New Kids in School

In 2003, Marvel Comics debuted an imprint called Tsunami.  In retrospect, the most famous of its titles is Runaways.  The Tsunami book I'm writing about today was originally going by "New Mutants".  It was created by a husband and wife team, Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir.  The book's artists would include such talents as Keron Grant, Staz Johnson, Michael Ryan, and Aaron Lopresti.  At times you could find cover art created by Chris Bachalo or Joshua Middleton.

Okay, let's cut to the story and characters.  The original New Mutants were a younger class of superheroes operating out of the same school as the X-Men.  During Grant Morrison's renowned New X-Men run, the Xavier Institute built on its identity as a school and drew in dozens of new students.  Weir and DeFilippis started creating their cast of teens.  Most of this book's original leads were recruited from outside the school by some of Xavier's former pupils.  The thing about this title is that for the first 13 issues, these kids were "new mutants" as a general description and not by a team name.  Some of the original New Mutants came back as faculty, visiting heroes, or (in one case) a mystical re-shaping of the Marvel Universe.  Dani Moonstar was this group's main mentor.  Karma was the librarian.  Wolfsbane, (the lycanthropic lass shown below) tried her hand as a teacher before leaving.

Issue 14 came at a time when many of the X-books were being re-arranged.  When Morrison's New X-Men tale was complete, repercussions echoed through the X-Men line.  Sort of like how the students of Hogwarts were divided into houses, the students at Xavier's were divided into teams.  Dani named her team the New Mutants.  Teenage mutants from other X-books joined the book as it got retitled "New X-Men: Academy X".  A new part of their schooling would be that teams would
scrimmage each other in adventurous exercises.  A little more than a year later, the characters would be swept into an alternate reality called "House of M", concocted by a desperate Scarlet Witch.  With the end of House of M, Weir and DeFilippis left the book.  It's been almost 10 years since their departure, but characters they created still impact the Marvel universe in remarkable ways.  Supporting characters like Anole, Rockslide, and Hellion have remained with the X-Men as the team wherever the team was to move.  Elixir coincidentally would join an X-Force team.

In the aftermath of House of M, Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost wrote the series under a shortened title "New X-Men".  Beginning with a disturbing act of terrorism in the first post-HOM arc, the students faced perils throughout this world and beyond.  I like what both writing teams brought to the series, but I feel that the Weir/DeFilippis era in the X-books is often underappreciated.  Throughout the couple's time with the book, more of an emphasis was placed on seeing how people interact with one another and how mutant abilities affect their relationships.  I really liked that there were series that were about living life with superhuman abilities.  Rather than thwarting someone who holds the Earth for ransom, they were dealing with their own anxieties and urges.