New Mutants #12 Recap and Review, Spoilers

[nandes]

RIP in piss Nova Roma (???? - 2020)




Ok, onto the actual issue.

After what we saw in the preview, Magik, Dani and... Glob (yeah, I know) lead a mission to the headquaters of the humans behind DOX, the group of humans who have been literally doxxing the locations of mutants around the world.

Meanwhile, in Nova Roma, the mystery blonde woman who commands the monsters we saw a few issues before in Brazil leads an attack against Nova Roma. The monsters kill off everyone except their leader, who the woman leaves in an almost dying state so as a survivor he can bring the mutants who killed her babies to her.

RIP Nova Roma. You won't be missed.

Magik and Dani give... uhhhh... a lesson to the humans by showing the consequence of their actions. Mutants' locations being leaked have lead to various murders around the world. The humans try to deny the effects of their actions but Dani and Magik try to push them into accountability by inputting a program made by Trinary which makes it so every posting by DOX also features their own names and locations. Eh, alright.

Before they leave, the leader of the group threatens to show the world how the mutants invaded their space and their "freedom of speech", which causes Magik to almost attack him. She's stopped by... Glob? Who also attacks the man and threatens to kill him if he continues to persecute mutants? Idk. It's just a bit of mess.

In the closing scene, Glob explains his lashing out to Magik by telling her his backstory. Magik, of all people, acts as a counselor to him because uhhhh she leads the team and she's popular so she needs to be everywhere?

This was not a good issue.

Next: Magik continues her role as a counselor by bullying Cypher! You go girl.

[Dante Milton]

- We open just outside of Nova Roma where two Centurions are killed by the blonde monster making woman from New Mutants #8, she then leads her monster army to Nova Roma.
- Then we cut to the preview pages Trinary meets Magik at the Green Lagoon with info about DOX.
- Data Page from DOX detailing Krakoa gate activity in various cities.
- Magik, Dani, and Glob go to the DOX HQ in Columbus, Ohio. Dani reminds Magik to Kill No Human.
- The DOX boss sees the mutants coming and orders everyone to film the interaction.
- Dani shows a slideshow to the DOX workers of mutants who have been killed or injured from DOX leaking their location to put a face to DOX’s victims.
- Leader guy doesn’t care, saying DOX isn’t to blame for the actions of others. Dani then uses the device Trinary gave Magik to “update” DOX’s system so that anytime they try to give out the personal information of a mutant it will also give out the personal information of a DOX worker.
- While leaving, Leader guy says something shitty, Magik gets mad, but Glob is the one who attacks the guy and threatens him.
- Data Page that shows the DOX site is down.
- Back in Nova Roma, blonde lady’s monster army has killed everyone except Magma’s dad, who she tortures to learn the identity of the New Mutants team that killed her other monsters and bring them to her.
- Then we get Glob’s tragic backstory, yay. His dad was a bigot and when Glob’s powers activated he was abusive, Glob used to be big mad, now he isn’t so much. Magik tells him the value of righteous anger. The End.

I wish the solicits had been more honest about this being a Glob spotlight issue, I could have saved myself the money. The issue read like a “Very Special Episode”, it was dull. I still don’t care about Glob, I really wish Brisson would stop trying to make me. Almost twenty years after a character introduction is a long time to get their backstory, and people have already formed an opinion on him, this isn’t likely to change that opinion. Blonde lady is strange, she doesn’t seem to have anything against mutants in general, she just wants to make monsters and treats them like her babies?

[Journey]

I'm probably gonna get shitted on for this but I didn't hate it.....

[Rufio]

I'm probably gonna get shitted on for this but I didn't hate it.....

I don’t hate it either. It felt like it would have been an alright “breather” issue if it weren’t for the hiatus.

[Will Evans]

When was the precise moment Glob became the token male New Mutant?

[CGAR]

ok ok...i know i **** on Brisson because he has a hard-on for Glob and literally focuses on the same three characters: Glob, Armor, and Magik; when he in fact has a huge stable of young characters.

But THIS was a GREAT showing for the character.

I wish he was this passionate about the other New X-Men kids.

[Dante Milton]

When was the precise moment Glob became the token male New Mutant?

When Brisson became the writer of the book.

About Glob's backstory, now that I've sat with it for a moment, it's not just that I don't care, but I'm now actively resenting it because it's an obvious attempt to emotionally manipulate readers into giving a **** about the character. I actually preferred the AoXM Next Gen version of the character, because at least Brisson wasn't relying on petty tactics to get us to care, he was just writing the character to be more interesting.

[Glio]

I'm probably gonna get shitted on for this but I didn't hate it.....

It's hard to hate New Mutants. It's just "ok". There is not much to love or hate. It's your "Vanilla mutant comic".

[Beetle]

Dani having to defer to Magik and trail her around is still bullshit

[sunofdarkchild]

This was probably the best issue of the series since they got back from space. Never cared one way or the other for Glob, but this was probably the best I've seen him. I wasn't expecting this to be a one and done given how much it's been built up, but it worked. This was a realistic problem that they faced with determination but without going too far and no one was being overly stupid like in previous issues.

[NewMutant]

Glob is the Jar Jar Binks of the X-Men. He actually actively hurts the series.

[ericng]

As I predicted earlier in the review of last issue, the focus were on Magik and ....Glob!

Glob became the STAR in this issue. Is there any Glob fan besides Brisson?

Ed Brisson's writing is quite predictable. The whole series should be renamed Magik and Glob...instead of New Mutants.

[Weather]

I like Glob. He is fun and has been very likeable for a long time. People give him hate without the need, the last issues he was barely present, and you guys know it.

I think these last pages were used to show how he changed since the Morrison days to the more lovable character since Lemire/Brisson used him. And it was quite sad and felt honest. I liked Dani's and Magik's characterizations as well.

The DOX was not a big enough threat to have a whole arc to its conclusion, so it is fine as a breather issue. Although I don't think this book needs one right now. Things are going very slowly for that to be necessary. I missed seeing more characters.

The whole plot about Nova Roma is terrible. This villain is a joke, I couldn't care less.

[pkingdom]

Bad idea to have a badguy called DOX when your series is also under the DoX umbrella. And I get it, its like Fox! And the dox people! But its still kind of dumb.

Heroic doxxing people is the counter to evil doxxing people? Its kind of weird. And 'they're getting mutants hurt/killed' doesn't carry any weight anymore now that they just pop them back up at Krakoa. Its not a good enough justification for violence anymore.

[sunofdarkchild]

I'd get the complaints about Magik here if this was Empyre: X-Men. But this is New Mutants, the book she was the main character of during the Claremont run, the Wells run, and the Rosenberg run. And she has not had that much focus in this series. The first arc was more about Roberto and Sam, she wasn't in Nova Roma, and during the Russia arc she was left behind and was absent for the entire multi-issue fight until the very end. Glob also hasn't really been getting focus until now. He's just been sort of there. He's not a New Mutant, so there's that.

The problem has not been too much focus on Magik or Glob in New Mutants. The problem is the way the other characters have been handled when the focus has been on them. Had they simply been written smarter it wouldn't have stood out that Magik had to step in at the last second to save them, but treating a a character as a deus ex machina at the very end is not the same as giving them too much focus. It usually means giving them less focus and that's what happened.