The New Mutants book was not doing well.
Writer Louise Simonson was putting together stories that sidelined the young mutant team and used them as cyphers to tell whatever story she had in mind. They also lasted too long. Something needed to change.
Enter: Rob Liefeld.
Liefeld is a polarizing personality when it comes to comics. His art has some strong defenders and strong opponents. Be that as it may, it is not technically "good." It would be hard to argue that his art is fantastic and especially in his early comic days (right here, for example), his work was messy and unprofessional looking. Some would argue that his storytelling was better in these pages and... maybe? It's a hard thing to support. What is true is that he wasn't doing the plotting early on so he was working with someone else's scripts and having to try his best to illustrate what the story called for instead of what he wanted. This leads to some problems when what the story wants is something he can't draw. It happens in this volume and it's interesting to see the dialogue talk around the thing it can't SHOW.
Anyway, Liefeld is Liefeld.
And yet, the book is actually better than the previous volume. Louise Simonson remains as the writer and while this is still not her best work, there's more energy here, most likely provided by Liefeld. Rob Liefeld comes up with a TON of new characters here and learning who everyone is contributes to the fun. Many of them are complete duds.
The new group of bad guys introduced here, the Mutant Liberation Front, are made up of a lot of Liefeld's half thought out doodles. That means the group is populated by people like Thumblina and Forearm who basically contribute nothing. None of them is given much in the way of personality and even later writers haven't really added much to flesh out these guys.
But then there's Cable and to a lesser degree, there's Stryfe. Cable is introduced as a man of mystery with his metal arm and glowy eye. He has secret history with Moira MacTaggert and Wolverine. Thirty years later, he is completely embedded in the X-Men story but THIS is the guy who drew people in just to figure out who he was.
As far as the New Mutants themselves go... well, that's a mixed bag. They get a lot of panel time but don't display a lot more personality than they did in the previous volume. Louise Simonson seemed to favor her own creations from X-Factor so Boom Boom and Rictor get more significant panel appearances when compared to older characters like Sunspot and Cannonball. Everyone gets their moment but the Demon Bear Saga is a distant memory at this point, meaning CHARACTER is often sacrificed to move the plot forward.
To that end, the team moving from being wards of X-Factor to Cable's charges comes off as pure editorial and the in-story justification is messy. Some of the team gets in a fight with Freedom Force so Cyclops has them lay low in the ruins of the X-Mansion with Cable until things quiet down. X-Factor basically drops the New Mutants like a bad habit, giving them to some guy they don't know whose bonafides are that he is wanted by the US Government and Moira vouches for him. Considering the militant direction Cable takes the team and how he'll start butting heads with the X-Men and X-Factor in the near future, it's a poor decision and X-Factor doesn't come off looking very good here.
We also see the New Mutants team stripped down to a tight six member squad. Danielle officially leaves the team at the beginning of this book and after the Asgard storyline. Rusty and Skids disappear soon after but keep on getting hinted at returning. They don't.
Liefeld continues to improve his art... or Hilary Barta gets more comfortable inking it. It's hard to say. But by the end of the book, you get a good sense at where Liefeld's strengths lie. Again, it's not technically good. I liken it to watching a Michael Bay movie. While the action is rolling, it's good over-the-top fun. When things slow down, you actually have time to process what you're looking at and that's when things fall apart.
Beyond the Liefeld issues, this book includes the Days of Future Present story that featured in the X-Annuals (and Fantastic Four Annual) in 1990. I have always loved this story and have the full thing collected in one of my first trades way back in the day. This book only has the parts that feature the New Mutants so that Fantastic Four Annual that starts the whole thing off is not included. Which is a shame. BUT! You get X-Men Annual # 14 with amazing Art Adams artwork so it is hard to complain.
There's also New Mutants Summer Special #1 by Ann Nocenti and Brett Blevins. It is insane and super long. I'd like to say I hated it because I dislike the heavy handed yet overly simple political message that starts the thing off but as the story gets going, I started getting into it. There's some nice symbolism here and after the heavy-handed beginning, it actually falls into a good rhythm of subtlety and cleverness. And outlandishness. Blevins really nails some of this because it works in a dream-like style. So it starts terribly and ends well but is crazy and political. I'm amazed they allowed it to be made and from the little I looked into it, the higher ups at Marvel DID try to bury it. Whatever your feelings on it, the story doesn't have any consequences for the team or for the Marvel Universe.
Beyond New Mutant stories from 1989 and 1990, you get a lot of Liefeld's character designs, potential and realized costume redesigns for the main cast, little notes of how Rob Liefeld felt about these doodles, a Rob Liefeld interview from Marvel Age #86 (that also features an unused cover treatment for New Mutants #87 which is significant because a character called Cougar takes up most of it-- he would go unused until Rob ended up using him in his creator-owned Image book, Youngblood), an ad for New Mutants Summer Special #1, cover art for the Days of Future Present trade, cover art for the Cable and the New Mutants trade, a pin-up of Cable drawn by Rob Liefeld, the second printing cover for New Mutants #87, the cover for Cable Classic volume 1, the cover for X-Force: Cable and the New Mutants hardcover, and the back cover for the same hardcover.
This isn't the first time I've picked up a trade of these particular issues. I have a beaten up copy of Cable and the New Mutants on my shelf. It skips out on all those extras featured here and only has the Rob Liefeld illustrated issues of the main book. I probably still prefer how that book handles the color treatment because that newspaper color dot look adds some texture to the flat images. This book is better in pretty much every other way and the colors here are handled better than some other Epics handling the same time period.
In short, the New Mutants book is slightly better here than it was in the previous Epic Collection but the Demon Bear Saga days are well and truly in the past. The book is on its way to becoming X-Force. Louise Simonson doesn't do much to save her job. Art Adams art is amazing.
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![New Mutants Epic Collection: Cable (New Mutants (1983-1991)) by [Louise Simonson, Dwight Zimmerman, Ann Nocenti, Chris Claremont, Rob Liefeld, Bob Hall, Jon Bogdanove, Terry Shoemaker, Bret Blevins, Arthur Adams, Dwight Jon Zimmerman]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61NckZ4NsdL._SY346_.jpg)
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Temple Phoenix
A Change of Pace for the New Mutants, But Is It For the Better?
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 10, 2020Cliente de Amazon
Even nostalgia can't make Liefeld's art look good!
Reviewed in Mexico on May 24, 2022Customers who bought this item also bought
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