What does the brave new X-World hold for Professor Xavier’s third wave of students? Your Major Spoilers review of New Mutants #1 awaits!
NEW MUTANTS #1
Writer: Ed Brisson & Jonathan Hickman
Artist: Rod Reis
Design: Tom Muller
Letterer: VC’s Travis Lanham
Editor: Jordan D. White
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Cover Price: $4.99
Release Date: November 6, 2019
Previously in New Mutants: The classic New Mutants (Sunspot, Wolfsbane, Mirage, Karma, Magik, and Cypher) get together with a few new friends (Chamber and Mondo, late of Generation X) to seek out their missing member and share the good news… a mission that takes them into space alongside the Starjammers!
“HONESTLY? SOME CREEPY STUFF.”
The back story of Hickman’s X-books thus far has been high-level stuff, with lots of myth-building, so I was pleasantly surpirsed when this issue opened with Rahne Sinclair quietly and serenely enjoying her new life on Krakoa. We get a flashback of her resurrection and Storm telling her that all her sins are forgiven, leading to the remarkable realization that Rahne is, for perhaps the first time, actually good. The rest of the New Mutants are likewise enjoying Krakoa, though Cypher (who has a cybernetic Warlock arm now?) has enlisted Mondo to try and communicate with Krakoa, while Sunspot and the-artist-formerly-known-as-Mirage have a clever conversation that not only serves as a short history of the X-Men but a really effective way to establish the character of two old friends. The only problem with all this madness, according to Sunspot, is that one of their old friends is missing, and so the New Mutants set off to deep space to find Cannonball! They hitch a ride with Corsair and the Starjammers, which leads to problems of assimilation issues (the Krakoa flower they’re carrying is damaging the hydroponics, for one, and Magik might have chopped of Raza’s arm in a rage), leading to near-disaster and Sunspot needing a great space lawyer.
I REALLY LIKE THIS SOFT-EDGED ART
First off, Rod Reis does an incredible job with the art in this issue, with a painted feel and a lovely palette of colors. The early sequences on Krakoa are all lush pastels, transitionging to darker blacks, reds and greens once they’re on the spaceship, and the transition is both perfect and subtle. Reis even evokes a little of the ol’ Bill Sienkiewicz “madness eyes” when Magik loses her cool, providing continuity to the old-school New Mutants stories. The addition of the new characters feels perfectly natural and I like seeing that, even in this brave new X-world, there’s still room for weird, personal side trips. I’m not entirely sure I’m cool with Corsair abandoing a bunch of late adolescents/twentysomethings in deep space, but even that feels like a relatively reasonable outcropping of the story being told here and the depth of character given to everyone makes for a fascinating read. I’m actually kind of looking forward to spending some actual time with the much-abused Mondo (for the first time, maybe, thanks to all the retcons in his bacstory) and I really want to see if Roberto can get himself and his friends out of this one. Brisson and Hickman
BOTTOM LINE: GLAD TO SEE THEY’RE NOT ROLLING BACK SUNSPOT
In short, this is one of the most approachable of X-books (but still weird and otherworldly) and it has a lot of character promise as well as a return to the space-stuff that I enjoyed during HIckman’s run on ‘Avengers.’ If you’re a fan of traditional X-Men space antics, New Mutants #1 seems like the beginning of a book for you, with some really beautiful art and a lot of story possibilities with these characters, leading to a truly impressive 4.5 out of 5 stars overall. I’ll be honest: I’m really looking forward to the reunion of Sam and Roberto, but the rest of this is all pretty fascinating, even the fact that one of these guys calls himself Jono.
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NEW MUTANTS #1
There's a lot of great stuff in here, including incredible art, some fun space adventure nonsense and an interesting cast of characters. Corsair's a real jerk, though.
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Writing7
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Art9
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Coloring10
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.