From the random stack of unread comics.
After this book, 47 comics remain in the random stack. There are 54 days remaining before we leave Vietnam. Which means that if I want to finish the stack before we head to the US, then I only get to skip 7 days. And that's not counting the various graphic novels in the school library (and a couple on my to-read shelf) that I'd like to get through. So expect things to be busy here in the coming weeks.
And during our month-long visit home, hopefully I'll get the chance to review some new releases for the first time in a while! After that I'll be gathering a new random stack of unread comics to pack for our time in China.
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Date: 2009
Writer: John Rhett Thomas, Sheila Johnson, Chris Claremont, Louise Simonson, Rob Liefeld
Artist: Bob McLeod, Sal Buscema, Paul Smith, Ron Frenz, Tom Mandrake, Bill Sienkiewicz, Steve Leialoha, Rick Leonardi, Bret Blevins, Jackson Guice, Terry Shoemaker, Rob Liefeld
Editor: Jeff Youngquist, Mark D. Beazley, Jennifer Grunwald, John Dennng, Cory Levine
Cover: Diogenes Neves, Danny Miki, John Rauch
This is a promotional recap book that summarizes the entire run of The New Mutants from the 1980s into the early 1990s. It hits some of the now-classic Marvel crossover events like Fall of the Mutants and Inferno.
The recap is done in prose written by John Rhett Thomas and Sheila Johnson based on the stories originally written by Chris Claremont, Louise Simonson, and Rob Liefeld.
Prose recaps of complicated ongoing comic stories are challenging to write (and to read!), and Marvel's mutant stories from the 80s and 90s are among the most convoluted anywhere in comics. New Mutants wasn't a book I followed for its whole run, but I picked up enough of the individual issues back in the day to have this bring back some memories. New Mutants could be a mess of a book, but it always had a lot of heart to it, and the recap presented here does a good job of focusing on the themes of friendship and loyalty that were important to the fans of The New Mutants.
Still, the complexity of the plot does get in the way of this book's effectiveness. If the objective is to sell the reprint trade paperbacks, this does an uneven job, Some of the stories sounded interesting, while other sounded like they'd be a slog to get through.
The reprinted art was awesome, though, and just flipping through this will likely bring a nostalgic smile to fans of Marvel's classic mutant stories.
Rating: 5.5/10
