New Mutants

My love for the New Mutants

| Costas Barbatsis

I had started reading comics at the age of 9 because there weren’t enough animations on television and I didn’t like the ones that were already there. I did not expect it but I started to like reading comics, they intrigued my imagination which I expressed through drawing and I advanced my drawing skills by studying the art in the comic books. You can say that out of necessity I got into comics. They were there for studying and to read in my spare time but eventually, I fell in love with them!

 At the age of 13, my eye caught a comic book which had an amazing cover with the most realistic art hanging by a peg next to the entrance of my local corner store. I was transfixed and I was standing there for several seconds studying and building up a story for what I saw on the cover. As I returned home I could not forget it so I went back and bought it!

It was a superhero comic translated from English to Greek and it featured 3 comics from Marvel – the Uncanny X-Men, New Mutants and Alpha Flight! On the cover was the New Mutants and the comic was named X-Men.

I was amazed by how good the creative team of Chris Claremont and John Byrne were so I loved the X-Men, I was fascinated with Alpha Flight this new Canadian superhero team that John Byrne was introducing, but I identified immediately with the New Mutants!


The New Mutants were a bunch of teenagers trying to fit in while feeling moody, awkward and outcasts but they had superpowers! Yes at that age I felt just like that and I wished I had superpowers too but also and mostly I just wanted to have friends just like them!

Chris Claremont had succeeded to build for each and one of them a true personality and Sal Buscema’s art was the type I called “realistic”…they seemed so authentic and real to me and that hooked me. As I grew older I continued to read their stories as they grew up and became X-Force and up to today I’m still following Dani’s, Sam’s, Berto’s, Rahne’s, Amara’s and Xi’an’s adventures wherever they might be featured.

My love for the New Mutants is big and great. They got me hooked on comics and I will always feel fortunate for that. I will always read their stories and it will be like visiting old friends.

If you are fans of the New Mutants I believe you will understand my passion.

For you who are not I strongly suggest to read their stories, I’m sure you will enjoy them as much as the rest of us

New Mutants: Dead Souls

| Costas Barbatsis

I’m a big fan of the New Mutants, I was 13 years old when I first read issue 4 of volume one and since then I have been following how their stories progress in different comic book titles. So obviously I had to read the newest limited series about them that came out.

New Mutants: Dead Souls is a 6 issue limited series written by Matthew Rosenberg, penciled & inked by Adam Gorham and coloured by Michael Garland. Issue one came out in May 2018 and issue six which was the final issue of the limited series came out in October 2018.

The limited series focuses on a new set of team members from the New Mutant history. This new roaster consists of Karma, Magik & Wolfsbane three of the original members, Boom Boom & Rictor who joined the original team along the way and are better known as members of X-Force, Strong Guy & Prodigy who are the newest additions. This wasn’t a roaster I was looking forward too especially as I did not see how these characters are linked and how they will interact with each other.

Luckily Rosenberg wove such a story rich with threads of the New Mutant and X-Men history. I was so glad how the characters seemed so true both as to what I knew of them and also in how they have matured and evolved without dismissing the continuity that has defined them.

The art by Gorham was very much to my taste, a bit of gritty/realistic as l like to call it. It has a lot of detail and cool face expressions and what l absolutely enjoyed was that each character had his distinctive look and style which made them different and recognizable. It’s not easy to achieve this.

I really enjoyed this limited series which I did not like at the beginning for the choice of its team roaster but I loved it for the character interaction and for the continuous history and true continuity mentions, it made a good story even better. But l wish it did not end the way it did. It seemed more of a cliffhanger for a next issue then a nearly tied up story.

Its not a comic book series for a jump on point for new readers or a fresh start of reintroducing the New Mutants but I do believe its a great comic book for long-standing fans.

I would definitely suggest it for hardcore New Mutant and X-men fans, you will absolutely enjoy it.

Hooked, inspired and entertained!

| Costas Barbatsis

The comic book that got me hooked on superhero comics was X-Men.

A comic book translated in Greek and published by ΜΑΜΟΥΘ COMIX (Μαμουθ Comix) way back in 1987.

It was so different compared to all the other comics that I was reading up to then, the format was bigger it had coloured pages and it featured three superhero stories.

The stories were written almost a decade before I got the chance to read them but they still seemed so fresh and the art was stunning.

I was hooked, inspired and entertained!

I still love reading it after all these years.