Listen to the episode here.
Art by David Wynne.
Teenagers, amirite? (New Mutants #55)
This dress was one of the most memorable parts of this issue for both of us. (New Mutants #55)
“Psst, kid. Drugs make you cool. Pass it on!” (New Mutants #55)
One more of the dress. (New Mutants #55)
This jerk. (New Mutants #55)
Raise your hand if you’ve had nightmares along these thematic lines. (New Mutants #56)
That’s… an interesting deck you’re using, Tarot. (New Mutants #56)
Somewhere there’s a universe where June Brigman drew the rest of this arc, and it was roughly a million times better than the version we got. (New Mutants #56)
Line of the issue, EASILY. (New Mutants #56)
I remain retroactively disappointed that they didn’t do a classic romance comic cover for this issue. Art challenge? (New Mutants #56)
I love how weird and elegant Brigman’s Bird Brain is. (New Mutants #56)
That One Time Magneto Said “Heck.” (New Mutants #57)
SIGH. Remember last issue, when June Brigman drew this dude and it was awesome? (New Mutants #57)
Saturday Morning New Mutants. (New Mutants #57)
Forget love: the REAL universal language is squawks. (New Mutants #57)
God damnit. (New Mutants #58)
Nothing is okay. Nothing will ever be okay again. Also, why the hell does Dani sleep in fishnets? (New Mutants #58)
NEXT WEEK: Live from Las Vegas with a space barbarian in tiny briefs!
LINKS:
And here I thought Bird Brain was something my mind had made up in a fever dream back in the day.
Ooof, that page with the students in their sleepwear is rough.
I choose to believe that Dani is wearing unfortunately patterned pajama pants.
Something about Bird Brain reminds of Michael Jackson post bleaching.
Bird Brain was why I stopped reading New Mutants. Such a terrible character.
Oh just wait, we still have Gossamyr to come!
And Spyder…. The only good thing about Gossamyr is Alan Moore’s take on the same idea in Top Ten (I did wonder if he’d read the New Mutants, it would make it even better)
Well, I sleep in fishnets just in case I have a dream about being a magician’s assistant.
I can’t remember which issue, but there’s an X-men where beast in his blue feline form, tracks down what he thinks is a mutant with a similar mutation only to realize that it’s actually a mutant cat and is dying. That story was well done, deep and revealed something meaningful about the characters. Sort of the opposite of this story. I will recommence pretending it never existed.
That is a superb interview with Louise Simonson.
I still think that in terms of the narrative, killing the most easily killable New Mutant for the sake of an editorially mandated crossover was entirely the wrong thing to do on many levels; “Look, we just offed the one New Mutant with no defensive psi-abilities and no real physical combat skills, aren’t we edgy?”, but she is such a natural raconteur that even _I_ was smiling.
And I have to say I SOOOOOO resonated with Brian’s reactions to #60, step for freaking step!
I liked that you covered the culture of fan mail back in the day, and the way we had an ongoing dialog with the writers. (I’m betting a hundreds of us caught Mastermind’s shadow on the wall back in the Dark Phoenix Saga and wrote in about it.)
I was an avid letter writer in this era, writing more than a dozen letters about TNM. I chatted with Claremont at a signing once, who remembered a 7,000 word scholarly essay I wrote about Illyana which the bullpen passed around and discussed.
I especially appreciate the link to Simonson’s interview where she confirms a letter of mine which was published in New Mutants #78, where I pointed out that the little girl version of Illyana 0.0 after Inferno was the original “one who got away” back in Uncanny X-Men #160, and that 616 Illyana 1.0 is therefore still lurking around somewhen in Limbo, and could come back to displace Illyana 2.0 any time.
Cold opens have to happen for a reason, right?
Add in the fact that we later find out that Teen-Illyana was infected with the Legacy Virus (by her older brother… the one who isn’t Piotr whose name escapes me) whilst on a group outing to the future to meet their older selves in Ben Raab’s “New Mutants – Truth or Death” mini, so Li’l-Illyana, who was one of the first to die of the Legacy Virus, was an alt past version of a girl who was infected by an alt present version of herself whom she would never actually grow up to be.
I think we need some new tenses for this sort of a thing.
Is is safe for Cannoball to go off indoors?!? His exhaust looks like a fire hazard and air and noise pollutant.
This got me thinking of a theory – Doug has advanced cancer at this point and that’s why he is willing to be with Cannoball’s toxic fumes and also why he goes with the team to dangerous adventures with the rule of the human shield.