New Mutants Return to the Marvel Universe

The New Mutants are returning to the Marvel Universe and rather than evil mutants, the team will be taking on creatures of the night.

Marvel Comics has announced New Mutants: Dead Souls, a six-issue miniseries from writer Matthew Rosenberg (Phoenix Resurrection, Secret Warriors) and artist Adam Gorham (Rocket). The series features the team of Magik, Boom Boom, Rictor, Strong Guy, and Wolfsbane brought together by the mind-controlling former New Mutant Karma. Each issue will see the motley mutant crew star in a standalone story against a supernatural threat.

“To me, the New Mutants exemplify everything I love about [super hero teams],” Rosenberg said in a statement. “They are true underdogs, doubted and dismissed, but always ready to prove themselves. They’re the weirdos, the outcasts, the leftovers, and the misfits, but they are there for the people who need them.”

“They’re constantly in way over their heads, but always rise above,” says Rosenberg of the team. “Our series takes all of that, collects some of the best New Mutants alongside oddballs better known for their time with X-Factor and X-Force, and throws them into a mission they aren’t at all ready for. We pack it full of nods to the history of the team and hints about their future, and enough creepy moments, epic battles, offbeat humor, and dysfunctional family dynamics to make a book worthy of the title New Mutants.”

The decision to have the New Mutants face off against darker threats puts the new series in line with the superhero meets horror genre mashup of the upcoming New Mutants movie, which releases in April 2018.

Rosenberg has some experience with Magik. He wrote the mutant sorceress into the pages of Secret Warriors, where she is currently teaming up with the young Inhumans team to hunt down Dark Beast and Mister Sinister.

The rest of her team have been primarily been background characters for the past few years. Strong Guy, Rictor, and Wolfsbane are all former members of X-Factor Investigations who attended the funeral of their former leader, Multiple Man when he died in Death of X. Strong Guy then joined the X-Men in their assault on New Attilan in Inhumans vs. X-Men. Some of them showed up on the mutant state of New Tian with mysterious new powers during the Secret Empire event.

Boom Boom has recently been a part of Cable’s X-Force team before leaving to form the Utopians, who lived on the ruins of the mutant haven of Utopia. When the group was discovered there by the X-Men, they rejoined their mutant brethren at Xavier’s School.

New Mutants: Dead Souls launches in March 2018.