NEW MUTANTS vol 4 #8-12
Issue #8 and #12 by Ed Brisson, Marco Failla & Carlos Lopez; issues #9-11 by Ed Brisson, Flaviano & Carlos Lopez

New Mutants is a book with something of an identity problem. If you step back and view it as a series… well, what is it? The first seven issues were weirdly structured, cutting back and forth between a comedy storyline by Jonathan Hickman with the original New Mutants in space, and an Ed Brisson story about a drugs gang besieging a Nebraskan farm. And those stories had pretty much nothing in common – not the creators, not the cast, not the themes, not plot point, not even tone.

Now that the Hickman issues have dropped out of the picture, their inclusion in the first place looks all the weirder. The book is now running Ed Brisson stories, using both casts, and so the tone is more consistent. But it’s still a slightly haphazard read.

Issue #8 is a one-shot, where Boom-Boom, Magma and Armor visit Nova Roma and deal with genetically-engineered mutant-hunting monsters – it seems to be setting up a rematch with their creator for down the line. Then issues #9-11 jump to the generic former Soviet Republic of Carnelia, where a 13-year-old girl called Tashi is warping reality with her new nightmare powers. That one pretty much chucks the whole available cast at the story. And then, in issue #12, we’ve got the anti-mutant website Dox being shut down by Magik, Mirage and, er, Glob Herman. Is there something holding all this together?

Well, ish. There’s a slow burning subplot about Boom-Boom’s flaky behaviour and heavy drinking, coupled with an acknowledgement that she’s more competent than she looks, and that there’s a bit more going on beneath the surface. And there’s a fair amount of follow-up in subplots on the Nebraska incident from Brisson’s first run. But it’s a book with a lot of characters, wandering off in assorted directions – those that actually have something to do, at any rate.

The Nova Roma issue gets something of a pass because it’s clearly intended as set-up for an upcoming storyline – and I’m all for getting the foreshadowing in early. The Cornelia three-parter, though, I’m a little less convinced by. At its core, it’s a straightfoward story – a new mutant can’t control their powers, and the New Mutants have to sort out the problem while fending off the unhelpful intervention of hostile, anti-mutant authorities. Nothing wrong with that; it’s a familiar story for a reason.

What the Cornelia arc brings to that well-trodden path is Flaviano’s art, combined with a set-up where Tashi’s nightmares escape into the world around her when she sleeps. The art is appropriately surreal, and contrasts that nicely with a more grounded world around them. The weird lopsided design for Tashi herself is perfect, with the massive outsize right eye that makes her look as if she’s part cartoon; if those are the powers you’re going for, then she absolutely should look as if she’s warping into a different visual language. This story needs a strong look to sell it, and it absolutely gets that.

But beyond that, it’s a slight story. We never really get to know Tashi – she’s cowering in a tunnel sobbing when we first see her, and she pretty much remains that way for the whole story. Her nightmares are visually striking, but they don’t tell us much about her. She doesn’t get that much to say after she’s rescued, either. With hindsight, she never really develops beyond a plot device. And considering that she’s the focal point of a three-part story, that feels underdeveloped.

The Dox issue is a curious one. You know it’s not going to be subtle, and fair enough. 2020 is not a subtle year. Still, I can’t help thinking there’s a more interesting version of that story where the site isn’t quite such a straw man – where its coverage of mutants stays just within the boundaries of what they might really believe, and where they manage to pick up on some legitimate criticisms of Krakoa along the way. But that’s not the story Brisson wants to tell here.

The actual story in issue #12 is awkward in a couple of ways. Having set up Dox to be entirely unsympathetic, it sends in Magik and Mirage to throw their weight around and implausibly hack their systems so that the editor’s name and address will be published whenever he runs an article identifying a mutant’s whereabouts. (But, um, couldn’t plenty such articles be legitimately newsworthy? What if they’re in a public place? Wouldn’t this cover articles about Professor X attending a conference?) Honestly, I have problems with that as a plot point because it fails the credibility threshold for me, even within the Marvel Universe – maybe because Dox is played in a fairly street-level way otherwise.

The trickier feature of issue #12 is how we’re meant to feel about what the mutants do to Dox. Again, they’re behaving in a way which arguably legitimates Dox’s paranoia, yet Dox’s editor is so one-dimensional that it’s hard to take it as some sort of story about moral grey areas. Instead, the focus is on Glob lashing out at them, and later giving a speech to Magik about how he resents these people and wants to break the cycle of anger that he inherited from his father. He sees losing his temper as a defeat; Magik pretty much gives him a pep talk about how, nah, they had it coming.

The point it seems to be trying to make is that Glob’s desire to break the cycle is well and good, but it’s unhealthy for him to push it to the other extreme and try to suppress any anger he feels at people who provoke him to this degree. That’s fair enough, particularly with a character as meek as Glob – it wouldn’t work with most characters – but the setting is a bit too simplistic to pull it off. Giving the closing speech to a morally shady character like Magik feels like something you’d do to acknowledge the complexities of it all… but the story as a whole doesn’t really lend itself to being read that way.

This is an odd collection of issues that feels as if it’s not quite clicking. There are interesting ideas scattered around; there’s often some very good art. But the stories aren’t quite firing on all cylinders, and they aren’t quite connecting into a larger whole.