Major Spoilers
    Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube Twitch Discord RSS
    Major Spoilers
    • Home
    • Reviews
      • Random Access Memory
      • Retro Review
      • So You Want to Read Comics
    • Podcasts
      • Critical Hit
        • Critical Hit House Rules
        • Critical Hit World Building
      • Dueling Review
      • Finally Friday
      • Geek History Lesson
      • The Legion Clubhouse
      • Major Spoilers Podcast
        • MSP TPB for 2019
        • On the Next Major Spoilers Podcast – 2013
        • On the Next Major Spoilers Podcast – 2012
        • On the Next Major Spoilers Podcast – 2011
      • Munchkin Land
      • Top Five
      • Wayne’s Comics
      • Zach on Film
    • Features
      • Casual 60
      • Comic Casting Couch
      • Comics Portal
      • Did You Hear?
      • Editorials
      • Features
      • Gamer’s Corner
      • Hero Histories
      • Let’s Get Nerdy
      • Major Spoilers Adventures
      • Random Access Memory
      • So You Want to Read Comics
    • Movies
      • Did You Hear
      • Movies
      • Television
    • Comic Previews
    • Patreon
      • Patreon
      • Store
    Major Spoilers
    Marvel

    Review: New Mutants #1

    Matthew PetersonBy Matthew PetersonMay 6, 20098 Comments6 Mins Read

    Or – “Everything Old Is… Still Old, Actually,  But May Have A Few Tricks Left…”

    NM2.jpg

    I have made many parallels lately between the age of Marvel’s editorial staff and the fact that the properties of THEIR (and by extension, my) youth have been recieiving much more play in the 21st Century Marvel Universe.  Characters like Spider-Woman, Luke Cage, Ms. Marvel, and Ghost Rider hearken back to the second big renaissance of Marvel in the 70’s.  Now, we’re seeing a turn towards those characters of the early 80’s, and the point in time where the X-Men were presumed dead in outer space.  Having killed all of his students, a stricken Charles Xavier gathered a new group of super-teens who, rather than being trained as superheroes, were to be trained to be normal kids.  Wanna guess how well that worked?

    Previously, on New Mutants:  With his first class of X-Men graduated into the Champions, the Defenders, and backups stories in Amazing Adventures, and his second group of graduates NM1.jpgapparently eaten by an alien race, Professor X gathered his newest group of mutant children carefully.  From Kentucky, a young lad named Sam Guthrie, with an uncontrollable (but high-level) flight power.  From Rio came Roberto DaCosta, the excitable solar dynamo called Sunspot.  From the southwest, Danielle Moonstar, the psychic young Cheyenne known as Mirage.  From Vietnam came the telepathic brain-controller Xi’an Coy Manh, called Karma.  From Russia came Illyana Rasputin, younger sister of Colossus, who became known as Magik.  From Scotland came a girl who is busy in another X-book.  And from the hidden city of Nova Roma, Amara Aquilla, known as Magma due to her tectonic powers.  They walked the Earth and had adventures.  One became immortal; one became a Norse Valkyrie; one became a demon, died, came back, and died again; one had her backstory retconned, unretconned, and re-retconned to the point where even I don’t know what it all means; and nearly all of them at one point or another became villains.  But what sort of menace would it take to reunite the Class of ’82?  The greatest threat of them all:  one of their own.

    Our story opens in a ramshackle home somewhere in Colorado.  A young girl sits on her bedroom floor, playing with her dollie quietly.  An older girl enters, and tries to engage her in a conversation.  “Don’t be scared, all right?  My name is Shan.  My friend, Dani and I have been looking for you.”  The girl doesn’t respond at first, and Xi’an again tries to communicate with her.  “You’re new.  They LIKE the new ones,” says the frightened child, and suddenly there comes a pounding at the door.  The wood gives way, and monstrous limbs reach through to grab them, as the little girl tells Xi’an, “We should run now.”   Well, that’s ominous…  An equally portentious even occurs half a continent away in San Francisco, as a teleportal opens and spits out it’s cargo: Illyana Rasputin, the former New Mutant known as Magik, as well as repeat offender in the demonic possession category.  Magick tries to find someone to help her, but gets immediately attacked by the New X-Men (who are rightfully angry that she tried to kill them some months ago.)  Illyana is nearly beaten and/or run out of town on a rail before a mysterious stranger gets involved.  “Is there a problem here, kids?” drawls Sam Guthrie.  When he’s told that he better not get involved, Sam tells them all that Illyana is his friend, and nobody messes with his friend.  “I don’t have to show you what they means, do I?” he says through his best Cable-taught poker-face, and the underblassmen back off…

    A quick trip to the infirmary later, and Illyana has convinced Sam and Roberto DaCosta that it’s time to get the band back together, that Xi’an and Dani need help that only “The New Mutants” can provide.  When asked what he thinks, Sam says, “I don’t.  If you, Illyana…  ANY of the New Mutants ask for help, I don’t need to think about it.”  They rope in Amara Aquilla (currently only playing nursemaid for the blinded super-villain Empath) and Sam goes to Cyclops for approval of a rescue team.  Scott immediately agrees, to Sam’s surprise, and advises Cannonball of something Xavier told him once.  “The most important part of leading wasn’t personality, tactics or training.  It was doing whatever it takes to get your team back alive.  Bring them back, Sam…”  They’re issued uniforms (and, yes, Sam’s has aviator goggles) and an official Blackbird jet and the fearsome foursome sets off to find their teammates.  On the flight, Illyana taunts Magma about her secret love of Empath (a disturbingly creepy and nicely written scene) and Sunspot and Cannonball reunite their awesome unlikely buddy-movie chemistry.  When they arrive in Colorado, Illyana nearly flips out at the sight of a missing child poster, and she and Magma set out to find the lost girl, while Cannoball and Sunspot investigate the old fashioned way: with a bar fight.  The girls find the lost Xi’an Coy Manh, while the guys find… the lost Xi’an Coy Manh???  Somebody’s lying, but whom?  The answer is revealed when Amara and Illyana open the tiny locked box where Xi’an’s voice emanates and find… LEGION, the son of Professor X!

    I gotta be straight with you here:  I liked this book.  Zeb Wells obviously knows the character history of the New Mutants as well as I do, and penciller Diogenes Neves has a pleasant vaguely retro-style throughout that I enjoyed.  (He even nailed the now-customary superhero team “Bad Ass Power Walk” sequence…)  Maybe my history with the New Mutants is showing, or maybe I’m biased towards Marvel (inside joke, sorry) but New Mutants #1 really pleased me in a surprising way.  It’s good to see the characters fall into familiar old interactions, the way old friends do, and seeing Cannonball finally comfortable in his own skin made me kind of proud.  I remember him as the gangly, awkward, square-headed kid, but he’s now an experienced member of the X-Men, and an impressive leader as well.  Illyana’s time-twisting powers have given us some tantalizing hints of something brewing, and I’m even interested to see where Dani Moonstar fits on the team now that she has no mutant powers to speak of.  Nostalgia alone won’t sell a comic book, but if you can give me an interesting story and good art, I’m on board, and this comic delivers both.  New Mutants #1 earns a nicely unexpected 4 out of 5 stars overall, with good character work, a nice story hook, and some B-plots to take us past the first five issues.  That’s more than many comics EVER get…

    4stars.jpg

    Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
    Previous ArticleInterview: Victor Garber is Sinestro
    Next Article Review: Irredeemable #2
    Matthew Peterson
    • Website
    • Twitter

    Once upon a time, there was a young nerd from the Midwest, who loved Matter-Eater Lad and the McKenzie Brothers... If pop culture were a maze, Matthew would be the Minotaur at its center. Were it a mall, he'd be the Food Court. Were it a parking lot, he’d be the distant Cart Corral where the weird kids gather to smoke, but that’s not important right now... Matthew enjoys body surfing (so long as the bodies are fresh), writing in the third person, and dark-eyed women. Amongst his weaponry are such diverse elements as: Fear! Surprise! Ruthless efficiency! An almost fanatical devotion to pop culture! And a nice red uniform.

    Related Posts

    The Imperial Guardians rise at Marvel Comics

    Read More

    Unchosen #1 Review

    Read More

    Retro Review: Marvel Team-Up #95

    Read More

    8 Comments

    1. Luke Stevens on May 6, 2009 8:53 pm

      I’m glad I added this to my pull list. I really liked the first few issues of the original New Mutants run.

    2. Jerard on May 7, 2009 11:05 am

      I really loved this issue

    3. Ricco on May 7, 2009 1:18 pm

      The “you like him helpless” dialogue between Magma and Magik alone was worth it, great book.

    4. Steve on May 9, 2009 4:53 pm

      This book rocked! Ilyana was never this creepy back in the day but I kinda liked it. Maybe she has always needed a Dani or a Kitty to keep her mouth in check and we just never noticed…

    5. Ricco on May 9, 2009 8:28 pm

      @Steve: well she DID spent a few years as a soulless demon…

    6. Eddie Ginsburg on May 11, 2009 5:59 pm

      I am shocked to hear all the good talk concerning this magazine. I have read a couple of Zeb Wells spidey comics and they were almost unreadable.

      Has anyone read anything else good by Zeb?

      thanks,

      Eddie

    7. #1 owner on August 25, 2009 8:38 am

      I recently found a copy of the original ” The new Mutants ” issue #1 March 1983 in pretty good condition, does anyone know if it is worth anything and if it is how to go about selling it, cheers

      • Matthew Peterson on August 25, 2009 11:47 pm

        I recently found a copy of the original ” The new Mutants ” issue #1 March 1983 in pretty good condition, does anyone know if it is worth anything and if it is how to go about selling it, cheers

        Depending on the condition of the issue, New Mutants #1 will probably be worth between one and six dollars. An absolute pristine mint untouched issue could go higher, but generally speaking, it’s a relatively common issue in good condition. The best way to sell it is probably an online auction site, though you can figure that you will have a lot of competition there. A search of a popular unnamed auction site shows about a dozen of those issues, none priced more than two bucks… You might check with your local comics store, if you have one, but odds are that they won’t be paying much for an individual comic book. Your mileage, as always, may vary.

    AMAZON AFFILIATE

    Support this site by making a purchase through our Amazon affiliate links

    Reviews
    6.0
    July 13, 2025

    Unchosen #1 Review

    6.3
    July 13, 2025

    Retro Review: Marvel Team-Up #95

    8.7
    July 11, 2025

    Fantastic Four #1 Review

    6.0
    July 8, 2025

    JSA #9 Review

    7.0
    July 7, 2025

    X-Men: Hellfire Vigil #1 Review

    Patreon Support
    Sponsor

    ComiXology Home Page

    Follow Us
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Instagram
    • YouTube
    • Twitch
    Major Spoilers Patreon
    • About
      • Major Spoilers Terms of Use
      • Major Spoilers Frequently Asked Questions
      • Major Spoilers Privacy Policy Statement
      • Major Spoilers Podcast Gear
    • Contact
    • Cookie Policy (EU)
    Major Spoilers is copyright 2006-2025 by Major Spoilers Entertainment, LLC

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.

    We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
    Cookie settingsACCEPT
    Privacy & Cookies Policy

    Privacy Overview

    This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
    Necessary
    Always Enabled
    Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
    SAVE & ACCEPT