New Mutants

As always before a comic book movies come out I would like to take a look at the background of the New Mutants and how their stories might translate to the big screen. The New Mutants is a group of young people with powers who are too young to be considered X-Men, but who are old enough to start learning how to contain, control and harness their powers. Under the guidance of Professor X, young heroes Karma, Moonstar, Cannonball, Sunspot and Wolfsbane became the core team. Though there have been additions to the team over the years the core original members mostly stayed the same.

Among the major additions were Warlock, Magik, Magma and Cypher. One of the major themes and struggles of these children was the balance between childhood and responsibility. Professor X did his best to instill upon them that it's okay to be kids, but when duty calls, it was time for business. Though some battles showed their immaturity, the comics show children growing into themselves. The entire series is a coming of age story.

Member changes were not the only adjustments the team had to deal with, over the years the New Mutants have also dealt with changes in leadership. Professor X brought the team together but after an intense mission needed to step away to recover leaving the team leaderless. The New Mutants then decided to join a rival team, the Hellions now falling under the leadership of mutant Emma Frost. This team up didn’t last long and the New Mutants were then left under the leadership of a newly reformed Magneto. The team was skeptical of following the X-Men’s main enemy, and Magneto eventually proved that hesitancy correct when he reverted back to the man he was after becoming the White King of the Hellfire Club.

After a long stint of being a united team, story lines started to take these young heroes beyond earth and throwing them into situations that would tear them apart. After the Inferno Saga (October 1988-August 1989); A massive cross-over story line that included nearly every mutant we’ve ever met across every team, Magik is reverted back to a little girl. After the New Mutants joined the X-Men to visit Asgard (1985) Moonstar stayed on Aagard and became a member of the Valkyrie. At the end X-tinction Agenda, another major crossover storyline (November 1990-January 1991) Rictor, and Wolfsbane stayed in Genosha to help the country with its rehabilitation efforts, and Warlock was killed, the remaining team members fell under new leadership once again, now lead by Cable. Eventually these team member became X-Force, Cable lead Boom-Boom (I know I make fun of DC’s hero names but...c’mon), Cannonball, Feral, Warpath, and Shatterstar.

The New Mutants have almost always worked independently of the X-Men, only appearing together in major crossovers, I am excited to see what direction the movie takes as this is rich source material that could go in a lot of directions. My only immediate concern with the first look of the New Mutants movie is the style is clearly in the scary movie genre, and that may close off a lot of opportunity for crossover with other teams or integration with the current MCU standing. Of course trailers don’t tell us everything (especially Marvel trailers) but they can give away a lot. I will be doing a trailer breakdown and spit-balling some predictions soon. Though I don’t think that they will be taking any major story lines from the comics I am at least hoping for basic character traits, and relationships to be comic book accurate. As this seems to be a lesser known team I am going to be slightly less judgy about story line accuracy.