New Mutants 64 - Inferno Prologue

The New Mutants face their grief over recent deaths in their own way.

New Mutants #64

Writer: Louise Simonson
Penciler: Bret Blevins
Inker: Terry Austin
Letterer: Tom Orzechowski
Colorist: Glynis Oliver
Editor: Ann Nocenti
Editor-in-Chief: Tom DeFalco

The deaths of Doug Ramsay (Cypher) and of the whole X-Men recently have cast a shadow over the New Mutants but unfortunately the reaction has been delayed by not one but two awkward fill-in issues. Now we get a strong issue looking at how people react to grief when they have both powers and technology to hand that cannot bring their close ones back. All they can do is try and hope.

How many people go over a tragedy in their mind again and again, thinking over what they could have done differently and wishing they could have prevented the events? Rahne's reaction follows this pattern but it's made worse by the existence of the Danger Room and thus she is not merely thinking the situation through but running endless simulations in which she took a different action and Doug survived. She goes on to spend much of the rest of the issue not quite accepting that Doug has died even when she first sees his body lying in his coffin. Such a reaction feels all too human and understandable but magnified by everything around here.

Illyana's reaction to the apparent death of her brother and the other X-Men also has obvious parallels to how many react to tragedies in the news. She sits for ages watching the footage of their final moments, having taped a lot of the coverage to capture the whole sequence. All she can do is express her anger that she wasn't able to get to Dallas and can only watch until she comes to her conclusion about who is responsible for the deaths, setting up a strong cliffhanger as she declares she is going to seek vengeance.

Magneto finds himself in the difficult position of having to preserve the true nature of both the school and Doug whilst also telling his parents how their son died. His decision to lie and pretend that it was an accident when on a camping trip Doug stumbled across hunters clearly weighs heavily on him but all he can do is hold in his anger and grief whilst wondering about the eventual fate of mutantkind.

But it's Warlock's reaction that is remembered the most and which takes the cover scene. The child-like alien just does not understand human death and his confusion is enhanced first after seeing a zombie movie on television and then as he learns of the Christian belief in the afterlife and the eventual resurrection of the dead. So he becomes convinced that all Doug needs to come back from Heaven is to have life energy restored to him. When Doug does not do this Warlock decides to show him those who miss him in the hope this will bring him back to life. At first it seems macabre to have a corpse carried around and paraded in front of first his mother and then the one who might have become his girlfriend. But as an unusually sensitive Bobby (Sunspot) explains this is just Warlock wanting what all of them want and trying to bring Doug back to life just as Rahne was trying in the Danger Room. It's quite a moving scene as Rahne and Warlock come to accept that Doug is truly gone.

It's incredible how such a weird situation and such a comic looking character as Warlock can generate such a moving issue. But this one works surprisingly well as all the reactions are entirely in character and understandable given the extraordinary situation everyone is in. This issue is the best so far in this look and its only fault is coming two months later when it should have been issue #62 giving a strong immediate aftermath to the Fall of the Mutants rather than coming later.