The opening arc for the latest New Mutants series offers the return of Legion, a good writer who hasn’t worked in the X-Verse before, and a talented artist. The New Mutants have had several volumes already, and nearly all of them have been solid launches. It’s also got a small core team of six, well-established characters, which is a manageable number.
I’m hopeful that another new #1 will be a good read.
The opening is like a horror movie. Karma is in Colorado, and crouches next to a little girl. She tells the girl, Marci, that she’s been looking for her and Marci responds that Karma is new and “they like the new ones.” A creature starts to knock down the door, and we shift to the California X-Men base, where Magik teleports in, injured, and gets a less-than-warm welcome from the former members of the New X-Men who only know her as the woman to took part of Pixie’s soul.
The team is now together, and they go looking for Karma and Dani. What they find is Karma’s body bound to a chair and her soul in the body of Legion–along with Marci.
There’s mindscape scenes with Dani and Marci fighting David Haller’s negative personalities, who blame Karma for her role in integrating Legion’s personalities and relegating these personalities to his subconscious. In the real world, the New Mutants fight the various souls who gain control of Legion’s body–each having their own super abilities.
That’s really the bulk of these issues. The fighting goes on for several issues. It’s all well done, and of course there are twists along the way, but that’s essentially it. Magik gets inside the mindscape with her sword and just starts hacking away at all the personalities while Karma and Marci track down David Haller–in a prison cell–and help him regain some semblance of control so that he can be taken back and treated by Hank McCoy.
The wrap up is a little quick and easy, but this is an entertaining story and solid start for this book. I’m hopeful that the reintroduction of Legion means we’ll get to spend more time with the character in the coming issues.
My only gripe is that calling these guys, who have been around since the ’80s, “New” Mutants is a misnomer, and really goes against the essence of the New Mutants brand. It’s explained that they are the New Mutants “Squad,” seeing as how much of the world doesn’t really know them the way they know Cyclops, Beast, Wolverine, etc. Minor gripe, but still valid.
English (US) · 