The OG New Mutants are responsible for training a new generation of teens on Krakoa, and the teens resist. Dani and Xi’an chased a runaway former student into Otherworld, then got snagged by malevolent Merlyn: can they find him, or even free themselves? And what’s the Shadow King training his hand-picked group of disconsolate teens to do? New Mutants #17, written by Vita Ayala, art by Rod Reis, lettering by VC’s Travis Lanham.
Zachary Jenkins: I don’t get a lot of opportunities to step on this side of the aisle and talk about X-Books, but Liz needed a break and I’ll never say no to talking about this phenomenal run of New Mutants.
Stephanie Burt: And they’ll never say no to you. (Unless you ask to die and go through the Resurrection Protocol for what the Quiet Council believes to be merely cosmetic reasons. Then they’ll definitely say no.)
The Kids Continue To Not Be Alright
ZJ: The mutants on Krakoa may be trying to influence the younger generation, but it seems like someone else is getting to them first.
SB: Remember when Krakoa promised Rahne Sinclair some happiness? Even a little at a time? Yeah, that won’t last. Here she is depicted lovingly, carefully, in a fetal position, terrified, while the Shadow King opens this issue with a “we are not so different, you and I” villain speech:”Back when I was a boy…I wept, alone in the dark, begging for salvation.” Just like you, Wolfsbane. Just like you. Where is this going?
“We must help each other,” continues the psychic emanation of my least favorite major X-villain, reaching out his –WHY ARE BIG ROUND PEOPLE ALWAYS THE BAD GUYS, OR ELSE THE COMIC RELIEF? WHY, STILL, IN 2021?– reaching out his big, thick-fingered hand to Rahne. Mutant children all over Krakoa, Farouk says, call out to his mind in pain. “I would rather it be you.” Rahne lost her own mutant child years ago; maybe she can help these kids instead.
ZJ: I’m honestly fascinated by these two plots coming together. Like you, the Shadow King has always been a villain I tolerate, not enjoy, but Ayala and Reis have brought a charismatic energy to him. It’s incredibly reminiscent of how the show Legion dealt with the character and it’s easy to see why characters would fall under his sway.
Wolfsbane is a character whose trauma in X-Factor was upsetting to me, and not in the way strong fiction should upset you. She was forced into painful situations, first with losing Hrimhari, then with the murder of Tier. Unfortunately, those developments never felt like they impacted her. Even in a book like New Mutants: Dead Souls, which I adore, Rahne’s trauma is glossed over, leaving the character feeling rather stagnant. Ayala is spinning gold from dirt by having this drive Rahne. She’s trying so hard to be content in paradise, to repress the pain from losing her son, but she’d sacrifice it all to get him back.
SB: I agree. She knows that past writers have treated her badly, and she’d like to get her own back: in her view, it may be her faith and her faith alone that kept her from turning into a revenge-seeking villain years ago, and now that her faith isn’t the same…
But that’s a plot thread we’ll have to follow next issue. Meanwhile in another part of the island, Cosmar and No-Girl and Anole and Rain Boy are learning how to use their powers in tandem, and how to share their consciousness. Sounds cool till you remember that the Shadow King has taught them how to do it. They kill a flower, but it’s all in the service of learning new sick team-up moves. When do we get to see the team-up moves?
ZJ: I love the concepts of team-up moves that Vita continues to explore here. Mutant technology can sometimes sound pretentious as hell when it’s used for things like resurrecting the dead or traversing spacetime to find mysterious crystals. But in reality? It’s a combo move, something that has a long and storied history in superhero comics. Vita is leaning into the fun of that with these kids. After all, if Krakoa is a community, doesn’t that mean everyone should be helping one another?
Roma Holiday
SB: Maybe someone can help Dani and Xi’an, who appear to have wandered out of a New Mutants plot entirely and into something from Cross-Time-Caper Excalibur. Last issue Merlyn captured them in Otherworld. Here we learn that he told them he’d put them to death unless they infiltrated Roma’s kingdom and captured a macguffin teapot, so off they go, following a psychic white rabbit on Dani’s white winged horse. There’s battle banter. There’s a potion they’re supposed to drink. They drink it and vanish.
ZJ: These Otherworld sections are where Reis really shines. His loose, impressionistic pencils and painted colors really sell the otherworldliness of umm Otherworld. What’s fascinating is comparing this with the dream world he created for Steve Rogers back in Secret Empire. Back then, while the colors stayed similar, the line work evoked a B-Rate Phil Noto. I was honestly hesitant about him on New Mutants, but he’s allowed himself to get more chaotic on the page, pulling from Bill Sienkiewicz’s inescapable impact on the title. He’s turned into a perfect fit for this psychic fantasy book. Now speaking of fantasy, you mentioned a potion?
SB: The potion came from King Jamie, everyone’s least favorite Braddock. The rabbit leads now no-longer-invisible Dani and Xi’an into Roma’s dingy, cluttered room of treasures, and thence to Roma herself, who knew our heroes were coming. No fan of breaking and entering, she’s offended, and then amused. Merlyn’s her dad. They do not get along.
Letting her robe-top fall open till we can almost– but not quite– see the bits that an all-ages comic book has to conceal, Roma shines her Light of Truth on the pair. Delightfully, it’s a magic item that looks like a thick wax candle but works like a flashlight: you can even turn it sideways. (Magical things in these magical realms look properly sorcerous, but also goofy: that, too, reminds me of early Excalibur.) Roma agrees to give our heroes their teapot and send them to find their missing mutant in a shower of rainbow sparkles, in return for an IOU, to be called in whenever a future writer needs an otherworldly plot twist. The rainbow and the conversation and the statuesque panels of Roma and Dani and Xi’an having a chat come off beautifully, fit for the fairy tales Dani mentions. Reis has still trouble with action sequences- his battles look stiff and staid– but a dramatic bargain with the empress of Fairyland? Perfect fit (and you’re right about Sienkiewicz).
ZJ: Tini Howard did a ton of work in X Of Swords to redefine Otherworld. So far it has almost felt like reading an RPG sourcebook, even though your campaign will never go to 90% of the locations. It’s fun to see Ayala set a story here and play with some of these toys. Sevalith has a fantastic gothic vibe that Reis crushes and I’m glad we get to explore it.
SB: Once we get to Sevalith the ideas behind Ayala’s plots roll back into view. Some people need Fairyland and its trappings, white rabbits and armor and castles and all, as a way to escape, temporarily or forever. Some people need it for its symbols and tools, which cast light and truth on the real world. Some people want to be seen as they are in this world. And some people– well, they don’t. Josh, the mutant Dani and Xi’an have been chasing, has fled to this dark urban demiplane, another one of the many realms brought to us by Howard’s event. Sevalith’s his kind of place: nobody minds that he looks like a blue, horned devil. He’s making friends! Can he live there? Can he, please?
Of course not, say Dani and Xi’an, who have started to cast themselves as the Responsible Adults. If Josh dies in Otherworld, he dies for real. Shouldn’t he stay immortal at home? Then Dani and Xi’an come around. It’s his choice. It’s his life, and he’d rather live there. It’s absolutely lovely, and– again– the combination of expressive character work (what in a worse artist’s hands would be talking heads) and out-there bodies, dream-or-nightmare costumes– we’re in Rod Reis’s wheelhouse, and I love it.
ZJ: I think Ayala is walking a very tight line. They are talking about feeling dysphoric in your own skin. Like you don’t belong where you’re at. As a cis man, this reads to me like a trans allegory, and one that emotionally resonates. It’s broad enough that people like me can relate from different perspectives, but hitting on some of the same feelings my trans friends have expressed. This isn’t a replacement for explicit representation, but it’s great to see a non-binary creator telling a story like this. I don’t know if that would have happened just a few years ago.
SB: As a trans lady, I agree with you. I also love the way that Josh’s escape to a new life where devilish looks are the norm dovetails with Anole’s, and especially Cosmar’s, hope to reshape their own all-too-visible bodies. Xi’an and Mirage and even the plucky Gabby Kinney, for all their past trauma, can pass for human whenever they want. If they have been treated as monsters, it’s not because of the way that they look, and they don’t hate their looks. The Krakoan gospel– all mutants are welcome, and we love you just the way you are (cue the Billy Joel)– works for Dani and Gabby, but it has very limited appeal to someone like Cosmar, who looks in the mirror and sees something, or someone, existentially wrong.
Josh, with his big blue horns, solved the problem by relocating permanently to Sevalith. Can the same problem get solved on Krakoa? Teens and others with visible disabilities– or with, ahem, gender-related dysphoria– can relate. (We know in our bones that our favorite X-writers are struggling to bring us on-page trans mutants. We know. Lord, how long we have known.) As a friend who follows trans stuff but does not follow X-Men comics remarked, Cosmar’s troubles with the Krakoan adults look a lot like real-life trans people’s troubles when insurers refuse to cover “cosmetic” procedures like facial feminization surgery (FFS), on the grounds that appearances shouldn’t count. (In the Krakoan adults’ defense, FFS does not ordinarily involve a labor-intensive death and resurrection.)
Weaving Together
SB: Meanwhile in another corner of the cast list James Proudstar, Warpath, has a journal on an all-text page. He’s noticed that Warlock and Doug may be on the outs, and Warlock has taken to “following others around, imitating the way we move, look and sometimes speak.” Very awkward nerdy BFF discovers that his less nerdy, more normie-passing BFF no longer wants to spend every minute together, now that the less nerdy partner has a girlfriend, or in this case a big warrior wife. Poor Warlock. Poor Doug? Poor Rahne. Where’d she go?
ZJ: I’m so conflicted on Jimmy’s role in this book. On one hand, these journal entries are deep dives into his psyche as a character, adding much needed depth for readers who might only know him as the big Apache guy from X-Force. On the other, he’s removed from the action. He’s a plot device right now, talking about others without doing anything. This is a massive cast, and it’s sure some folks will get dropped: heck, most of the team doesn’t make an appearance in this one. I just hope the story loops back around to giving Jimmy some action.
SB: What looked like it was gonna be a hard-to-follow issue of bits and bobs got stronger as it rolled along: I’m still a fan, despite the loose threads. I’m even a fan of the white rabbit manifestation, which– having scurried unexplained through Merlyn’s realm, and Roma’s, and Sevalith– pitter-patters back to the Akademos Sextant, the New Mutants’ home, where Xi’an explains to Dani that he might be the emanation of her evil brother, Tran, who always loved fairy tales.
That’s right, Xi’an fans: just when you thought she might get a storyline built around anything other than her mostly-evil, sometimes-vulnerable birth family, her bloodline is back in the picture. Here I am not gonna hide my disappointment: sending Xi’an back to this well feels only one step above making Rachel a hound again, and as much as I trust Vita Ayala with this set of characters I would have hoped they’d do something more with her. Still, we see– look at how they clasp hands!– the undying friendship that links Xi’an to Dani Moonstar: I would follow these characters anywhere. Especially if Rod Reis gets to draw their shared rituals, their journeys, their conversation. Even their talking heads.
ZJ: I mentioned New Mutants: Dead Souls earlier. It’s a book where I verbally groaned when it was revealed that, oops it’s a story about Karma’s evil brother. I consider myself a pretty knowledgeable dude when it comes to X-Men and I can’t think of a story for Karma that wasn’t about her uncle or her brother or her younger twin siblings or her super secret sister. Her family isn’t all that interesting so it’s a big confounding to me that this is the only story we get. Hell, she’s been out since the mid-90s, have her kiss a girl or something. At least give us a story that’s new to her.
But hey, I hated reading about the Shadow King before this arc, maybe we get surprised here.
X-Traneous Thoughts:
- Josh the blue devil explains the resurgence of Jersey Devil stories, or so he says. He’s also a Blue Devil (as in Duke University sports teams), and he looks a bit like a Star Trek Andorian. Coincidence? Or homage?
- Gabby Kinney will never, ever clean her room.
- Xi’an tells Dani, “You. I need you.’ They hold hands. 800 fanfics suddenly bloom.
- OK yes but maybe let them kiss too? We already had a sapphic Dani in a movie, what does Marvel have to lose?
- Krakoan Reads: Kill Me
Zachary Jenkins runs ComicsXF and is a co-host on the podcast “Battle of the Atom.” Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside of all this.
Stephanie Burt is Professor of English at Harvard. Her podcast about superhero role playing games is Team-Up Moves, with Fiona Hopkins; her latest book of poems is We Are Mermaids. Her nose still hurts from that thing with the gate.
