COMIC BOOK OF THE WEEK

 

COMIC BOOK OF THE WEEK

Welcome back!  It's been yet another delay (for that, I apologize, but I just recently started a new job, and in the training phase at the moment).  This week's comic book, we go back to Merry Marvel for the original spinoff of the Uncanny X-Men, The New Mutants.  This series premiered in 1983, and showed us the next generation of mutants trained at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.  They end up getting into all sorts of trouble, but we get some memorable characters from it. And since the movie was just released, I thought, "what the hell". So, let's take a peek behind the cover of this historical comic, and see where we got started....

THE NEW MUTANTS #1

COVER ART: Bob McLeod

WRITER: Chris Claremont

ARTIST: Bob McLeod

INKS: Mike Gustovich

COLORS: Glynis Wein

LETTERS: Tom Orzechowski

EDITOR: Louise Jones

COVER DATE: March 1983

PUBLISHER:  Marvel Comics

STORY TITLE: "Initiation" 

New Mutants #1 came out in the Spring of 1983, after having made an appearance in Marvel Graphic Novel #4, which introduced us to the team.  This comic is a spinoff of The Uncanny X-Men, and it focuses on Charles Xavier and his new class of mutants that he tries to teach in how to control their powers for the betterment of mankind, as well as help them work through their issues as young teenagers and kids.  We are introduced to many new members such as Cannonball, Magik, Moonstar, Wolfsbane, Sunspot, Karma, and more over the years.  The series lasted 100 issues, before the team was renamed X-Force, and the comic took off from there, as these new youngsters would now be led by the man called Cable.  

THE STORY:  The New Mutants get adjusted to their new home at The Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters, get to know each other, their talents, and unawares this whole time they are being spied upon by Henry Peter Gyrich and his government group.  Moira MacTaggert learns that Professor Xavier has a son, David.  Psyche, one of the new recruits, gets attacked by a mysterious assailant in the Danger Room.

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The one thing I loved about the New Mutants, was that it expanded on the X-Men mythos, and allowed Marvel and Chris Claremont to create a new class of young heroes to carry on the X-Men tradition, and we would get to see them LEARN their powers, and GROW as people...even though they ended up growing up too quick.  We new that, someday, these youngsters would eventually replace or join up with the members of the X-Men.  Later on, however, we learn that a core of them ended up reforming into X-Force.  The New Mutants is a good read, because THOSE characters that are now heavy hitters in the mutant teams, started out here, and it's a great place to watch themn while they were fairly innocent.

NEXT WEEK:  We dig through the archives to find more hidden treasure.