NMU #39: "Pawns Of The White Queen"

(In loco parentis)

Comments

It's stage two of the New Mutant's post-death therapy programme. Magneto hasn't been able to jolt them from their existential hard-drive crash; is Emma going to have any better luck?

Well, no, obviously, but the route by which we arrive at this foregone conclusion is an interesting one, rooted in Emma's growth as a character. Long gone is the one-note cackling villain the White Queen first arrived as. It's very clear here that Emma genuinely wants the New Mutants to feel better about themselves. The pride she takes in helping massage Rahne's mind to help her get past her trauma demonstrates that this is about more than simply getting the New Mutants back into fighting shape so she has more troops for her elite mutant army.

That's clearly part of it, obviously. But even there things aren't entirely simple. As the front cover of the issue shows, Emma wants to turn the New Mutants into Hellions, but there's more to that impulse than a simple craving for additional minions. Emma seems to genuinely believe our heroes would be better off in pink and black. And honestly, she's not utterly without a point here. After all, the Beyonder massacred Xavier's charges for the sake of making a point, not hers. Shan didn't find herself mentally compelled to become a villain and develop an eating disorder whilst studying at the Massachusetts Academy. There will come a time when Frost's cupidity (along with general '90s bullshit tendencies) will cause the total collapse of the Hellions, but right now she can make a strong case that she's protecting her students rather better than Xavier or Magneto ever has.

But the fact Frost's motivations mark her out as more than a simple villain, it doesn't mean they're not shot through with selfishness. She might genuinely want to help Rahne recover, but she can't resist poking around with the girl's sense of propriety so she won't be scandalised by Emma's clothing anymore. It's obviously none of my business what Frost wants to wear in her own home, but manipulating Rahne's reactions to it clearly isn't cool. But then this is precisely Emma's problem; the Hellion project has worked out fine for her so far, so she's convinced it's the only way to go, and everyone should get on board. Everyone should, in short, think the same way. No wonder she has Empath supercharge Magneto's self-doubt to the point where he willingly gives up his students to her. As far as Emma is concerned, every moment the New Mutants spend with Magneto whilst he blunders around looking for a way to help them is a moment wasted. He can't succeed; he can't look after students as well as she can. The sooner he admits he has failed, the sooner she can get the job done right.

This isn't exactly a slam-dunk reading, I accept. It's rather more interesting than assuming Emma is literally interested in nothing but adding the New Mutants to her recruitment pool. But even this comparatively generous reading of her actions needs to recognise that altruism is not her driving force here. The title of this story alone makes that clear. There's also a wonderful visual metaphor at the start of the issue in which see first the New Mutants' POV of Emma in her office, and then flip round to see her view of them.

What the teenagers are seeing is all opulence: fashionable chairs, sculptures, what appears to be a solid gold lamp, etc. What Emma sees, in contrast, is all function; uniform shelves of books and arrays of computers. Visitors to the office see luxury, the trappings of power (note Emma is talking to her new students whilst sipping at what is surely a tremendously expensive cocktail). What Emma sees is tools to use and resources to be employed. And you can value what you make use of. You can even come to care for it. But it remains, fundamentally, something that you take an interest in because it can get you what you want.

And really, realising that Emma's view of her charges is fundamentally as assets she happens to care for is the only way to understand why she keeps Empath around at all.  Because Magneto is absolutely right; if we were to ever accept that there are certain people who deserve to be executed for their crimes, it's a man who is not a serial sexual assaulter of women, but who just last issue forced two colleagues and close friends to rape each other constantly for days. I mean, that's so horrific an idea I have a real problem with Claremont for putting it in NMU in the first place, but since it's here it serves as clear evidence that no-one who willingly employs Empath can possibly claim to have any real interest in people as people. Yes, Emma keeps tabs on Empath and - so far - has been able to intercede and shut him down every time he has attempted to rape one of his own teammates, but that's a dance she can keep up only so long, and even she must realise that. But Empath is a useful tool for her, and so he gets to be kept on the shelf alongside all her other tools.

As an amoral policy of expedience, allowing Empath the run of the Academy is so horrendous I can imagine Richard Nixon balking at the idea. For as long as he stays, there can be no chance for Emma to even claim the moral high ground, she is simply too grotesquely compromised. She can tell herself this is for the New Mutants' own good all she likes, but the truth is she wants them to share the halls with a dangerous monster, because that dangerous monster makes her life a little easier.

What this ultimately means is that, whilst Emma Frost has become a more complicated and rounded character, and whilst she now seems to have embraced her duty of care, however twisted her conception of that is, things are worse than ever at the Massachusetts Academy. Something is going to have to break.

Clues

This story takes place over a single week.

Date

Monday 7^th to Monday 14^th May, 1985.

X-Date

X+7Y+55 to X+7Y+62.

Standout Line

Nothing much worth noting this issue. Well, there's Catseye dismissing Cannonball and Jetstream as "Noisyboys", I suppose. That's kinda fun.

NMU #38: "Aftermath!"

("A Godforsaken fucking tomb.")

Comments

A familiar approach in later years, this is the New Mutant's "Secret Wars II" comedown issue, although really it's just the first installment in their comedown arc. Which is fair enough; being brutally and callously murdered only to be raised from the dead as bodyguards for your murderer is exactly the kind of mind-fuck you can imagine taking a while to untangle.

Obviously doing this story justice is rather difficult. There's no real-world analogue for being brutally murdered and then resurrected by your killer (not unless you're the most cynical Christian imaginable) but the closest analogue must be some kind of horrifically traumatic near-death experience deliberately brought about by someone vastly more powerful than you, and there's no real hope that something like that could ever be satisfactorily worked through in a superhero comic, or at least not in a superhero comic where the heroes have to go back to punching people in a couple of weeks.

The degree to which this matters is open to debate; one would hope there are very very few people who can come close to understanding what the New Mutants are going through, which makes questions of accurate depiction of distant concern, and clearly something had to be done to address the events of last issue. In any case, Claremont's solution to the impossible problem of tackling an utterly unrecognisable situation in a ludicrously short space of time by shifting the focus to Magneto's struggle to help his charges, rather than their own experiences. In general this is not an approach I'm happy with, since it subsumes the story of the victim(s) into the story of the observer, but there are two things to be said for using it here.  The first is the aforementioned unreality of all that happens here; it's harder to object to someone not telling their own story when that story has no meaning for the real world (though as mentioned there may be people who can come close to relating here, and I'm not sure they'd be happy with the focus on Magneto). The second is that it allows Claremont to at least mine the comic's set up, as he offers up a story about how the adults just cannot understand what the children's problem is.

In fact, what Claremont manages here is genuinely impressive. The idea that the teenagers' trauma would lead to them being listless, inattentive and unconcerned with the future is at least plausible; they don't see any point in embracing or preparing for a life they know can be snatched from them at any time. You can't strive for a future you can't imagine existing. But as well as being a plausible approach regarding the New Mutants' trauma, it represent perfectly a common form of teenage behaviour, and in a way that actually strengthens the idea that this is how our heroes would respond to their trauma. There are, fundamentally, two types of school pupil who aggravate their teachers; the badly behaved, and the apathetic. The former are the ones who terrify the student teachers - hardly without reason; I was all of four weeks into my main teaching placement before one of the maths teachers was poisoned - but it's the latter who are ultimately the bigger problem. You can teach a child to behave (and if you can't a decent school will have strong support structure in place). What you can't teach them to do is care.

The area in which I did my teacher training was not a fun place to visit, and what I saw strongly suggested it wasn't improved by having stayed their through your childhoods. When I think back on the kinds of small, economically devastated former pit towns I worked in, I start thinking that Lord Howell's greatest sin wasn't in calling the North East desolate, but in failing to realise the extent to which his comments were accurate (which is little, but not none), his party is the reason why. Thatcher tore the heart out of those places no less surely than the Beyonder murdered the New Mutants, but when you kill a community the individuals who remain go on living. They go on living, and they go on having children, children who grow up seeing vast swathes of the adults around them living their lives on the dole because there's no other way to generate money. For an entire generation - perhaps even two by now - the assumption among the schoolchildren in these former mining communities was that school was just what stood between playing in scrubland and spending a life not being able to find work.

Try telling those kids that if they work hard enough they can improve their futures, and see the looks you get. They will stay with you, I promise you.

So as much as I question making this story so about Magneto (there is some stuff from Dani's perspective too, in fairness) the resulting image of a new teacher trying to pull students from an existential funk strikes me as an enormously powerful one. This is all the more true for how closely it cleaves to certain subsections of our own world (one wonders whether the Guthries are fated to go the same way one day). Like so many new teachers, Magneto has not yet built up an understanding of how children can be motivated, or the vocabulary he needs to do it. He knows what punishments he can dole out, but he has no idea how to use such sanctions in a constructive way. Even were he more experienced, thought, there's always the horrible possibility that the only thing that could potentially save these kids is to get them rolled in a different school where they would have a chance to interact with children whose backgrounds give them hope for the future. Enter Miss Frost and the Massachusetts Academy. In the context of the story the transfer is from a school without a telepathic teacher to one with (playing on Magneto's fear of being unable to replace Charles, in another nice touch), but within the metaphor of hopelessness, this is clearly about taking those who believe their lives have no meaning and taking them somewhere where they can learn what life can offer to those fortunate to have above average skills/talents/intelligence/whatever.

I must be careful here, because this is cleaving dangerously close to an argument in favour of private schools, or at least in favour of some kind of voucher system that can take those who are sufficiently gifted out of state schools and into private education. That's not what I actually think at all; what I think is that the obvious correct response to failing state schools is to make state schools better. It may well be true that voucher systems really are of benefit to those students who can make use of them, but the result is that those left behind are even more bereft of hope, even more aware of how thoroughly the deck has been stacked against them for reasons entirely outside of their control (it also relies on our society being even-handed and thoughtful about how we define "gifted", which I completely don't believe we're realistically capable of). So technically speaking, in terms of the metaphor Magneto makes the wrong decision politically.

But of course we don't need our heroes to make the right choice every time. They have to be allowed to make mistakes once in a while. Indeed, this is ultimately I think an entirely forgivable error on Magneto's part; he's inexperienced, his charges won't talk to him, and he has the luxury of being able to send his entire school to somewhere "better" rather than having to pick and choose which students get the break.  It's also worth noting that in a few issues the recuperation of the New Mutants will prove to only be possible with Magneto and Frost working together - true co-operation between social strata, in the language of the metaphor. So Magneto's mis-step here, born as it is of frustration and concern and fear, is entirely understandable.

So much so in fact that it's actually a real shame that it turns out he's being manipulated by Empath to feel as rotten and confused as he does. The set-up here is almost perfect in terms of what it shows us about students and teachers and the difficulty in instilling hope. Magneto's reactions are so human and believable that learning it took Empath to push him to those straits actually makes me think less of Magneto, though I suppose if you wanted to argue Mags would never see so clearly through his colossal impenetrable arrogance without psycho-emotional manipulation, I'd have a hard time arguing with that idea.  In the end, though, Empath's involvement simply serves to give something for Magneto something to punch (or intend to; we'll see next issue how successful he is) and given how wonderfully this issue works in reminding us that there are some fights that simply can't be won with a square jaw and a strong right hook, distracting us from that fact seems unfortunate. Again, though, since this story-line ultimately ends with Magneto and Frost both realising the New Mutants can only be helped with time, space, and compassion, perhaps Empath's intrusion here doesn't actually make all that much of a difference in the great scheme of things.

In short, you can question the specifics here, and you can certainly ask why the tale of these children's recovery is being filtered through their teacher rather than told themselves. But the tack Claremont has taken here does much to remove the bite from that line of criticism; there's just too much to be said for showing us the complexities of pupils who are bereft of hope from the perspective of the teachers who just don't know how to help them.

Of course, what we really need now is to see those same issues from the student perspective. Roll on NMU #39.

Clues

This story takes place over at least a week. Doug Ramsey's father notes that his son has been depressed for at least a couple of weeks. We'll therefore set this story to end just a hair under three weeks after the Beyonder was returned to his own dimension.

That places us in the early weeks of spring. This is contradicted slightly both the amount of snow on the ground (my limited understanding is that late April snows aren't unheard of, but this density pretty much is) and the fact someone says "Merry Christmas" at the local party, but there's no way to deal with that without unpicking the whole of "Secret Wars II". Problems exist here anyway since Magneto states here that he agreed to take over the school in summer, which would put his X-books on a time scale slightly faster than that in real life. But this would require the events of "Secret Wars" to have taken place over the course of well over a full year, which isn't plausible for all sorts of reasons. This is one of those occasions where we're just going to have to ignore our lyin' eyes.

Date

Monday 30^th April to Monday 7^th May, 1985.

X-Date

X+7Y+47 to X+7Y+55.

Contemporary Events

This cheque is cut, apparently. Points available for naming the movie.

Standout Line

"Brightwing?!! You're bowing!?! To a frog?!?" - Dani

Oh, I forgot to mention: Thor is in this too. As a frog. Man, I love this stuff.

(Full credit to Claremont for his permutation approach to punctuation there, too.)

NMU #37: "If I Should Die"

("What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night" - Crowfoot, Siksika First Nation)

Comments

This is about as far as you can get from the swashbuckling larks. Everything here that isn't gloom is doom instead. Well, there's a brief bit at the start featuring the kids relaxing whilst the senior team is away. These little "slice of life" sections are always some of Claremont's best, even if they tend to be stuffed with more corn than just the kernels Amara is popping to make snacks.  Even here there is sadness, though, as Rahne is forced to take the others to task for cheering on a Western filled with villainous "Indians" whilst their friend Dani is in the same room. Not being American, and to my great shame never having to my knowledge ever met or spoken to a Native American (though I've read writing from some) I can't tell whether this is too heavy-handed or not, but I personally appreciated it. Especially since Dani is trying to talk to her Cheyenne mother but can't hear her over the sound of hooting teenagers rooting for the US Cavalry. That's a hell of a metaphor about the violent overwriting of indigenous dialogue by colonial oppressors to be found tossed away on the first page of an '80s superhero comic.

 But then what is the Beyonder but the ultimate colonial, a force come to our lands to overwrite the story of humanity however he sees fit, secure in the knowledge we cannot stand against him, and utterly convinced that this same weakness makes us ineligible to contribute to the discussion of our fate. It's the ultimate white man's fear: that someday someone else is going to do to us exactly what we did to others for centuries with impunity [1]. Shooter's main SW2 title rather bypasses this in favour of elevator-pitch tales of hilarious misunderstandings and reality-juggling, but Claremont here takes the far more plausible route (to the extent that phrase has meaning here) and presents the arrival of the Beyonder as being a terrifying black swan event that would terrify you so much every internal organ would vacate your body.

Here Claremont ties in the sheer incomprehensible horror circling humanity's head by tapping Dani's status as an agent of death, specifically Hela. I've discussed before my discomfort with having a native American forcibly added to the ranks of the force of a white culture's god, but it certainly has some power here. There's a particularly nice moment in which Dani sees death hovering over each of her friends, but the form death takes depends on the beliefs of each New Mutant - so for Illyana it's a demon, for Amara it's Pluto, etc. For some reason Sam's death appears to be Jesse Custer, but then I suppose he did do more than his share of killing, so fair enough. Roberto manages to escape the portentathon, since he's elsewhere, doing a bit of standard hero work and Claremontian brooding, presumably to remind us that normal service at least continues somewhere; that the Beyonder's shadow does not yet cover everything. But for everyone else on the team, it looks like being a pretty bad night.

For Beyonder, God of Imperialism, is a jealous deity, easily offended. He offered Illyana the chance to join him willingly last issue, and she refused. He came to her all smiles and gifts, and yet she rejected him, wanting to choose her own path. What is the Beyonder to do in response to such obvious and total irrationality? How could anyone fail to see his way is the best way? Who else can claim such power? Why would he have such total control over reality if not to rearrange it as he saw fit? Illyana's refusal is a sign she does not understand. Worse, that she would happily doom her own people rather than attempt that understanding.

The Beyonder turns her to dust the moment he sees her.

The rest of the New Mutants try desperately to avenge their friend, but the fight is obviously hopeless.  Indeed, the only reason it happens at all is because the Beyonder seems to want to toy with them, offering them hope specifically so he can take it away, as Dani puts it. This is more or less inarguable, given the Beyonder could have erased them all from existence without them even knowing he was there. Ultimately, though, the effect is the same; the Beyonder murders the team one by one (in a way that's probably the most horrifying team wipe-out I can remember since Alan Moore gave us The Fury) and then erases them from the entire timeline. Removing their stories utterly, and replacing them with his own.

The End.

[1] Claremont underlines this by gifting Dani a vision of her grandfather explaining how some amongst the Cheyenne believed the white man had been sent to punish them for their pride. I confess I've been unable to find anything on whether this is something that was genuinely believed at the time, or whether it's entirely fictional.

Clues

This story takes place over a single evening.

Sam mentions that summer is almost over, though since he turns that into a discussion about Thanksgiving it's not clear quite how good his grasp of chronology is.  In any event, with the Beyonder having been on earth since at least the start of the year (see UXM #196) placing this issue eight or so months later strikes me as letting him plague the planet for entirely too much time - the gaps between issues of #SW2 would have to become too large.   We can move the timeline on a few weeks, though, since it's clear from the next UXM issue that the X-Men have spent quite some time in San Francisco trying to sort out the mess there.

Date

Friday 13^th April, 1985.

X-Date

X+7Y+33.

Contemporary Events

American model, burlesque dancer and actress Carmen Carrera is born.

Standout Line

"They're watching some dumb cowboy movie -- of course we're the bad guys -- yeah, I wish things were different too."  - Dani.

NMU #36: "Subway To Salvation!"

("Why is it during the hard times there are only one set of footprints in the sand?"
 "Those are the times I was flying over New York in a magic subway car.")

Comments

Finding God can do strange things to a person. Having God find you apparently makes things stranger still.

First, let's dispense with the obvious: the degree to which Sunspot is shaken here by meeting the Beyonder doesn't particularly make sense considering how that encounter actually played out in SW2 #8. Basically the Beyonder doesn't even engage the New Mutants there, busy as he is with other things. "Lucky escape" is the phrase, rather than "All existence has been rendered meaningless by this encounter".  I don't see this as a failing of this particular issue, though. If there's a decent story to be wrung out of how the New Mutants deal with meeting someone who, if not technically a god, is clearly more powerful than the actual gods our heroes hung out with just a few weeks earlier, there's little sense in ignoring that fact because the awful mini you're tying into has dropped the ball.

Whether there is such a story lurking beneath the surface, of course, is a different matter.  And the early indications are pretty good. It appears that a close encounter with the Beyonder has knocked all the fight out of Sunspot, leading to him seeming distracted in training sessions and loudly announcing he didn't join the New Mutants to become a superhero, but just to learn how to live with being a mutant. Which might have been true initially, but even the most cursory glance at Sunspot's attitude over the last 36 issues and assorted specials - most especially his time in Asgard - makes it pretty hard to swallow the idea that his goal is a low profile and a quiet life. It's not as though it's tough to understand why the concept of the Beyonder could shake Roberto up, obviously, but the timing is interesting. After all, young master DaCosta has only just emerged apparently unscathed from the adventure which saw his mind invaded by a seemingly unstoppable tyrant who forced him to slaughter innocents, and seemed poised to use him and his closest friends as murderous flesh-puppets for the rest of their lives.

So why the sudden change of heart now? Why is Roberto suddenly once more consumed with regret and sadness over the death of his girlfriend Juliana, gunned down before his first meeting with Professor Xavier?  Well, I'm rather giving the game away phrasing it like that, so I'll come out with it. Before Xavier, Roberto's authority figure - one he didn't choose - was an egomaniac with a thirst for power and very little interest in how chasing after that power would affect those in the way. With Charles gone, Roberto's new authority figure - whom he didn't choose - is an egomaniac with a reputation for thirsting for power and having very little interest in how chasing after that power will affect those in the way. This isn't about the Beyonder, it's about daddy issues. Or rather, to the extent that this is about the Beyonder, it's because the Beyonder is yet another solipsistic berk on a power trip. He just happens to have all the power already.

All of which is pretty interesting, and another smart riff on the crossover Claremont found himself lumbered with. Alas, the rest of the issue can't really deliver on this opening. Again, it's not clear whether this is Claremon't fault - the problem here is the need to include the Beyonder, much as it has been for this whole miserable crossover, and I don't want to lay that at Claremont's door either. But an understandable problem is still a problem, and watching the Beyonder stick his omnipotent mullet-framed fizzog into the proceedings is as frustrating and disappointing as always.

Still, whilst there's nothing in the rest of the issue to match the inspired conflation of religious crisis and daddy issues, there is more on the subject of sudden shifts in faith, as Sam and Illyana both declare themselves Team Beyonder. In the latter's case, this is at least partially because the Beyonder removes her Darkchilde persona and attendant responsibilities, transferring them to Shadowcat without either girl's consent or knowledge (Claremont declines to explore the obvious mile-in-her-shoes opportunity this presents, probably due to lack of space). Sam's conversion, in contrast, comes about because he's brought to visit Illyana's new flying subway car of evangelism. Yes, this is a thing. No, I've no idea why. Forget it Jack, it's Claremont town.  You'd rather hope that neither of these events would cause so vast a sea change as signing up for the Big B newsletter, but that seems to be what's happened. I'll bet mind control is involved there somewhere. There always is. Forget it Jack, and review my previous comments.

Either way, there's something rather familiar in Illyana's conversion. Towards the end of the issue Kitty finds herself captured by some of the rampaging demons currently tearing through New York - why? No-one seems bothered enough to ask - and about to be sacrificed, and all Illyana can do is insist her mission for the Beyonder is too vital to interrupt for anything so trivial as her best friend's imminent death. And yes, she changes her mind in the end. Of course she does; this is a Claremont joint, and this is more or less exactly the same ending as he wrote for UXM in the same month. But before she returns her mind to earthly concerns, she acts as an admittedly hyperbolic example of a certain subset of the born-again religious. You might well know the type; the ones who have lived their lives in the eye of a hurricane of their own selfishness, and so can't help but make their new faith all about themselves too. When all you can do is talk about how important your relationship is with God, you're not fooling anyone about where your obsession lies, any more than those parents who can't shut up about how well their kids are doing.

Which is interesting. Well, I thought it was interesting, anyway. It does at least tie in with Sunspot's concerns at the start of the issue, giving us a bridging theme to help us get over the weak monster-runaround in the middle (and did we really need another instalment of "Who can Warlock kill for sustenance guilt-free?). I might not be inclined to thank God for that, but I can't deny that it's something.

Clues

This story takes place over a single afternoon.

Bobby is mentioned as still being thirteen in this issue.  This is flatly ridiculous, as an absolute bare minimum of twenty-one months have passed since his debut, at which point he was already a teenager.

The afternoon this story takes place on is referred to being an Indian summer, which would place this story somewhere in Autumn. This gives us some real headaches, however, since we know Madelyne had to have given birth to Christopher both around Christmas and only days before Magneto took over the X-Men. With that latter event still clearly something which our protagonists are having to adjust to, there's no way to sensibly push this story forward eight months, especially since Claremont wants us to believe this is taking place less than a year after the graphic novel which preceded NMU #1.

Date

Tuesday 12^th March, 1985

X-Date

X+7Y+11

Contemporary Events

Stromae is born. Twenty-five years later he takes Europe by storm with this, which I'd never heard of before, despite it reaching number one in a pretty impressive nineteen different countries.


(Clip officiel!)

Standout Line

"And with that, the subway car -- as beautiful and pure a machine as Illyana has become a person... takes to the sky... as if this is what it was born to do!"

I just... I got nothing.

NMU #35: "The Times, They Are A'Changin'!"

(Change your career, keep your spots)

Trigger warning: attempted sexual assault & (briefly) pederasty.

Comments

Much like Alpha Flight #29, which we covered recently (though not so recently as I would like; damn this house-move snorting up all my time), this issue is more or less forced into a familiar structure by outside events. With the former, this involved the title attempting to prove itself viable following the departure of its creator/writer/penciller. Here, the shake-up is entirely in-universe, as Magneto becomes head-teacher to the New Mutants, but the end result is broadly equivalent: the team members question the new status quo - just as the audience are - and ultimately accept it - just as the audience hopefully will.

Tightening the bindings still further, there are two overlapping points that need to be covered during an average "controversial new leader" story - and this really is entirely average. First the newcomer needs to prove there exists some benefit to the new regime, and then everyone else has to conclude those benefits overwhelm whatever baggage us being hauled alongside. Claremont essentially divides these beat between the two halves of the issue.  The first part can be dismissed fairly quickly, since it simply involves Magneto gathering the team in the Danger Room (minus Cypher, who doesn't get to play) and sets about slapping their internal organs out from whatever orifices are to hand. There's not really all that much to say about this, so we'll move straight onto the second stage of Magneto's second job interview. 

This is where things get very interesting and in no small way problematic. Claremont needs an inciting incident through which he can demonstrate Magneto's new-found restraint, and he settles on a trio of drunken men attempting to rape Danielle Moonstar.

Obviously, this is profoundly distressing.  There's never any actual danger the deed will be done, but that doesn't change the fact that a) Dani is physically assaulted by men who want to sexually assault her, and b) this sort of horror is inflicted on thousands of young girls every day, none of whom are lucky enough to have a winged horse to sweep them away to safety.

There's a lot to not like about this.  Firstly, we need to be very careful about the idea that a situation like this turns out OK if the assault is countered whilst everyone still has their clothes on.  And by "OK" here, I mean that there are profound psychological issues an attempted rape can bring on, and there's simply no way Claremont can tackle that sensitively or well. Secondly, the idea that the best way to have a white guy show his heroic chops is to punish people who beat up a young Native American girl ties into all sorts of lousy tropes. Our heroes are the white guys who determine for themselves what's best for Native Americans but with good intentions [1]? I'm not at home to that, especially since it's clear here that Dani's trauma exists in the narrative purely for the sake of Magneto's development.

There's also an issue of narrative laziness to this move, something I like to call "Baron Harkonnen Syndrome" after Frank Herbert's character in Dune.  Dune is a wonderfully complex book absolutely stuffed with complicated, multi-layered characters, all of whom have essentially valid reasons for doing what they do.  No-one is purely good, no villain is entirely bad.  Except Baron Harkonnen, who had sex with young boys. It's a grotesque revelation in a book otherwise dedicated to the complexities of political conflict, and reads like Herbert feared so many shades of grey would lose the reader unless someone emerged as an utterly clear-cut villain (see George RR Martin's Ramsay Snow for a contemporary parallel).  It's a very bad idea, partially because it undermines the complexity of the work, but mainly because it treats victims as disposable objects that exist purely to demonstrate how evil someone is. This is bad enough when framing a character as a callous murderer, but at least there the resulting trauma to the victim is something we don't have to dwell on.

And really, this is how we're supposed to conclude that Magneto might not be all that bad?  Because whilst he's a mass-murderer, he at least hates rapists? Talk about your low bars.  Pretty much everyone hates rapists. Hell, I'm sure most actual rapists hate rapists, because of the horrifically effective way culture has evolved to reassure rapists that their rapes don't really count. I made this point when discussing UXM #200, but if you want to rehabilitate Magneto you really have to process his own mistakes; simply pointing out the Nazis and/or rape gangs are objectively worse isn't going to cut it.

On top of all of this, it's completely obvious just how hard Claremont is pressing his thumb on the scale here.  Magneto's plan is to head to the criminal's hideout and threaten them with death if they ever show up on his radar again.  Apparently this is impressive and represents personal growth because he doesn't kill them on the spot.  But this only actually works our because Magneto scares the three men enough that they decide themselves they'd be better off turning themselves in. What would have happened if they hadn't? Are we really supposed to believe Magneto would keep tabs on them indefinitely? What if the next time they decide a woman's consent is irrelevant Magneto's off saving the world? What if next time they go after someone who isn't a mutant and suddenly Magneto has better things to do?

Really, there's no plausible way to interpret Magneto's actions here other than a reminder that he'll protect his own.  Which is laudable in it's own way, but because his own are our own in the context of reader sympathies, it's easy to miss the fact that his approach here will really allow him to only protect his own. Which is exactly what led Magneto to become a killer in the first place; he decided his own subjective beliefs about who got to live and die - who got to be punished - trumped everybody else's.

In short, a lack of body-count notwithstanding, this issue is the most Magneto that Magneto has never been. That the New Mutants lap it up because on this occasion they know and love the person whose decisions he is co-opting makes this all worse, not better.

I'll give the issue this, though. It has made me more willing to accept the idea of Magneto as the New Mutants' head-teacher. Not because it's made me think more of him. Because it's made me think less of them.

[1] Tellingly Sam's biggest problem with Magneto deciding he's going to deal with the rapists himself is that it should be the team's job, which ignores Dani just as much.

Clues

Since this story involves the New Mutants learning who will be their new head-teacher, I assume it takes place on the same day the X-Men return from Paris.

Date

Monday 11^th March, 1985.

X-Date

X+7Y+10.

Contemporary Events

Thousands of Doctor Who fans wake up two days after "Timelash" began and discover to their horror that it still isn't all a dream.




Standout Line

"I can yell 'Don't shoot' in any language there is..." - Cypher.

NMU Special Edition #1: "Home Is Where The Heart Is"

(Nine realms, nine tales.)

Comments

New Mutants Special Edition was, to say the least, an interesting choice as a follow-up to the six part "Shadow Karma" storyline.  After wading through that story over six months, two phases, and three continents, the question of "what next" was one worth thinking about, and this is something of an unexpected result, at least in part. Swapping out the overwrought melodrama for something a little more frothy certainly seems like a solid move, but 64 pages? After six full issues battling Karma/Farouk, do we really need essentially three more on the team's travails in Thor's homeland? Couldn't we just, you know, chill?

One interesting difference between this story and its predecessor is that our team is rapidly separated and forced to deal with their situation individually.  The set-up for this is fairly brief: Loki, like apparently every other major supervillain in the MU, wants Storm as a concubine/love object and, due to the events of the X-Men/Alpha Flight crossover a little way back, wants the rest of the X-Men tortured to death. Both tasks are given the Enchantress to carry out.  Unfortunately for the New Mutants, their proximity to Storm leads the Enchantress to assume they are the team Loki mentioned, and so all are kidnapped. Ororo is delivered to Loki for some mind-control (because Odin knows there hasn't been enough of that in New Mutants lately...) and a last-minute attempt at escape by Magik leaves her alone with the Enchantress whilst her friends are scattered randomly across Asgard and Hel.

This in effect reduces forty or so pages into nine vignettes as we follow the protagonists through a wide variety of situations. The overall effect is beneficial in some ways, since it prevents any one section or idea from dragging on for too long. On the other hand, creating a satisfactory four or five page comic strip isn't actually a trivial task, and having to do it nine times (ten times if we include Storm's story here of "be controlled by Loki and get turned into a bird") is a real stretch. Claremont's approach here is entirely unsurprising, he just finds eight backwaters of Norse myths (the ninth story being Illyana's tribulations in the hands of the Enchantress) for a bit of whimsy. By now my feelings on this approach have been exhaustively detailed, but I wonder whether even those much happier than I to read Claremont in this mode feel enthused by the idea of so many minor variations on it in one book.

Still, at least this approach lets me talk about the story in a different manner to usual.  Here, ordered in ascending degree of how much they annoyed me, are the nine subplots of NMU Special Edition:

Wolfsbane

Definitely my favourite story of the group. If you're going to just throw things together to see what works you can do far worse than werewolves and giants. Especially if the wolves then fall in love. Via wolf prince Hrimhari we get to see Rahne enjoying herself more than usual, as well as growing as a character, and her dilemma between staying with him and finding her possibly endangered friends makes for a nice change from the usual fretting over life not matching up to her ultra-strict Protestant upbringing.

In fact, this is one the few story strands in this issue that I really wish had been stretched out.  There's a whole issue here about young lycanthropes in love, but instead Rahne just gets a page of two of dithering before Illyana's evil made manifest (we'll get to this in a moment) abducts her.

Magik

Illyana's story is the engine driving this entire plot.  It's also pretty grim, featuring as it does the Enchantress tearing out the elements of Magik's Darkchilde persona and cobbling into a vicious servant. Which would be bad enough, but in addition any damage incurred by the simulacrum instead affects Illyana. It's all quite vicious, a sprinkling of sharp spice in an otherwise mostly bland dish. For the rest of the book, the Illyana-shade stalks the land possessing people, and each hit she takes in the process we know is being directed somewhere else. The most cynical amongst us might see this as poetic justice for her throwing Ororo, Rahne and Dani to the Shadow King recently, but personally I'm far too busy squirming at Illyana's agony to want to approach that argument.

Sunspot

Some people get all the luck. Berto finds himself in an Asgardian hostelry, and quickly makes a name for himself by punching letches through the nearest available wall. This earns him the thanks of the innkeeper and, rather more importantly, no small number of the local womenfolk, which basically lands him the gig of bouncer/chief lady-seducer. 

Which is basically the stereotypical hormone-charged adolescent boy's dream. Show up somewhere where you have super-powers which you can use to beat up people who harass hot women, and by doing so impress hot women. Hell, given the culture he's been dropped in, they'll probably be happy to pay him in mead. Everything's coming up Sunspot!

This kind of wish fulfilment quickly gets boring, of course, but for a few short pages it's a nice way to essentially take the fact that superhero comic books are male wish-fulfilment anyway (every man has super powers and a ludicrous mega-titted sassy hourglass to grind against - there's even a joke here about how Sunspot is even more strong here because he reacts to Valhalla's sunlight the way Superman reacts to Earth's) and take it to the extreme.  Especially since here the extreme involves Volstagg, by far the most awesome character Marvel's Asgard has thus far offered. Observe his glory as he challenges Sunspot to pick him off the ground:

Hah! "Hast thou begun yet lad?", indeed! Of course the nature of this section as "Roberto's daydream" means that ultimately Sunspot succeeds (though he knackers his back in the process), but this is still my single favourite moment amongst these 64 pages.  Just imagine what hilarious scrapes DaCosta could get up to following the Warriors Three around.

Instead, alas, the Illyana-shade arrives and takes over his mind.  Because mind-control isn't something we ever see in New Mutants stories, obviously...

Cannonball

This feels a little like a wasted opportunity, actually. Sam finds himself in the tunnels of a group of dwarves, but not once does Claremont link this to Sam's own experiences in the mine-shafts of Kentucky following his father's death.  There's such a rich vein (pun very much intended) of material that could be used here; Sam's conflicted view of mining as the manner by which his town survived but his dad was killed.  The fact that whilst underground his power essentially lets him create tunnels, but always with a risk of collapse. Sam is the potential rewards and dangers of mining,

So bringing him in contact with delving dwarves - who actually go so far as to ask him to help out - only for him to end up battling trolls and dark elves seems like a tremendous waste of potential.  It's not that we get a bad story here - I'm putting it above Cypher's because at least here our protagonist gets something to do - it's just so far short of what it obviously could have been.  Admittedly, as with Rahne's tale, you'd need far more space than is offered here, but that just underlines the problem with this issue, you have two stories that could have easily supported an issue each, and seven more that are somewhere between mildly diverting and utterly throwaway.

Sam's tale ends when Loki makes a brief appearance to cause trouble (along with Storm, who he's transformed into a hawk to hide her from the dwarves - why he didn't just not bring her is left unexplained), annoying the head dwarf enough that he tells Sam where to find his friends, hoping the New Mutants can upset the God of Mischief with a little chaos of their own.

Cypher

Our resident translator finds himself in a Viking mead hall surrounded by drunken warriors.  Not particularly where a scraggly teenager wants to be, though Doug comforts himself with the knowledge that at least his abilities mean language is no barrier.  This is actually pretty funny, since precisely zero of his friends have any problem understanding the natives either - well, that dragon might've been telling Warlock she came in peace, I guess - which rather underlines the fact that Doug's power set is rather rendered impotent by basic narrative convention.

Which may or may not be why no matter how good he is with the Viking subjunctive clause, his unwilling hosts make him into their mead-bitch when he demonstrates he can't even beat up a woman. This unfortunate state of affairs lasts until Illyana's demonic twin arrives to kidnap him, only for Doug to be saved at the last minute by Warlock.

Which isn't really much of a story. It does function as a mirror to Sunspot's tale, though; offering us the flip-side to waking up surrounded by legendary warriors; this time without the strength to get your own way. One hesitates under the circumstances to call this the "realistic" option, but it's certainly a reminder of how far short of our daydreams life invariably proves to be. There's an alternate universe version of this pairing in which this would be the better, more interesting story, actually, but in Claremont's hands it just functions as an impediment to the jolly muckarounds he likes to write.

Still, Doug doesn't let that stop him shoving a Viking for being a dick, which I suppose is cathartic for all those of us who spent our adolescence being bullied by ale-swigging Scandinavian brawlers.

Warlock

Warlock meets a dragon who he eats, since he's running on fumes, and then meets Hela, who he runs from because a) he needs to find his friends and b) he's not an idiot.

So ends the saga of Warlock. For the rest of the story he's just a literal vehicle for gathering characters for the final showdown. Which I guess someone had to do, but that doesn't make this thread any more interesting.

(There is at least a fourth wall-breaking sight-gag here, whereby Warlock shifts into the form of Longshot - because that's what finding his friends is - despite the two never having met.  Instead the link between them is that this issue was pencilled by Arthur Adams, who co-created Longshot and drew the Longshot mini that was running whilst this was released. I wouldn't call it a funny joke, still less a clever one, but as a nod to those behind the curtain it's certainly preferable to, say, the X-Men invading Marvel HQ on a scavenger hunt.)

Magma

I've complained already about Claremont relying on the "mental control" plot twice in a row with respect to the Illyana-shade taking people over. Magma's story manages to be even more irritating by taking this mind-control plot following directly on from another mind-control plot and putting a mind-control plot inside it. Come to think of it, the last time Claremont took our heroes and threw them into what's basically a fantasy role-playing adventure, everyone had their minds wiped by Kulan Gath.

In short, this is all getting desperately tiring. Moreover, Magma is tremendously badly served here.  She wakes up, accepts food and drink from the locals, and finds herself immediately taken over by villainous dark elves.  She's then moulded to look like her captors and pressed into their war against the dwarves looking after Cannonball, which means Amara's own storyline is entirely subsumed within Sam's, with her becoming a mere background character to be saved and then cared for when she's finally freed of elven influence. When Warlock left his plot line (along with Magik, only he and Magma don't see a return to their stories in this issue; everyone else is checked in with at least twice) he at least got to operate as the wheels. Magma and Magik just have to wait for someone else to rescue them.

Dissatisfying!

Karma

This is about as simple as stories can get whilst maintaining a non-trivial page count: Karma finds herself in a desert, wants to lay down and die (because of how horribly Farouk has altered her body), but finds a small girl wandering alone and resolves to see her to safety.  The trip is just long and arduous enough for Shan to get her figure back, and concludes with the girl turning out to have been an agent of the Norns, who presumably have some reason to want Karma alive and/or svelte.

There's a very strong argument to be made that this is an amazingly weak wrapping-up of Karma's time as a morbidly obese survivor of abuse.  Which is a fair point, but frankly this plot strand is unpleasant enough that any ending has to be considered a mercy. Becoming morbidly obese makes you want to kill yourself? As though we didn't have enough problems with superhero comics conflating overweight people with the useless and the malevolent (something we're still having to deal with today, remember when Amanda Waller looked like this?). Even if you wanted to ignore the arguable link here between Karma becoming a hero again with her shrinking waistline (which is probably a stretch), the fact that no-one sees fit to make the obvious point that heavy does not equal worthless is a major problem for me.

I don't want to oversell this, of course. My chunky status is pretty much my only window into anything even remotely approaching the world of those hated on simply for who they are (well, that and my rapidly growing bald spot). Nothing is worse than straight cis white guys complaining that they have it tough because they're chubby, or strawberry blonde, or whatever. Then again, the real damage that gets done by the anti-weight brigade is aimed at women like Karma, so I can safely be annoyed on their behalf.  Especially since, as I've said, Karma's extreme weight gain was an outward manifestation of some very real and unpleasant trauma which is in danger of being swept under the carpet as quickly as her new BMI was.  Again though, it's not so much that I wish Claremont would explore the angle (I'm not sure how good he could possibly do there) so much as this underlines how problematic the Shadow Karma arc was to begin with.

Ultimately Karma gets found by Warlock and Cypher, and it's off to the final battle.

Mirage

Oh no. No, this won't do at all.  Mirage's tale involves her finding a winged horse in a trap. Saving it, she makes the acquaintance of the Valkyrie, who ride similar steeds.  Dani returns home with them, which works out just fine for a while, until she ultimately discovers that her bond with her horse means she has been chosen as a Valkyrie herself.

Which, as I've argued before, is a terrible development. The problem with overwriting - even just in part - a Native American's identity with something from European culture should be horribly obvious, but somehow that's exactly what's been begun here. One of the most obvious trapdoors white writers have to be wary of when including characters from other cultures is to avoid writing them as basically white characters with different skin colours and reference points.  This has never been a strong suit of Claremont's, whose dialogue relies on various surface differences to disguise what are actually pretty similar voices, which of course here means pretty similarly white.  Mirage's treatment here is a particularly unfortunate extension of this policy of starting with varied characters and then treating their developments as completely interchangeable.

In any case, Mirage is for now attempting to resist her fate, and she flies off to join her friends once she learns the truth. Which brings us at long last to the grand finale.

Endgame

Once everyone is assembled, either under Nega-Illyana's sway or in opposition to her, things work out pretty fast. Karma gets to show everyone how useful she is by taking over their enemy, which immediately breaks the hold on our captured heroes.  Within a few pages the Enchantress' castle has been stormed, Illyana's dark soul returned to her (which immediately heals her for absolutely no reason at all) and Xian has produced the goods once more by possessing the Enchantress just long enough for Illyana to teleport her to Limbo and hand her over to S'ym.

So all's well that ends well, except for two things.  First, Storm is still Loki's prisoner. Second, Bobby and Dani are too happy, Amara too scared, Shan too curious, and Rahne too in love to actually want to leave Asgard. Both problems have the same solution, of course; time for the New Mutants to pay Loki a visit...

Clues 

This story picks up with the New Mutants on the island of Kirinos, a destination suggested by Storm at the end of NMU #34. From the sound of things they've had at least a couple of days to settle in, which together with the time needed to travel from Egypt to Greece (how did they even get hold of their passports? Or did Illyana finally manage a decent group teleport?) makes me inclined to start this story three days after the Shadow King's defeat.

When it ends is impossible to judge right now, since the script is explicit that our heroes have ended up in slightly different time periods across Asgard.  We'll just have to come back to this after UXM Annual #9.

Date

Friday 25^th January, 1985.

X-Date

X+6Y+332.

Contemporary Events

Norway launches a four-stage sounding rocket to study the Aurora Borealis over Svalbard, almost causing the Russians to launch a nuclear strike when the rocket is mistaken for an ICBM.

Standout Line

Absolutely nothing's going to beat "Hast thou begun yet lad?", I'm afraid.

NMU #34: "With A Little Bit Of Luck!"

("In my experience, there's no such thing as luck.")

Comments

The next few entries are going to involve some jumping around since the December issue of UXM takes place after October's New Mutants: Special Edition and Uncanny X-Men Annual 9, both of which follow on from this issue of New Mutants.

Clear?  Good.

At last, after six issues, we come to the end of the Shadow Karma arc. My feelings on the degree to which it was worth stretching out this story so far are well known at this point, so we'll just focus on how good a job this issue does of wrapping things up. Really, that comes in two parts; how well does issue #34 wrap up the events kicked off in #29, and how well does it resolve the Illyana-is-evil plot set up the previous month.

The answer to the first question really hinges on how successful one views the revelation that Karma has been possessed by the Shadow King. From a historical perspective, there's a low ceiling to this; six issues to be presented with a reveal you already knew was coming just feels vastly too long.  But that's precisely the wrong way to look at it. Criticising a slow reveal because you know what's going to be revealed anyway is far from fair.  The only relevant question here is whether the revelation could have been worth it for readers at the time.

Even here, though, I have my doubts. The problem here is that the very surprise of the Shadow King's return works against the story.  Farouk's return from the dead will certainly be surprising for those who remember who he is, but since he'd appeared in just one issue of a different title one month shy of seven years earlier, it's hard to believe there could be more than one in a hundred fans who recognised who he was - a fact rather underlined by Claremont finding it necessary to have Magik travel back in time to watch Xavier's seemingly kill Farouk back in the '60s. Really then all we learn is that Karma isn't actually Karma (something mentioned before in the story in any case) [1], and as I've argued before, the nature of comic convention is such that this is actually the most plausible explanation possible.  Only the reveal that Karma is entirely herself would actually surprising here, and of course we don't get that.

The entirely unsurprising nature of a New Mutant not being evil is a good segue into talking about Illyana. As I mentioned last time, there must have been essentially zero readers at the time willing to believe Illyana had actually sold out Storm and the New Mutants to Shadow Karma. The cliffhanger wasn't over whether or not she'd turned her heel, but how giving Dani, Rahne and Ororo to SK might sensibly form part of a plan for the villain's ultimate defeat.

Here we learn the answer, and much as it did last time around, the success of the move depends entirely on how fully you're willing to buy into the idea that Claremont is deliberately writing Illyana as having heroic intentions but being sufficiently compromised by her time as Darkchilde that her plans are almost wilfully unpleasant and deceitful.  A surface reading here does the comic few favours; Illyana's plan turns out to be to use the goodwill she generated with SK to get Warlock (disguised as herself) in close to the villain to keep him distracted whilst she 'ports out everyone else.

It's perhaps not the most impressive plan to cap off a six-issue story, but the bigger problem is that it offers no explanation as to why Magik believed she needed to sell Ororo out. Giving SK Dani or returning Wolfsbane should have been enough; SK was offering her an alliance from the very start, and even after Illyana gives everyone she can to the villain, he still plans to double-cross her, so it's not like she's actually gotten anything extra from the deal.

Or maybe she has. Maybe offering all three mutants instead of just one did increase the odds somehow.  If we use the "malicious hero" reading, then this suddenly makes total sense: Illyana in her current iteration should be entirely happy to subject her friends to humiliation and degradation purely because it stacks the odds in her favour a little more.  What does it matter how Ororo and Dani suffer? All that counts is that Illyana has the greatest chance of rescuing them all.

The biggest reason to doubt this describes Claremont's intentions is Illyana's behaviour at the beginning of the issue, where she faces Warlock down after he attacks her for seemingly betraying their friends.  Not only does she refuse to fight him (betting on him not being able to murder her in cold blood), but she gives him a stirring pep talk about how awesome he is and how much she needs him, and how she's still a friend. This really doesn't come across as the behaviour of a scheming, cold-blooded manipulator.  Even here, though, the alternative reading has weight.  Illyana knows she needs Warlock for her plan, and that means she'll say anything to keep him on-side and ready for action. Viewed that way, and her comments stop being heartfelt reassurances that all is well, and cynical manipulation in order to get what she wants.

It's not a perfect fit (we see Illyana fretting about Storm's suffering, which doesn't really make sense), but it's an interesting enough angle for me to not particularly mind that. It's certainly the best spin I can put on this issue.  Even using this approach, though, things fall apart at the end. Illyana's rallying of the New Mutants quickly leads to Farouk's defeat, and though he tries to hide out in Cypher, an awakened and apoplectic Kama tears him out and tosses him away as flames consume his Cairo nightclub.  It would seem that this is a happy ending, Karma's unfortunate condition notwithstanding.

Except of course that it shouldn't be. Yes, the Shadow King has been defeated, but it took the mental enslavement and subsequent abuse of three women to do it. Karma is obviously terribly damaged both physically and psychologically by what's happened, but it was just yesterday that Dani, Rahne and Ororo were seemingly betrayed by Illyana and forced into psychic slavery.  Don't anyone of them want to point this out?  Don't anyone of them want to argue that Illyana's plan doesn't become acceptable merely because it worked? You would think there would be more than one awkward and urgent conversation to be had, but instead Ororo just suggests they all head for a holiday on Kirinos and the story comes to an end.

Perhaps there will be some space in the 64 pages of New Mutants: Special Edition to go through some of this in depth (for that matter, we still haven't dealt with the fact that under the Shadow King's compulsion some of the team carried out several brutal murders). For now, though, this is that most frustrating of storylines, an overlong and bloated tale that still manages to end up feeling rushed.

[1] Technically I suppose it's also heavily implied that the mutant that attacked Karma's mind in NMU #6 - still more than four years earlier - was not a new threat but an old one. It also gives us a plausible explanation as to why she was never found after the Hydra base in Big Sur exploded - she was already possessed and headed off to cause mischief. None of this is so much as mentioned in the actual script, which seems odd to me, but I suppose if Claremont has decided to assume his audience can remember the specifics of events from books he wrote years before, he might as well go all in.

Clues

This story follows on directly from NMU #33, and takes place over the course of a few minutes.

Date

Tuesday 22^nd January, 1985.

X-Date

X+6Y+327.

Contemporary Events

It's the one week anniversary of Israel pulling out of South Lebanon, which is ironic since over in El Salvador Lieutenant Colonel Sigifredo Ochoa Perez is enacting his "Israeli Solution" during the sixth year of that country's civil war. This consisted of 12 "free-fire" zones in which any person not identified by the military was assumed to be an insurgent and subjected to "indiscriminate bombing".

Standout Line

"Query: FriendIllyana approves of self's disguise?"
"Welll -- 'E.T.'s' was better..."

It's hard work disguising aliens.

NMU #33: "Against All Odds"

(You'll find them in the club.)

Comments

Part five of the sprawling Shadow Karma epic, and we're still not done.  I have to confess to flagging somewhat at this point. Which is interesting, considering how common five- and six-parters are these days as people "write for the trade", but I guess decompression does in the end have its uses.  After 110 of Claremont's dense pages, I'm very much ready to move onto something else.

Putting that aside, though, what does this issue have to offer us? Well, a lot of it is standard Claremont meat-and-potatoes superhero punching, which as usual is neither too inspiring nor too calamitous for us to discuss fruitfully (as always, though, Sienkiewicz gives everything a nice twist, though the law of diminishing returns might be starting to make its presence felt at the edges it isn't Sinkiewicz, of course, it's Leialoha, and I'm an idiot).  The linking theme here is Storm and Illyana's contrasting approaches to fighting Shadow Karma (currently residing in her Pharaoh nightclub and making couples fall out with each other, which seems a bit penny-ante).

At least, I think that's it, assuming that the first attack against Karma is Storm's idea. It seems to be, given Illyana is calling her boss" during the initial fight, which ends with Dani using her psionic rapport with Rahne to shake off Karma's influence for long enough for the two of them to escape along with Storm and Illyana. From this I assume Storm's plan is to slowly chip away at Karma until her captives are all free and rather more violent tactics come into play.

If this is indeed Storm's approach, then it makes some sense; grind away until the enemy has no super-powered bodyguards and then launch your offensive.  The trouble is that I've no idea how this is supposed to work in the long term. Wolfsbane was uniquely easy to free because of her rapport with Mirage and because SK didn't actually understand what was being pulled. It's not clear how Storm plans to proceed from here, if indeed any of this was Storm's plan to begin with.

And that's all very frustrating, because the back end of this issue is about how Illyana wants to tackle the problem, and instead of contrasting that with a strong alternative approach from Storm, we sort of see our heroes maybe succeeding despite themselves and not deciding where to go next.  Considering this issue references the Storm and Illyana miniseries, which contained a major thread about how Storm wanted to play the long game which Illyana lacked the patience for, not being explicit as to whether this is the same problem appearing in very different circumstances seems like a wasted opportunity.

We're also left uncertain as to why Illyana wants to shift tactics.  Is she worried the long game gives SK too much time to establish a power base?  Does the possessed New Mutants' attack on their hideout suggest they have no way to escape constant assaults by SK, forcing Illyana's hand?  It's not clear.  When she has the opportunity to grab Magma and drag her to Limbo along with Warlock, why doesn't she take it, and at least see whether that releases Amara from control (it'd be pretty amazing if it didn't, I think)? All of this matters because the eventual plan Illyana formulates is so reckless and unpleasant - teleport first Dani and Rahne, then Ororo to SK so they can be mind-controlled, presumably in the hopes of striking against her once her guard is down - it becomes critical to understand what drove her to it.  Can she literally see no other workable option? Or is this just the sort of plan that appeals to her?

Maybe Claremont is holding back on that in case he can sucker a few readers into thinking Illyana really has switched sides, but you'd have to have a fairly low opinion of one's readers to try that, and I hope Claremont would be too smart for that.  The question here shouldn't be whether Illyana has turned traitor, but how she expects pretending to will get her what she wants.  Well, that's one question, the other as noted as why whatever Plan A was has been rejected, and why she doesn't at least try something a little less galactically unpleasant before resorting to selling her friends down the river. How much of a problem this all is depends of course on whether you think Claremont is missing obvious alternatives to get a bit of nastiness on the page, or whether it's plausible Illyana herself would end up concocting a horrible plan like this and put it into action without considering less unpleasant approaches.  In the end, I think it's the latter - again, the reference to her actions in Limbo reminds us that her sadistic streak is never fully under control. I actually think this is pretty much the best way to make use of Magik (I think Zeb Wells figured this out in NMU Vol. 3, in fact); not as a character who is actively evil, but as one that's somewhere between chaotic good and chaotic neutral who just can't help coming up with vicious plans for victory that tend to be high on collateral damage.

So I really like the idea of Illyana's scheme, even if its specifics are jaw-dropping in how hideous they are (seeing Ororo under SK's control is especially horrific, but then for some reason my brain associates mind-control with claustrophobia, so what do I know?).  It's just a real shame that the first half of the issue had a golden opportunity to give the second half much greater heft and tie things together in a compelling way, and it simply doesn't really try.

Clues

This story takes place over a single night.

Date

Tuesday 22^nd January, 1985.

X-Date

X+6Y+327.

Contemporary Events

This induces a lot of strange half-memories (note the post-Doctor Who Tom Baker voice-over, too):



Standout Line

On occasion, despite myself, I cannot avoid finding Claremont's corniness rather cute.

NMU #32: "To The Ends Of The Earth"

("Your first step into a larger world.")

Comments

We march now unafraid into the fourth part of the Shadow King/Karma/Gladiators plotline.  Last time we caught up with the junior team, they'd gone rogue in the hopes of hunting down their former teammate, now villain, Xi'an. The decision to go it alone was partly out of a sense of obligation, but mainly because Bobby is convinced Xavier must have known Xi'an - thought by her friends killed months ago - had survived.

Sunspot continues to push this theory throughout this issue, and my Gods is it getting tiresome.  I realise it's a plot point that young master DaCosta is dealing with his frustration and guilt and failing to save Karma by being a hotheaded jerky teenager to all and sundry - Claremont is kind enough to point this out directly in case it wasn't utterly obvious - but the problem here is that no amount of understanding why Bobby is acting out makes up for the fact that it's horrendously dull and repetitive. It's another reminder that writing teenage characters with too sharp an eye for realism just makes them utterly unbearable.

Still, once Sunspot has finished being unbearable in the States, the New Mutants get onboard an overnight flight (on which Sunspot is unbearable), he gets to head to Southeast Asia with the team and be unbearable in... Madripoor.

Madripoor! A thousand Wolverine stories can trace themselves back to the island nation's humble beginnings here in NMU #32. In all honesty, the place is rather sketchily drawn here (pretty much literally; either landscapes aren't really Sienkiewicz's bag, or he has no interest in fleshing this new playground out any). Claremont likens it to various historical and sci-fi locations in which criminals of all breeds can mix safe in the knowledge that any police off-island have no jurisdiction, and those in the local cop shops couldn't possible give less of a damn - though they seem to have a curiously strict visa policy for a country catering to criminals; how fortunate our heroes have access to distracting volcanic eruptions and alien helicopters - but otherwise this is a pretty blank slate right now. MacGuffin as location, if you will.

Once safely in the country, it's time to assault Karma's compound (Doug is left behind, which of course just ends up in him being captured anyway).  It's interesting to see how far the team has come at this point. Sunspot might be characteristically unbearable about it, but Dani has become a pretty solid field leader, and the team is starting to gel together into a decent assault force, something it was clear they were going to become from the very moment they signed up with Xavier (there must be a lot of interesting material written on the tension between drawing vulnerable people together for mutual protection but thereby painting a target on everyone nearby; I wonder if Xavier is basically using his vast wealth and impressive mansion to disguise the fact he's asking mutants to ghettoise themselves).

All the competence in the world doesn't help though if your werewolf goes off half-cocked (a common problem for us all, of course) and pretty much your whole team gets themselves possessed by your enemy (who has clearly been sharpening his/her possession skills recently).  Of the team, only Illyana manages to escape through a stepping disc, dragging Dani with her. When they return, a standard Rasputin overshoot occurs, and they find all of Shadow Karma's henchmen (former LA gladiators apparently prepared to outsource themselves to Madripoor) have been massacred by the New Mutants.  Apparently Shadow Karma has herself some new toys now, and is busy clearing away last week's models.

(This is actually an interesting development, insofar as it highlights the difference between '80s & '90s and contemporary comics. In a contemporary comic, it would be close to unimaginable to have the heroes murder people, even villains and even while brainwashed, at least not without major consequences. Here it's just ignored completely for at least the next two issues. I've mentioned before that the slow spiral downward into the thoughtless violence of the '90s is first evident - in the X-Books at least - in Claremont's mid '80s output, and here is another example of that.)

There's no time to process all this, alas.  The local cops have arrived and are definitely switched to the shoot-first setting. Knowing that the now-departed SK has another base in Cairo, Illyana attempts a long-distance jump.  Fortunately they arrive early enough to set up an ambush for Karma, so long as the materials they build their trap out of can last 5000 years. Fortunately for them, and ludicrously coincidental for us, they've touched down within spitting distance of Ashake, an Egyptian priestess and sorceress, easily identifiable from her white hair and blue eyes.  It doesn't take a genius to wonder whether she's a relation of Storm given those indicators, though I'm not impressed by the idea she could actually be mistaken for Storm. She might have the same hair and eye colour, both of which are pretty much unprecedented in those of African descent, but a 3000BCE Egyptian wouldn't look anything like a 1980s child of a Kenyan and an African American. You might as well say George Bush and Václav Havel would be indistinguishable if they both donned green wigs and violet contact lenses.

They weren't even the same fucking hairstyle

I'm really not sure what purpose this scene serves, other than to remind people Storm exists for the final page (which seems unnecessary), unless it's to introduce Ashake for later use, which if so seems like wasted effort; she's listed as appearing in all of four Marvel issues from this point on. Anyway, as a sorceress Ashake can both understand English and use her powers to get our heroes home.  It turns out she has the same flaws as Illyana, though, if not to the same extent, and our intrepid duo end up a few decades late to SK's homecoming, to discover their teammates are still at her mercy, and busy murdering people in 21st century Cairo on their boss's orders. Fortunately a refreshed Illyana has the energy to make one more trip through time, landing them back in what they hope is the present day.

Unlike their pit-stop in the land of the Pharaohs, this trip to the future at least serves some plot function, in that it shows them what will happen should they fail to rescue their friends.  Which, fine.  Not sure the stakes needed to be clarified, but I get what the point of it is.  Unfortunately, this then leads to a page of Dani freaking out because she's not sure whether what she's just seen is inevitable or not.

Which is utterly goddamn ridiculous. It's only been fifteen issues since this exact same thing happened when the New Mutants were captured by the White Queen. Dani and Illyana jaunted to the future and saw how their friends turned out without being rescued.  And then Mirage and Magick went back in time and changed the future. Dani knows these trips to the future aren't set in stone because she's already changed one.  For fuck's sake, she specifically mentions the White Queen caper here, and then says "and just like then, we don't know If what we saw is the shape of things that will be, or that might?!". Well take a fucking guess, Dani.

Ahem.

Illyana has the presence of mind to start yelling at Dani for being utterly useless, but a promising argument is interrupted when Warlock - safe from Shadow Karma because of his alien mind - arrives with reinforcements.  He's found Storm, somehow and somewhere (how big can East/North-East Africa be, after all?), and she's ready to help out.

Time to bring our children home.

Clues

This story takes place over three days, with various flashbacks and time-travel antics.

The arrival of Storm at the end of this issue causes some potential complications, since by our timeline Storm is still in Africa over a week after last issue's story.  But there's no reason why it can't have taken the New Mutants some time to discover "Karma's" base in Madripoor, and of course Illyana and Dani might be a little ahead of the curve due to temporal problems caused by jaunting.

We'll assume the latter isn't true for now, though - next issue this might need revising - and assume the hunt for Karma took a fortnight, thereby giving Ororo time to travel from Kenya to Cairo.

Date

Saturday 19^th to Monday 21^st January, 1985.

X-Date

X+6Y+324 to X+6Y+326.

Contemporary Events

The San Francisco 49s beat the Miami Dolphins 38-16 in Superbowl XIX.

Standout Line

"Welcome, fellow students, to Earth's version of Mos Eisley spaceport -- a modern-day Tortuga, haven of world-class pirates, crooks and assorted lesser scoundrels. No extradition, and government security make this the perfect hideout. A sort of Neutral Zone where the deadliest of enemies can hang out in absolute safety, without fear of each other or foreign cops." - Cypher

So now we know. A legend dawns.

NMU #31: "Saturday Night Fight"

(Whatever could have possessed her?)

Comments

Part three of this story, and it's time for the breathless action scenes and Big Reveal. Another short one, in other words, especially since two pages of the issue are given over to another in the irregular series of New Mutants character profiles.

Things have been going pretty well for Shadowy Blob #1 so far. His business model of playing everyone off against everyone else clearly has legs. He's been using a holographic projection of Flynn to make the Gladiators follow him, and he's brought in Karma's crime lord uncle to expand his empire.  Right now he's got Sunspot and Magma fighting a giant robot secretly containing Shadowcat. Moreover, he's not only photographed every wealthy tosser who's arrived at the games so he can blackmail them later, but he's got Dazzler on the sands firing out a hypnotic light-show that will break every member of the audience when they realise they'll never get to see it again.  The narration here suggests this is a punishment worse than prison, but I say we can't afford to take the chance. Lock the bastards up.

This being the issue where things need to start going wrong, of course, things start going wrong.  Somehow Kitty manages to escape her conditioning at the same time as Rachel, Illyana and Sam arrive in their designated role as cavalry. When Dazzler joins in as well, there's simply too many minds set against SB#1 for him to use his new-fangled possession trick to keep himself out of harm's way.

(Which is actually kind of interesting,  We know from later stories that the Shadow King - for it is he, not that he's mentioned by name here - can deal with many minds at once.  But right now he seems far too keen on using his newly-borrowed bag of tricks, despite them clearly not being the best tools for the job.  I guess he's just caught up in how new and fun they are. Like how when you unlock a crazy powerful new weapon in a game and you can't stop using it even though you've no idea how to make the most of it.)

This can only work for so long, of course, especially when the Gladiators are either defeated or persuaded to give up by Dazzler (this being the final stage of the Dazzler redemption story that has never made any sense in concept or offered any interest in execution, so at least that's gone), so eventually the Shadow King is forced to deploy his final weapon; revealing himself to be possessing the body of the original New Mutant, Karma, believed dead all these months by our teenage heroes, who are all too young and new to the superhero game to be aware of the "if you haven't seen a body..." rule.

The surprise generated by this revelation gives Shadow Karma the time s/he needs to escape, but now her former team-mates know she's alive, the hunt is on.  For a few moments the idea of handing over the search to the senior team is mooted, but between Sunspot refusing to believe Xavier had been unable to sense Karma's thought patterns after her supposed death, and the general feeling that Magneto's new role at the mansion raises some problems (both of which are fairly good points, actually), they decide to have Kitty cover for them with the adults whilst they launch a rescue mission.

The hunt for Karma is on!

Clues

This story takes place in approximately real time.

Date

Saturday 5^th January, 1985.

X-Date

X+6Y+310.

Contemporary Events

The Japanese launch the Sakigake probe to Halley's Comet.

Standout Line

None of them, really.

NMU #30: "The Singer & Her Song"

(Those who are about to die of boredom salute you!)

Comments

Last time around we spent some time kicking UXM #196 for ignoring Secret Wars II about as much as it possibly could whilst avoiding potential legal action.  On first glance, we might want to aim the same accusation at NMU #30. Certainly the kick-off here suggests this.  We last saw Illyana throwing herself into Limbo with Shadowcat, Cannonball, Dazzler and Rachel Summers, after the Beyonder had forced her into her Darkchilde persona as part of his apparent quest to do as much pointless damage in nine issues as is possible.  This transformation had no impact on SW2 #1 itself, so at the very least there was an implication that Claremont would do something interesting with it here.

Instead, we get a couple pages of our heroes panicking before Kitty gets hold of her roommate's soulsword and bisects her as neatly as circumstances allow.  This restores Illyana to factory settings (assuming Belasco is running the factory, of course) and they heard back to the real world to get back to the interrupted gladiator story.

It's a stronger tie-in than UXM #196 - praise fainter than a three-day old fake tattoo, of course - but other than characteristically strong Sienkiewicz artwork it still feels desperately unnecessary. There's a hint here that Kitty's use of the soulsword will cause her problems down the road, but there's still the definite feeling that this is less "Secret Wars II continues..." and more "Secret Wars II is summarily dismissed...".

Maybe not, though.  The Beyonder rocks up here, during Kitty's rescue op.  Some background on that: Kitty's plan is to pose as a techie and infiltrate Flynn's operation; there she'll knock out the power and spring Roberto and Amara in the confusion.  Dazzler offers to go with her, is rebuffed, and completely unsurprisingly decides to go along anyway, because Kitty is fifteen and being a pain in the arse.  Besides, Dazzler has to return to the gladiators so that she can prove... well, that's less than clear.  That everyone is wrong and she isn't addicted to fighting, I guess. Which is kind of like trying to prove you're not addicted to heroin by shooting up (they make her take a stronger version of the drug they hooked her on last time, too, which rather compromises the fuck out of this as a scientific experiment).  But whatever. Not one line of this Dazzler plot has made the slightest sense since she showed up here.

Anyway, whilst Sam, Rachel and Illyana wait outside the venue for Kitty's signal, the Beyonder shows up to stare at people some more.  Specifically, he seems interested in Rachel this time, going so far as to share his conception of reality with her before Sam freaks out and blasts everyone away.  In itself, that's still not a terribly impressive crossover example, but combine this with the Beyonder tailing Rachel in UXM #196 (which is clearly intended to follow on from this), and Rachel mentioning here that the Beyonder reminds her of stories about the Dark Phoenix, and the roughest sketch of a conclusion begins to emerge. Given SW2's reputation, we might take some comfort in that.

Elsewhere in this issue, Amara and Roberto act like complete arseholes, terrorising Dazzler for having the gall to enjoy the adulation of the crowd whilst she works to ensure each bout ends without a fatality (and whilst trying to prepare them for the coming escape attempt).  And OK, basking in the applause of bloodthirsty scum like these particular audiences is a bit of a strange way to get your jollies, but if I were being applauded for style points whilst specifically preventing what the shits in the bleachers have ostensibly paid for, I think I'd be a little chuffed as well.  This plotline resolves with Dazzler reaching the most obvious conclusion possible, that she wants the adulation without the violence.  Kitty calls this proving herself a hero, I say it just means Alison isn't the thoroughly despicable human being this story has been determined to paint her as.

Much more interesting, though, is the shadowy villain controlling events.  Interesting how? Well, he captures Kitty and locks her inside a giant war-robot of, ah, idiosyncratic design:

"Raraghh"

which he then sets on Sunspot and Amara in the arena. That, I submit, should do for a start. More than that, though, I really appreciate how Claremont is building up to the big reveal. Knowing the truth ahead of time, it's fun to watch him scattering clues or, more often, red herrings.  The body shape and declared gender come under the latter heading (is the human body really capable of so extreme a change in weight, though?), but the phone call to Xi'an Coy Manh's villainous uncle is a great nod to what's really happening. I don't think anyone is actually expected to be able to put the pieces together yet - we don't know enough about the Shadow King, for a start - but Claremont is clearly having fun stirring the pot, and I'm enjoying watching him do it.

Which is more than I can say for this damn gladiator plotline. Bollocks to this damn gladiator plotline.  Let's try and move things along here, OK?

Clues

This issue picks up immediately after the Beyonder turned Magik into Darkchilde, but the majority of this issue takes place over two evenings. Cannonball notes that the latter of these is Saturday, so we'll start the main events of this issue on the first Friday following first contact with the Beyonder on Earth.  This means a gap of six days from that encounter, but this is easily explained away by another problematic jaunt courtesy of Illyana.

Date

Monday 31^st  December to Saturday 5^th January, 1985.

X-Date

X+6Y+304 to X+6Y+310.

Contemporary Events

The internet domain name system is created.

Standout Line

"This affair is proceeding wonderfully... which prompts the prudent man to immediately prepare for disaster."

Our shadowy foe proves himself commendably pragmatic.