Mo' Mutants, Mo' Problems

The New Mutants Marathon … continues

I ran the 400m in High School, the quarter mile. If I had any sort of strategy it was to work the corners like a 'crafty' veteran pitcher or a hooker.  The third corner is a bear and the last corner breaks most runners and then it's an all out sprint. I'm about to turn the fourth corner on my New Mutants writing project and I can feel my body dig for the extra gear I'll need on that last straightaway.

This week my essay on The New Mutants #25 was posted to Comics Bulletin. It wraps up a tasty narrative pretzel about Rahne and Bobby inheriting the powers of Cloak & Dagger. Tandy and Tyrone, unburdened and ready to leave the life behind, decide to do the 'noble' thing again take up the … err … cloak and dagger.

There are two B-stories in this arc that involve Selene and the Hellfire Club and Magneto and Aleytys "Lee" Forrester that are plain kooky. To be honest, the one about Selene, The New Mutants #23, is kinky and as I write in the piece an eye-opener for me at the time. The other plot thread with Magneto and 'Lee' takes place on an island somewhere in the Bermuda triangle. As Magneto and Forrester approach this Cthulhu-inspired getaway, Sienkiewicz scrawls 'Cockrum' into the cracks along the sea wall. The man is not without a sense of humor or history.

 

I don't know if anyone has coined the term 'the Sienkiewicz face,' if not, you may want to register that domain name or tumbler tout de suite. The New Mutants #24 makes a case for the face. This being the New Mutants the faces are often in anguish or some kind of distress. My favorite is one of Magik (natch) as she and her teammates figure out what to do with Rahne and Bobby. She's got this enigmatic smile that says discomfort and hints at barely contained roiling rage.

Next up, is the arrival of David Charles Haller a/k/a Legion, perhaps the most powerful mutant ever imagined and therefore problematic in every way.

The other piece that came out this week at Comics Bulletin is the January edition of 2 for #1. Jamil Scalese and I along with this month's mystery date, editor extraordinaire, Danny Djeljosevic take on The Black Beetle #1, Adventure Time with Fiona and Cake #1 and Young Avengers #1.

Ensconced as I am in Marvel's merry mutants, I find myself more and more drawn to the Marvel universe. Marvel NOW! is marketing bullshit and yet I keep thinking if I was thirty years younger, Young Avengers would have been my jam like The New Mutants was back in the day except Sam and Bobby never shared an open-mouth kiss like Wiccan and Hulkling.

According to Blogger, this marks my forty-ninth post to Interested in Sophisticated Fun?. It's only fitting as I near the tape on my one year anniversary that I try to make it an even fifty, which (almost) averages to one post per week, my goal when I began this new universe.

Time is irrelevant when it comes to writing. What we write lives after us (we hope) and when it comes to the act itself, writing ain't no sprint, it's a damn marathon.