#newmutants91

[gaknar]

Man, look at this mess. Look at how skinny Sabertooth is. Look at his hair. Look at that codpiece. I guess there’s this thing in art called gesture drawing, where the pose is exaggerated for maximum dramatic effect. But, I dunno. It’s easy to make fun of the hands and feet Rob Liefled draws, but look at some of this shit. Those aren’t even hands that Sabertooth has there. They are giant bird talons. And notice anything weird about his feet?

He doesn’t even have 5 toes!! How can you be so lazy that you just leave out a toe! This isn’t a pasta salad, Rob! You can’t just leave out the olives because you don’t have time to run to the store and it’s probably going to taste fine anyway! You have to draw all the toes, Rob! You have to! (New Mutants #91 – July 1990)

[gaknar]

This confrontation between the New Mutants and Sabertooth and Caliban seems so watered down. Sabertooth is cutting the shit out of everyone but there’s no blood. Look, Rictor supposedly had his “guts ripped out” in the last issue, but he’s perfectly fine here!

That white tank top is spotless! Does “guts ripped out” not mean what I think it means??? Does it not mean having your abdomen lacerated so deeply that your intestines breach your torso and spill out on the floor? And you try to stuff them back in but you can’t because they are way more slippery than you expected  because you’ve never really thought about how hard it would be to grip your own intestines because why would you?? If that’s the case, I guess this misunderstanding is all on me, but if Rictor and Archangel aren’t actually getting their guts ripped out in these comics, then that actually makes the story a lot less exciting. (New Mutants #91 – July 1990)

[gaknar]

Does anyone else think that this looks like it would actually feel pretty good? Caliban really gets in deep there. Oooo and he’s pushing his neck back and everything. Man how many of us just want a very large ape-like mutant to take us in his powerful arms and tenderly twist us into a pretzel. I could see this guy running his own chiropractic clinic. Caliban’s Chiropractic. He comes in with a lab coat and a clip board. He promises to take all our pain away. Shit but then he’d probably start pressuring us to commit to like three adjustments per week. We all know how pushy Caliban can be!! No one needs you fucking with their back that much, you pseudo-science maniacs!

Anyway, yeah, Caliban breaks Sabertooth’s back. This was pretty big news at the time. It was presented as defeat on a scale that Sabertooth had not suffered before, and it was implied that the injury he sustains here actually killed him, or at least would have lasting effects. I don’t know why anyone would think that. He’s been crushed, had his heart skewered, and heck, like a day and a half before this, Archangel practically cut him in half. Why would anyone think he wouldn’t recover from a measly cracked vertebrae and a severed spinal cord? He’s got a healing factor, remember?? At least it’s good to see Caliban getting some revenge for that time Sabertooth almost murdered him, and also deliver some retribution for Sabertooth’s part in Mutant Massacre. (New Mutants #91 – July 1990)

[gaknar]

I don’t know how accurate the coloring is here on this screen cap, but I find this cover to be very hard on the eyes. Like, dream fever Psylocke scratching my eyes out hard on the eyes. Or maybe it’s the idea of watching Cable trounce around in sewage water that’s mixed with decomposing Morlock corpses. Just . . . this whole thing is unpleasant. (New Mutants #91 – July 1990)

[gaknar]

Masque makes another appearance after terrorizing several of the heroes over in Uncanny X-Men. Here we see him in his element, leading dozens more Morlocks that we have never seen before but somehow managed to escape the genocide of Mutant Massacre. Are we sure the Marauders even committed genocide? Because it seems like they missed a few. And by a few, I mean most of them. And for whatever reason, Masque doesn’t decide to mutilate this particular group of heroes that happen to be trespassing in his territory like he has done to almost everyone else lately. He just kind of leaves them be. Shitty consistency! (New Mutants #91 – July 1990)