205. New Mutants vol 1 #21 ... Marvel ... Chris Claremont ...

Back in the 80s and early 90s, back when writer Claremont was in his prime, he was churning out hit after hit, creating new characters, both good and bad and here is another example of his creation that until today has been a cult favorite resulting in even a super villain cosmic crossover event!

So let's start from the awesome painted cover by artist Bill S. It says slumber party. And since it is a book about teens, naturally here in this issue, after the mess that happened, we see most of the young people requiring a break. Prof X approved them inviting local teens from the nearby village/ town to come and ... to my surprise and how incredulous this part of the storyline is ... they came and naturally people being people some started exploring school grounds

Now why no one freaked out when they saw a real life tiny dragon defies believe (we are talking about Lockheed) ...

So while the girls have their party, the boys were left wandering the grounds ... until they see a meteor coming in for a landing in their vicinity and go to investigate

SPOILER ALERT ... or a sort

As per the corner box on the cover, you already know that the character is going to be future member, Warlock. Warlock is a child escaping from his techno-organic world where a child is expected to fight his parent for the right to live once he comes of age except that Warlock decided not to do so and flees his father. As we are shown in panels here and there, he is being pursued but that is another tale for another day

In this issue, it merely deals with Warlock meeting the humans and how they communicated with him after the usual obligatory "fight". But as this is NM and not XMen, the fight is brief. One more future character not on the cover is Doug Ramsey (aka Cypher) who is brought in to communicate with Lock as his ability is ... to be able to translate all languages almost instantaneously ... yeah we agree ... lame ... and he is not of the jock type of kid either ... so why did he join the NM and actually later go on missions? Defies understanding

But hey my criticisms aside, this is an excellent read as so much happened here! And awesome moody artwork from Bill S

Ratings: 8/10