New Mutants #2 // Review
It's the New Mutants versus the People of the Shi'Ar Empire in New Mutants #2, by writer Jonathan Hickman, artist Rod Reis, and letterer Travis Lanham. This issue keeps up the same fun tone of the last one and is a blast from start to finish.
Sunspot narrates the story of the group's time in "space jail" before they are brought to trial.. Where they are found guilty (his space lawyer wasn't as good as he thought). They're sentenced to life in the service of the Empire… are picked up by Cannonball and his Shi'Ar Supergaurdian wife, Smasher, who promise to get everything straightened out on the Imperial throneworld, Chandrilar. On the way there, Smasher is given a mission and tells the New Mutants that they'll be pardoned as long as they help her. On Chandrilar, Majestor Gladiator tells Xandra of the chaos in the outer Empire and that they are retrieving someone to teach her to rule when it's her time- her aunt, Deathbird.
It's easy to see how much Hickman loves writing this book. It's packed with all kinds of great humor, a lot of coming from the narration of Sunspot. He comes across as both hugely confident and a little dim, and it works incredibly well. Ask any fan about the tone of a Hickman comic, and they'll probably say that they are extremely serious tonally, but those people have never read something like Transhuman. Hickman gets to flex muscles that most readers don't even know he has with this comic. It's light-hearted, but that doesn't make it less great. If there is a drawback, it's that it focuses a bit too much on Sunspot and Cannonball. Still, they are great characters who Hickman has a lot of affection for, this isn't actually that huge of a drawback.
Putting the team on an extended mission in the Shi'Ar Empire is a great idea. Deathbird is a classic X-Men character, and her serious manner played against the team will be a joy to see. Hickman also hints at a greater threat to the Empire, one which the New Mutants will probably have to face in the future. One of the main problems with the Dawn Of X idea is that all of the X-Men's traditional villains are now allied to the team. New Mutants overcomes that hurdle by throwing the team into space and giving them a new threat to fight.
Rod Reis' does a great job with his character acting in this book. It helps the fun tone of everything. His expression work really sells what is happening on the page. The only drawback is that while his style is excellent for figure work, he's not that much of a sci-fi artist. That's not to say that his renditions of the alien stuff in the book is bad, it's just not as out of this world as it could be. However, his coloring is top-notch, and his use of lighting effects in the coloring is excellent throughout.
New Mutants #2 keeps up the great work. Hickman feels like he's having a great time writing this book because it's easy to have a great time reading it. The humor is a little cheesy, but it works so very (there's something so funny and quaint about phrases like "space jail," "space lawyer," and "space judge"). He also knows that humor can't carry the whole thing and makes sure to introduce some conflict for the future. It'll be interesting to see how the team, who are portrayed as a jovial group of friends, play against the super serious and extremely dangerous Deathbird. Rod Reis' art really sells the tone. His characters look great. His sci-fi renderings are a little underwhelming, but so far, that's okay. A lot of the Dawn Of X books have been kind of dour and serious, so it's really nice to have a palette cleanser as great as this one in the line-up.
