Beautiful Mutants 1984

New Mutants #20 (October) Badlands. 

Chris Claremont, Bill Sienkiewicz.

The kids fight the Demon Bear on its own mystic territory, and their victory somehow brings about the revelation that Danielle's murdered parents were the Bear all along and, having been liberated, are now alive and well. Where New Mutants went from a fun bunch of teenagers jumping around and chugging soda to a soundtrack that almost certainly featured Hip to Be Square by Huey Lewis and the News, they're now something as starkly dramatic and gut wrenchingly powerful as a Swans album, and the transformation has somehow gone ahead without it feeling like a different book or seeming in any way laboured. I don't understand why the Sienkiewicz run on New Mutants doesn't get mentioned in the same sentences as Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns.

Beautiful Mutants 1983

Marvel Team-Up annual #6 (October) The Hunters and the Hunted. 

Bill Mantlo, Ron Frenz, Kevin Dzuban.

I've never been a fan of comics instructing kids not to do stuff because the message invariably seems to get in the way of whatever fun is to be had. Here we find Spider-Man teaming up with Cloak, Dagger, and the New Mutants in order to foil drug dealers who are making the kids take drugs so they can sell more drugs to them later on and Cloak & Dagger are involved because some drug dealers made them take drugs and those drugs gave them superpowers and thus have they sworn revenge on all drug dealers who sell drugs to kids because drugs are bad - although drugs as the cause of Cloak & Dagger's powers surely sends out a message more in line with the writings of Timothy Leary than the one which was obviously intended, when you think about it. The good guys win, you may not be surprised to learn, and we get what may be the worst art I've seen in any Marvel comic for a while. Wolfsbane's transitional human-wolf form looks like Biffo the Bear on page fourteen.

Beautiful Mutants 1982

Dazzler #11 (January) Lest Ye Be Judged.

Tom DeFalco, Danny Fingeroth, Frank Springer, Vince Colletta.

Dazzler, whom we should probably recall is more or less Kylie Minogue with a superpower, gets the best of Terrax the Tamer, escapes a black hole despite not having a spacesuit, catches up with Galactus - who has given up and gone home by this point - and persuades him to behave; and not once have I been compelled to hurl the half-read comic book across the room in disgust. Also in this issue we have the long overdue return of Beefer beginning on page seven where he is seen holding the drumsticks like chopsticks, possibly deliberately, and Harry S. Osgood is played by Joe Don Baker. Beefer can also be seen enjoying a candy bar on page fourteen and a bag of potato chips on page nineteen. Welcome back, big guy.

Beautiful Mutants 1981

X-Men #150 (October) I, Magneto... 

Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum, Joe Rubinstein, Bob Wiacek.

Magneto is back, living on a Lovecraftian island where no-one else has working powers. Cyclops is held prisoner but is temporarily unable to moan about having to wear glasses. Magneto is up to his old tricks and does thus sink a Russian submarine, killing all of its crew - which I'm fairly sure will come back to bite him in the ass at some point - but this is otherwise a distinctly more reflective Magneto, one who teeters on the brink of humanism but for the aforementioned murder of Russian sailors. Lest we need further evidence, this issue serves as yet another testament to Claremont's writing as the former frothing maniac somehow evolves into a sympathetic and hence more believable character without any obvious contradictions or revision of what we already know. Between this anniversary issue and Defenders #100 - and possibly the Avengers annual depending on the dating - Marvel were really firing on all cylinders this month.

Beautiful Mutants 1980

Marvel Two-in-One #68 (October) Discos and Dungeons. 

Mark Grunewald, Ralph Macchio, Ron Wilson, Gene Day.

We're getting to see a lot of ol' flappy this month, don't you think? Here the Angel is getting over the death of Jean Grey by dancing his ass off at the same discotheque as the Thing, and the two of them inevitably end up fighting for their lives in Arcade's Murder World. This would be business as usual but for this Murder World having been put together by the Toad, with Arcade thankfully just a shadowy sponsor somewhere behind the scenes. The Toad is taking revenge on anyone who ever pissed him off, working his way up to Magneto. The Angel's name appears earlier on the list for obvious reasons and the Thing is simply caught up in the sweep. Being a millionaire, the Angel takes pity on the Toad, even sympathising with him, and so spontaneously finances a theme park called Toadworld in the hope of keeping his former enemy's mind off crime and that. It's possibly the most stupid ending to any superhero comic ever published, and that's why it's great.

Beautiful Mutants 1979

Captain America #229 (January) Traitors All About Me.

Roger McKenzie, Sal Buscema, Don Perlin.

Cap needs to investigate the disappearance of the Falcon in Los Angeles and, continuing the public transport motif we've seen in other titles, needs to take  a long-distance coach. Unfortunately he's a bit low on funds. The Beast offers to help out and we learn that, despite being a fully-grown man, Hank saves pennies in a piggy bank - albeit one which looks more like Sasquatch from Alpha Flight than Napoleon from Animal Farm. Unfortunately the Beast has only $4.75 saved, but thankfully Jarvis is able to step in with his pin money. Things get even stranger once Cap is on the coach and finds himself sat next to Billy, a small boy reading Daredevil #156, as described below*. Billy is very excited about Gene Colan having returned to the title, although he doesn't seem to rate Captain America as a comic, which is probably a good thing. Had Billy been sat on the coach next to Captain America while reading Captain America #229, the issue in which he sees himself sat on the coach next to Captain America while reading Captain America #229, the book might have turned into David Tennant era Doctor Who and would have been shite.

*: In the book as printed, obviously.

Beautiful Mutants 1978

X-Men #112 (August) Magneto Triumphant. 

Chris Claremont, John Byrne, Terry Austin.

Having cornered the X-Men in a sideshow caravan, Magneto flies them all off into space, meaning they can't knock him out because he's keeping them alive, although I'm sure Phoenix could have come up with something. None of this has anything to do with Mesmero or his circus of doom. Magneto points out that he's never even met the man and simply happened to be passing, also failing to shed further light on the robot version of himself we saw revealed as an imposter back in X-Men #58 - ten fucking years ago. Anyway, the lad flies our gang to the south pole, to his massive underground base—well, one of his massive underground bases - then makes them captive by means of technology which reduces them all to infancy in terms of motor coordination, being able to form words, and presumably wiping their own arses. This is to teach them a lesson. Alpha reduced the magnetically empowered nutcase to infancy back in Defenders #16 and, even though it was his own fucking fault, Magneto now invites the literally blameless X-Men to give account of how much they like them apples.