The New Mutants are: Cannonball, Sunspot, Magma, Magik, Dani Moonstar and Karma aka the X-Men’s B-team aka who?! When one of their team goes missing, they set out to find her in a remote town – and guess who’s awaiting? Legion! It’s six versus however many dozens of personalities are inside David Haller’s whacked-out mind!
After some truly dismal recent X-Men books, I thought I’d go back a few years and try out Zeb Wells’ acclaimed 2009 run on New Mutants despite recognising only a couple of characters, Magik and Legion. And it speaks to Wells’ ability that he did a decent job with a cast of near-unknowns!
This is the first time I’ve seen Legion live up to his name as the personalities in his head surface, one by one, to take over his body – and it’s pretty cool to see! The revolving door of personalities also gives him alternating superpowers which makes him a pretty dangerous cat – I get why he’s an omega-level mutant now (though I’m not sure how those personalities wound up in his noggin in the first place). He has an ambiguous alignment – essentially good but bad people control his actions - rather than being just straight up evil and wanting to take over the world which makes him an interesting villain.
I liked the unusual storyline of Magik launching a rescue attempt inside Legion’s chaotic mind even if the real world half was the regular superheroes punching the bad guy thing. Also, besides Legion and Magik, none of the characters really stood out. Diogenes Neves’ art isn’t anything special and he has some very bland character faces that tend to look alike. The final issue is a bit dull in mostly recapping the adventure that’s just happened and the fill-in artist was dreadful.
Considering I’ve never read any New Mutants books or know most of the characters, I was pleasantly surprised to find Return of Legion to be a flawed but ok read – worth a look if you’re an X-Men fan but don’t expect brilliance.
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