Because it’s more fun to be a mutant than a light, anyway.
Generation Hope #1
In the last few months, X-Readers all over the world saw something that they had not seen for quite some time. Following the Second Coming crossover it was strongly hinted that Hope, Scott Summers’ own Mutant Messiah, would bring on a wave of new mutants. And while things certainly haven’t returned to pre M-Day levels with mutants becoming the dominant species, and riots at Xavier’s, we have been introduced to the “Five Lights.” For those of you keeping score at home, the five lights are the first “new” mutants to appear since M-Day, all of whom are at the very least in their teen years, and all of whom require contact with Hope to regulate their uncontrollable powers.
It’s a cool enough premise, right? But what have we gotten so far? The first four lights were the following: a speedster who is possibly experiencing enhanced aging because of his power, a fire/ice mix power set that I thought of on the playground in second grade, an Age of Apocalypse Wild Child rip-off who answers only to Hope, and finally, a diamond girl who looks just enough like Penance. That, coupled with the cover font and foreshadowing title Generation Hope, might just be enough to sucker former Generation X fans into getting on board with the new class. None of whom were all that interesting, but on the surface were at least moderately acceptable, at least for those of us who have been dying to see a real new mutant over the past several years.
This week however with Generation Hope #1, we were introduced to the fifth light. His name is Kenji, he is from Japan and he is a blatant rip off of Tetuso from the movie Akira. It makes me wonder: House of M was 5 years ago, is this really the best the house of ideas has got? Not exactly.
The New New Mutants
There’s another book in the X-Verse, New Mutants, written by the brilliant Zeb Wells. Wells has done an excellent job of making the New Mutants title not only fresh, but approachable and relevant, something X tie-in books have struggled with over the years. He’s also introduced not only new, but far, far more interesting mutants.
How is that possible, you ask? Simple. Back in the late 80’s there was an event called Inferno. Mr. Sinister and the Goblin Queen and some other nasty folks opened a portal to hell, and to do so they used 12 mutant babies as the power source. Apparently, no one but Mr. Wells has ever wondered what happened to those characters until now. They’re back in the pages of New Mutants, and have aged quickly. They were stuck in Limbo, being brain washed by an extremist sect of the US military. The mutants still blame the book’s resident ray of sunshine, Illyana Rasputin, for getting them all stranded in Limbo in the first place. The story is not only better than “this happened because this girl looks like Jean Grey,” but the power sets themselves are more interesting. The plight of growing up in hell as opposed to simply getting powers at 17 and not being able to cope is much more engaging for someone who’s been reading these books most of their lives. So far we’ve seen:
- Either tumor or scab-based regeneration
- A guy with a thousand mouths
- An energy projector who, without a face, makes Chamber’s origin sound like a walk in the park
- Some kind of evil amorphous blob
- A siren (the mythological kind) type of character who’s brainwashed the new and awesome Doug Ramsey
- An arm snapping chick with demon robot hands
- Guy with cannon arms (sans the Random barrel chest and 90’s cut off vest)
- Girl with demon skull shoulder pad and invulnerability
- Okay, we have a speedster here too…
And three more that we’re not really sure about.
The question for you, the reader, is: are you more interested in bland generic power set mutants and anime rip-offs whose main qualm is that they are not used to being mutants? Or, are you in favor of characters cleverly plucked out of X-History, who were raised in limbo, brainwashed (Doug refers to them as indoctrinated) by fascist zealots, took out the whole New Mutants team in just a few short pages AND appear to have much more interesting power sets?
Personally I prefer the latter, which is sad for a few reasons. Not only do I feel like Kieron Gillen (Generation Hope’s scribe) can turn out a much more interesting story (I loved his short-lived Thor run), but Generation Hope’s very existence overshadows the far more interesting new class debuting over in the pages of New Mutants. At this rate, the next new mutant we will see is going to be Goku from Dragon Ball Z, or a Transformer, or have collectible card game based powers. That is of course, unless Mr. Wells has more mutants waiting in the wings, or at the very least, the circles of hell.
First. And although I have not read it. The New Mutants sound like a team of Image villains, or possible parallel with the Marauders? Those guys were dark. 80's dark.
Do appreciate that someone is working within the continuity to make this happen. Speaking of forgotten character inside of continuity. I wish to steer this discussion towards Gene Nation. The Morlocks who survived Mutant Massacre, and became Giant 90's Powerhouse Homeless Monsters.
Max – they actually do certainly remind me of a "cooler" Marauders team. Personally I could never really get behind that team. As much as they were comic characters (and we all know comic characters never stay dead), the fact that they were all clones and could infinitely come back from the dead bugged me, it also I felt took away from any real character growth. They certainly seem to capture that darkness, and are after all children of the 80's. I wonder if Sinister will ever get his hooks in these guys.
I think Gene Nation was for the most part de powered post House of M? I seem to recall reading a comic where Marrow and Feral were de-powered but still looked like weirdos. Where does this leave homeless monsters today ? Certainly in a sorry state, and that's just wrong.
Additionally , I have Google'd this Kenji that you speak of. Is there any chance that this character is designed as an homage to Tetuso? I mean, if this is an honest attempt to lift content, its seem far too transparent and obvious.
That's the thing Max, I'd normally entertain the idea that this could be an homage, but it really IS too transparent/obvious. I mean the characters frail mental state, design, location, all the way down to the way he can so rapidly expand his mass just seem to be so completely lifted from Akira. I always thought an homage was supposed to be a hell of a lot more clever than this.
I think it's a bit much to call Kenji a blatant rip-off of Tetsuo. Gillen has said multiple times already (before the issue came out even) that it was an intentional homage and that he's going to use Kenji as a way to explore the relationship between art and life (much like he did in Phonogram.) It amazes me that anyone would throw around the word "rip-off" around when discussing mainstream super-hero comics since almost every mutant (hell almost every super-hero) made in the last fifteen years is just a mish-mash of older characters and tropes. Gillen has also stated that the Fire/Ice mutant is going to get a lot more interesting, and that her initial powerset was intentionally simplistic.
I actually really enjoyed the first issue of Generation Hope. I could care less what their powers are as long as the characters themselves are interesting. I think that Gillen's execution of the multiple narrators worked really well. These characters have only had a few issues in Uncanny and 1 issue of their own series. I don't expect them to be fully fleshed out, but I already feel like I understand some key things about each one of them. Seems like judging them off of a handful of pages is a bit rash.
Plus, I second Maxwell's criticisms of that New New team. What makes their powers any more interesting or original than the Generation Hope team?
Sorry if the tone of this seems harsh, but damn has the internet been way too full of negativity the last couple of weeks.
Funny, Tetsuo's also the first thing I thought of when I saw a preview of Kenji Hulking out (or whatever happens when he does the grotesque morph – not a title I read). Maybe it's because Akira is such an iconic movie that we can't help but note the striking similarities, rip-off or not.
Hi cmrohling, thanks for reading and taking the time to comment.
For me a lot of my reaction comes from the simple fact that these are the first "new" mutants we've seen in several years. I don't think, considering that, that it was an intelligent choice to make one of them into an 'homage' and feel that the homage itself was done rather poorly. Yes most comic book characters these days are mish mashes of old ones, but my main point is that Zeb Wells is doing things much more creatively over in his book ( at least in my opinion) and I'd have homed Gillen would have been as creative. So far I just do not think that is the case.
I actually enjoyed the multiple narration tactic Gillen used. But stating in an interview that 'things are going to get more interesting' doesn't really cut it for me. Again, if this were any other book but Generation Hope i'm sure i'd be much less critical, but this is the big one, this is the one we've been waiting years for, and I felt it fell very flat.
And in regard to why Well's mutants are more interesting than Gillens, I feel I've made my point there. If you do not agree, well, that's why this is an opinion piece.
Don't worry about your tone, your argument was well thought out, and like I said when push comes to shove this is an opinion piece. Plus this is the internet, if everyone got along what would be the fun.
Also thanks for reading / commenting Nightwyrm. I agree that our conclusion regarding the rip off is likely due to Akira being such an iconic movie. If it were a reference or an homage to a mush lesser known character it would have likely been much less of an upset.