Not As Hoped

“To the Grave,” “Fast and Furious,” “Not As Hoped,” 
“A-Hunting We Will Go,” “Something Rotten In…,” 
“Parasomnia,” “Ice Cream Dreams,” “Monster Machine”
New Mutants #3, 4, 6, 8-12
Written by Ed Brisson
Art by Flaviano (3, 6, 9-11) and Marco Failla (4, 8, 12)
Color art by Carlos Lopez

This series has been very frustrating, mainly because Ed Brisson is always shooting in the direction of good ideas but never quite hitting his mark. His stories are focused on dealing with the world outside Krakoa, with an emphasis on how hostile and bigoted humans are dealing with the existence of a new mutant nation state. This is fertile ground for stories but the situations and new human antagonists Brisson has come up with are rather dull – generic drug cartel enforcers, generic military goons, generic fictional foreign countries, generic right wing media trolls. Aside from one gangster with a particularly outlandish design, these are barely characters and they don’t come across as particularly threatening. The plots plod along like an empty ritual. Flaviano and Marco Failla don’t do much to elevate material – they tell the stories effectively but without much style or pizazz. It’s all strictly professional and nothing more. 

Brisson does a little better with character moments, particularly with Glob Herman. Brisson, who was writing various X-Men titles before Jonathan Hickman took over the franchise, has been fixated on Glob for some time now and has done more to develop the perennial background character than anyone else. But even after all the work he’s put in here in terms of fleshing the guy out in these issues, he’s still a snooze – a sweet boy in the grotesque body of a pink Jell-O monster. Perhaps I would be more receptive to Glob if it didn’t feel so much like he’s meant to be an unintentionally cruel metaphor for obesity. 

But hey, the text page with Glob’s vegetarian laksa recipe was very cute. Points for that. 

There are other characters in New Mutants, including several that people would commonly associate with the name like Magik, Mirage, Cypher, Wolfsbane, Karma, Boom Boom, and Magma. The latter two characters have unexciting subplots, but the rest just seem to show up to serve plot functions. The fact that Hickman wrote most of the early issues of this series and has used several of the classic New Mutants in X-Men does Brisson no favors. Hickman has an excellent feel for these characters and is able to convey everything that’s ever been charming about them in very economical scenes and bits of dialogue. As written by Brisson they all seem flat and interchangeable.

I just don’t think this book is working. It’s not bad – lord knows there are plenty of comics that aren’t nearly as competent or at all thoughtful – but it’s well below the standards established by the other current ongoing X-Men titles. With all due respect to these creators, it’s hard to shake the feeling there’s other writers and artists better suited to the task of writing about the young mutants on Krakoa. Maybe some of them would even include romance plots, something you’d really hope for in a series about a community of a few dozen teenagers and young adults.