{"id":8849,"date":"2023-03-11T18:17:51","date_gmt":"2023-03-11T18:17:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8849"},"modified":"2023-03-11T18:17:51","modified_gmt":"2023-03-11T18:17:51","slug":"new-mutants-lethal-legion-1-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=8849","title":{"rendered":"New Mutants: Lethal Legion #1 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>NEW MUTANTS: LETHAL LEGION #1<\/strong>
\n“Vampire Heist”<\/strong>
\nWriter: Charlie Jane Anders<\/strong>
\nPenciller: Enid Balam<\/strong>
\nInker: Elisabetta D’Amico<\/strong>
\nColourist: Matt Milla<\/strong>
\nLetterer: Travis Lanham<\/strong>
\nDesign: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen<\/strong>
\nEditor: Sarah Brunstad<\/strong><\/p>\n

NEW MUTANTS: LETHAL<\/strong> LEGION.<\/strong> This is a five-issue miniseries. I’m not generally doing annotations for minis – which is why I’m not doing\u00a0Bishop: War College<\/em> – but this is in substance\u00a0New Mutants<\/em> #34-38, billed as a miniseries, presumably because someone thought it would boost sales. It’s a direct continuation from the storyline in New Mutants<\/em> #31-33.<\/p>\n

COVER \/ PAGE 1:\u00a0<\/strong>The cast in the foreground – Escapade, Cerebella, Wolfsbane, Karma and Mirage – with the Shadow King, the Demon Bear and a couple of U-Men in the background. Shadow King is looking a bit Mojo-like, too. The Demon Bear and the Shadow King aren’t in this issue at all, but maybe it’s a cover for the whole trade.<\/p>\n

Rather boldly, the cover tells us that this features a “new creative team”, despite the fact that (a) it’s officially a miniseries, and (b) Anders, whose name is in the largest text, has been writing the book for three issues now – though the artists are new.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

PAGE 2.<\/strong>\u00a0Escapade takes out a U-Man guard.<\/em><\/p>\n

Boxton, Florida\u00a0<\/strong>doesn’t appear to exist.<\/p>\n

Presumably, Escapade is carrying the feather on a string because it makes it easier to swap places with the U-Man guard and take his gun if she’s holding something herself.<\/p>\n

This book is still very much Escapade Featuring The New Mutants, which I don’t particularly have a problem with, since I quite like the character – but I can see why your mileage might vary.<\/p>\n

PAGE 3.\u00a0<\/strong>The New Mutants enter the U-Men’s facility.<\/em><\/p>\n

The group here is Wolfsbane, Warpath, Karma, Mirage, Cerebella and Escapade. Since Escapade isn’t wearing a team uniform, I assume she and Cerebella are here because of their personal interest, rather than because they’ve actually joined the team.<\/p>\n

“Recently, they captured me and my friends.”\u00a0<\/strong>New Mutants<\/em> #31-33.<\/p>\n

“When we escaped, we found a list of their other horror factories…” <\/strong>On the hard drive that Wolfsbane salvaged at the end of\u00a0New Mutants<\/em> #33.\u00a0Considering that the U-Men are apparently guarding this facility in full costume, openly on the street, you do have to wonder why anyone needed a list in order to find it. Maybe they only stepped up security after the hard drive was stolen.<\/p>\n

“Cerebella, are you sure you’re ready to go back in there?”<\/strong>\u00a0This isn’t the facility they took down in the previous arc, so presumably Escapade just means going back into a U-Men facility in general.<\/p>\n

“She had to relieve the worst moment of her whole life.”<\/strong> In the previous arc, Sublime tried (and failed) to turn Cerebella back into a disembodied brain under his control, which was her status quo when first introduced in\u00a0New X-Men<\/em> #118.<\/p>\n

PAGE 4.\u00a0<\/b>The New Mutants fight the U-Men.<\/em><\/p>\n

Escapade’s narration continues the recap for new readers.<\/p>\n

John Sublime<\/strong> is a living bacteria from the dawn of time who controls a human host, though the U-Men (mostly) don’t know that. This is not important to the present story.<\/p>\n

“Destiny showed me a vision where I caused the death of my best friend.”<\/strong> In\u00a0Marvel’s Voices: Pride<\/em> #1 (2022). The vision was averted in\u00a0New Mutants<\/em> #33 when events panned out differently. The strong implication has been that Destiny and Emma Frost are trying to manipulate Escapade into becoming a Krakoan asset (something she’s very sceptical about, since she doesn’t buy into the mutant nationalist project). Emma and Sublime have both alluded to the fact that Escapade’s weird powers imply that she’s actually quite a powerful reality-warper.<\/p>\n

PAGE 5.\u00a0<\/strong>The New Mutants rescue captive mutants.<\/em><\/p>\n

Both these prisoners seem to be generics. I’m tempted to say that the insectoid boy must be really up on his mutants if he recognises Wolfsbane, but I guess she did have a public profile as part of the government-sponsored X-Factor team in the early 90s.<\/p>\n

PAGE 6.\u00a0<\/strong>Escapade and Cerebella talk.<\/em><\/p>\n

The degree of tension between Escapade and Cerebella comes from the fact that when Cerebella was a prisoner of Sublime, she asked Escapade to kill her, to prevent him from mutilating her again. Escapade refused, which Cerebella regarded as evidence that Escapade was more concerned about keeping herself pure (particularly since Cerebella would just have been resurrected on Krakoa). Since Escapade went on to rescue Cerebella in a different way, that’s being smoothed over.<\/p>\n

PAGE 7.\u00a0<\/strong>Recap and credits. I don’t think we normally get both real names and codenames in the recap pages, but it’s probably a good idea.<\/p>\n

Karma’s real name is given here as Xu\u00e2n Cao Manh, rather than the traditional “Xi’an Coy Manh”, due to the traditional version being, well, wrong. This was covered in\u00a0Love Unlimited Infinity Comic<\/em> #31.<\/p>\n

PAGE 8.\u00a0<\/strong>Data page. A string of text messages from Morgan Red to Escapade, which she isn’t answering. Morgan has always been even more sceptical about Krakoa than Escapade was. She originally went there in order to gain control of her powers and prevent the timeline where she killed Morgan, but the fact that she’s staying there even now is clearly a wedge between them. Morgan is a mutant, but point blank refuses to have anything to do with Krakoa.<\/p>\n

PAGES 9-10.<\/strong>\u00a0Wolfsbane visits Morgan.<\/em><\/p>\n

“He found out Shela and I are mutants along with everyone else in New York.”<\/strong> They appeared on stage along with Wolfsbane and other Krakoan representatives in\u00a0New Mutants<\/em> #31.<\/p>\n

“I’m ‘always welcome on Krakoa.’ But Shela’s the one you all really wanted.”<\/strong> He’s being somewhat self-pitying, but he’s right.<\/p>\n

“Meanwhile, my trans mutant support group is taking a break because of death threats.”<\/strong> We seem to be slowly drifting back to a view that there’s a significant mutant population outside Krakoa – albeit that they’re more often shown padding out Orchis jails than living normal lives. The original line seemed to be that everyone had moved to Krakoa aside from a relative handful of refuseniks.<\/p>\n

PAGES 11-12.\u00a0<\/strong>Escapade proposes some light burglary.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is what Escapade (with Morgan as back-up) was doing when we first met her in\u00a0Marvel’s Voices: Pride<\/em> #1. In\u00a0New Mutants<\/em> #32, while escaping from the U-Men, she tells Morgan: “I think we should stop calling ourselves super villains. It was cute, but now I’m over it.” She’s re-casting herself as more of a Robin Hood figure here.<\/p>\n

Westchester, New York<\/strong> is the location of the X-Men Mansion, which doesn’t seem relevant here, but might be significant later.<\/p>\n

PAGES 13-14.\u00a0<\/strong>Count Nefaria kills a captive.<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s not\u00a0entirely<\/em> clear who this captive is – Nefaria calls him “a grubby peon who spies on his betters for the security state”, so I suppose he’s either a cop or a SHIELD-type agent.<\/p>\n

Count Nefaria<\/strong> is principally an Avengers and Iron Man villain, but he has fought the X-Men twice – once way back in the Silver Age, in\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #22-23, and once in\u00a0X-Men<\/em> #94-96, which is the story where Thunderbird dies. He’s one of those characters who looks human but is actually a being of ionic energy, like Wonder Man.<\/p>\n

“My humiliation at the hands of the Sin-Eater.”<\/strong>\u00a0In Amazing Spider-Man\u00a0<\/em>#46 (2020),\u00a0Nefaria was killed by a magical version of Sin-Eater and resurrected in a morally pure form. He was interviewed on camera by Norah Winters, and wound up begging his former victims for forgiveness. Sin-Eater’s “victims” largely returned to normal following his defeat in\u00a0Amazing<\/em> #56.<\/p>\n

PAGES 15-16.<\/strong> Escapade, Cerebella and Scout decide to rob Count Nefaria.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is obviously going to go well.<\/p>\n

“He used to be in the Maggia.”<\/strong> He did indeed. The Maggia is Marvel’s stand-in for the Mafia.<\/p>\n

PAGES 17-18.\u00a0<\/strong>Wolfsbane and Morgan Red hunt for tech in the sewers.<\/em><\/p>\n

Collecting this sort of thing\u00a0is<\/em> Morgan’s standard interest, but Wolfsbane seems to be reaching out to him for other reasons – most likely a combination of feeling sorry for him over Escapade’s decreased interest, and wanting to keep him on side (to the extent he’s on side in the first place).<\/p>\n

The idea that Krakoa’s enemies already know about organic tech, so that it’s important to get hold of something more conventional, is… not standard for the Krakoan era. It may be a pretext, of course.<\/p>\n

PAGE 19.\u00a0<\/b>Data page. Count Nefaria recruits for the Lethal Legion (presumably, not in quite the words he used in the real adverts, even though this exact page is on Cerebella’s tablet in the next scene).<\/p>\n

The Lethal Legion<\/strong>\u00a0is a team name that Nefaria has used for his henchmen on a number of occasions, starting with 1977’s\u00a0Avengers<\/em> #164. The name was first used by the Grim Reaper for an unrelated team that debuted in\u00a0Avengers<\/em> #70. There have been a bunch of other totally unrelated Lethal Legions down the years, but Nefaria certainly has used the name multiple times.<\/p>\n

PAGE 20.\u00a0<\/strong>Escapade and co decide to pose as Lethal Legion recruits to get in.<\/em><\/p>\n

PAGES 21-23.\u00a0<\/strong>Wolfsbane and Morgan find a monster in a lab.<\/em><\/p>\n

Spencer Smythe\u00a0<\/strong>is a Spider-Man villain. J Jonah Jameson hired him to make the original Spider-Slayer.<\/p>\n

Morgan gives two reasons for disliking Krakoa: first, a general anti-nationalism, and second, a conviction that mutant separatism will lead to eternal war. Rahne’s counter is to argue that she tried keeping her head down and living a quiet life “[w]hen I was a child back in Scotland”, though that would logically be before her powers emerged, and it somewhat glosses over the fact that she was being raised by an abusive religious extremist. That said, we’re clearly meant to take these are two competing perspectives on Krakoa, rather than as Rahne offering an unanswerable rebuttal.<\/p>\n

PAGES 24-25.\u00a0<\/strong>Escapade and Scout invent supervillain costumes.<\/em><\/p>\n

The headpiece that Escapade is wearing is the one that Psylocke wore as Lady Mandarin. I feel sure I’m meant to recognise some of the other components.<\/p>\n

PAGE 26.\u00a0<\/strong>Trailers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. NEW MUTANTS: LETHAL LEGION #1 “Vampire Heist” Writer: Charlie Jane Anders Penciller: Enid Balam Inker: Elisabetta D’Amico Colourist: Matt Milla Letterer: Travis Lanham Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen Editor: Sarah Brunstad NEW MUTANTS: LETHAL LEGION. This is a five-issue miniseries. […]<\/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-8849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8849","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=8849"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8851,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8849\/revisions\/8851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}