Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics | Tagged: Dawn Of X, marvel, new mutants, x-men, X-ual Healing - The Weekly X-Men Recap Column

It Takes an Island to Raise Evil Children in New Mutants #6 [X-ual Healing 1-29-20]

Published Mon, 03 Feb 2020 14:30:26 -0600

by Jude Terror

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Four X-books hit stores last week. Five if you count Deadpool: The End, which normally we would, but there's no recapping that issue which was just one long series of meta-jokes. Kudos for wrecking DC's Batman Who Laughs nonsense though. Anyway, we're recapping X-Men #5, X-Force #6, New Mutants #6, and Fallen Angels #6. Which will win the coveted Wolverine's Weiner X-Pick of the Week? Not Fallen Angels, that's for sure.

Sworn to sell comics for Marvel executives who feared and hated the fact that Fox owned their movie rights, The Uncanny X-Men suffered great indignities, but thanks to a corporate merger and a line-wide relaunch, the X-Men can finally get back to doing what they do best: being objectively the best franchise in all of comics.

NEW MUTANTS #6 DX
NOV190817
(W) Jonathan Hickman (A) Flaviano (CA) Rod Reis
A simple visit to check in on old friends in the human world has gone wrong – dangerously wrong. With innocent lives on the line, Armor and the other young mutants have their hands tied… but escaping without collateral damage looks increasingly impossible.
Rated T+
In Shops: Jan 29, 2020
SRP: $3.99

What happened in New Mutants #6?

This issue checks in on the storyline at Beak and Angel's farm in Nebraska, where drug dealers have taken the family, along with Armor, Glob Herman, Manon, and Maxime hostage. Boom Boom, on a drunken bender, had just arrived at the end of the last chapter of this story and blown up one of the drug dealer's trucks. Now, the dealers fire back with a rocket launcher whose explosion dampens mutant powers for several hours. Inside, Glob Herman is really freaked out that Maxime and Manon used their powers to make the two dealers who were guarding them kill each other last issue. Glob explains they could have just used their powers to make them friendly. He demonstrates the use of non-lethal force by choking out another dealer who comes to investigate the shooting. Beak gets shot in the chest.

Outside, the leader instructs his minions to eliminate Boom Boom and armor while he goes in the house to check on the hubbub. Angel melts another dealer with acid while Maxime and Manon convince one to be friendly and shoot at the leader. Outside, Boom-Boom and armor kick everyone's ass until the rest of the mutants make their way outside, Glob carrying Beak. They are about to take one of the dealer's trucks to bring Beak to a hospital when they hear a gunshot. The drug dealer leader has killed Beak's mom and he has Beak's dad as a hostage now. He demands they hand over the remaining truck so he can escape. Angel says she's not going to let her husband die (why not just let him be resurrected on Krakoa?), creating a standoff. The dealer kills Beak's dad and then himself, warning that his cartel will keep coming for them. An infographic shows us how large the cartel is (very large). DOX, the anti-mutant news outlet, reports the violence that happened at the farm as an act caused by mutants.

On Krakoa in the not-too-distant future, Beak is fully recovered and grateful for his friends' intervention. He and Angel don't seem too broken-up about what happened. It turns out that Maxime and Manon mindwiped them so they believe Beak's parents died quietly in their sleep years ago, preventing them from needing to grieve. Armor lectures them on this and they agree to be better next time, but man, this is gonna really come back to bite someone in the ass later on.

X-ual Healing — They are definitely not sorry.

Was it any good?

It took some plot contrivances to make this story play out the way it did. For a nation that claims to care so much about all mutants to the extent it has forgiven every genocidal X-Men villain from all of history, nobody on Krakoa gives enough of a crap about Beak and Angel to check up on them except for a group of kids? Nobody but Boom Boom cares enough about those kids to check up on them? Nobody notices what's going on in Nebraska and they can't call for help because… there's no cell phone service? Don't the X-Men have pretty much global coverage with all their telepaths and Cerebro?

But if you can overlook all of that, it's interesting to watch Maxime and Manon and their complete lack of any kind of morality. When confronted about it, they act innocent and apologetic — they just don't know any better — but is that really true? Or is it just emotional manipulation? And is it any surprise, given Xavier's behavior, that these two would learn to act this way?