The New Mutants Forever takes place when writer Chris Claremont left the book with issue 54. This was when Professor Xavier was written out of the series and Magneto was made the headmaster of the school, but thankfully he doesn’t wear that lame costume with the giant “M.” Unfortunately that’s about the only thing to be thankful for in this book, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

What is nice about the book is that Claremont does a great job of giving the reader the necessary back-story to understand what is happening in this story. I consider this a personal favor since I was about three years old when he left the book. The members of this superhero team include: Cannonball, Magma, Mirage, Wolfsbane, Magik, and the most useful character ever, Cypher. The story starts with Magneto having recently been made a member of the Hellfire Club, meeting with Sebastian Shaw, Emma Frost, and Selene about creating a truce between the Hellfire Club and Xavier’s School. Meanwhile the kids are upstairs arguing about getting away from the Hellfire Club altogether. Their argument is cut short when some soldiers show up and start an attack on the club, The New Mutants immediately go on the defense and send the attackers on their way. The only survivor of the attack is found out to be Magma’s father, who just happens to be Selene’s son. Back at the Club, Magma and Doug decide to find any information they can as to why Magma’s father was in the area. Almost immediately the club is attacked again, but this time things don’t go so well, Wolfsbane is injured, Shaw and Frost are knocked out, and Cypher and Magma are kidnapped.

Selene is determined to save her granddaughter so she teams up with Magik and Cannonball to interrogate their only prisoner that was captured and sent to limbo by Magik. The issue ends with Magma and Cypher being taken to the leader of the their captors who is revealed to be The Red Skull.

I’m a huge X-Men fan, and Chris Claremont has written some of the best X-Men comics ever published. I really wanted to like this, but I just couldn’t get into it. I haven’t read any of the original New Mutants comic books so I know I’m not the target audience. Despite this I decided to pick up the book anyway. I love Cannonball and always liked Warlock so I thought at the very least it would be a fun read, but without Warlock in the book it just makes it obvious how useless a character Cypher is. His super power is the ability to translate languages, who needs to fly when you can read the instructions for your DVD player in any language you want?! Claremont tries to do something with the character, but his only skill used in this issue besides being captured is the ability to “Search the Web.” The book in general was just confusing, the first fight came out of nowhere, I didn’t even realize who was being attacked when the soldiers showed up, and it ended so quick it felt like there was a page missing, and just two pages later they’re attacked again. Bottom line is that it certainly wasn’t the worst comic I’ve ever read, but I don’t think I’m going to continue with this series unless the second book just has Cannonball and Warlock fighting Sentinels for thirty pages.

Ken Zeider
Ken@ComicImpact.com