Friday, September 16, 2005

NEW MUTANTS #18 Marvel Comics, 1984



This is one of my most treasured comic books: New Mutants #18, by Chris Claremont and the superhumanly bad-ass artist Bill Sienkiewicz. The copy I own today is the same one I picked up from a comic shop in Bellevue, WA back in 1984, and like all of my Important Comics, I have read, looked at, and smelled my beat-up copy countless times.

Part one of the two-part Demon Bear storyline, this issue focuses on young Danielle Moonstar, a mutant student at Xavier’s School whose dreams are haunted by the demon bear that killed her parents. Danielle prepares for an inevitable, fateful confrontation with the bear in the physical realm – and meets her destiny in the snowy woods outside Xavier’s one night.

This comic book blew my 15 year old mind.


I had never before seen art like this in a monthly comic book. Sienkiewicz’s work on this comic and all of his New Mutants work really broadened my perception of the possibilities inherent in the medium, of what comics could be. Here, printed on the same crappy newsprint as the issue of Micronauts I no doubt picked up at the same time, is a little masterpiece of technique and design disguised as disposable children’s entertainment.

I can’t overstate how revolutionary Bill Sienkiewicz’s art seemed at the time. This run made me a lifelong fan of his work, particularly Elektra: Assassin, which is just an insane acid-trip of a comic. I credit Sienkiewicz with opening doors in the comic industry for more progressive artists like Dave McKean and David Mack. It seems to me that Sienkiewicz’s work on New Mutants changed everyone’s perceptions about the limits of comic book art in a monthly format. Okay, I may be overselling his influence – I am prone to fits of hyperbole every know and then – but I really feel like Bill Sienkiewicz was a revolutionary figure in comic books. He was with me, anyway.

Sienkiewiecz's art really elevates Claremont's story, which is bogged down a little by the subplots and mannered dialogue that he is so known for today. This issue just goes to show what a collaborative form comic books really are. The New Mutants series started out with rather conventional comic book art illustrating Claremont's scripts (check out the upper left corner of the cover, above, to see what the characters looked like prior to Sienkiewicz) but soon made a sharp left turn into magic mushroom land when Bill S came on board. The writing had not changed, but the change in artists had a profound and positive effect on the book, and everybody wins.

Check out these panels, below. Sienciewicz takes what in script form may seem like a pretty straightforward sequence - Dani walks outside, challenges the Demon Bear to show himself - and transforms it into something special, something mythic and foreboding:



On one level it’s a pity that this beautiful art is printed on this twenty-two year old pulp paper – you can tell by these scans that the production and material aren’t equal to the art itself. It’s sort of a shame because I think it needs to be reprinted on paper that is equal to its radness. Have they ever reprinted these books? Anybody? Dan Coyle?

But on another level, I like having the original comic that Young Dave read over and over in 1984 and in all the years after. It’s a little imperfect relic from my youth, from those early days of discovery and hope before I grew up and was seized by an existential terror, before I realized that only the cold void, the black and unimaginable emptiness of death awaits us. Nothingness – that is our destiny and birthright as mortals. The void calls all of us.

Woah! Hello, Sylvia Plath? Somebody’s stealing your routine! I don’t know what that was about; sometimes the meds wear off and I just write shit.

Right, back to the comic. Here's the big full-page money shot of Dani facing the Demon Bear:




Anyway, New Mutants #18 is one of the Important Comics in my collection because of its sentimental value and because it opened my puny mind to the possibilities available to comic creators when they stop letting the conventions of the media dictate what they can and cannot put on the page. The possibilities, man…

Tell me that doesn't rule.

42 comments:

beatzo said...

By some weird coincidence, issue 20 of the New Mutants was my first exposure to Bill Sienkiewicz's artwork. Most of my reactions were quite similar to yours. Because comics arrive late in India, I read this comic sometime in 1994 and yes, i was fifteen then too.

Thanks for this post, and for all the others. You have an amazing blog.
-beatzo

Anonymous said...

Do you know, they did reprint this story, in a trade sensibly called 'The Demon Bear saga'. It was on glossy paper, and I bought a copy back in 1992 or so, when New Mutants was all about Cable and cross-hatched cheek bones.

It's a classy piece of work.

Kevin Melrose said...

I had a nearly identical reaction when I picked up Issue 18 as a lad.

Prior to that, the series had been illustrated by Bob McLeod and then Sal Buscema, two perfectly fine artists whose work never really clicked with me. Then bam: Bill Sienkiewicz.

His work on the later storylines involving Cloak & Dagger, and David Haller/Legion were wonderful and surreal, too.

Then Steve Leialoha took over ...

Peter said...

Sienkiewicz on New Mutants was fantastic. Sienkiewicz on anything is fantastic.

And indeed, this was reprinted in the Demon Bear Saga tpb.

Just throwing in too that I personally think Sal Buscema is also fantastic, if not on New Mutants, then definitely on Spectacular Spider-Man. (His issues of The Child Within, Funeral Arrangements, and the double-sized Goblin stories in #189 and #200, especially the concluding pages of that epic, are like some of the best Spidey art ever--and I looooove Spidey artists!)

Comics rock. Your blog too ;)

Anonymous said...

I found my Demon Bear TPB copy a few years ago, because I had ignored the New Mutants in my wee lad years and when I really got back into comics some years ago I was just going through stuff like this and various indie 80's titles.

Let's just say the first New Mutants comics I saw by the time of my early adolescence weren't anything classic but indeed, when it was all heavily cross-hatched BS and Cable.

Let us revel in a time when Claremont's work wasn't the most effective parody of itself, when his output's negative qualities weren't dialed up to so high a level.

naladahc said...

Indeed. Sienkiewicz's run on New Mutants changed my total expectation with what could be done on the printed page in a comic. This was the first time I was exposed to this kind of illustration and at 14 it blew my mind.

I actually lost so much interest in the book after he left too.

Ah. Remember the X-Men and New Mutants of the early 80s is such a fond thing compared to the mess of a thousand titles the whole X line is now.

Easy to read good stories and none of this insane continuity bog down that an X reader now must have.

naladahc said...

And I am still a fan of that era of Micronauts. None of that "New Voyages" or recent crap!

Ken said...

Good essay. I'm a sporadic comics guy, but Sienkewicz is easily in my top four or five artists, along with Will Eisner, Alex Toth, Jack Kirby, and David Mazzucchelli.

Anonymous said...

Peter: Anything with Sal Buscema and J.M. DeMatteis is pure comic Spider-Man gold. They did great stuff together. One or both of those guys is due a Marvel Visionaries hardcover, as is Mr. Sienkewicz.

Greg said...

It's interesting to read Moon Knight with Sienkiewicz, because he starts out ripping off Neal Adams and slowly evolves into the mind-blowing artist he was on New Mutants and has remained since. If you don't have those, go find them. They are totally worth it.

David Campbell said...

I'm with Greg on that, those Moon Knight issues Sienkiewiecz did are the cat's ass.

Anonymous said...

Sienkiewicz seemed to be as concerned with the techniques and materials of the medium as he was with what he was representing, bringing to mainstream comics what had already happened in painting, Pollack being one of the most notable examples, supported and driven by critics like Clement Greenburg.

I remember when this came out. This, and Elektra: Assassin. And he just steamed right on, with his adaptation of Moby Dick, Stray Toasters, and the cruelly unfinished Big Numbers. He was blowing everybody's mind. People were saying, eyes wide, in hushed tones of awe, "You know how he inks blood? He just splatters and flicks it onto the page!" Like, SHHH! Beautiful blasphemy!

Matt Shepherd said...

Man, I hated Sienkiewicz when I was 11. I just thought everything was a scratchy mess, and why can't he just learn to DRAW?

What converted me was the Helfer/Sienkiewicz run on the Shadow a few years later. I love the Shadow so much I felt COMPELLED to read it, even if I hated the art, and THAT is when he blew my 15-year-old mind.

...maybe he has an age requirement?...

Anyway, by the third issue of The Shadow, Sienkiewicz was my comics messiah, and Stray Toasters became my bible for about a year. THOSE comics are the most-read things in my collection, pored over panel by panel, word by word, for two years of my life.

And I maintain that the Helfer Shadow series is one of the best, funniest, most underrated comic book series of all time. Sorry to get off on a tangent, but that's my Sienkiewicz story.

thekelvingreen said...

I think there is an age requirement for Sienkiewicz; I remember they had him do some covers for early issues of Transformers and I thought they looked terrible. Now of course, I see what he was doing, but then, it just looked like bad art.

The Half Price Books around the corner from my place has a copy of the Demon Bear tpb. I'll see how cheap it is...

Anonymous said...

I'm pleased to see all the praise for Sienkiewicz, especially for his run on The Shadow, which was brilliant, surreal stuff. I still read those issues today. It's incredibly witty and twisted, and Sienkiewicz's art on it is some of his best work, especially his last cover for the series, which is still one of my favorite comic covers ever.

Anonymous said...

Helfer's Shadow, and the Howard Chayking miniseries that preceded it, are the bee's knees. Conde Nast was so horrified by it they forced DC to cancel it mid-storyline.

The Sienkewicz stuff is great, as is the prelude Annual drawn by the late, great Joe Orlando, but when Kyle Baker takes over the art chores with issue #7 the book goes totally batshit crazy, with 11 year old presidential assassins, Irish mobsters using gorillas, and decapitation by helicopter falling on you. Verily, some great comics.

tomorrowboy 2.9 said...

Heh, I actually picked this up out of a quarter bin earlier this year along with some other new mutants comics. The other ones were fun enough, but yeah, I thought the art in this was amazing (albiet I was 21 at the time...)
I'm guessing there'll be an essential new mutants collecting this in the next few years

Anonymous said...

"Helfer's Shadow, and the Howard Chayking miniseries that preceded it, are the bee's knees. Conde Nast was so horrified by it they forced DC to cancel it mid-storyline."

Was that the story that featured the Shadow and Shi-Wan Khan's heads being removed and placed on the rock'em sock'em robots? It's been ages since I read that series but that was some crazy stuff.

Andy

Anonymous said...

Sienkiewicz is the Jimi Hendrix of comics. He's my favorite artist (closely followed by Windsor-Smith and Colan), and he's the only artist to make The New Mutants interesting. The Legion story is my favorite from that era.

Go find the Dazzler comics he did the covers for. No, seriously. They're amazing! (just don't open them...)

And the artists he inspired! Dave McKean, David Mack, Ashley Woods, Ted McKeever, Ben Templesmith: all quality, all different yet sharing Sienkiewicz's jaggedly surrealism.

Okay, I sound like a 13 year-old talking about the latest action movie ("it's like so awesome dude if u don't like it U SUCK"), so I'll stop.

Anonymous said...

Andy: You betcha. DC still had the Shadow license and followed it up with a more traditional The Shadow Strikes! series set in the 40s by Gerard Jones and Rod Wigham, which ran for a few years.

Anonymous said...

I have read, looked at, and smelled my beat-up copy countless times.

Thank you, Dave, for tearing down the veil of silence and shame that surrounds the most surreptitious yet loving comic book habit: comic book smelling. If more people had your courage perhaps we wouldn't all be regarded by the general public as emotionally stunted closet-dwelling pulp-sniffing freaks.

I vote for a Smell Week.

Matt Shepherd said...

" Sienkiewicz is the Jimi Hendrix of comics."

If you already knew about Voodoo Child, then that was a very sly comment.

If you DIDN'T already know about Voodoo Child, you are in for a VERY big treat, my friend.

(I wish I could read some stuff again for the first time ever)

Anonymous said...

I didn't read these comics until I was 20, so I was past the age requirement, and they suitably impressed me. I really liked the issue after the Demon Bear story,too where they introduced Warlock, a character that everyone but Sienkiewicz has struggled with (as much as I struggle with spelling his name). Anyone read Fell, by the way? Ben Templesmith, who has a similar style, does some cool stuff in that issue, in a 9 panel grid at that.

Jason Langlois said...

I remember thinking "What happened to the guy who did Moon Knight? He was so cool then..."

And about 4 issues later, New Mutants became my favorite comic ever (eclipsing Legion of Super Heroes).

Bill was a god.

Peter said...

Hey Dan, I totally agree, both DeMatteis/Buscema's run on Spider-Man, as well as anything Sienkiewicz (remember his inks on Sal during the clone saga? That was bizarre!) should receive a Visionaries treatment, preferably in hardcover.

Has any Spider-Man cast/villain ever gotten a better send-off than Harry? I think it's terrific that DeMatteis got Sal's art for Spec #200 and decided to simply not dialogue any of the final pages because they were that powerful on their own. And they were. I think the first time I read it I actually had tears in my eyes because I felt so bad for both Harry and Peter!

(well, as for better send-offs, there's Aunt May, I actually cried my eyes out there, and look who wrote that ;))

At the very least there should be an Essential New Mutants by now, shouldn't there? After all, they're putting out an Essential X-Factor (!) out soon...

Anonymous said...

Sonuvabeeyotch that's ... stunning. Absolutely stunning.
Gotta love the Sien...

"Thank you, Dave, for tearing down the veil of silence and shame that surrounds the most surreptitious yet loving comic book habit: comic book smelling."

Uh.. I recently bought 50 issues of Marvel Two In One in the quarter bins at a Con and I'm desperately trying to get rid of the stink... that musty/mildew smell is not good. At all.
Right now I have twenty issues hanging on bbq skewers over some clay cat litter hoping it will help suck out the odour (it's a time honoured restoration process apparently)

Peter said...

I wonder if my room stinks, considering it's stuffed full of comics going back decades... I wouldn't know since I don't have a sense of smell!

Unknown said...

This was a funny post for two reasons. I hold this comic in exactly the same way Dave does. It opened my eyes to new forms of comic art, as well as being among my most treasured posessions. The second reason was that I read the latest Claremont X-Men today - and have decided to give up on it. The man has become such a parody of himself it is scary - I just put down the comic, realised I am 34 and understood bugger all that had gone on. Even though all it did was provide exposition.

But to New Mutants #18 - I salute you.

And the Cloak and Dagger arc was even better.

Anonymous said...

I miss Jeanne-Marie Beaubier here, the great Aurora from the Alpha Flight.

Anonymous said...

Matthew: Oh yes, I own and love Voodoo Child. While the biography is skimpy and sometimes too precious, the art may be the best work Sienkiewicz has ever done.

Anonymous said...

Holy cats, Sienkiewicz must've done that cover to Transformers #1 that I spent so many hours pondering as a child!!! I kept thinking "this is so messed up", but always came back to "...but it's pretty cool".

Suddenly, the world makes a little more sense...

Anonymous said...

Just read this essay.

You are correct on all points, sir.

Anonymous said...

Oh my god, I've only just discovered your blog when my non-comics friend sent me the Power Girl article...

But this...

I could cry it was the first US format superhero comic I ever ever read...

And yes it blew my mind...

Thanks for taking me back.

Anonymous said...

I couldn't stop reading all this. A whole page of praise for Sienkiewicz New Mutants and DeMatties/Buscema Spectacular!!

I must have been 11 or 12 when NM 18 came out, and I'd been a reader for two issues at that point and like everyone else it blew my mind.

Remeber the poster Siekiewicz did? Featuring elements of Warlock, parts of it were actual circuit boards glued to the canvas! I have it hanging on my wall, next to an original from the Cloak and Dagger storyline.

Really revolutionary stuff. The whole run deserves a re-colored hardcover treatment.

barsoomcore said...

Thank you for that tremendous trip into my own memories. New Mutants was when I started seriously deviating from what everyone I knew liked. I was the only person who liked that book.

And to whoever blessed the Art Adams Special Edition #1 -- hell yeah! Man I LOVED that book. I read it to pieces.

Republic of Replicants said...

Great review of #18.
I did a review of the Sienkiewicz run, also.

It's simply amazing how he made the New Mutants so much more exciting at the time.

Unknown said...

i agree with everything you said. Bill S. totally changed my view of comics. he was and still is my favorite artist in comics. i was in high school when i got hooked on the new mutants, and though the uncanny x-men were already eating a substantial part of my allowance, i just had to skip recess meals and fit the new mutants into the budget.

Anonymous said...

Ah, all of us soon-to-be middle-aged former (and current!) comic book 'geeks'; New Mutants was one of my favorite titles growing up. I guess I was around 13 when the 'Demon Bear' arc came around and I loved it too; I mean, were they really going to kill off poor Dani or what? I wasn't nearly as jaded then as I am now so that was a real fear! As far as Bill Sienkiewicz went, I think I fell below that age limit; I never really liked his art much. Looking back, I can appreciate it a lot more, but all things with time, I guess...

Mike jackson

Anonymous said...

Tastes vary. Sienkiewicz pretty much killed me off the title. His stuff is TERRIBLE. The 'bear' story? That head shot of the critter looks like a wolf, not a bear. Everything was wildly distorted as though he was on drugs. Heck, at one point he had Sam Guthrie looking almost like Frankenstein's monster. Awful!

jackbnimble said...

I was 13 when I read this. I was the art kid all through school, the guy who could draw any thing you threw at me, and being a comic book artist was my calling - now I'm broke and unemployed and can't draw anymore(I took up being a writer)... but man, Sienkiewicz's take on the New Mutants blew me away, and opened up the vistas of how comics could be presented for me. I remember vividly his run on the New Mutants, especially with this issue and the following, which was an acid trip compared to the stuff prior... great post.

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