New Mutants: Lethal Legion #1 - Unlettered Preview

[JB]

https://aiptcomics.com/2023/02/03/ma...thal-legion-1/

[JB]

I like the art better here than the art from the last arc.

[Phoenixx9]

I like the art very much.

The Idea of a new Lethal Legion is great and taking on this team is something new and refreshing.

I like how the various powers are shown, like with Karma's being similar to how it was shown originally.

[Bunch of Coconuts]

Who's the one with the exposed brain?

[Daedra]

Who's the one with the exposed brain?

Someone with an horrible fashion sense

[Arachne]

Who's the one with the exposed brain?

Cerebella, I think she calls herself, now. Formerly known as No-Girl.

Art's nice. We'll see about the story. I don't have high hopes.

[Weather]

The art is for sure better.

I have to say... I hate when they make Rahne transform herself into multiples wolves. It's so stupid. Many books over the years, X-Force by Kyle and Yost for example, were able to make her look like a real threat without the nead for this.

[Phoenixx9]

Someone with an horrible fashion sense

LOL! Well, in all fairness, she did just as a floating brain for most of her life.....

[Arachne]

Wait. How come Escapade gets her own costume, but the OG New Mutants don't?

[Dermie]

Wait. How come Escapade gets her own costume, but the OG New Mutants don't?

Because she already had her own costume as an independent operator prior to joining the New Mutants.

[ARkadelphia]

Wait. How come Escapade gets her own costume, but the OG New Mutants don't?

She’s non-conformist

[Will Evans]

Who's the one with the exposed brain?

Martha Johansson, formerly No-Girl.

[Uncanny X-Man]

This looks... OK I guess? I'm ready for Marvel to figure out what they wanna do with the New Mutants and relaunch the book though.

[Grunty]

This looks... OK I guess? I'm ready for Marvel to figure out what they wanna do with the New Mutants and relaunch the book though.

The weird thing is that they allready had a direction for most of them back in the 90's which was X-force (while Douglock and Rahne ended up in Excalibur). The New Mutants were gone and had actualy progressed into having their own independent identities and adventures outside of being "The Junior X-men". Especialy since Generation X actualy filled the spot of the junior team for them, which meant there was no slip back into that role.

But then X-force and Generation X was canceled in the early 00's, which basicly meant that their surviving members were scattered to the wind, reduced to having bit parts in the surviving titles (except Cable who had his solo series and eventualy Cable and Deadpool to keep being relevant). However throughout the early 00's it's noticable that those who had been part of X-force were usualy still presented via this backround rather than as New Mutants.

However with the new X-force team created in the aftermath of House of M, which only had Warpath to roughly link it to the original team, it seems that even that identity was largely taken from the former New Mutants. And by the 2010's writers begann to actualy reduce these characters to having been the New Mutants again. Because now they weren't remembered as X-force or Excalibur members anymore, since both teams were changed past their links to them.

Meanwhile the 3rd generation of "Junior X-men" created after the cancelation of Generation X were artifical kept in that role long past such a teams "shelf life", with new writers increasingly adding more and more characters now locked in a vicious cycle of "anti-progression".

And now we are in this weird state of things where the "Junior X-men" team is mostly covered by characters in their late 20's, early 30's who had long ago graduated into different lifepaths, but because of the lack of direction and cohension with the X-men line, keep being reduced to what they have once started out.

I recall some have expressed that the X-men actualy ended somewhere around 1992, when the TAS created the defacto pop culture imagine, which largely defined the "default" state of things in the majority of the fans' minds and the people who had more or less kept them on a steady path of progression during their "golden age" begann to leave.
Other place the end was around 2000, when the Movie came out and Marvel allowed a new writer to entirely redifine them inspired by said the movies, while the 2nd and 3rd generation of new mutant heros were ripped from their titles and scattered.
At this point the source material became defined by the adaptations, rather than the other way around as it should be.

Either way, since then it's noticable that the X-men franchise in the comics lacks cohesion, consistency and direction, which all characters and their identities suffer from. Between 1992 and 2000, the comics stopped being defining source for how the X-men are percieved and presented as in the minds of the larger fanbase. Aimlessly going from status quo to status quo with nothing truely leaving a mark anymore, while regression and stagnation are rampart.

As such it's no suprise that nobody in charge has a clue on what to do with the New Mutants, because except for the handfull of core X-men, they don't seem to have much of the same for anyone anymore.

[Nicoclaws]

Rahne and Dani became teachers and mentors (which imo kinda fit) and are still in that role in this book. The others are mainly in adult and main roles. Magik is a full-fledged X-man and a clearly main character in the books, Sunspot is a big player in Red, Cypher is one of the main components of Krakoa... None of them regressed, IMO, except maybe Canonball who was positionned to be a X-leader and then got a family and a job in outerspace.

I like that the "New Mutants" titel is a mix of that team old readers liked and actual new mutants. I think it fits the title and it actually brings evolution to the line.