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New Mutants

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The New Mutants is the name of two defunct Marvel Comics superhero teams, as well as the title of two series featuring those teams. Both were offshoots of the popular X-Men franchise and both featured a team of teenaged, mutant superheroes.

The first New Mutants were a junior team of X-Men. Created by Chris Claremont and Bob McLeod, they first appeared in Marvel Graphic Novel #4 (1982) and were featured in an eponymous title from 1983 until 1991, when it was reinvented as X-Force. Like its parent title, The New Mutants highlighted interpersonal and group conflict as much as action and adventure, and featured a large, ensemble cast.

The second New Mutants series, launched in 2003, featured another group of teenaged mutants, tutored by members of the first group. Unlike the original New Mutants, they were only one part of a huge cast of students at Xavier Institute. First, they were notable for their drive to become superheroes but soon rival groups played a large role in the series. In 2004, it was relaunched as New X-Men: Academy X, after which the central group was formally dubbed The New Mutants.

In late 2005, as part of the Decimation "event", the remaining students merged into one group, known only as a junior segment of X-Men.

Contents

History

The New Mutants, Vol. 1

By the early 1980s, Uncanny X-Men, under the authorship of Chris Claremont, had become one of the comic book industry's most successful titles, persuading Marvel to launch The New Mutants, the first of many spin-offs, deemed "X-Books".

The New Mutants were teenaged students of the telepathic Professor X, much like the original X-Men, who debuted in 1963 and had since grown into adulthood. The New Mutants, however, more resembled the "All-New, All-Different X-Men," who debuted in 1975, in ethnic diversity. The original team consisted of:

The team debuted in Marvel Graphic Novel #4 (1982), which continued a plotline from Uncanny X-Men. The group was formed by Professor X, when he was under the control of the menacing alien race the Brood. The youths were intended to be hosts for Brood embryos, but the X-Men returned and set matters straight.

The five youngsters remained at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters to learn to control their powers. But, predictably, they were thrown into a series of adventures in The New Mutants monthly series.

The series was originally written by Claremont and illustrated by McLeod, the team's co-creators, but McLeod soon passed artistic duties onto Sal Buscema and then Bill Sienkiewicz, who often painted covers for the series. Claremont gave the series an oddly dark tone. In addition to very seriously-toned depictions of teenage angst and growing pains, the series featured themes of mysticism and psychic boundaries. The New Mutants battled various demons, a secret society villain group called the Hellfire Club and their young apprentices, the Hellions.

Although The New Mutants never reached the popularity of its parent title, the series gained a loyal following among many readers.

New Mutants #11, featuring Magma.
Enlarge
New Mutants #11, featuring Magma.

As typical with X-Books, new characters were frequently added to the team. Early new recruits included:

In 1986, Professor X was written out of the series. Before he left, he made the X-Men's one-time nemesis, Magneto, headmaster of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Not trusted by his students, Magneto struggled in his new role and eventually joined the Hellfire Club.

In 1987, the series was turned over to writer Louise Simonson and illustrator Bret Blevins. Simonson controversially killed off Cypher and shortly thereafter retconned Magik's origin, reverting her to childhood. She also folded the X-Terminators, a group of young wards of X-Factor into The New Mutants. The X-Terminators added to the team were:

In 1989, Simonson crafted a saga in which the team journeyed to Asgard, the home of the gods of Norse mythology. The storyline wrote Dani Moonstar out of the series and was essentially the last gasp of the high-flying, mystic-minded version of the team.

Sales of the series had slumped for several years, but took a sharp upturn after Simonson introduced a new mentor for the group, the mysterious mercenary Cable, and Rob Liefeld took over the pencilling chores at the end of 1989. Over the next year, Simonson wrote out several longtime team members. When Rob Liefeld (plots) and Fabian Nicieza (scripts) took over as writers of the final three issues of the series, they replaced them with harder-edged characters:

In 1991, with key characters and plot elements from the series gone, The New Mutants became the platoon-like X-Force, a series that would last until 2002 and incorporate many members of the New Mutants; Liefeld plotted the last few issues (with Fabian Nicieza supplying dialogue, as well as pencilling the title. He also claimed to be inking the art as well, but later acknowledged that the bulk of the inking was done by his studio assistants.

In 1997, a three-issue reunion series, New Mutants: Truth or Death, written by Ben Raab and illustrated by Bernard Chang, featured the younger New Mutants, traveling forward in time to meet their older selves (the contemporary team).

New Mutants, Vol. 2/New X-Men: Academy X

In 2003, Marvel launched a second ongoing New Mutants series with writers Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir. The series featured a handful of the dozens of teenagers attending the Xavier Institute. The kids were instructed by the X-Men, Dani Moonstar, Karma, and Northstar, while Wolfsbane and Magma also appeared in several issues.

After 13 issues, this series was relaunched as New X-Men: Academy X in 2004. Ironically, it was only after the name change that the main group of characters was formally dubbed the New Mutants and received codenames.

The former line-up of the New Mutants, advised by Dani Moonstar, included:

The current group of Hellions is another squad at the school advised by Emma Frost, and the antagonism between the two teams plays a significant role in the series. The Hellions' Wither was previously a New Mutant, and Icarus was previously a Hellion.

After the Decimation

Main articles: Decimation (comics), New X-Men
As a result of the Decimation event, in which the Scarlet Witch's magicks de-powered most of the mutant population, only 27 of the 182 students enrolled at the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning still retain their powers, and the comic changed its name to simply New X-Men. In response to the increasingly desperate situation that mutants now faced, Emma Frost has disbanded all the former training squads (most of which had lost much of their membership to the Decimation) and integrated those students she deemed capable of combat, including new addition X-23, to a new team that is essentially a junior team of X-Men, while relegated the others to the sidelines and an unknown future, since Emma seems to have abandoned the general education program formerly in place at the school.

Of the former New Mutants, Prodigy and Wind Dancer were among the students who lost their powers; Wind Dancer left the school almost immediately, but Prodigy has been forced to stay to avoid wide-spread attacks worldwide against former mutants who are now seen as easy targets by mutant-haters. Most if not all of the other de-powered students were killed in an attack by the anti-mutant fanatic, Reverend William Stryker. Furthermore, Icarus was misled by Stryker into allowing his wings to be amputated, and was later killed by Stryker after serving his purpose in leading the former Hellion Dust to her apparent death (although the "vision" showed Dust disappearing as a threat, it was later revealed that the girl who had arrived in the burqa was actually X-23, Dust's roommate with a nearly undefeatable healing factor). A sniper working for Stryker was responsible for the shooting death of Wallflower, and Elixir, who had a former romantic relationship with Wallflower and witnessed her death, was reduced to a near-catatonic state over this event compounded with his inability to save any of his former classmates after Stryker's prior attack. The future of any of the former New Mutants is currently up in the air, as Surge and Elixir are shown in a "vision" of the future to be killed during an attack by Stryker's forces on Xavier's School; whether or not this "vision" will come to pass is yet to be seen.

Creators

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Other media

The animated TV series (2000-2003) featured a group called the New Mutants who, like their comic book counterparts, were a junior team living at the Professor X's school concurrently with the X-Men. The team featured Wolfsbane, Cannonball, Magma, Boom-Boom and Sunspot. Other members, such as Iceman, Jubilee,Berzerker and Multiple Man were not New Mutants in the comic book series, but were featured in other X-Men comics.

New Mutants is the name given to the 'race' of Mutants on the television show Mutant X.

It has been rumored by Zak Penn, screenwriter of , that if that film is a success he will direct a fourth installment of the film series. While no details have been released, it is believed that it may be an adaptation of New Mutants.

Bibliography

See also

External links

 

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