New Mutants - The Complete Chris Claremont Run 1982-1987

New Mutants - The Complete Chris Claremont Run 1982-1987



This is a collection I have made of the complete Chris Claremont run

from 1982-1987 on the New Mutants comic book title published by Marvel

Comics. This material has been available on the Internet before, but I

have never seen it collected in one place like this. (If you see

something I've forgotten, please leave a comment or PM someplace and

I'll try to patch this.)



Note that this is only the Claremont material and nothing else, since

I don't care about the other stuff. I am not even particularly a comic

book fan, but I bought New Mutants #44 in August 1986 from the comics

rack at the local mall's B. Dalton's bookstore, and the New Mutants

became a special part of growing up. As an adult, I've found that

digital comic books are available online, and have downloaded these

old favorites.



After #54, I quit reading the New Mutants. The Louise Simonson and

Bret Blevins team completely ruined the book. (Apparently I am not the

only one who thought so, since sales of the title went into the tank.)

Blevins was so awful as an artist that I think Rob Liefeld following

him explains why Liefeld was so popular. I think 22 blank pages would

have been an improvement over Blevins. Liefeld was the next best thing

to blank pages; I didn't like Liefeld's run, either. If you want that

stuff, you can look in chronological X-Men torrents.



I do not include tangents like mini-series Claremont did not write,

such as the Fallen Angels and Firestar mini-series. The exception to

this is the two Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe series, the

1983-84 original and the 1985-86 Deluxe Edition. The first series came

out when the New Mutants had just started, and, for example, Magik and

Magma don't get entries in the "M" issue, although they are in the

issue with the X-Men. (The New Mutants didn't have a separate entry in

the first series.) By the second series, all eight New Mutants and

Professor Xavier have their own entries, plus a team entry, plus

entries for related subjects like the Hellions. This is a treasure

trove of information about the New Mutants. If you just want the New

Mutants entries, and not the whole handbook, the "Other Stuff" folder

has only them in CBZ format. (If you extract these files, the

filenames for the images list the volume and page they're taken

from.)



Everything in this torrent is assembled from other sources I have

found online (props to all the people who did the hard work of

scanning!), except for the high-resolution scans and the New Mutants

material from the Comics Scene #51 magazine, which are both my own

scans. I scanned my own copies of #44-47 and #52-54 long before I knew

about digital comic books, so I reduced my scans to ~1600x2400 pages

and made CBZ files. (The issues between #47 and #52 are not very good,

which is why I did not scan them. The blecherous Bret Blevins does art

in one, and #51 has utterly bad fill-in art. While #50 has art by

Jackson Guice, it is extremely rushed and degenerates to outlines by

the end. Kyle Baker didn't ink this issue, and the fill-in inker

couldn't bail Guice out the way Baker could by finishing the art.) I

bought the magazine sometime in late 1986 on the rack, when it first

came out, but lost it over the years. I had trouble locating a copy (I

couldn't remember the name of the magazine), but finally purchased one

and scanned it. Most notable is that this reproduces a pencil layout

sketch by Bob MacLeod for a page in the graphic novel (Dani and the

mountain lion; this is scanned separately and included as a bigger

picture than the magazine pages). I have never seen any of McLeod's

pencil art for the New Mutants anywhere else. (This is not the actual

pencil art of that page, but a thumbnail sketch of his layout.)

Besides these original bits, I have just pulled together everything

from various sources.



I have included an intervew with Claremont and then-editor Louise

Simonson (still known as Louise Jones at that time before her marriage

to artist Walter Simonson). This is from an X-Men companion in 1982,

and discusses the upcoming New Mutants title at such an early point

the name "New Mutants" was not even certain. I also included the three

annuals, the special (and its second part in the X-Men annual that

year), and the 1986 Uncanny X-Men annual which features the New

Mutants. (The New Mutants appear passim in the Uncanny X-Men at that

time, such as issue #201, but I do not include these brief appearances

where the kids are being kicked out of the Danger Room, watching TV in

the background, etc.) I include the Magik limited series which

Claremont wrote. I also include Karma's first appearance, written by

Claremont, from 1979.



After Claremont left the book, three fill-in issues appeared, two in

the New Mutants themselves and one in the Uncanny X-Men (Colossus and

Illyana; this could have been used as a fill-in for either title, and

the art was by Rick Leonardi). Marvel often kept fill-in issues ready

to run in case of missed deadlines. When Claremont left the title,

these ready-to-run issues were never updated for the new characters

and situations, so these are "lost" New Mutants stories that are part

of Claremont's run.



As a lagniappe, I have included "New_Mutants_Index.html" which is an

exhaustive index to the Claremont issues. I've had this for many

years, and I can't remember where I found it. I wish I could give

major props to whoever did this, because it's excellent. I have never

found a mistake in it, and I have used it quite a bit. If you know who

did this, let me know.



For new readers, besides the graphic novel and the first few issues

that establish the title, the best issues from the run are probably

#21, #44, and #45. The two-part story by Claremont with art by Arthur

Adams and Terry Austin in the 1985 special and the X-Men annual is one

of the high points of the run.