Marvel Graphic Novel #4

"The New Mutants"
Published: September 1982
Writer: Chris Claremont
Penciler: Bob McLeod
Inker: Bob McLeod

What's Going On?
As Charles Xavier mourns the passing of his former students, the X-Men (as totally not seen in Uncanny X-Men #161), new mutants are manifesting all over the globe.  As the foremost expert on mutation in the world, that means that people are coming to Chuck with their mutant problems.

• Moira MacTaggert comes across a young Rahne Sinclair as she is being chased by men with torches; Rahne apparently can turn into a wolf or a wolf-human hybrid.  
• Xi'an Coy Mahn was referred to Xavier by the Fantastic Four; Xi'an can possess and control others with a very specific psychic ability. 
• Dani Moonstar is apparently the orphaned daughter of one of Xavier's as-yet-unmentioned best friends; her specific psychic ability is to pull an image from someone's mind and present it like a hyper-real hologram.  
• Roberto DaCosta manifested in the middle of a soccer stadium that was clearly too large for a game between rival high schools; Roberto has super-strength, but apparently only in short bursts.  
• Sam Guthrie was a sixteen-year old miner, struggling to provide for his family when he was caught in a cave-in; Sam can fly fast and hit hard without injuring himself. 

Donald Pierce of the Hellfire Club is also targeting Xavier and these young mutants.  Is it because the Hellfire Club has a stated goal of gathering mutant resources and using them to become more powerful?  Er, no.  Apparently, Pierce hates mutants, despite having only appeared working closely with evil ones in his previous appearances.  His goal is to kill each of these new mutants, as soon as they manifest.  Then his goal changes to kidnapping some of them and fooling Sam to work for him as hired muscle.  Then the goal changes again to sucking the knowledge out of Xavier's head.  But then that extremely complicated process stops being the main goal, and Pierce once again decides on simple murder.  The kids work with Xavier and Moira on a globe-hopping adventure to foil Pierce's mad plan and then all enroll at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters as students who wear black and yellow spandex.

Subplots!

• All five new mutants join the team that has not yet been officially named.
• While this comic directly references Uncanny X-Men #161, no mention is made to the alien creature that is trying to possess Xavier's mind.
• Xi'an is hired by Xavier to help run the school.  I am pretty sure that point is never brought up again in The New Mutants comic.
• Both Xi'an and Sam have serious economic problems and extended family that they care for.  While Xavier's job offer explains how Xi'an will support her siblings (although not where they will live), Sam's problem is not resolved by the end of the comic.  He just decides to quit work and go to school.
• Donald Pierce hates mutants now.  Apparently.

The Retroactively Amusing:
- Xavier explicitly states that he does not trust Tessa.  At the time, that made perfect sense, since she was Sebastian Shaw's girl Friday.  However, Claremont did a massive retcon on Tessa when he returned to the X-titles in 2000, making her into Xavier's super-secret agent.  It's funny to see evidence of how unplanned that change was.

- It never struck me as odd before this moment, but "The New Mutants" is really a terrible name for a super-hero team.  Why not the X-Men?  The last time Xavier lost some students, he just grabbed some more and slapped the team name on them.  This time, though, he goes with a team name that simply accurately identifies them?  Lame.

- Dani Moonstar is really, really, really stereotypically American Indian here.  The character gets a lot of depth as the series goes on, but her bit in this issue can be boiled down to "Angry Injun."

Also: is that a bulge in Rahne's pants?

Points to Claremont for ethnic diversity, but writing Dani like she was in a '60s Western is pretty bad.

- Donald Pierce, a cyborg with many weapons at his disposal, uses a flintlock pistol as his back-up weapon.

Fact: you can't shoot a gun and poop standing up at the same time

I get it, the Hellfire Club likes to dress like they're from the 18th century, but really?  A flintlock?  He just shot an energy burst from his hand and is mostly robot.  Where's his ray gun?

- Mutants are popping up all over the globe.  As proof, this comic has five that manifested at roughly the same time.  Xavier agrees to re-open his school (was it even closed?) for these mutants, but stops short of looking for more mutants to help.  I guess five is his maximum class size.

The Peculiar:
Rahne's mutant ability in this comic is substantially different than how she appears after this.  Typically, she is either a wolf or a werewolf-looking thing.  Here, she has the torso of a werewolf and the hind quarters of a wolf.

Of the five new mutants, only Xi'an (Karma) and Sam (Cannonball) are given code-names.  That would be a little odd, even today, for an origin story, but in the early '80s, when character names are mentioned as often as possible...?  That was highly unusual.

Why does Xavier presume that the X-Men are dead?  They disappeared in a comic that was published in the same month as this graphic novel, and there was no indication that Xavier thought they were dead then, or even that he knew they had been kidnapped yet.

Rahne is chased by villagers carrying torches.  Where would you even find a torch in the 1980s?

Worth Noting:

• This is the first appearance of Sam Guthrie (Cannonball), Dani Moonstar (Psyche), Roberto DaCosta (Sunspot) and Rahne Sinclair (Wolfsbane).  Xi'an Coy Mahn (Karma) first appeared in Marvel Team-Up #100 (which was a Claremont/Frank Miller collaboration).
• This is the second appearance of Cole, Macon, and Reese, although they are not specifically named here.  They are the Hellfire Club guards who Wolverine tore apart during The Dark Phoenix Saga, and would later be founding members of the Reavers with Donald Pierce.

And so it begins...!  This is the moment that the X-Men stopped being a single team and became a family of titles.  While I wouldn't argue that this issue was very good (Pierce's always-changing plan and a lot of stereotypes at work), it does an okay job introducing the characters.  Xavier's school hadn't been used to teach mutants much of anything since Xavier's fake death in Uncanny X-Men #42, so I see the void this title is filling.  Does Claremont make the best use of this concept?  Time will tell.

Uncanny X-Men #161

“Gold Rush!”

Published: September 1982

Writer: Chris Claremont

Penciler: Dave Cockrum

Inker: Bob Wiacek

What’s going on?

Professor Xavier is in a coma, psychically fighting “an alien consciousness” that is trying to take over his mind.  While the X-Men, Starjammers, and Xavier’s girlfriend, Lilandra, wring their hands helplessly and hope for the best, Xavier is reliving a similar situation from “twenty years ago.”  In this flashback, we see a young (but still bald) Xavier treating Gabrielle Haller at an Israeli psychiatric hospital.  Gaby has been catatonic for years, thanks to the horrors she witnessed in Dachau, and her doctor has asked his old friend Xavier to help as a last-ditch effort.  Naturally, to avoid suspicion, Xavier spends several weeks slowly breaking down her mental barriers cures her immediately.  At the hospital, Xavier meets a volunteer named Magnus, a survivor of Auschwitz.  The two immediately bond, according to the script.  It’s hard to see why, since Magnus is pretty brusque and comes across as an extremist nut whenever the conversation veers toward politics, genetics, sociology, or just about anything.  Meanwhile, Xavier shows some questionable judgement when he enters into a romantic relationship with his patient, Gaby.  Then Hydra strikes, kidnaps Gaby, and Xavier and Magnus must reveal their mutant powers to each other and save the day.  Then Magnus becomes evil and steals a bunch of Nazi gold on his way to becoming the villainous Magneto.

Subplots, oh the Subplots!

• Cyclops reacts poorly to the Professor’s illness, and by “poorly,” I of course mean “like a total dick.”  Granted, the man has gone through a lot recently, with the death of his love, Jean Grey, and giving up the reins of the X-Men to Storm — but it is scenes like this that make Cyclops difficult to like.
• This is the beginning of the Brood storyline in proper; the past several issues have had Xavier dealing with a mysterious sickness, but this is where it is revealed to be an alien creature called the Brood.
• The last page has Deathbird usurping the Shi’ar throne from Lilandra and the Brood claiming the X-Men as “host-forms for the spawn of…the ‘mother-of-us-all!’”
• This story becomes retroactively important when Legion travels back in time to this era during the “Legion Quest” storyline.

The Retroactively Amusing:

This story was written back when Marvel allowed their characters to age in something approaching real-time.  That means that the pre-X-Men Xavier and Magneto are in their early-to-mid thirties. 

While it’s not unheard of for a man that young to be completely bald or have shock-white hair, I do think it is funny that the two don’t age a day over the next twenty years of comics (Erik the Red notwithstanding).

The Not-As-Retroactively Creepy:
Xavier seduces his patient, Gabrielle Haller.  That seems like a really terrible idea.  Oh, well, he must not have realized what a mad idea that was at the time…

Professor Xavier is a jerk.  On a side note, does the fifteen-ish years Gaby spent catatonic mean that she is still mentally a child?  Does that make Xavier even worse here?

Everything 80's:
This is the back-cover ad for this issue:

I sure don’t remember anything about MegaForce, but it looks awesomely bad.

The last page of this otherwise unremarkable flashback story has 1) a royal coup 2) all the X-Men defeated in a single panel 3) a lead-in to the next several months of stories.  Chris Claremont may be known for his decompressed storytelling, but the man has moments where he likes to cram absolutely everything in at once.