’t as clearly conveyed as you’d want.<\/p>\n

An odd feature about this is that despite being told she needed to come to Krakoa and learn about her powers, Escapade does indeed change her destiny by electing to\u00a0not<\/em> use them, which is what she was planning to do all along. Maybe the idea is that her greater control prevents her from lashing out instinctively. Or maybe the point is that she’s able to resist the temptation and keep her head because she’s grown as a person on Krakoa. Either way, Emma and Destiny’s account seems questionable and manipulative. Escapade certainly takes it that way. Even so, she does draw the conclusion that she needs to control her powers to prevent them being abused by others.<\/p>\n

PAGES 22-24.<\/strong>\u00a0The kids discuss Time Archer.<\/em><\/p>\n

I’m not sure if Time Archer is a reference to anything in particular.<\/p>\n

PAGES 24-25.<\/strong>\u00a0Escapade confronts Destiny and Emma.<\/em><\/p>\n

Yoda does indeed say “Always in motion, the future is”, in\u00a0The Empire Strikes Back<\/em>. Let’s assume Destiny is playing along in pretending not to know that. No doubt we’ll get back to the subplot of what they had in mind for her in the next mini.<\/p>\n

PAGE 26.<\/strong> Trailers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. NEW MUTANTS vol 4 #33 “The Sublime Saga, part 3: Let It Burn” Writer: Charlie Jane Anders Artists: Alberto Alburquerque with Ro Stein & Ted Brandt Colourists: Carlos Lopez with Tamra Bonvillain Letterer & production: Travis Lanham Design: Tom Muller & […]<\/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-8637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8637","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=8637"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8639,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8637\/revisions\/8639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}