Review: ‘New Mutants’ #30 Celebrates In Style

It’s been forty years since the debut of the first spin-off from Marvel’s uncanny heroes. In New Mutants #30, we get to celebrate, but it’s remarkably bittersweet.

In their final issue of New Mutants, Vita Ayala is joined by Alyssa Wong, Alex Lins, Emma Kubert, Roberto Poggi, Antonio Fabela, Jason Loo, Justin Mason, Bryan Valenza, Geoff Shaw, Nolan Woodard and Travis Lanham in a massive anniversary celebration.

Sunspot just wants to celebrate his team’s anniversary. Unfortunately he didn’t account for the fact that they’re a group of chaos goblins, in absolutely the best way. It leads to a lot of happy reminiscing, and even more chaos… Meanwhile, Deadpool decides to mentor the next generation of New Mutants. It goes well.

This was just a joyful comic. The New Mutants have been some of Marvel’s greatest characters since their debut, and Ayala has proven to be one of their best writers. They dive into every era of the characters’ lives and show how they grew as characters. Their bonds as people are fully on display, and you can see how they’ve become found family. It’s heartbreaking that Ayala is leaving the title, as they announced at the end of the issue.

The art on the issue is stellar. There’s no one standout because they’re all equally good. Each of the four lead story artists are complementary, but gives their chapter a unique feel that goes with the spotlight character’s personality. Any one of them would be welcome as a long term regular art team for the series. It’s a little sad to not see longtime series artist Rod Reis pop up, but the rest of the creative team does a fantastic job.

Also, special shout out to Lanham. He always does a great job, but he makes the letters really stand out in this issue. The highlight is his pictograph dialogue for Warlock in the last short, which captures both the character’s personality and honors his history.

The Deadpool story from Wong and Shaw is a lot of fun. It balances just enough crazy Deadpool antics with the more standard comic book shenanigans the young generation of mutants gets into. It’s a sweet follow-up to the work Ayala did with the young mutants, in addition to setting up the upcoming Deadpool series.

I hate to see Ayala go, but hopefully it means they’re up to bigger and better things. Thankfully we got this one last ride.

New Mutants #30 is available now from Marvel Comics.