New Mutants: Lethal Legion #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
NEW MUTANTS: LETHAL LEGION #1
“Vampire Heist”
Writer: Charlie Jane Anders
Penciller: Enid Balam
Inker: Elisabetta D’Amico
Colourist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
NEW MUTANTS: LETHAL LEGION. This is a five-issue miniseries. I’m not generally doing annotations for minis – which is why I’m not doing Bishop: War College – but this is in substance New Mutants #34-38, billed as a miniseries, presumably because someone thought it would boost sales. It’s a direct continuation from the storyline in New Mutants #31-33.
COVER / PAGE 1: The cast in the foreground – Escapade, Cerebella, Wolfsbane, Karma and Mirage – with the Shadow King, the Demon Bear and a couple of U-Men in the background. Shadow King is looking a bit Mojo-like, too. The Demon Bear and the Shadow King aren’t in this issue at all, but maybe it’s a cover for the whole trade.
Rather boldly, the cover tells us that this features a “new creative team”, despite the fact that (a) it’s officially a miniseries, and (b) Anders, whose name is in the largest text, has been writing the book for three issues now – though the artists are new.
PAGE 2. Escapade takes out a U-Man guard.
Boxton, Florida doesn’t appear to exist.
Presumably, Escapade is carrying the feather on a string because it makes it easier to swap places with the U-Man guard and take his gun if she’s holding something herself.
This book is still very much Escapade Featuring The New Mutants, which I don’t particularly have a problem with, since I quite like the character – but I can see why your mileage might vary.
PAGE 3. The New Mutants enter the U-Men’s facility.
The group here is Wolfsbane, Warpath, Karma, Mirage, Cerebella and Escapade. Since Escapade isn’t wearing a team uniform, I assume she and Cerebella are here because of their personal interest, rather than because they’ve actually joined the team.
“Recently, they captured me and my friends.” New Mutants #31-33.
“When we escaped, we found a list of their other horror factories…” On the hard drive that Wolfsbane salvaged at the end of New Mutants #33. Considering that the U-Men are apparently guarding this facility in full costume, openly on the street, you do have to wonder why anyone needed a list in order to find it. Maybe they only stepped up security after the hard drive was stolen.
“Cerebella, are you sure you’re ready to go back in there?” This isn’t the facility they took down in the previous arc, so presumably Escapade just means going back into a U-Men facility in general.
“She had to relieve the worst moment of her whole life.” In the previous arc, Sublime tried (and failed) to turn Cerebella back into a disembodied brain under his control, which was her status quo when first introduced in New X-Men #118.
PAGE 4. The New Mutants fight the U-Men.
Escapade’s narration continues the recap for new readers.
John Sublime is a living bacteria from the dawn of time who controls a human host, though the U-Men (mostly) don’t know that. This is not important to the present story.
“Destiny showed me a vision where I caused the death of my best friend.” In Marvel’s Voices: Pride #1 (2022). The vision was averted in New Mutants #33 when events panned out differently. The strong implication has been that Destiny and Emma Frost are trying to manipulate Escapade into becoming a Krakoan asset (something she’s very sceptical about, since she doesn’t buy into the mutant nationalist project). Emma and Sublime have both alluded to the fact that Escapade’s weird powers imply that she’s actually quite a powerful reality-warper.
PAGE 5. The New Mutants rescue captive mutants.
Both these prisoners seem to be generics. I’m tempted to say that the insectoid boy must be really up on his mutants if he recognises Wolfsbane, but I guess she did have a public profile as part of the government-sponsored X-Factor team in the early 90s.
PAGE 6. Escapade and Cerebella talk.
The degree of tension between Escapade and Cerebella comes from the fact that when Cerebella was a prisoner of Sublime, she asked Escapade to kill her, to prevent him from mutilating her again. Escapade refused, which Cerebella regarded as evidence that Escapade was more concerned about keeping herself pure (particularly since Cerebella would just have been resurrected on Krakoa). Since Escapade went on to rescue Cerebella in a different way, that’s being smoothed over.
PAGE 7. Recap and credits. I don’t think we normally get both real names and codenames in the recap pages, but it’s probably a good idea.
Karma’s real name is given here as Xuân Cao Manh, rather than the traditional “Xi’an Coy Manh”, due to the traditional version being, well, wrong. This was covered in Love Unlimited Infinity Comic #31.
PAGE 8. Data page. A string of text messages from Morgan Red to Escapade, which she isn’t answering. Morgan has always been even more sceptical about Krakoa than Escapade was. She originally went there in order to gain control of her powers and prevent the timeline where she killed Morgan, but the fact that she’s staying there even now is clearly a wedge between them. Morgan is a mutant, but point blank refuses to have anything to do with Krakoa.
PAGES 9-10. Wolfsbane visits Morgan.
“He found out Shela and I are mutants along with everyone else in New York.” They appeared on stage along with Wolfsbane and other Krakoan representatives in New Mutants #31.
“I’m ‘always welcome on Krakoa.’ But Shela’s the one you all really wanted.” He’s being somewhat self-pitying, but he’s right.
“Meanwhile, my trans mutant support group is taking a break because of death threats.” We seem to be slowly drifting back to a view that there’s a significant mutant population outside Krakoa – albeit that they’re more often shown padding out Orchis jails than living normal lives. The original line seemed to be that everyone had moved to Krakoa aside from a relative handful of refuseniks.
PAGES 11-12. Escapade proposes some light burglary.
This is what Escapade (with Morgan as back-up) was doing when we first met her in Marvel’s Voices: Pride #1. In New Mutants #32, while escaping from the U-Men, she tells Morgan: “I think we should stop calling ourselves super villains. It was cute, but now I’m over it.” She’s re-casting herself as more of a Robin Hood figure here.
Westchester, New York is the location of the X-Men Mansion, which doesn’t seem relevant here, but might be significant later.
PAGES 13-14. Count Nefaria kills a captive.
It’s not entirely clear who this captive is – Nefaria calls him “a grubby peon who spies on his betters for the security state”, so I suppose he’s either a cop or a SHIELD-type agent.
Count Nefaria is principally an Avengers and Iron Man villain, but he has fought the X-Men twice – once way back in the Silver Age, in X-Men #22-23, and once in X-Men #94-96, which is the story where Thunderbird dies. He’s one of those characters who looks human but is actually a being of ionic energy, like Wonder Man.
“My humiliation at the hands of the Sin-Eater.” In Amazing Spider-Man #46 (2020), Nefaria was killed by a magical version of Sin-Eater and resurrected in a morally pure form. He was interviewed on camera by Norah Winters, and wound up begging his former victims for forgiveness. Sin-Eater’s “victims” largely returned to normal following his defeat in Amazing #56.
PAGES 15-16. Escapade, Cerebella and Scout decide to rob Count Nefaria.
This is obviously going to go well.
“He used to be in the Maggia.” He did indeed. The Maggia is Marvel’s stand-in for the Mafia.
PAGES 17-18. Wolfsbane and Morgan Red hunt for tech in the sewers.
Collecting this sort of thing is Morgan’s standard interest, but Wolfsbane seems to be reaching out to him for other reasons – most likely a combination of feeling sorry for him over Escapade’s decreased interest, and wanting to keep him on side (to the extent he’s on side in the first place).
The idea that Krakoa’s enemies already know about organic tech, so that it’s important to get hold of something more conventional, is… not standard for the Krakoan era. It may be a pretext, of course.
PAGE 19. Data page. Count Nefaria recruits for the Lethal Legion (presumably, not in quite the words he used in the real adverts, even though this exact page is on Cerebella’s tablet in the next scene).
The Lethal Legion is a team name that Nefaria has used for his henchmen on a number of occasions, starting with 1977’s Avengers #164. The name was first used by the Grim Reaper for an unrelated team that debuted in Avengers #70. There have been a bunch of other totally unrelated Lethal Legions down the years, but Nefaria certainly has used the name multiple times.
PAGE 20. Escapade and co decide to pose as Lethal Legion recruits to get in.
PAGES 21-23. Wolfsbane and Morgan find a monster in a lab.
Spencer Smythe is a Spider-Man villain. J Jonah Jameson hired him to make the original Spider-Slayer.
Morgan gives two reasons for disliking Krakoa: first, a general anti-nationalism, and second, a conviction that mutant separatism will lead to eternal war. Rahne’s counter is to argue that she tried keeping her head down and living a quiet life “[w]hen I was a child back in Scotland”, though that would logically be before her powers emerged, and it somewhat glosses over the fact that she was being raised by an abusive religious extremist. That said, we’re clearly meant to take these are two competing perspectives on Krakoa, rather than as Rahne offering an unanswerable rebuttal.
PAGES 24-25. Escapade and Scout invent supervillain costumes.
The headpiece that Escapade is wearing is the one that Psylocke wore as Lady Mandarin. I feel sure I’m meant to recognise some of the other components.
PAGE 26. Trailers.
While I enjoyed a couple of Anders’ novels (and was a a super fan of hers when she started io9), I was pretty down on those last 3 issues before New Mutants was rebooted into this mini, mostly because, as Paul and others noted in previous annotations, it stopped being a NM book. (Also, I hated and still hate Escapade’s powers.)
That said, I enjoyed this issue a great deal more now that we’re past the setup, and I can see a case for there being a book for a new generation of New Mutants (Lost Club + Scout + Escapade), while we finally allow Dani, Karma, Warpath, et al graduate to the X-Men or other books.
Re: Karma: Paul, thanks for directing us to that Marvel Infinity comic. It has bothered me FOR YEARS that literally the only Viet superhero I’ve ever known had a Chinese name, and I didn’t know why until now, when I just read an article about how Claremont basically just butchered her name.
The Love Infinity retcon is clever, too: Viet boat people commonly had to adopt Western names either somewhat similar to their Viet ones phonetically, names that had similar meanings, or completely unrelated names the name of “assimilation.” And, of course, there are Viet people who just roll with their actual names, only to inherit incomprehensible–and more importantly, unwanted–nicknames because people don’t know how to pronounce the original or don’t even try. Really, really well-done. I just hate this was buried in a Marvel Infinity series and that I’m just now learning about this.
Re: Morgan and Rahne’s debate: More of this, please. We’ve been collectively clamoring for more a critical analysis on this and related topics for months in the annotation comments. While I don’t necessarily disagree with Morgan’s thesis that nationalism is bad, I don’t think singling out the creation of a language as his only supporting argument is particularly compelling, especially since we haven’t been shown that Krakoan as a language hasn’t been central cultural driver for…well, anything so far.
Feels weird to have an X book subtitled with name I associated with a villain Avengers team. Copyright renewal time?
@Moonstar Dynasty I didn’t make the io9 connection, thanks!
Totally missed the Love Unlimited Infinity Comics. Granted, I only got a phone that could work with Unlimited’s Infinity comics last fall, but seems like an espcially obscure place for that story. They couldn’t have done it in an X-Men Unlimited story at least? Anyway, glad it’s been addressed and corrected finally, and will have a look at Love Unlimited.
And generally agree that this is off to a better start than the New Mutants story, I agree Escapade’s powers are a little goofy and confusing, and can easily fall into plot convenience, but we’ll see how it unfurls.
One nitpick, and this is probably just me cos I grew up in southern Westchester near the Bronx, but, while there are places you can see some skyscrapers in the distance, from a bridge over train tracks for instance, there is nowhere in the county that would provide a view like that behind Nefaria’s mansion, even in this exaggerated perspective. Makes it look like the house is in Central Park. There’s an entire burrough (The Bronx!) between Westchester and Manhattan’s skyline… But I know, poetic license, telling us Westchester is close to the city and not upstate. But like, we’re X-Men readers, we know this already. End rant.
I liked this issue more than the last few issues of New Mutants, and I like Escapade’s growing relationship with Cerebrlla. Having young characters like Morgan questioning the benefits of Krakoa makes sense, especially since the older characters push Krakoa so hard.
The line about a trans mutant support group made me wonder about transphobia among some mutants. Maybe that’s another reason why Morgan feels uncomfortable with Krakoa- bad enough he has to deal with prejudice I. The “real world,” I imagine being discriminated against in a utopia would be even worse.
Given that this mini-series ends in July, I suspect one or more of the classic New Mutants here (Karma, Mirage, Wolfsbane) might end up on the Jean and Scott’s Year 3 X-Men roster.
So this mini exists to bridge the gap between New Mutants Vol 4 ending and Hellfire Gala 2023. That said, for a low stakes character-exploration story, I quite enjoyed this issue.
Yeah, I also liked this better than the New Mutants arc, and I wonder if part of it is simply the rebranding. Having Escapade kind of take over the New Mutants title without any “Now! A New Era Begins!” sort of focus felt weird. Having Escapade as the primary character of a miniseries doesn’t tickle that annoyance.
Also I’m happier with Cerebella here than in the previous issues, and that’s mostly because we don’t have her blaming the other characters for leaving her as a brain for so long. That’s one of those character points where… yes, it makes complete sense why Cerebella would be upset. But the situation with her and Cosmar was more of a mess than I feel like it was treated and it all makes me uncomfortable. Namely them both effectively being students of Dani and the others. There’s a difference between doing violence to a close friend and equal on their request, and doing it to someone who’s your younger student on their request, and so maybe Dani has a good reason to feel really icked there. I kept waiting for that to come up and it never did.
So Cerebella giving some natural complaints brings back distaste for that entire plotline. But now that she’s focused on bonding with people and exploring herself, I’m really enjoying it!
Regarding this being “Escapade Featuring The New Mutants”, I’m here for it. I don’t think that “team” books actually work all that often, per se. There just aren’t enough pages. Putting a tight focus on one character, either per issue, per arc, or for an entire run — these are the only stories that I regularly enjoy any more. The “big fight where every character gets a beat” is usually just dull to me.
This issue felt like a real step up from the three previous ones, and those were just fine. The previous ones had things like Peanuts-style flashbacks and winged turtles, contrasted with Cerebella begging for death so a villain doesn’t carve away her entire body. This is more even and discards the odd fate stuff. I look forward to the next issue.
I really liked the Peanuts style flashbacks, which began in Voices. They were cute and appropriate. Always on the bottom of the page IIRC. Somehow felt appropriate. Also Hibbert the genetically engineered flying turtle also appears in this issue.
“Having Escapade kind of take over the New Mutants title without any “Now! A New Era Begins!” sort of focus felt weird.”
Put like this, it actually can be read as a meta commentary on her powers. We swapped with the cast of NM!
Joseph S: Huh, now that you point that out, the cover with her taking all of the OC’s places fits really well, if in a kind of snarky way.
@Mark Coale: There was already a Lethal Legion in X-Men: Red.
@Paul “Spencer Smythe is a Spider-Man villain. J Jonah Jameson hired him to make the original Spider-Slayer.” He’s supposed to be dead. Is it his son, the unimaginatively named Spencer Smythe Jr.?
Not to pick on a spelling error, but I can’t resist this: There is also an entire *burrow* (The Morlock tunnels!) between Westchester and Manhattan.
Somehow.
@karl ha! I lol’d. love a good pun
fwiw I was teaching William S. Burroughs in class that week…