New Mutants 62 - Inferno Prologue

Magma travels home to Nova Roma the long way round.

New Mutants #62

Writer: Louise Simonson
Artist: Jon J Muth
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski
Colorist: Glynis Oliver
Editor: Ann Nocenti
Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

We come to another issue that is all too obviously a fill-in and again told in flashback with a letter starting off the issue though this time the letter merely sets the scene and doesn't describe the details. Instead we merely learn of a character's current location before seeing the path that brought them there.

It seems clear that Amara (Magma) was a character inherited from Chris Claremont that Louise Simonson was not very keen on. Very early in her run on the series she wrote Magma off the team by having her transfer to the Massachusetts Academy where the Hellions are based. This issue moves her a step further as though she's being set up for something further down the line. Unfortunately the signs are that this will be a well-trodden cliched storyline of a clash between a traditionalist father and a westernised daughter over a prospective arranged marriage with Amara at one point not wanting to be rescued from the jungle because of this. It is a pity that so many writers so often resort to this plot device for a culture clash storyline and there's little of interest in it. Even Amara's brief environmental speech about how the jungle they're in produces a quarter of the world's oxygen and so she needs to be careful about using her magma powers seems more interesting though it turns out this is just an excuse for not deploying them.

Slightly more interesting is the handling of the Hellion Empath. His powers to manipulate emotions are on extremely dodgy grounds especially when used for seduction and it's indicated here that despite his claims to the contrary he has been using his powers on Amara which makes their eventual kiss late in this issue rather dodgy. He is sent to accompany Amara on her journey home in order to strengthen the Hellfire Club's relations with Nova Roma and ensure Amara returns. But in the course of their journey their plane is struck by lightning and the pilot killed, forcing the pair to spend many days wandering through the jungle trying to survive and discovering each other's character better. There's the revelation that Empath doesn't just manipulate emotions but can also read them and in part his use of his powers is a defence mechanism to cope by blocking out the emotions he's reading. The intention may be to develop his character in a more sympathetic direction but even in this issue he's also shown taking control of others for pleasure which hints at the limits to what can be achieved.

Otherwise the issue is taken up with the extended and rather dull trek through the jungle as Amara and Empath try to find their way out. But there's little hiding the fill-in nature of this issue and once again we have one that comes right at the moment when a title needs to be dealing with the dramatic consequences of a recent big storyline and not digging through the inventory files to flashback to what another character's been up to.