The New Mutants #76-78
These issues come after Inferno, when the New Mutants and the X-Terminators met, and tell of how the two teams combined -- although Skids and Rusty are separated by the end of these, really, so it's more like the Muties assimilated Boom-Boom and Rictor. One of the things I liked, reading these, is that I know exactly where it fits in with the rest of the X-books, timeline-wise. Marvel really sucks at that these days.
#76 was a really fun adventure story: Namor and the kiddies fight a giant tentacled thing on the cover!
Inside, the New Mutants are dealing with their school having been blown up. Now they have to go home, and deal with the fact that Illyana has been turned back into a child and doesn't speak a word of English. They stop to use a payphone and are attacked by concerned citizens who mistake them for demonic kidnappers. They retreat and decide to go visit the X-Terminators, and X-Factor, in their big talking intelligent space ship. Mostly they're hoping to stay long enough to get some sleep before they have to try figuring things out again; none of them have slept since the day Doug was killed, pretty much.
X-Factor are off dealing with Alchemy in London, so the X-Terminators have convinced Ship that undersea exploration is just as educational as anything they could do in a classroom and are having an expedition. (They were all kicked out of summer school, presumably for disappearing during Inferno.) It looks like a lot of fun, and these pages are cute. Rictor runs afoul of a squid and/or octopus and gets inked, and then some sharks come check them out. Boom-Boom discovers that it's a lot harder to throw a time-bomb underwater and have it get to your target when you thought it would, and Ric scares the beasties off with vibrations, so that there's no blood shed.
Then they find something they think is a shell and take it to Ship to identify while they have their lunch. It turns out to be a horn, and Ric "vibro-cleans" it to get all the algae and barnacles off. They each take a turn trying to blow the thing, but of course chatterbox Boom-Boom is the only one with the lung power to dislodge the seasnail that was in it. (It hits poor Ric right in the face.)
Ship is immediately attacked by an enormous tentacled monster. Ship tries to get the kids to leave and save themselves, but they're determined to save it. The monster tries to steal Ric, but Boom-Boom rescues him. At this point, the New Mutants show up, eyes all a-bug about the monster. The monster retreats from Rusty's firey attack and pulls Ship under with it. Boom-Boom suggests that, since blowing the horn made the monster come, maybe a second blast will make it go. Before she can put lips to horn, though, Namor grabs it out of her hands and yells at her. Apparently she would have called another one, these things can destroy cities, blah blah. He's pissed and accuses her of stealing the horn and defiling sacred Atlantean artifacts.
Sam tells him off. ♥
Rusty tells everyone to chill, and points out that what's done is done, and now they have to save Ship and New York. Namor is duly impressed. (Too bad Rusty will soon be totally wasted as a character, because he sure didn't use his "attitude of a statesman" much as an Acolyte...) Namor compares the mass of kiddies favourably to older, less responsible heroes and miscellaneous surface dwellers XD and offers to help defeat the thing. Dani plucks designs for water-breathing gear from his mind and equips everyone, and Warlock turns himself into a submarine.
It turns out that the monster is bigger than the one Namor fought before. Boom-Boom gets started trying to blow tentacles off of Ship, but the water-resistance means everyone has to keep the monster busy whilst the bomb gets there. Before it even reaches target, Rictor realises that this approach isn't going to be effective. "We need a more localized attack. We need to destroy its brain. I was with my dad in South America. I learned about a lot of things there... including stuff about dynamite!"
(So that's Mexico, Central America, and South America. Ric did a lot of traveling as a kid. I wonder how old he was supposed to have been when his dad died, originally? It's officially been 11 and 6 in the books.)
So they all pile into Warlock -- even Namor -- and Dani makes the right amount of TNT, according to Ric's memory. (And Namor makes an evil face whilst holding the stuff. Or maybe that's just his eyebrows.) Sam, Skids, and Rusty deliver the payload down the monster's gob while the others keep it distracted, and there is a mighty boom. Ship surfaces just as X-Factor comes back.
Jean: The ship's a mess!
Bobby: Is that -- a flying horse?
Scott: Would you mind telling us what's going on?
Ship and Namor defend the kiddies from scolding, Namor takes off with the horn, saying he learned a lot and promising to take better care of his people's artifacts in future, since he's the one who actually dropped the horn in the first place. And the X-Terminators make puppy eyes asking if the New Mutants can stay for a while.
Bobby: (while everyone else looks like they might scold anyway) Sure, they can stay! We know what happened to your school! And remember, it was once our school, too! (the rest of X-Factor get smiley.)
I kinda miss how the X-Terminators were this group of schoolwork avoiding scamps who really just wanted to help people. "Can we? Pleeeeeeease?" has come up before. And X-Factor are big softies who cave on pretty much everything, except sending them to boarding school, which they did to protect them. I mean, I really loved how they got caught dragging a sledge full of presents to a children's hospital -- when they weren't supposed to leave the ship unescorted -- and earnestly sweet-talked and pleaded their cause to the grown-ups, all of whom tried to look stern and responsible. (Bobby failed hilariously. He had to clap both hands over his mouth to keep from laughing, which set Jean off...) Alas, this is the beginning of the end of all that. :(
Issues #77 and 78 are the beginning of another Asgard arc. After the kiddies take Illyana home to her family, Dani collapses. Ship analyzes her illness and concludes it to be magical in nature, so sends them to see Doctor Strange. Alas, the good Sorcerer is pretending to be dead at this time -- and has an eyepatch! -- but he watches them invisibly. It seems Dani is possessed by an evil entity, whose toxic aura is affecting the others. He observes that Boom-Boom and Rictor (or rather, "the little blonde and the dark-haired boy") are the most sensitive to it, which is kind of a no-brainer, what with the way they get into a shouting match on his doorstep and have to be physically restrained from attacking each other.
This is the bit that really caught my attention, actually. Why those two? Other than Rahne, they're the youngest -- and Rahne, being psychically connected to Dani, should have been more easily affected, right? Dani's almost a stranger to them, so what's the deal? Are they just naturally mystically sensitive? I'd really like someone to run with that for a fic, maybe an AU. There's a canonical other reality where Rahne is a queen and Boom-Boom is her loyal maidservant. There's no Rictor ever seen there -- maybe he's off being a wizard's apprentice! *plots*
#76 was a really fun adventure story: Namor and the kiddies fight a giant tentacled thing on the cover!
Inside, the New Mutants are dealing with their school having been blown up. Now they have to go home, and deal with the fact that Illyana has been turned back into a child and doesn't speak a word of English. They stop to use a payphone and are attacked by concerned citizens who mistake them for demonic kidnappers. They retreat and decide to go visit the X-Terminators, and X-Factor, in their big talking intelligent space ship. Mostly they're hoping to stay long enough to get some sleep before they have to try figuring things out again; none of them have slept since the day Doug was killed, pretty much.
X-Factor are off dealing with Alchemy in London, so the X-Terminators have convinced Ship that undersea exploration is just as educational as anything they could do in a classroom and are having an expedition. (They were all kicked out of summer school, presumably for disappearing during Inferno.) It looks like a lot of fun, and these pages are cute. Rictor runs afoul of a squid and/or octopus and gets inked, and then some sharks come check them out. Boom-Boom discovers that it's a lot harder to throw a time-bomb underwater and have it get to your target when you thought it would, and Ric scares the beasties off with vibrations, so that there's no blood shed.
Then they find something they think is a shell and take it to Ship to identify while they have their lunch. It turns out to be a horn, and Ric "vibro-cleans" it to get all the algae and barnacles off. They each take a turn trying to blow the thing, but of course chatterbox Boom-Boom is the only one with the lung power to dislodge the seasnail that was in it. (It hits poor Ric right in the face.)
Ship is immediately attacked by an enormous tentacled monster. Ship tries to get the kids to leave and save themselves, but they're determined to save it. The monster tries to steal Ric, but Boom-Boom rescues him. At this point, the New Mutants show up, eyes all a-bug about the monster. The monster retreats from Rusty's firey attack and pulls Ship under with it. Boom-Boom suggests that, since blowing the horn made the monster come, maybe a second blast will make it go. Before she can put lips to horn, though, Namor grabs it out of her hands and yells at her. Apparently she would have called another one, these things can destroy cities, blah blah. He's pissed and accuses her of stealing the horn and defiling sacred Atlantean artifacts.
Sam tells him off. ♥
Rusty tells everyone to chill, and points out that what's done is done, and now they have to save Ship and New York. Namor is duly impressed. (Too bad Rusty will soon be totally wasted as a character, because he sure didn't use his "attitude of a statesman" much as an Acolyte...) Namor compares the mass of kiddies favourably to older, less responsible heroes and miscellaneous surface dwellers XD and offers to help defeat the thing. Dani plucks designs for water-breathing gear from his mind and equips everyone, and Warlock turns himself into a submarine.
It turns out that the monster is bigger than the one Namor fought before. Boom-Boom gets started trying to blow tentacles off of Ship, but the water-resistance means everyone has to keep the monster busy whilst the bomb gets there. Before it even reaches target, Rictor realises that this approach isn't going to be effective. "We need a more localized attack. We need to destroy its brain. I was with my dad in South America. I learned about a lot of things there... including stuff about dynamite!"
(So that's Mexico, Central America, and South America. Ric did a lot of traveling as a kid. I wonder how old he was supposed to have been when his dad died, originally? It's officially been 11 and 6 in the books.)
So they all pile into Warlock -- even Namor -- and Dani makes the right amount of TNT, according to Ric's memory. (And Namor makes an evil face whilst holding the stuff. Or maybe that's just his eyebrows.) Sam, Skids, and Rusty deliver the payload down the monster's gob while the others keep it distracted, and there is a mighty boom. Ship surfaces just as X-Factor comes back.
Jean: The ship's a mess!
Bobby: Is that -- a flying horse?
Scott: Would you mind telling us what's going on?
Ship and Namor defend the kiddies from scolding, Namor takes off with the horn, saying he learned a lot and promising to take better care of his people's artifacts in future, since he's the one who actually dropped the horn in the first place. And the X-Terminators make puppy eyes asking if the New Mutants can stay for a while.
Bobby: (while everyone else looks like they might scold anyway) Sure, they can stay! We know what happened to your school! And remember, it was once our school, too! (the rest of X-Factor get smiley.)
I kinda miss how the X-Terminators were this group of schoolwork avoiding scamps who really just wanted to help people. "Can we? Pleeeeeeease?" has come up before. And X-Factor are big softies who cave on pretty much everything, except sending them to boarding school, which they did to protect them. I mean, I really loved how they got caught dragging a sledge full of presents to a children's hospital -- when they weren't supposed to leave the ship unescorted -- and earnestly sweet-talked and pleaded their cause to the grown-ups, all of whom tried to look stern and responsible. (Bobby failed hilariously. He had to clap both hands over his mouth to keep from laughing, which set Jean off...) Alas, this is the beginning of the end of all that. :(
Issues #77 and 78 are the beginning of another Asgard arc. After the kiddies take Illyana home to her family, Dani collapses. Ship analyzes her illness and concludes it to be magical in nature, so sends them to see Doctor Strange. Alas, the good Sorcerer is pretending to be dead at this time -- and has an eyepatch! -- but he watches them invisibly. It seems Dani is possessed by an evil entity, whose toxic aura is affecting the others. He observes that Boom-Boom and Rictor (or rather, "the little blonde and the dark-haired boy") are the most sensitive to it, which is kind of a no-brainer, what with the way they get into a shouting match on his doorstep and have to be physically restrained from attacking each other.
This is the bit that really caught my attention, actually. Why those two? Other than Rahne, they're the youngest -- and Rahne, being psychically connected to Dani, should have been more easily affected, right? Dani's almost a stranger to them, so what's the deal? Are they just naturally mystically sensitive? I'd really like someone to run with that for a fic, maybe an AU. There's a canonical other reality where Rahne is a queen and Boom-Boom is her loyal maidservant. There's no Rictor ever seen there -- maybe he's off being a wizard's apprentice! *plots*