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New Mutants: Lethal Legion
New Mutants: Lethal Legion #1
THE NEW, NEW MUTANTS - WITH ALL THE CLASSIC THRILLS! Best-selling, multiple-award-winning, generally bedazzling writer Charlie Jane Anders launches a fresh take on the beloved team, with rising star Enid Balám behind the illustrious pencils! The Shadow King. U-Men. Demon Bear. Themselves. The New Mutants have faced some of the most cunning minds in the Marvel Universe - and survived. But when someone starts building a new Lethal Legion, will Krakoa's youngest class finally be outmatched? Featuring fan-favorites like Wolfsbane and Karma alongside explosive newcomers like Escapade, this is a series you can't miss! Everything leads to the Fall of X - don't sleep on the start.
26 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 8, 2023
6 people are currently reading
22 people want to read
About the author
Charlie Jane Anders
165 books4,064 followersMy latest book is Victories Greater Than Death. Coming in August: Never Say You Can't Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times By Making Up Stories.
Previously: All the Birds in the Sky, The City in the Middle of the Night, and a short story collection, Six Months, Three Days, Five Others.
Coming soon: An adult novel, and a short story collection called Even Greater Mistakes.
I used to write for a site called io9.com, and now I write for various places here and there.
I won the Emperor Norton Award, for “extraordinary invention and creativity unhindered by the constraints of paltry reason.” I've also won a Hugo Award, a Nebula Award, a William H. Crawford Award, a Theodore Sturgeon Award, a Locus Award and a Lambda Literary Award.
My stories, essays and journalism have appeared in Wired Magazine, the Boston Review, Conjunctions, Tin House, Slate, MIT Technology Review, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, Tor.com, Lightspeed Magazine, McSweeney’s, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, ZYZZYVA, Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Uncanny Magazine, 3 AM Magazine, Flurb.net, Monkey Bicycle, Pindeldyboz, Instant City, Broken Pencil, and in tons and tons of anthologies.
I organize Writers With Drinks, which is a monthly reading series here in San Francisco that mashes up a ton of different genres. I co-host a Hugo Award-winning podcast, Our Opinions Are Correct, with Annalee Newitz.
Back in 2007, Annalee and I put out a book of first-person stories by female geeks called She’s Such a Geek: Women Write About Science, Technology and Other Nerdy Stuff. There was a lot of resistance to doing this book, because nobody believed there was a market for writing about female geeks. Also, Annalee and I put out a print magazine called other, which was about pop culture, politics and general weirdness, aimed at people who don’t fit into other categories. To raise money for other magazine, we put on events like a Ballerina Pie Fight – which is just what it sounds like – and a sexy show in a hair salon where people took off their clothes while getting their hair cut.
I used to live in a Buddhist nunnery, when I was a teenager. I love to do karaoke. I eat way too much spicy food. I hug trees and pat stone lions for luck. I talk to myself way too much when I’m working on a story.
Previously: All the Birds in the Sky, The City in the Middle of the Night, and a short story collection, Six Months, Three Days, Five Others.
Coming soon: An adult novel, and a short story collection called Even Greater Mistakes.
I used to write for a site called io9.com, and now I write for various places here and there.
I won the Emperor Norton Award, for “extraordinary invention and creativity unhindered by the constraints of paltry reason.” I've also won a Hugo Award, a Nebula Award, a William H. Crawford Award, a Theodore Sturgeon Award, a Locus Award and a Lambda Literary Award.
My stories, essays and journalism have appeared in Wired Magazine, the Boston Review, Conjunctions, Tin House, Slate, MIT Technology Review, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, Tor.com, Lightspeed Magazine, McSweeney’s, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, ZYZZYVA, Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Uncanny Magazine, 3 AM Magazine, Flurb.net, Monkey Bicycle, Pindeldyboz, Instant City, Broken Pencil, and in tons and tons of anthologies.
I organize Writers With Drinks, which is a monthly reading series here in San Francisco that mashes up a ton of different genres. I co-host a Hugo Award-winning podcast, Our Opinions Are Correct, with Annalee Newitz.
Back in 2007, Annalee and I put out a book of first-person stories by female geeks called She’s Such a Geek: Women Write About Science, Technology and Other Nerdy Stuff. There was a lot of resistance to doing this book, because nobody believed there was a market for writing about female geeks. Also, Annalee and I put out a print magazine called other, which was about pop culture, politics and general weirdness, aimed at people who don’t fit into other categories. To raise money for other magazine, we put on events like a Ballerina Pie Fight – which is just what it sounds like – and a sexy show in a hair salon where people took off their clothes while getting their hair cut.
I used to live in a Buddhist nunnery, when I was a teenager. I love to do karaoke. I eat way too much spicy food. I hug trees and pat stone lions for luck. I talk to myself way too much when I’m working on a story.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 11, 2023
Abomination.
Look, I really am gay, and even I think that New Mutants has gone off the rails. It just keeps randomly making characters queer without explanation, without even a coming-out story. This issue established for the first time that Martha Johanson --previously the brain in a jar known as "No Girl"-- is apparently queer. Despite the fact trans mutant Escapade already has a possible love interest in the form of her best friend Morgan, now a flirtation is hinted at between Escapade and Martha. Which means that Escapade's gender identity is female, but her orientation is... I don't know. Bi? Opposed to the concept of being labeled at all? And Martha is a lesbian, or otherwise is willing to date a person who presents as female...
None of these characters are taking the time to explain their orientations anymore. It's just the writers going nuts, making every single character queer, and not bothering to respect the character --or the audience-- enough to provide a coming-out story.
I hate it.
This is not what my life is really like! Coming out is hard! Even after you have come out to all your family and friends, you still wrestle with internalized homophobia for years. Sometimes, gay people still experience some transphobia. It can be hard to get gays and lesbians to remember to use proper pronouns. Some of them wonder if they're expected to dress in clothing of the opposite sex, and they may seriously not want to. There are a lot of gay men who HATE drag, or who hate effeminate gay men, or even hate overly masculine gay men.
There's a lot of hate to go around.
This comic could have had a fairly straightforward premise (Wolfsbane and Morgan are inexplicably checking the sewers for Spider-man villain technology, and Escapade and Martha are planning to sneak into a supervillain's home). But it indulged itself in performative wokeness. We had to watch Martha and Escapade fantasize about ballroom dancing, thus establishing Martha's --apparent-- queerness. We had to treat serious story elements (like, getting attacked by a giant lizard monster) as a joke.
I hate this. And the artwork sucks.
I also want to note that by choosing to make the entire team queer, the writer is undermining the message that cishet people and queer people can coexist as friends with mutual respect. Here, there are no straight people for the audience to identify with. This isn't an alliance of people from different backgrounds; this is basically just a Caucasian gender-queer support group.
No Black or Latino characters. No straight people (apparently). And even queer people are getting offended that characters aren't allowed to come out, or deal with realistic homophobia/transphobia. Queer romances aren't being portrayed realistically. Characters aren't asking, "Are you out to your family? Are they accepting?" No one is expressing trepidation about the mechanics of queer sex. No gay character is offending their partner by expressing disgust at the prospect of wearing drag, or transitioning.
This isn't what queer people are really like. And 90 percent of my friends are cishet. I don't spend my days surrounded by a gender-queer support group!
Look, I really am gay, and even I think that New Mutants has gone off the rails. It just keeps randomly making characters queer without explanation, without even a coming-out story. This issue established for the first time that Martha Johanson --previously the brain in a jar known as "No Girl"-- is apparently queer. Despite the fact trans mutant Escapade already has a possible love interest in the form of her best friend Morgan, now a flirtation is hinted at between Escapade and Martha. Which means that Escapade's gender identity is female, but her orientation is... I don't know. Bi? Opposed to the concept of being labeled at all? And Martha is a lesbian, or otherwise is willing to date a person who presents as female...
None of these characters are taking the time to explain their orientations anymore. It's just the writers going nuts, making every single character queer, and not bothering to respect the character --or the audience-- enough to provide a coming-out story.
I hate it.
This is not what my life is really like! Coming out is hard! Even after you have come out to all your family and friends, you still wrestle with internalized homophobia for years. Sometimes, gay people still experience some transphobia. It can be hard to get gays and lesbians to remember to use proper pronouns. Some of them wonder if they're expected to dress in clothing of the opposite sex, and they may seriously not want to. There are a lot of gay men who HATE drag, or who hate effeminate gay men, or even hate overly masculine gay men.
There's a lot of hate to go around.
This comic could have had a fairly straightforward premise (Wolfsbane and Morgan are inexplicably checking the sewers for Spider-man villain technology, and Escapade and Martha are planning to sneak into a supervillain's home). But it indulged itself in performative wokeness. We had to watch Martha and Escapade fantasize about ballroom dancing, thus establishing Martha's --apparent-- queerness. We had to treat serious story elements (like, getting attacked by a giant lizard monster) as a joke.
I hate this. And the artwork sucks.
I also want to note that by choosing to make the entire team queer, the writer is undermining the message that cishet people and queer people can coexist as friends with mutual respect. Here, there are no straight people for the audience to identify with. This isn't an alliance of people from different backgrounds; this is basically just a Caucasian gender-queer support group.
No Black or Latino characters. No straight people (apparently). And even queer people are getting offended that characters aren't allowed to come out, or deal with realistic homophobia/transphobia. Queer romances aren't being portrayed realistically. Characters aren't asking, "Are you out to your family? Are they accepting?" No one is expressing trepidation about the mechanics of queer sex. No gay character is offending their partner by expressing disgust at the prospect of wearing drag, or transitioning.
This isn't what queer people are really like. And 90 percent of my friends are cishet. I don't spend my days surrounded by a gender-queer support group!
March 27, 2023
Picking up where the last New Mutants series left off, still with new character Escapade as the protagonist. Anders’s writing on this issue is both fun and funny. Not sure how I feel about the artwork on this one. I don’t hate it but it’s not my favorite. The plot is clever, but random, as Count Nefaria is holding auditions for a new Lethal Legion, prompting Escapade and Cerebella to concoct a Robin Hood-esque heist scheme. As I’m writing this, it occurs to me that the kids on Krakoa are getting very bored at home, which is completely relatable to any of us who experienced rebellious teenage years. Interested to keep reading.
February 15, 2024
Entiendo que esto parte de una etapa previa ya Krakoniana y pues... Es cierto que estos nuevos personajes destacan de entrada. Pero sí que Charlie Jane Anders nos lanza sin demasiado contexto cuando todos sus personajes parecen estar o dominados por sus hormonas mutantes o sus dudas de identidad o hermandad con la situación de la Nación Mutante... Pero sí, vamos a ver en qué se desmadra el ir a buscarle las cosquillas al Conde... No, a Drácula no... a Nefarian (¿un vampiro iónico sigue siendo un vampiro?).
April 13, 2023
I’ve been looking forward to this, and it’s even more fun than I imagined!
It is wonderful to see Charlie Jane’s words pop with a new character and fun setting.
It is wonderful to see Charlie Jane’s words pop with a new character and fun setting.
July 15, 2023
I am new to New Mutants and it reads like a fun and very chaotic adventure.
Looking forward to find out more.
Looking forward to find out more.
August 19, 2023
Morgan's criticism of Krakoa is pretty valid.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews