New Mutants: Lethal Legion #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
NEW MUTANTS: LETHAL LEGION #2
“Terrible Decisions”
Writer: Charlie Jane Anders
Penciller: Enid Balám
Inker: Elisabetta D’Amico
Colourist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1: Escapade in front of a Lethal Legion recruitment poster, having apparently swapped roles with Grim Reaper – who isn’t in this story, but did have an involvement with an earlier version of the Lethal Legion. The papers blowing around her include photos of Dani, Rahne and Gabby.
PAGES 2-4. Wolfsbane and Morgan flee into an underground survivalist camp.
They disturbed this thing last issue, while hunting for potentially useful technology in an abandoned underground lab that once belonged to Spencer Smythe. It seems to be just some Thing Living In The Tunnels.
They stumble into what seems to be some sort of anti-mutant survivalist camp, hiding away from some sort of mutant-related apocalypse. So far as we can tell from this issue, this bunch seem relatively harmless – they really do just want to hide away in the tunnels and sit out the end of the world.
PAGE 5. Recap and credits. Oddly, the recap claims that Escapade had joined the New Mutants before the U-Men storyline – she had joined the cast but she hadn’t joined the team, unless you’re counting Lost Club as part of the New Mutants.
PAGES 6-8. Escapade, Cerebella and Scout arrive at Nefaria’s castle.
This is the Lethal Legion recruitment event that was being advertised last issue. Escapade and Scout are still in the makeshift villain costumes that they created last issue, with Escapade as “BlasterDame” and Scout as “FistiCuss”. Cerebella doesn’t get one because she’s just going to sneak inside. Cerebella doesn’t seem to be taking this terribly seriously – maybe a case of the somewhat relaxed Krakoan attitude to the threat of death – and Escapade perceives herself as the one who is having to be “responsible”. Which is slightly absurd, of course, since the truly responsible thing would be to get the hell out of there.
Jonathan is Scout’s pet wolverine.
The Lemurians are a kind of sister race to the Atlanteans.
The Lethal Legion auditionees are a truly motley crew of nonentities, but the vast majority of them are pre-existing characters – maybe even all of them, but at any rate, here are the recognisable ones.
- Starting on page 7 panel 4, the guy on the left hand side with the shield is Death-Shield, a kind of evil copy of Captain America who debuted in Amazing Spider-Man vol 1 #367. Rather awkwardly, he died in the recent continuity implant story Venom: Lethal Protector vol 2 #5, but he’s appeared (very occasionally) in other later stories – so either he got better, or this is a second Death-Shield.
- Next to him is the Unicorn, an honest to god proper supervillain from Iron Man.
- I don’t recognise the guy in the uniform.
- The big black thing next to him is Volga Belle, who fought Darkhawk in Darkhawk #16-18 back in 1992. She was last seen as a member of the Russian group Remont 6, and like Unicorn, she’s C-list, but still a cut above the rest of these bozos.
- The woman in the red outfit with the sword is Guillotine, from Al Ewing and Paco Medina’s Contest of Champions in 2015.
- The person in the background with the glasses is Eclecta, whose only previous appearances were as one of Deadpool’s interns in Deadpool vol 3 #39-40 in 2000.
- Next is Escapade.
- I think the guy in the cowboy hat is Montana from the Enforcers, Silver Age Spider-Man villains from the days when he fought more or less regular criminals.
- I don’t recognise the guy with the sideburns, or the large man, or the little purple fellow.
- Hovering in mid-air is Psi-Borg, identified in a later caption as “Psi-Borg III”. The first Psi-Borg was Aldo Ferro, a Larry Hama Wolverine villain, but he has nothing to do with the later Psi-Borgs. The second Psi-Borg is an unrelated character who appeared in Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. storyline in 1992 – she defected to HYDRA and died in issue #45 of that series. This character is drawn identically to her, and I’m guessing the “III” is because somebody realised at the last minute that the character was meant to be dead.
- On the far right of the page is the Cylla Markham version of Skullbuster, a minor member of the Reavers – Escapade fought her in her debut appearance in Marvel’s Voices: Pride #1 last year.
- On page 8, we can also see someone with green hair wearing a yellow and red striped suit – I don’t recognise this character.
Escapade’s comments on Nefaria’s speech are probably more a reflection of how she sees Emma Frost (who has indeed focussed on manipulating her rather than inspiring her).
PAGE 9. Data page – a transcript of a conversation between Count Nefaria and his therapist which inspires him to re-start the Lethal Legion.
I’m not sure what Nefaria is referring to in terms of being humiliated by Dr Doom or Dr Octopus. The Sin-Eater briefly altered his mind and led to him giving an emotional public interview in Amazing Spider-Man vol 5 #46.
PAGES 10-11. Wolfsbane and Morgan find another underground camp.
This bunch aren’t survivalists, they’re just homeless, it seems. I’m not sure if Rahne’s meant to be recognising anything in particular on the wall – the art just shows a bunch of smudges – but at any rate, she recognises this as one of the tunnels where the Morlocks were slaughtered by the Marauders during the Mutant Massacre crossover in 1986.
PAGE 12. Data page: resurrected Morlock Jared Flyn explains how he was killed in the Massacre. Apparently he was backed up just as he died, but given the number of Morlocks who died, I guess some of them could have been. This is presumably some kind of mutant history project. Flyn is a new character.
Greycrow is the character then known as Scalphunter, and now more or less reformed as Kwannon’s partner.
Riptide was one of the Marauders.
Cybelle was a bit part Morlock who died in the original crossover, specifically in Uncanny X-Men #211.
PAGES 13-15. The Lethal Legion auditionees spar.
Most of these nonentities are pretty useless – though note that the story carefully keeps the regulars away from the likes of Unicorn, who may not be an A-lister, but at least ranks as a proper supervillain.
HGTV is “Home and Garden Television”, a US TV channel.
PAGES 16-17. Mirage and Karma look for Cerebella and Scout.
Morgan is obviously going to be very disappointed that Escapade has gone on a heist without him – it also plays into his whole thing of seeing Krakoa as a threat to his relationship with her.
PAGE 18. Escapade defeats Sweet William.
We haven’t seen this guy in the earlier group shots, but he is indeed a pre-existing character – he was a member of the Split-Second Squad, who were henchmen of Cornelius van Lunt (Taurus) in Avengers #77. He’s never appeared anywhere else. He did indeed spend his first appearance talking about how much he regretted violence while shooting wildly with his gun.
PAGES 19-21. Nefaria interviews “BlasterDame”.
And gets her drunk. The bit about deciding to be a “supervillain” as a kid is basically right, though pre-New Mutants it expressed itself mainly as Robin Hood-type heists; Escapade seems to be giving him a semi-accurate account of her history, or at least her motivations. Nefaria, presumably, either suspects something is up, or is just seeing how gullible his potential new henchman is. Or maybe he’s genuinely just offering her a drink.
Grappa isn’t always 100% proof, but by the (lower) US definition of that term, a lot of it reaches the 100% threshold. It’s between 35% and 60% alcohol by volume.
PAGE 22. Wolfsbane subdues the monster.
Morgan seems to be bonding with Rahne in place of his fading relationship with Escapade.
PAGES 23-24. Escapade gets exposed and screws up.
Skullbuster presumably recognises Escapade because she’s no longer trying to disguise her voice.
PAGE 25. Trailers.
If it helps, “proof” is basically double ABV, so “100 proof” is 50% ABV. (No, I don’t know why we bother either.) So that’s some strong grappa.
I thought the wall smudges were probably meant as ash-blasted remains from Harpoon, Greyclaw, or one of the other energy-wielding Mauraders killing someone. I think we got some of that imagery back during the Massacre.
Rahne wasn’t around at the time, but she may easily have learned that Thor gave the Mutant Massacre victims a Viking funeral by immolation in 1986’s Thor #374 (a darned good story, btw). I assume that she saw some scorching marks in that wall and remembered why they are there.
Am I misreading something or is the sequence with Morgan and Rahne running from the creature nonsensically paced? It starts with a splash page with it right behind them, the next page they immediately run into some people and stop to have a conversation, then light a flare that seemingly reveals it in the shadows.
Guillotine really shouldn’t be there; she’s an outlaw-type hero, not a supervillain.
The Morlock text page, meanwhile, is pretty great.
…wait, how could any of the Morlocks be backed up during the MM? Xavier’s meant to have had to do the backups manually per the HoXPoX data pages, and he wasn’t even on Earth at the time.
Unless it’s Waiting Room shenanigans, not a Cerebro backup, I guess.
@SanityOrMadness- the PoX data pages seemed to make it clear that Xavier had to do the backups manually but Marauders made it clear that Leland had memories of his final battle with Nimrod while Xavier was off planet, suggesting that the backups were being done automatically by then.
Isn’t that a bit of an academic concern now, though?
The Waiting Room created at the trailing end of The Trial of Magneto is a ready-made explanation for mutants to ressurrect regardless of the existence of Cerebro recordings. By my account it has been in place for well over a year even in comics time. And it makes sense that Morlocks would have a measure of priority in that queue.
There’s just no getting rid of those damned Morlocks.
Are they still calling themselves Morlocks? Because unless they’re living underground again (I have no idea what the case is), it doesn’t much sense for them to still be calling themselves Morlocks. They should just call themselves herpes. No getting rid of that either.
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Psi-Borg didn’t actually defect as was revealed to be a HYDRA infiltrator.
Montana is supposed to be dead.
@neutrino- Montana was brought back as a clone by Ben Reilly while he was using the Jackal identity.
The Rahne/ Morgan/ monster subplot didn’t work for me, but I liked the bulk of the issue. Of course two teenagers and a preteen came up with a dumb plan that’s not working, they shouldn’t be able to. I’m enjoying the hijinks.
As for characters being alive or dead or resurrected… unless it’s a major character, or a character who had a really memorable death (e.g. Skurge in Simonson’s Thor), I just shrug and move on.
The first issue pointed out how Nefaria is underestimated, but now it seems like they’re treating him like a joke.
I didn’t get that feeling – he’s not really involved in the action in this issue. We’ll have to wait and see.
The monster chase in the tunnels is weirdly paced – or rather, a lot of it happens off page but it’s not very clear what actually happened?
Minor quibble aside, I liked this, it’s good fun.
Given the presence of Sweet William, it makes sense for the man next to Unicorn to be Cap’n Skragg and the bearded man in the green sweater to be Joe the Gorilla, two other members of the Split-Second Squad. The man in the cowboy hat could be Pecos, another SSS member.
@Krzysiek Ceran: If the best he can do for the new Lethal Legion, a previous incarnation which took on the Avengers, is a “a truly motley crew of nonentities”, he doesn’t look that impressive.
@Krzysiek ,@neutrino- Yeah, the idea is that after all his defeats, he can’t get the usual supervillain henchmen to work for him. Readers don’t think of people like Whirlwind, Grey Gargoyle and Living Laser as top notch villains but for all their flaws, they’re experienced supervllains who have given A-list heroes a hard time on many occasions. The new Lethal Legion are all losers and so, by implication, is Nefaria.
Yes, although the conspicuous exception is Unicorn. He’s a proper Iron Man villain who was hanging around with Korvac not so long ago. He’s way out of the league of everyone else who’s shown up here, and I suspect it’s no accident that he’s kept to the margins while everyone else is made to look like an idiot.
In fairness, Unicorn has worked with Nefaria before, so maybe there’s an element of loyalty at work.