Broken Frontier

This week sees the return of the original New Mutants in their own new ongoing monthly series. BF journeys back to 1982 to find out more about the genesis of the "junior" X-Men...

In 1982, the X-Men were not yet the phenomenon they are today. In fact, these misunderstood mutant superheroes were just another small part of the greater Marvel Universe, and though their star was definitely on the rise (and Frank Miller’s classic limited series Wolverine was about to make one of the more initially unpopular members of the team a superstar in his own right), Uncanny X-Men was possibly not the first book the average reader would have expected to spawn a spin-off. That all changed though, with the arrival of Marvel Graphic Novel #4 (the Marvel Graphic Novel series, for the uninitiated, were irregularly published, oversized and rather posh looking card covered one shots) titled simply ‘The New Mutants’.

The actual story - written by Chris Claremont (who essentially ran the whole Marvel mutant sub-universe almost single handed for a surprisingly long time) and drawn by Bob McLeod - tied in o an ongoing story in Uncanny X-Men which saw the not very merry mutants lost in space, battling the Brood; alien parasites who laid eggs in their victims, who would then be transformed into Brood themselves. In their absence, the X-Men’s founder, Charles Xavier (who unknown to all was actually already infected by the Brood himself) gathered together a group of new young mutants from around the globe to train in the use of their powers.

The team comprised  Irish werewolf Rahne Sinclair, codenamed Wolfsbane (a young, painfully shy Catholic girl who had been raised by an abusive priest and who felt far more at home as a wolf than as a human), Brazilian Roberto DaCosta, a solar energy absorbing mutant codenamed Sunspot who was the son of a rich but unscrupulous businessman, Native American Danielle Moonstar, codenamed Psyche (later changed to Mirage) who could create illusions of people’s greatest fears, and Vietnamese Xian Coy Manh, AKA Karma, a girl who could possess the bodies of others.

Before the issue’s end, the team had gained a fifth member: Kentucky born Sam Guthrie, AKA Cannonball, who the team first encountered working as an unwilling agent of the villainous Hellfire Club and its ‘White Bishop’ (the club’s Inner Circle ranked themselves after Chess pieces), the cyborg Donald Pierce.

The Graphic Novel was a success, and the ongoing series, The New Mutants, launched in March 1983, with Sal Buscema soon supplanting McLeod on the art chores. Early stories included one in which Kitty Pryde, youngest of the now returned X-Men, was ordered by Xavier to join the New Mutants. An indignant Kitty, who had been used to working with the adult team, was scandalized, christening them ‘the X-Babies’, and was soon back with the X-Men proper.

Sienkiewicz Arrives...

By #6, however, the first significant change in the team’s membership had already occurred with the apparent death of Karma (ironically, the only New Mutant to have appeared prior to the Graphic Novel, in Marvel Team-Up #100 in 1980). Shan (as Xian was known) was replaced a few issues later by Amara Aquilla, codename Magma, a young woman with lava generating powers who had grown up in a lost enclave of the Roman Empire somewhere up the Amazon river!

Later recruits included Doug Ramsay (Cypher), who had the mutant gift to immediately understand any language or code, and Warlock, an alien mutant shape shifter with a bizarrely comedic outlook on life and a total lack of understanding of human society, who quickly became the insecure Doug’s best friend. Warlock, named for another Marvel character then dead, was an anomaly, a member of a vicious alien race called the Technarchy whose mutation was basically that he was nice!

Initially a series very much in the traditional Marvel mold, Claremont quickly began to introduce darker themes into it, which were complimented by the arrival of Bill Sienkiewicz as regular artist. Sienkiewicz’s already quirky art gradually became more experimental, and for a long time there was nothing quite like New Mutants on the newsstands.

These darker themes included the arrival on the team of Illyana Rasputin, AKA Magik (the sister of the X-Man Colossus, who had spent years growing up in a magical limbo) and her constant struggle with the darker side of her nature, and the eventual reappearance of Karma, now a bloated wreck being controlled by the evil psychic entity Amahl Farouk, the Shadow King (she was freed from his control, but took some time to recover from her experiences).

Xavier left his School for Gifted Youngsters, the backdrop to the series, and was replaced as Headmaster by his former arch enemy, Magneto, and the kids also engaged in a recurring rivalry with the Hellions, their counterparts at another school, the Massachusetts Academy (run by the Hellfire Club’s White Queen, Emma Frost).

The Simonson Years

In 1987, writer Louise Simonson and artist Bret Blevins took over the book and the tone changed again. In a shocking move, Cypher was killed off, and Magma and Mirage were written out while Magik was returned to being the child she had been before her abduction to Limbo by the demo lord Belasco. In their place, several new members joined the team - short lived recruit Bird Brain, who left after the team discovered he was actually one of a group of genetically engineered animals (his creator, the Ani-Mator, was responsible for Cypher’s death) and Gosamyr, an alien irresistible to males whose mere presence nearly tore the team apart from within (like Bird Brain, Gosamyr’s tenure was brief).

More permanent additions to the roster, though, were the teenagers formerly known as the X-Terminators, former members of the supporting cast of companion title X-Factor: pyrokinetic outlaw Rusty Collins, Tabitha Smith (known as Boom Boom), who could create miniature explosives she called ‘time bombs’, the Earthquake causing Mexican youth Rictor (Julio Richter) and Rusty’s girlfriend, Skids, a former member of the underground dwelling mutant community called the Morlocks, whose body was permanently surrounded by a force field she couldn’t turn off!

Liefeld and Cable

Simonson crafted some great stories, but sales of the book slumped nonetheless and in late 1989 Rob Liefeld came aboard as artist and co-plotter. Several members of the team were written out, while Magneto (who had returned to his villainous ways) was replaced as the kids’ mentor by the mysterious Cable. Eventually, Fabian Nicieza took over as co-writer (with Liefeld) and, within three issues, effectively dissolved the New Mutants, simultaneously introducing several new characters to join the depleted squad.

New Mutants #100 (1991) was the final issue, but led directly into the new creative team’s new follow up series, X-Force, which subsequently had a lengthy run in the 1990s. X-Force, though, was a very different book. The few remaining members of the New Mutants who had joined X-Force (of the old team, only Boom Boom and Cannonball became regulars at first) had seemingly come of age and this new group was effectively a paramilitary force fighting Cable’s personal war!

In 2003, a second ongoing series entitled New Mutants debuted, featuring an all new group of mutant teens at Xavier’s school, with several former New Mutants (now adults) acting as teachers and mentors to them, including Mirage, Magma and Wolfsbane. The other surviving former members were scattered throughout various other titles or had vanished entirely, though most have since resurfaced. The new series, though, lasted only 12 issues before being relaunched as New X-Men: Academy X, and later as Young X-Men. With this latest series though, the original line-up (minus Wolfsbane, now a regular in the new X-Force series) plus Magma and the revived Magik are New Mutants once again. Which isn’t bad going for a group established 27 years ago…

New Mutants #1 is on sale now from Marvel Comics priced $2.99.