X-Forums book Club: New X-Men 20-23 by Kyle and Yost

[Rift]

Oh boy that was tag. thank you for the info i really appreciate it. Man kyle and yost are not coming off good in terms of the young ethnic mutants. wow.

Spoils for issues outside of this arc

spoilers:

If it helps, Prodigy becomes more relevant, arguably more than ever before. While he doesn't get his powers back, he does get access to all he'd learned with them previously, making him even stronger and more reliable than he used to be. His issues with Julian come up a few times, and they fight in this book and out. You'll probably like Surge, but I can't spoil it because you'll see a bit of it in this arc. Just know that she's going to get her dues. She has her flaws, but she's sympathetic and you can at least see why she does things. I don't remember if Dust gets a lot, but IIRC she's handled with respect.

end of spoilers

[jwatson]

Spoils for issues outside of this arc

spoilers:

If it helps, Prodigy becomes more relevant, arguably more than ever before. While he doesn't get his powers back, he does get access to all he'd learned with them previously, making him even stronger and more reliable than he used to be. His issues with Julian come up a few times, and they fight in this book and out. You'll probably like Surge, but I can't spoil it because you'll see a bit of it in this arc. Just know that she's going to get her dues. She has her flaws, but she's sympathetic and you can at least see why she does things. I don't remember if Dust gets a lot, but IIRC she's handled with respect.

end of spoilers

Good to know. I think i'm going to take a break and maybe finish it tomorrow with fresher thoughts. The vault of the stories at the same time are opening and though i know some of the stuff im approaching it from where it was in it's place in time from what i remember was happening in the x-franchise at the time. But yeah this is kind of dark but not in the way i thought it would be.

[Rift]

Good to know. I think i'm going to take a break and maybe finish it tomorrow with fresher thoughts. The vault of the stories at the same time are opening and though i know some of the stuff im approaching it from where it was in it's place in time from what i remember was happening in the x-franchise at the time. But yeah this is kind of dark but not in the way i thought it would be.

Np. Also, if you want something lighter and with a diverse cast, I recommend the kids' first book, New Mutants vol 2. Dani, Karma, Surge, Dust, Prodigy, and Wind Dancer (if you count her) get some good focus. Prodigy even has an arc dedicated to how dangerous his powers can be.

[jwatson]

Np. Also, if you want something lighter and with a diverse cast, I recommend the kids' first book, New Mutants vol 2. Dani, Karma, Surge, Dust, Prodigy, and Wind Dancer (if you count her) get some good focus. Prodigy even has an arc dedicated to how dangerous his powers can be.

It's not that it's too dark that it's like overwhelming i'm more at a pause because it feels like the story is saying those who kept their powers deserved what happened next. I don't know it's just the feeling i'm stuck with reading it so far and who the jerks are and how certain characters are being portrayed and the tilt of the execution. First i felt like okay they took the mutant abilities away from all the diverse mutants but as i get further the culimation feels like "we were saving these people from being mutants"

[Rift]

I just realized I misread the OP, and this thread is for all issues. I already wrote small notes for all issues, so here we go.

Issue 21
Surge and Hellion fighting on the cover. There's never any real romance between the two characters, and the one kiss they do share is just Surge trying to make Prodigy upset. (For his own good. It makes sense in context.) The two even met on a sour note, with Hellion telling her she needed a bath. Still, they have similar personalities, they butt heads a lot, and they both went through a lot together. It's no wonder why this is a popular ship among many. And fun fact: the two get married in an alternate future.

Surge has a scene with Forge here. We don't see a lot of it, but the two are well-acquainted with each other. I believe he's the one to console her when the school closes after Messiah Complex. EDIT: Nope. RIP.

Tag mentions not wanting to go home, and worrying that they'll force him to leave. Another hint at a troubled home life.

Hellion is a jerk to Prodigy now that he's human. He has a chip on his shoulder regarding humans, and he frequently bullies those outside of his friend group. Note that he would never even think about treating Sofia so poorly for being depowered. If you notice, he has this habit of double-standards when it comes to the people he cares about.

Logan calls Laura his sister here, which was a kind of thing they seemed to be aiming for when they were still trying to figure out their dynamics. I don't remember when they settle into a father-daughter dynamic, though I remember adoption papers being mentioned at one point in this book.

This issue establishes the very rocky relationship of Laura and Emma. It can gets pretty rough.

Remember when Hellion was mocking and excluding Prodigy for not being a mutant? Sofia took his words to heart and is planning to leave school because of it. While he didn't intend it, Julian's words hurt the girl he loves. Hellion's poor treatment of others has come back to bite him. This is where their relationship falls apart. After this issue,

spoilers:

the two don't see each other again until Krakoa's X-Factor, in 2020. Sofia doesn't appear in any X-books until then, either; instead, she briefly becomes a member of the New Warriors before falling into comic book limbo.

end of spoilers

Mercury gets fed up with Julian this issue, and she disapproves of his bratty behavior later on. Much like Sofia was soft with Wither, she's a lot kinder with Julian than everyone else. While she's still soft on Julian though, she's taking more of a stance than she normally would.

This was a fun issue. It was a nice little breather compared to the previous issue and the next. Santos was really funny, and we got some good gags from the Danger Cave.

Note that mission 116, Live Free of Die, is a reference to issue 116 of Uncanny X-Men Vol 1, which has the same name. Mission 227, Fall of the Mutants, a reference to Uncanny X-Men issue 227, which is part of the Fall of the Mutants story arc. Art from that issue makes an appearance on Prodigy's screen.

References:

• Stryker's file photo is art from God Loves, Man Kills.
• Academy X cameos: Quill, Anole, Pixie (sporting a very early design.)
• Other notable cameos: Trish Trilby.

[Rift]

Issue 22

Has the characters fretting over Nimrod and talking about how strong it is. Guess who they'll be fighting in a future arc?

One thing I liked is how the kids refered to the Danger Cave scenarios as "play." They don't take it seriously and It's a nice little reminder that these are still kids. This is just a brief escape from the world. Though Jay and Brian, who are currently dealing with bigger issues, get sick of what's happening and take themselves out of the game.

Icarus dies in the game after getting part of his body chopped off. Haha. Haha. Haaaa.

We got more petty fighting between Surge and Hellion. These two butt heads a lot, huh?

Tag feels ignored by his friends. Keep in mind what I said in the last two reviews, about him needing his friends. And keep that in mind if you ever read issue 24.

Emma and Julian both mistreat Emma. Funny thing: Emma hates Laura because she fears that she'll hurt other people. Julian, meanwhile, dislikes her for being an outsider, killstealing in the game and staring at him all the time. (And also because he's Hellion, he's a jerk to everyone who's not a Hellion or named Wind Dancer.) Funnily enough, Julian ends up being the one to reach out and help her first.

Wither escapes the school and isn't seen again in this arc. spoilers:

He ends up becoming homeless and taking care of an elderly woman, who turns out to be Selene in disguise. She helps him embrace his powers, but she also takes advantage of his loneliness, seduces him, and gets him in on her plans. This plot will come to a head in the Necrosha story.

end of spoilers

Sadly, Wither didn't here Julian say that he'll look out for him no matter what. Something similar happened in a past story, where Julian, Sofia and the Hellions tried to break Wither out of police custody in order to protect him. Kevin really does have great friends, but it's sad that he wasn't able to recognize that in time.

Another bit of Hellions bonding: look how Cessily and Julian interact. Even when he's upset, Julian doesn't lash out at her like he does with the New Mutants squad. He's soft-spoken and calls her Cess. When she gets mad at him and tells him that he's not looking after his friends, he apologizes. We don't see if he stays by Sofia's door or joins her in looking for wither, though.

Santo calls Wallflower Smell-Girl. LOL.

Accidental funny moment: Dust asks Laura if she's familiar with her home, Afghanistan. Laura says that she's killed there, and then they just stare at each other in silence for a panel.

References:

• Mission 240 is "Inferno." You guessed it, UXM issue 240 was part of the Inferno event.
• Cyclops has a Kidrobot shirt. I don't know of any connection between Kidrobot and New X-Men, though.
• Laurie (or maybe Josh?) has a poster for the movie, Save the Last Dance. Nori's FLCL poster appears here, along with a picture of her family. We also get various IRL paintings on the walls.

[Rift]

And finally, my notes on Issue 23

If you look at the church pews, there's this multi-armed monkey...thing. This is never explained or even acknowledged. This is just a thing that's there.

More Hellion and Surge fighting. Now that Surge is the team leader though, things are going to get wonky.

The six mutants Emma selects for the team make a lot of sense. Aside from the obvious fact that they're all main characters, so duh they're going to get on the team. But she made sure that all her Hellions got on. Elixir is a great pick because he's a healer, he can keep them safe. Surge is strong, but she was likely included to punish Hellion. If he didn't constantly pick fights with her, there wouldn't be an issue, huh?

The Emma/Hellion student/teacher relationship takes a hit here. Previously, Julian was Emma's prized student and dutifully followed in her footsteps. She kept him out of trouble as best she could, even getting him and the Hellions out of Kingmaker's sights at the end of the Hellions mini. (She didn't punish him for that whole mess either, by the way.) While she does end up helping him out in Laura's time of need, she ultimately abandons him after Messiah Complex, when the school shuts down. Their relationship has never recovered.

Now that we're done the arc, let me just talk about how weird Laura's arc is. Not so much in this one, but in New X-Men as a whole. I love it, I'm Helix trash and I found it amazing. But from an outside perspective, when you look at the basics instead of the writing that sets it up, it's pretty funny.

So picture this: the main character of a book is quickly written out of the story. Just as she's written out, a new character comes in and gets more and more focus as the story goes along. She becomes friends with the whole cast and takes the former main character's love interest. Said love interest repeatedly gets hurt or attacked so this new character can unleash her dark side, defeat her enemies and save him.

Like I said, it requires you to look at the story without any of the details and nuance that builds it. But it's still pretty weird and ??? It's like Harry Potter, except Voldemort kills Harry halfway through the fourth book and Ebony Way takes over, carries Harry's destiny and friend group, and starts dating Ginny/Draco Malfoy.

References:

• Cameos: Quill, Anole, Indra, Three-in-One, Blindfold, Loa, Ernst, Match, Pixie, Bling!, Trance, Onyxx, Wolf Cub, Armor, Gentle

I thought this was a pretty cool arc. I recommended this because, while much of the character development, trauma and memorable moments come up later on, this one is required reading. Even if it draws on past stories, I still think it's a good intro to most of the characters. At the very least, I recommend the next 9 issues - two 4-issue arcs and a one-shot. Aside from including the infamous bus scene and dealing with its fallout, it gives us a lot more of the characters and what sort of struggles they have to face. Emma gets a fantastic scene that shows off how complex she can be. Wither gets as much of a satisfying ending as he's ever gonna get. Hellion is perfect and amazing as always.

If you want to learn more about the characters, check out the Tumblr of their original writers. They have a lot of behind-the-scenes details about characters and stories, as well as ideas that were planned but ultimately never came to be.

[Ambaryerno]

Logan calls Laura his sister here, which was a kind of thing they seemed to be aiming for when they were still trying to figure out their dynamics. I don't remember when they settle into a father-daughter dynamic, though I remember adoption papers being mentioned at one point in this book.

This came up in the Killing Dream (first) arc of the Liu X-23 book, in either issue 1 or 2, I believe.

[Wolverine12]

This came up in the Killing Dream (first) arc of the Liu X-23 book, in either issue 1 or 2, I believe.

You should recommend the first Liu arc of X-23 for our next book club!

[jwatson]

So my final thoughts. Overall this was well written but i feel the message here is this was the end of Kyle and Yost childhood and not necessarily the new mutants. It's not like it was 30 years of peace so the erasure of mutants suffering in the past with emma "all you saw were people thriving." i could see that is how a generation that grew up around that time on comics would get that message and also why some of the intense feelings are directed at the xmen. I can also see how anyone having this as an entrance point would feel there was no place in the xmen for diversity when literally all of the miniority characters dropped like flies in this arc and going forward it was quite a while before most x-books were as diverse as they use to be so i can also see why this time may have made others especially thirsty for what we got now but there is a subtle revisionism going on here and i think it reflects the time at the office. The xmen use to be this, they use to thrive but welcome to the dark days, welcome to the end of what you knew of xmen, welcome to a world of civil war and dark reign, for the most part it continues the tone of morrison run very well but this is when the xmen lost it's heart. Getting rid of the depowered, going all commando on them, acting as though the 98 that were left weren't mainly the xmen who have been doing it anyway and that all these kids every knew was thriving takes away the in universe suffering we know to have existed. So yeah this was literal child hood's end but for the reader and fans of mutants. Glad i missed out on it at the time. It was no longer cool to be a mutant at marvel.

[Ambaryerno]

So my final thoughts. Overall this was well written but i feel the message here is this was the end of Kyle and Yost childhood and not necessarily the new mutants. It's not like it was 30 years of peace so the erasure of mutants suffering in the past with emma "all you saw were people thriving." i could see that is how a generation that grew up around that time on comics would get that message and also why some of the intense feelings are directed at the xmen. I can also see how anyone having this as an entrance point would feel there was no place in the xmen for diversity when literally all of the miniority characters dropped like flies in this arc and going forward it was quite a while before most x-books were as diverse as they use to be so i can also see why this time may have made others especially thirsty for what we got now but there is a subtle revisionism going on here and i think it reflects the time at the office. The xmen use to be this, they use to thrive but welcome to the dark days, welcome to the end of what you knew of xmen, welcome to a world of civil war and dark reign, for the most part it continues the tone of morrison run very well but this is when the xmen lost it's heart. Getting rid of the depowered, going all commando on them, acting as though the 98 that were left weren't mainly the xmen who have been doing it anyway and that all these kids every knew was thriving takes away the in universe suffering we know to have existed. So yeah this was literal child hood's end but for the reader and fans of mutants. Glad i missed out on it at the time. It was no longer cool to be a mutant at marvel.

This is a surprising take considering the NXM team at this point has:

A Japanese female leader
An African-American (later confirmed bisexual)
A Muslim female who practices Hijab
A bisexual female (though not outed yet)

Only two of your cast (Hellion and Elixir) are your traditional WASPish types that tend to dominate comics rosters. You have four women altogether, (Surge, Dust, Mercury, and X-23) which is half the "core" roster. And that's not even touching on characters that would be peripherally added to the roster like Anole (homosexual male) and Loa (Pacific Islander).

I would argue this team is even MORE diverse than most of the current X-books.

[jwatson]

This is a surprising take considering the NXM team at this point has:

A Japanese female leader
An African-American (later confirmed bisexual)
A Muslim female who practices Hijab
A bisexual female (though not outed yet)

Only two of your cast (Hellion and Elixir) are your traditional WASPish types that tend to dominate comics rosters. You have four women altogether, (Surge, Dust, Mercury, and X-23) which is half the "core" roster. And that's not even touching on characters that would be peripherally added to the roster like Anole (homosexual male) and Loa (Pacific Islander).

I would argue this team i
s even MORE diverse than most of the current X-books.

Okay? In these four issues for me i stand by my previous thoughts.
And looking just a bit ago at the name of mutants depowered overall there was a bit of a trend to it.
https://comicvine.gamespot.com/profi...-powers/13137/

So your response imo is very surface level don't think about what was lost but what was kept. Which is really a conversation i have no interest in having because it's surface at best.

[Milici]

This is a surprising take considering the NXM team at this point has:

A Japanese female leader
An African-American (later confirmed bisexual)
A Muslim female who practices Hijab
A bisexual female (though not outed yet)

Only two of your cast (Hellion and Elixir) are your traditional WASPish types that tend to dominate comics rosters. You have four women altogether, (Surge, Dust, Mercury, and X-23) which is half the "core" roster. And that's not even touching on characters that would be peripherally added to the roster like Anole (homosexual male) and Loa (Pacific Islander).

I would argue this team is even MORE diverse than most of the current X-books.

Gentle, Armor, Bling! and later Cipher were also around, but yeah I agree they should have kept Sofia, Prodigy and Tag and get rid of the Cukoos, Trance or Match.

[Agent Grayson]

I've read #20 and #21 so far and I'll post my thoughts in full once I've finished the arc, but I thought it was worth saying how great it is to revisit these characters when they had their own spotlight. This book had such a fantastic cast and it's a shame they've largely been squandered since.

[Rift]

Okay? In these four issues for me i stand by my previous thoughts.
And looking just a bit ago at the name of mutants depowered overall there was a bit of a trend to it.
https://comicvine.gamespot.com/profi...-powers/13137/

So your response imo is very surface level don't think about what was lost but what was kept. Which is really a conversation i have no interest in having because it's surface at best.

Aside from the list having a few errors (Wiz-Kid wasn't actually depowered and IIRC, Sunfire and Xorn weren't), more than half of the list is white. The franchise hasn't always done right by minority characters, but the depowering (while incredibly stupid) was a just a side-effect from having a diverse cast, but "needing" to cut things down because they felt things had gotten so bloated. The X-Line has characters from all around the world and with many different ethnicities, so it's unavoidable that many would have been hit by Marvel editorial's culling.