Friendship and reconciliation is the name of the game in New Mutants #22, where our plucky teens/tweens work through the awkwardness of accidentally abetting a villain who murdered your friend, and we finally learn what Shadow King’s deal is.
REVIEW: New Mutants #21 Picks Up the Pace
Reading this issue had me saying, “Finally!!!” out loud. The slow-burning Shadow King plotline is moving to its final act, its different strands finally weaving together — though not explosively (yet!). But still, it is a relief to get the gears in motion especially fast in New Mutants #21.
REVIEW: New Mutants #20 is Lost in Shadow
This New Mutants arc has been a bit of a slow-burn for me, and Vita Ayala and Rod Reis, and now (to a less-menacing extent) Alex Lins and Matt Milla have been able to sustain a fair amount of looming tension. But, we’re seven issues into this Shadow King storyline and I am still grasping…
REVIEW: New Mutants #19: Paper Tigers
The New Mutants are at the Hellfire Gala, a little different than we’ve seen them before — new artists Alex Lins and Matt Milla have some big shoes to fill, and issue #19 really underscores just how much emotional heft Rod Reis’ work has brought to the series.
REVIEW: New Mutants #18: On a Precipice
There’s something looming ahead in the distance for the denizens of Krakoa, and it’s not just the Hellfire Gala — the Shadow King’s intentions hang over everything and remain unrevealed. This issue doesn’t bring us any closer to understanding his aims; instead, this issue continues to use the mutants as a metaphor of dysphoria, explicitly…
REVIEW: New Mutants #17 is a Quest of Questions
New Mutants #17 continues to try to shed light on the anxieties and issues hidden in the new world of Krakoa, following Rahne, Dani and Xi’an, and the young mutants under the Shadow King’s tutelage in plot lines that are slowly beginning to intertwine. The month-long gap between #16 and #17 makes this issue feel…
Single Issue Stories: A Conversation With Vita Ayala on New Mutants #15
Vita Ayala and Rod Reis’ New Mutants #15 is an issue that marked a personal turning point for the new Krakoan paradigm in what we can expect the stories of this era to tackle. This issue is an unfolding promise to tackle concepts such as identity, bodily-agency, and belonging in ways that no X-Men story has…
REVIEW: New Mutants #16 – A Crowded Room
The word of the arc is synergy, both in power sets and community. New Mutants has a broad cast of characters it follows: members of the titular New Mutants team, the younger generations of mutants who have been around for years but never allowed to age, and actual new-new mutants, like Cosmar (both newly powered…
One Issue, Many Bodies: Dissecting Dysphoria and Passing in New Mutants #15
Content Warnings: Transphobia, Trans-Medicalism, Dysphoria, intracommunity discourse
REVIEW: New Mutants #15 – Passages to Krakoa
New Mutants continues to pick at the seams that hold Krakoa together in #15. The issue is titled, “Out of the Shadows,” but it’s questionable what is actually being exposed here—the motivations of some young mutants, or the limitations of the current resurrection protocols?
REVIEW: New Mutants #14 – What Up, Warlock?
New Mutants as a title and a team managed to leave X of Swords unscathed — while Cypher is now married to Bei the Blood Moon, he’s taken his bride back to Krakoa with him and appears none the worse for wear. In New Mutants #14, we find that the team members who weren’t off…
REVIEW: New Mutants #13: Old Swords
The crossover event X of Swords has hit the New Mutants right where they live — their eponymous book with issue #13. And I take up the role of your regular New Mutants reviewer.