Reading the New Mutants’ debut in their eponymous 1982 graphic novel is really strange forty years later.
Not that it’s aged badly. The story of Professor X reluctantly recruiting a new team of mutant kids to train — he thought the X-Men had died fighting the Brood in space, though he really should have known better — is way better than X-Men at the time. I bought the book steadily until Claremont’s strips started to get too grim and Marvel saddled the book with Bill Sienkiwicz’ eye-gouging art (I know Greg thinks the guy’s a genius, but Greg is wrong).
What’s strange is realizing how radical an idea this seemed at the time. An entire new team of X-Men? Whoa! Little did I know back then how many X-Men and mutant teams would crop up to milk the franchise within a few years.
And wow, five new mutants in one book? Sure, we’d been meeting new mutants over in X-Men — Kitty, Sebastian Shaw, Proteus — but this still felt like a big deal at the time. Pierce, the villain of the story, comments in passing that growing numbers of mutants are manifesting; a decade later that would seem like a laughable understatement. Mutants in the 1990s were everywhere, in increasing numbers, until Marvel tried trimming them back with the House of M/No More Mutants arc (I believe that just like Superman getting depowered, the numbers started rising again later).
When I read that book the first time I had no idea what was rushing towards us. Looking back now, I do.
I still enjoyed the book.
#SFWApro. Cover by Bob MacLeod.
frasherman: I remember reading the New Mutants back in the day, from graphic novel up to just after Bill Sienkiewicz left the book as an inker. (after his run, he stay as an inker for a bit). Loved Sienkiewicz’s work.
I stopped reading N.M. around the end of “Fall of the Mutants” cross-over. Both the Uncanny X-Men and New Mutants, X-Factor(?) were getting a bit too grim for my tastes back then.
One of these days, when I have time, I’ll have to go back and re-read the ’80’s stuff.
The 80’s were really good reads. The ’90’s, not so much, unless you count Vertigo.
The grim-and-gritty was the worst thing about Claremont’s later work for me. Well, and the distinctive voice all of his mind-controllers seem to have — I read a friend’s novel in which one bodysnatcher talks to his victim in much the same voice and I flinched to hear it.
And yeah, the 1990s were a painful era with a few bright spots.
I liked them quite a lot. I’m thinking about getting the 2 omnibuses. Together with the Fall of the Mutants and Inferno ones I already have I have all that I need. I sold my Liefeld stuff years ago at my LCS.
The Sink issues are great. I’m with team Greg. 😉
This, as they say, is what makes horse races. Though I shudder at the thought of a horse drawn by Sinkewicz.
I had a chance to read the first New Mutants Omnibus and I thought it was solid. New Mutants starts fairly well, though I found the Nova Roma stuff a little bleh. I feel like the book really hits its stride when the Hellions pop up which adds a fun teenage rivalry dimension.
Loved the Sienkiwicz stuff myself but overall a good read.
I’ve been contemplating grabbing the Excalibur Omnibi collection but can’t make up my mind. What is the best X-Men spinoff title I wonder?
I loved the Hellions. Having them as Slytherin to the New Mutants’ Gryffendor was a great idea.
It pissed me off when one of the big crossover events (IIRC) killed them off.
For my money, I’d say Alan Davis’ Excalibur is easily the best spin-off. Probably the best X-Men title at the time, in fact (it came during a bad time for Uncanny.
My tastes don’t line up to everyone else’s, though, and I haven’t read most of X-Factor.
I really enjoyed X-Factor once Louise Simonson was working on it but not up to Excalibur.
I mean, van Gogh wasn’t appreciated in his lifetime either. 🙂
You liked New Mutants better than X-Men at the time? I was not a fan of the Paul Smith art but apart from that I felt that the main Mutant title was pretty strong. I did enjoy New Mutants but I wish the kids would have had more physical powers (including the Hellions). To me the Mutant expansion at the time felt a bit like all the cool powers are already covered by older characters and they came up with way to many vague mental mind control-like powers. That got boring in Claremonts stories anyway.
Oh, and Sinkiewicz`s art was brilliant for a brief run. I´d also have liked way more from Jackson Guice and a lot less of Bret Blevins. But even Blevins was sheer brilliance compared to the guy that succeeded him:-)
I’ve never liked the Brood and found their long arc tedious. Plus, Claremont’s tics are getting heavier, though not as bad as they’d be later. The mind control, and the way everyone in the X-Men keeps offering deep philosophical insight, which makes them all sound alike. Colossus giving Kitty a pep talk shouldn’t sound like Wolverine giving a pep talk (I admit I may be more negative than when I read them for the first time because I know how much worse it’s going to get).
You have a point about their powers — another thing that became more prominent with other mutants later — though it doesn’t bother me.
I agree that the Brood arc went on too long and the deus ex machina-solution to the infestation was unsatisfactory but the second Brood arc was great: just three issues (during the summer 2 issues-a-month era, so it was really quick), lots of action and Marc-Silvestri/Dan-Green artwork.
If I ever had that one, it went when i got rid of a chunk of X-books. A shame, as Marc Silvestri art is fun.
Oh, yeah. I remember how excited I was about a new ongoing X-title, just like I was really happy with the original Wolverine mini-series that had just concluded a little earlier – oh, how naive we were as we clamored for more, more, more X-content…
Anyway, I also liked the series until Sienkiewicz came on board – I didn’t think his art was suited to it and I didn’t like the direction Claremont took at that point.
However, I should say that I like Sienkiewicz’s art fine elsewhere (e.g., Moon Knight) and I thought that at about this time the X-men started to pick up steam again after swinging between decent and mediocre for about a year or so.
I didn’t read any of these titles at the time, but I’ve got the first couple of Complete New Mutants trades, deliberately jumping off when Sienkiewicz came on board and the writing got darker.
That’s not for me.
I feel like Sienkiewicz tends to do really good artwork, then scribbles all over it.
I´ve never read a better description of Sienkiewcz`s art.
Thanks.
I have a real fond spot for the book. I came to it slightly late (sometime in 1988) since the run was included in a comic book collection my junior high music gave to me when he got tired of his wife hassling him about the hobby and how much space his long boxes were taking up in their house. This was right before I started high school so it was they perfect time to dig into comic filled with characters me own age. I didn’t get Sienkiewicz ‘s art then but he is one of my favorite artists now. (I didn’t really get Kirby as a kid either) Regardless of appreciating the art now, I do think Sienkiewicz was a very odd pick for a book that I assume Marvel wanted to appeal to adolescent readers. Though maybe Marvel didn’t expect it to appeal to adolescents since if that was goal starting it all off with a graphic novel would be a weird strategy in an era where most not adult readers would still be buying news stand comics instead of direct market.
Ironically, I had to read New Mutants as back issue material (I started X-Books with UXM #196 Sept. 1985 and would discover New Mutants in the back issue quarter bins a few months later). The New Mutants never really appealed to me – part of it was the old school X-Men Uniforms and not having individualized appearances, and part of it was there powers didn’t really seem as ‘cool’ as the X-Men. They started to become cool when they got pulled into Loki’s schemes during the ASGARDIAN WARS… but I still was never a big fan because the series never really had that superstar artist. (McLeod was always a competent but generally overlooked artist; Sienkiewicz was always off-kilter and never a favorite… the only time the team really shined artistically for me was when Arthur Adams was doing them in the annuals. Though I do think Art’s “graduation costume” designs for them in X-MEN Annual #10 were rather hideous, especially the color schemes of white/silver and pink). But I digress…
The “flood” came from X-Factor, of course, not New Mutants. And had Claremont had his way, there never would have been a flood. He was completely against the expansion of the brand. But of course he was overruled by Shooter who wanted to give his buddy Bob Layton an X-Book because Bob wanted to play with the toys, and because on a corporate level, they felt Claremont had too much power and they needed to dilute HIM, but they didn’t want to fire him off the book (yet), so make more X-Books with other writers. Of course by the time they got to Bob Harras as the editor (who wanted to write the X-books himself), Claremont was eventually axed.
“But, but Harras never wrote X-Men!” Go ask Fabian Nicieza and Scott Lobdell. They’ll both tell you how Harras rewrote their books as a ghost editor/writer constantly. If you ever wondered how Fabian could write NEW WARRIORS so well but be so completely off on X-MEN, now you know.
Yes, I’ve heard stories about that editorial tenure.
In hindsight, X-Factor was one of the first (or was it THE first?) books to opt for the Silver Age over legacy heroes. Though unlike the resurrections of Hal Jordan and Barry Allen and getting Babs out of the wheelchair, it didn’t replace the later versions.