New Mutants
New Mutants #98 1st appearance of Deadpool
The New Mutants #1. Art by Bob McLeod. Clockwise from top: Cannonball, Sunspot, Wolfsbane, Karma, Dani Moonstar, Professor X (blue in background).
The New Mutants is a group of teenaged mutant superheroes-in-training published by Marvel Comics. They have been the main characters of three successive comic book series, which were spin-offs of the X-Men franchise.
The first team of New Mutants characters was created by Chris Claremont and artist Bob McLeod. They first appeared in 1982’s Marvel Graphic Novel #4 and are subsequently featured in their own title from 1983 until 1991. Like its parent title,The New Mutants highlighted interpersonal and group conflict as well as action and adventure, and featured a large ensemble cast. With the end of the first series, the characters were relaunched as X-Force in a new, eponymous series.
The second New Mutants series, launched in 2003, featured a new group of teenage mutants. Unlike the original New Mutants, they were part of a huge cast of students at the Xavier Institute. In 2004, it was relaunched as New X-Men: Academy X, after which the central group was formally dubbed the “New Mutants.” In the aftermath of the “M-Day” crossover storyline in late 2005, the remaining students were merged into one junior team, the New X-Men.
The third New Mutants series, reuniting most of the original team, launched in May 2009.
The New Mutants, vol. 1
Cover to The X-Men #1 (Sept. 1963) Art by Jack Kirby.
By the early 1980’s, Uncanny X-Men (under the authorship of Chris Claremont) had become one of the comic book industry’s most successful titles, prompting Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter to launch The New Mutants, the first of severalX-Men spin-offs. X-Men editor Louise Simonson recalled “Neither Chris [Claremont] or I really wanted to do it. We wanted X-Men to be special and by itself, but Shooter told us that if we didn’t come up with a new ‘mutant’ book, someone else would.” The name was a modification of Stan Lee‘s original name for the X-Men, “The Mutants.”
The New Mutants were teenaged students of Professor Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, much like the original X-Men, who had since grown into adulthood. These students, however, rather resembled the “All-New, All-Different X-Men” in terms of ethnic diversity. The original team consisted of:
- Cannonball (Samuel Guthrie), a mild-mannered Kentuckian and eventual co-leader, who became nigh-invulnerable when rocketing through the air.
- Karma (Xi’an Coy Manh), a 19-year-old Vietnamese girl and the team’s original leader, who could mentally possess other people’s bodies.
- Mirage (Danielle Moonstar, originally codenamed Psyche), a Cheyenne and eventual co-leader after Karma’s “death,” who could create visual empathicthree-dimensional illusions.
- Sunspot (Roberto da Costa), a Brazilian who gained superhuman strengthfueled by sunlight and could store solar energy in his body to use his super strength during the night.
- Wolfsbane (Rahne Sinclair), a Scot who could transform into a wolf-like creature.
The team was intended to debut in their own series. However, as the first issue was nearing completion, Shooter ordered it to be reworked into a graphic novel so that Marvel Graphic Novel could make its deadline for the next issue. Thus, the New Mutants debuted in Marvel Graphic Novel #4 (December 1982), which continued a plotline from Uncanny X-Men. (Despite Shooter’s wheeling and dealing, however, the graphic novel missed its shipping slot by two weeks due to artist Bob McLeod‘shoneymoon).
The series was originally written by Claremont and illustrated by McLeod, the team’s co-creators, but McLeod soon passed artistic duties on to Sal Buscema. Claremont gave the series a darker tone, which was heightened with the arrival of artist Bill Sienkiewicz. In addition to very serious depictions of teenage angst and growing pains, the series featured themes of mysticism and psychic boundaries. The stories also relied on wilder, more far-fetched premises than were typical of X-Men at the time. Locales included demonic dimensions, alternate futures, and an ancient Roman civilization hidden within the Amazon rainforest. The New Mutants also encountered a secret society called the Hellfire Club, and began a rivalry with their young apprentices, the Hellions.
After the apparent death of Karma, Cannonball and Dani Moonstar act as co-leaders. New recruits included:
- Cypher (Douglas Ramsey), an otherwise ordinary young man who could learn any language, spoken or written, at an exponential rate, whether it was human, alien, or machine, making him an unmatched computer expert.
- Magma (Amara Juliana Olivians Aquilla), a fiercely tempered native of a secret Roman society in the Amazon who can control lava.
- Magik (Illyana Rasputin), sister of the Russian X-Man Colossus and long-time resident of the X-Mansion, an accomplished mystic who could open “teleportation discs” allowing travel to Limbo and from there, any point on Earth.
- Warlock, an extraterrestrial of the techno-organic race known as the Technarchy.
Professor Charles Xavier Art by Aaron Lopresti
In 1986, Professor X was written out of the series. Before he left, he made the X-Men’s one-time nemesis, Magneto, headmaster of his school. Not trusted by his students, Magneto struggled in his new role and eventually joined the Hellfire Club.
With Claremont taking on Wolverine and Excalibur, he left The New Mutants and the series was turned over to writer Louise Simonson and illustrator Bret Blevins with issue #55 (Sept. 1987). Simonson was intended to be only a fill-in writer for the six months Claremont needed to get the two new series launched, but he ultimately remained with his new projects, and Simonson ended up writing the series for over three years. During her controversial run, Magma is written out of the book and Magik is de-aged back to childhood. Due to his unpopularity with New Mutants readers and artists, Cypher is killed off. Simonson recalled, “He wasn’t fun to draw. He just stood around and hid behind a tree during a fight… Every artist who ever did him said ‘Can’t we kill this guy?’ We would get letters from fans about how much they hated him.” Simonson also folded the X-Terminators, a group of young wards from X-Factor, into the New Mutants.
The X-Terminators added to the team were:
- Tabitha Smith on the cover to Weapon X #11 Art by Georges Jeanty.
- Boom-Boom (Tabitha Smith), a teen runaway who could create “plasma bombs.”
- Rusty Collins, a pyrokinetic wanted by the U.S. government.
- Rictor (Julio Richter), a young Mexican who could create shock waves.
- Skids (Sally Blevins), a former Morlock who could project a frictionless force field around her body.
In 1989, Simonson crafted a saga in which the team journeyed to Asgard, the home of the gods of Norse mythology. The storyline wrote Dani Moonstar out of the series, as she joined the Norse pantheon as one of the Valkyrior. However, the most controversial issue of her run was New Mutants #64. Titled “Instant Replay!”, the story deals with the New Mutants’ mourning for Cypher, and includes a scene in which Warlock attempts to resurrect Cypher by taking his corpse out of its coffin and showing it to Cypher’s loved ones. Simonson holds it to be her favorite New Mutants story, though she acknowledges that many readers found it too morbid.
Sales of the series had slumped for several years, but took a sharp upturn after Rob Liefeld took over the penciling and co-plotting chores at the end of 1989. A new mentor for the group, the mysterious mercenary Cable, was introduced, further helping sales. Over the next year, several longtime team members were written out or killed off. However, the relationship between Liefeld and Simonson was fraught with tension, and Simonson claims that Harras dealt with the situation by rewriting her plots and dialogue so that the characterizations did not make sense: “Although I wasn’t being fired, I think I was being shoved out the door with both hands by Bob Harras. Bob was only doing what he had to do, I expect, which was make Rob Liefeld happy.” Simonson eventually gave in, leaving after issue #97. When Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza, who wrote dialogue based on Liefeld’s plots, took over as writers of the final three issues of the series, they included several harder-edged characters:
- “Domino” (Vanessa Geraldine Carlysle), Cable’s pale-skinned, black-garbed mercenary lover. Actually Copycat, impersonating Domino.
- Feral (Maria Callasantos), who possessed a bestial temperament and appearance.
- Shatterstar (Gaveedra Seven), a swashbuckling warrior from another dimension.
- Warpath (James Proudstar), the younger brother of slain X-Man Thunderbird and a former Hellion, an Apache who possessed super strength and speed.
The New Mutants was cancelled in 1991 with issue #100, but the new platoon-like team formed by Cable continued in X-Force, a successful series (whose first issue sold approximately one million copies) that would continue until 2002, and feature a variety of the former New Mutants cast.
