Time for some fun - New Mutants Annual #2

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It's been a long and rather trying week for this little Robin fan as so much has changed... but rather than wallow in what has been lost (I'll still do that, but on my own time) it's time for this old codger to "Accentuate the Positive" again, and reach for the comic equivalent of comfort food... and for me, that's a little classic Alan Davis.... I was going to go for his Detective Comics run, but I think I'll use bits of that for my next Robin posting, so instead, it's off to another reliable source of entertainment; The New Mutants, with added Alan Davis.... (These 16 or so (of 48) pages are scanned form my original, 26 year old copy of this, so there are liable to be some less than CG perfect colouring issues etc)

As my favourite mutant asks...

We open "Last Year" with Betsy Braddock making her US debut, and her first comics appearance at all, since the end of the Captain Britain Monthly series. She's in Switzerland, on a skiing holiday, and after completing the Olympic level ski run perfectly, she's off for an apres-ski, and a bit of a self reflection...



".. and it cost her her sight". (Yes, she just completed an Olympic level ski course whilst blind though, as she notes, a telepath is never truly blind, since she can see through the eyes of everyone around her (A concept I wish they had explored further, it's a fascinating idea))

Oh, and don't worry Betsy, you'll be joining the X-Men soon enough, there'll be plenty of time for feeling sorry for yourself then. In the meantime you'll just have to make do with an unexpected attack by the usual Claremontian "morally warped, manifestation of body horror with a penchant for mind control"

So Betsy is blasted by this Gruesome Twosome...


This is where the name "Psylocke" came from, and it is never given any more explanation thatn... well, none.

Now we move to "Last Month" and we find one of the New Mutants not in a happy place... I wish I could have included the splash page of a sheet of headed notepaper from "Professor Charles Xavier's School For Gifted Youngsters" with the terrific doodle of Warlock, which incoroprates a game of tic-tac-toe and a smiley face, but more important is the question Doug Ramsey is asking (also the name of the story)

"Why do we do these things we do?"



Aside from some very nice commentary from Claremont on how being even a passive mutant can screw up your life as soon as you join the Xavier School, Davis just draws the cutest Doug doesn't he? (And Dani doesn't have a nosebleed in that first panel you can see her clearly in, just a colouring slip) And his Dani hasn't exactly been near the ugly stick either.

The levels of irony on this next panel are worthy of mention... since Dani's powers noticeably DIDN'T predict Doug's death (as Simonson changed her powers to be dependent on probability of death, which is something Claremont never did, her powers were to see Death before it came, because Death as seen by the Valkyrie IS inevitable)



Like you really need to ask...

Now we're at "Last Week", as a new TV series has a worldwide debut... "Wildways", and look who the cast are...



The show gains some instant fans; Karma's younger twin siblings Leong and Nga, Rahne Sinclair (on Muir Island), Bobby DaCosta (who has found a show he's more hooked on than Magnum) and Meggan, though her boyfriend Brian Braddock instantly realise that "Psylocke" is Betsy and it must be connected with her now months old disappearance from Switzerland.

So Captain Britain goes looking and quickly ends up Manhattan (This is before they decided that he would lose his powers if he left the UK) where in Alphabet City he finds something really unexpected in a warehouse he's ripping apart as that is where he's tracked her to....



Aside from both his parents being dead, this is particularly odd for reasons we'll get to later

And elsewhere on the same night, back at Xaviers School...



Yeah, that's going to end well... An interesting thing which isn't mentioned these days is that Sunspot was the second youngest of the New Mutants, barely older than Wolfsbane, but whilst her being young was frequently referred to, his lack of age wasn't, much. But being hooked on a cartoon can happen at any age I can attest... :)

And now we reach "Today"... in the Danger Room, Sam/Cannonball is running an obstacle course that Dani is monitoring for him, and they beoman the fact that the New Mutants who the Beyonder killed and resurrected (Long, nasty story) have all regressed in their skill levels to where they were when they first joined the team...

Meanwhile Illyana/Magik has kitchen duty...



Ooops!

Amara/Magma is writing a scroll home to Nova Roma, and Doug, Warlock and Sunspot (Yes, he's there) are about to uproot a tree trunk from school grounds. Warlock forms a powersuit around Doug. Doug and Lock chat, he's noticed that Bobby is being incredibly NICE to everyone, it's not wrong, but it's uncharacteristic and Warlock is a little concerned that something is up with Bobby's "lifeglow"... but Bobby reassure them that he's fine, and is ready to take the weight of roots, whilst Doug and Lock handle the crown of the tree.

There's a rather sickening crunch and a loud scream from Bobby's end of the tree, and....



Awww....

Later on as the sun sets the team are pondering what to do. They've taken the body inside, but the Police would ask too many questions, Magneto's out of reach, the X-Men are on a mission, and they can't reach Bobby's parents, they decide to leave things until tomorrow.)

Doug is pretty much inconsolable, blaming himself for the death, though the others assure him it was an accident. He does ask why Dani didn't foresee it, and she confesses she has no clue, Valkyrie-vision has NEVER failed her before now.

Doug runs off, and Sam suggests that they leave him to deal with things in his own time... Warlock disagrees and goes after his best buddy.

I love this next page, even just the reluctance to grab the handle on the door to the room where they've put the body...



It's overwrought, but I do like that Doug is honest enough to note that he and Bobby have never actually LIKED each other very much. They're team-mates and they trust one another, but they have little in common other than that. (When Doug died, Bobby did a bit more weeping and wailing and it never seemed that convincing, at least to me, Sunspot fans may disagree)

Warlock arrives and points out that he's finally realised Friendbobbysunspot isn't dead, because this isn't Friendbobbysunspot... he suggests that they investigate further and forms a sort of surgically equipped self around Doug... (Which is actually a pretty creepy idea if you think about it for very long.) In the end...



Elsewhere Mojo and Spiral, accompanied by Psylocke, who is A) naked and B) wearing a rather nasty facial brace which pulls her eyes open and her mouth into a smile, like Mojo, are preparing their latest recruits...



Oh 1986 fashions, how gloriously OTT you could be!

The New Mutants arrive at the same place as Captain Britain was (an old school as it turns out), Warlock having tracked the correct lifeglow of Bobby there... when they find a few welcoming visitors...




This is Snitch (Butch as was) who has the power to turns friednship into rivalry and love into hate, which is very handy for instant intrateam conflict of the sort you now seemingly need a crossover event to trigger...

Dani and Sam start arguing about over who is team leader, Amara disputes BOTH of their right to lead, just because they are the oldest... Doug isn't quite sure what the hell is going on, and Illyana decides, in a fit of the sulks, not to mention that a grown up Sunspot and Wolfsbane are arriving to attack them too.

With a full grown werewolf and a fully grown superstrong powerhouse attacking them, as well as Dani and Illyana trading delightful little insults like "Sorcerous Sleazebucket" and "Barbarian COW!" (Amara calls them both "Savages!" just so she's not left out) Sam blasts off to try and clear his head because he knows he's not thinking clearly.... which allows us to introduce



No, not THAT Jubilee, she wouldn't show up for another two or three years, but a good name and powerset are clearly worth repeating. She also seems to speak pure Claremontese, so it's probably a good thing they have Doug on hand to translate if required.

But of course, all good fights come to an end and in this case it's because this duo appear....



Other than Warlock, the only member of the team able to resist Template is, perhaps oddly, Amara, and so Template take another approach, they de-age her to about 10 years old, before her powers manifested and physically escort her in...

(Oh and this is the oddity I mentioned earlier, it appears to be Template who overpower Brian earlier on (with his Mummy and Daddy references), but Leong and Nga weren't turned into Template at that time, though I suppose it might have been a test run)

Anyway... meanwhile overhead...



The moral of this seems to be that sometimes a traumatic childhood can be useful.... who knew? (If I didn't slightly ship Doug and Lock already, that panel where they appear to be cuddling could sway me a little, if taken out of context). Landing on the roof of the old school, Warlock extends a lens down into the building, where he sees this...



Doug notes that how beautiful they appear, like Michelangelo sculptures come to life... but worries that he and Lock will end up the same way if they're not careful.

Warlock notes that they are not alone on the roof and there is someone else there... so they go looking for whoever it is, whereupon they come across a naked young man (as one does)





Like many of Doug's ideas this is both logical and sensible (It's practically a superpower in itself), but Brian points out that there's no time, Mojo and Spiral are taking the children to the Wildways that very night, and that he knows this because his sister Betsy is helping them do it.

In include this next panel simply because it's one of my all time favourite images of Magma's power, the molten energy that she becomes breaking through her skin like solar flares or erupting lava from a lavaflow...



However, in breaking free of thier hold, she reverts to the 10 year old self, but with her own memories, and after trying to bring the others back to their senses, and failing, she runs... Template don't want that...



Doug clearly gives good pep talk.



Doug and Lock sneak into the school, with Warlock providing a suit which will block them from electronic observation...



As it turns out no, she can't, as her Mojo-supplied eyes are electronic too, meaning the suit blanks them to her.

Doug's first reaction on finding out that the she needs the artifical eyes to see is "Poor lady". They think about trying to transmode her into technorganic matter so that Warlock can drain her lifeglow. Doug thinks that this is a little extraeme, as she may well not be the villain that Brian thinks she's become, but be a victim like the New Mutants and the Bratpack. So he asks Lock to tap into the wires of her brain and see what they can find out... They instantly get a full blast of Betsy's life story which, as it has involved everything from the Fury, to Mad Jim Jaspers to Mojo, is fairly traumatic for all concerned...

Whilst Amara and Brian attempt to avoid the Bratpack hunting them, Doug and Lock consider their next move. They can sense that Betsy IS being manipulated by the tech that Mojo has installed in her. And that it's through her that the Bratpack and New Mutants are as they are...

And then comes this memorable little scene as the "Team Supreme" decide to take their relationship to the next level.





And her tail thingie promptly grabs Douglock by the head...

I love Douglock-vision...



Psylocke offers them a chance to become part of the Wildways carousel, which Douglock declines. But she doesn't intend to give him/them a choice and zaps them...



The pulling apart of the smiling-face is damned impressive, though freaky as all get out, even when you know Douglock is a metamorph of sorts



As it turns out it's really Spiral who is at the centre of things, controlling Psylocke, who in turn controls the children.

Spiral has plans of her own, she has no desire to see herself supplanted as Mojo's primary henchperson by Psylocke OR the Bratpack. SHE'S the one who will dance on the Wildways, and she's going to destroy Psylocke's mind to do it, ensuring that the Bratpack's minds are dragged to destruction too, leaving mindless zombies for Mojo to try and make stars of.

By turning the carousel into a vortex of her chaos energy, Spiral will shatter Psylocke's mindscape. (Davis take on Douglock-vision is again pretty awesome)



I've said it before and I've said it again, Doug being brave and determined will never cease being adorable in it's impressiveness.



The others are pulled off the carousel by Brian and Doug-, whilst -lock slots the final part of the mindscape back into place, which results in this....



Spiral repeats the offer, assuring her of the security of slavery, with a master who loves her (Ick!)



And with that she restores everyone to their rightful forms and bodies, and this equally memorable scene




That manly hug from Brian, that grin from Doug, So adorable! :)

And at the end of the day... Betsy decides to stay at the Xavier School to learn more about what she can do. (And perhaps to be near Doug, her guardian angel, who she knows cares deeply for her, and who she cares for in return, though she's not sure she herself knows how much yet)

Doug's little personal doubts from the start are also addresses as he and Dani talk again. Mojo and Spiral used a kids show to try and destroy children, the future. He repeats a comment Sam made a while before about the goal of the New Mutants being to be there to protect kids, the next generation, with the hope for the future they represent. Dani agrees, and notes that there are worse jobs, and much worse people to do them, but the New Mutants stand a better chance than most, through both their talents and their toughness.

"It's hard to be a hero, but occasionally well worth the price"

Comments

[halloweenjack]

Claremont was awfully fond of running variations on that "everybody confronts their greatest fears made incarnate, blah blah blah" story, but the art is pretty, and Doug makes out like a bandit, starting out with a very nice looking Dani getting very close to him and ending with nude Betsy sprawled all over him. ("Query, Dougfriend: does carpet match drapes?") I mean, he's a teenager here, is all I'm sayin'.