Endangered Birds

“Space Jail” / “Endangered Birds” / “Spoilers”
New Mutants #2, 5, and 7
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Rod Reis

I already wrote about the start of Jonathan Hickman and Rod Reis’ mini-run on New Mutants back in November, but am now circling back to cover the subsequent three issues which have been published in a loose alternating pattern with a parallel story by regular series creators Ed Brisson, Flaviano, and Marco Failla. I’ll get to that stuff a bit later on once they’ve had a bit more time on the book. Given how tonally fresh and visually exciting the Hickman/Reis issues have been, the other issues have mostly felt like drab fill-ins in context and I’d like to get a better feel for what Brisson does on his own terms here. 

It was very wise of Hickman to lean so heavily on humor and self-awareness in this New Mutants arc, not just in terms of varying the tone of the overall X-Men line, but to flex some elements of his style that can get lost in his reputation as Mr. Epic Worldbuilder. The sitcom-ish tone also serves the characters well, at least in that each of them gets to be reintroduced as the essence of themselves as originally defined by Chris Claremont. A lot of baggage is being shed here in the interest of resetting this part of the franchise, and I’m all for it. In most cases this does nothing to go against how the characters have been written over the past few decades, but it’s very noticeable in the case of Wolfsbane, who seems to have regressed to a gentle naïf after about 30 years of stories in which she is traumatized and hardened. Maybe this is a hint that Xavier et al are omitting certain traumas from some people who are resurrected, or maybe it’s just Hickman bringing Wolfsbane back to what made her such a lovable and relatable character in the 1980s and it’s not something to overthink. Given the tone of this arc, the indication seems to be more the latter scenario. 

The focus of this arc is very much on Sunspot, who is obviously one of Hickman’s favorite characters and is now set up to be a central figure in all Shi’ar plot going forward. I’m quite pleased with this development as I adore Hickman’s version of Sunspot and also the way Sunspot’s narration makes a lot of Shi’ar plot I typically find rather dull and overly complicated quite fun and vibrant. I have a near lifelong history of disliking Shi’ar stories, but this one was a joy to read and I now feel invested in what happens with the Shi’ar empire and how it will intersect with the X-Men’s plans in the future. Even as a fan of Hickman going into this, I was skeptical about whether he could make me care about this aspect of things, but here we are. 

Some notes: 

• The “fuck or fight” scene with Magik in issue #5 is very funny, but also notable as one of the few times I can remember Magik being played as an overtly sexual person. She’s often sexualized in illustration, but despite frequently being played as a subtextual girlfriend of Kitty Pryde, she’s never had a real romantic or sexual plot. (I might be forgetting something, but I don’t think so? I know she had a few flirty lines in Brian Bendis’ run.) 

• The use of the Shi’ar Death Commandos from the Claremont/Chris Bachalo run in the 2000s continues Hickman’s reverential use of characters designed by Bachalo. 

• The text page replacing what could have been “seventeen glorious pages” of action in issue #7 with a tabletop game is both hilarious and formally inventive. A reminder that we’ve only scratched the surface of what can be done with the text pages! 

• This arc is a real star turn of Rod Reis, who impresses on every page with his distinctive approach to color and design, and mastery over gestural drawing and facial expressions. Thankfully he’s sticking with Hickman for a Fantomex special in the near future, and will hopefully continue to work with him through the duration of his X-Men tenure. Or maybe an Image book together? They have remarkable chemistry; it feels like they’ve only just begun their collaboration. 

• Cypher has been walking around with what appears to be Warlock as his left arm all through this arc and in House of X/Powers of X, but this has not been addressed in the text. I wonder when Hickman plans on getting into that, as it’s obviously significant.

The Sextant

“The Sextant”
New Mutants #1
Written by Jonathan Hickman and Ed Brisson
Art by Rod Reis

There isn’t anything disappointing about Jonathan Hickman and Rod Reis’ revival of New Mutants besides the fact that Hickman will be not be sticking around beyond the first arc, which is setting up elements of space opera plot that will blossom into something bigger for the X-Men line at some point in the future. Hickman explained in a podcast interview for SKTCHD that aside from his regular work on the primary X-Men comic, he’ll be doing brief runs on other series to tell bits of stories that are crucial to his macro-plot. This is a cool idea, but if you’re invested in the core classic New Mutants cast – Sunspot, Magik, Mirage, Wolfsbane, Cypher, Karma, Cannonball – it’s bittersweet to have a writer nail the essence of these beloved but often under-written characters and then bail so quickly. These issues are going to have to be savored. 

Ed Brisson, the only X-Men writer to carry over from the pre-Hickman era, is ostensibly the co-writer of this issue, and will be the sole author of the series once Hickman wraps the opening space adventure. Brisson can be pretty good, but I don’t really notice any traces of his voice or aesthetics in this issue.  The tone and script is about as Hickman-y as it gets, albeit on the more light and funny end of his spectrum. A lot of the issue is devoted to establishing ideas about where the New Mutants – and the other younger characters like the cast of Generation X and the students that populated the X-books of the 2000s – fit into the grander scheme of mutant society as the first generation of mutants plentiful enough to develop actual community, setting up plot for the Shi’ar story, and elaborating on the mechanics of Krakoa and its miraculous fauna. It’s a comic book that’s heavy on ideas, but still mostly is focused on the joy of getting to spend time with these revitalized characters. The characters are having a reunion of sorts in-story, but the more important reunion is the audience and the characters. It feels like hanging out with old friends. 

The issue is packed full of wonderful character beats and genuinely witty dialogue, to the point that it feels more like a hang-out sitcom than a standard action-driven superhero comic. Hickman has fully internalized the voices of the characters as established by Chris Claremont in the 1980s, and the smallest bits of plot are enough to set the conversational dynamics in motion. Hickman lets the characters conform to their archetypes – Sunspot is vain and egotistical but extremely warm and generous, Mirage is tough as nails but very thoughtful, Magik is intense and scary – but he allows for shading and growth. This is particularly noticeable in Wolfsbane, who retains some of her classic naif qualities but is more mature and has distanced herself from her fundamentalist upbringing while still seeming idealistic and spiritual. 

The star of the show is Sunspot, which should come as no surprise to anyone who read Hickman’s use of the character in Avengers. I think it’s safe to say that no one has ever loved Sunspot the way Hickman does, but in writing him, he’s certainly won many people over on the character’s charms. A lot of Sunspot’s personality could come across as grating but Hickman has a great feel for the nuances of his ego, and makes it clear that he’s a very pure and decent guy. The more arrogant elements of his character are quite cute because they aren’t fully delusional, and are the words of someone who has the raw confidence to be openly proud of his achievements. When he says a line like “I’m an amazing hero and that’s why people love me,” it just makes you go, “damn, Sunspot IS an amazing hero and that’s why I love him.” The joke isn’t that he’s not self-aware, but that he somehow lives life without much anxiety and zero imposter syndrome. What must that be like? 

Rod Reis’ art in this comic is top-notch. The fundamentals are all strong – nuanced facial expressions and physicality, storytelling, compelling backgrounds – but there’s also a level of stylishness that sets his work apart. Reis, who started as a color artist, colors his own work and it seems clear that he’s thinking about color as a compositional element on the most basic structural level of his pages. The current X-Men is blessed with a lot of top quality color artists but what Reis accomplishes here is probably the most effective at conveying the somewhat alien beauty of Krakoa and signals a sense of “you are looking at something fresh and new” that backs up the more radical moves of the storytelling. This isn’t so much the case for other new X-Men titles like Marauders and Excalibur, where the artists Matteo Lolli and Marcus To deliver quality draftsmanship that nevertheless looks a bit too ordinary and “house style” for comics that are otherwise quite ambitious and forward-looking. Those books look fine, but New Mutants looks like the future.