Marvel’s New Mutants was one of the first comics I followed on a monthly basis. My uncle bought me the team’s graphic novel debut for my eleventh birthday, and the discovery of a local news stand with a spinner rack of current comics allowed me to keep up with the X-Men spinoff on a monthly basis.

My younger self adored the series, partly because I’d gotten in on the ground floor of a “hot” new X-title and partly because it focused on a mixed cast of adolescent mutants not much older than myself. Sure it radiated an excess of corny teenage meldodrama, but it did so at a time when I was an eager and receptive audience for such overblown hogwash.

The individual stories weren’t classics by any stretch, but worked well enough as long as writer Chris Claremont kept up his G-rated, genetic outcast riff on Fast Times at Ridgemont High‘s themes of teen angst. (“Will I ever be loved? Let’s hang out at the mall! OH NO! KILLER ROBOTS!”) My interest started to wane, however, once the X-scribe started dragging in the catch-as-catch-can plot mining that characterized his work on the main X-Men title…which happened in earnest around New Mutants #8 (October 1983) and the debut of this week’s Nobody’s Favorite honoree.

Following the presumed death of the New Mutants team leader Karma, Professor X decides the kids need a little downtime and packed them off to chill in Brazil with Sunspot’s mom, an archeologist/Nancy Walker impersonator. In accordance with the Prof’s wishes to keep the children out of harm’s way, she lets them tag along on one her expeditions into the uncharted depths of the Amazonian jungle…where they are promptly attacked by female barbarians and rescued by the centurions of a lost Roman city.

I don’t know why my younger self was able to willingly accept the idea of using Mr. T as a villain or having the kids team up with the mysterious gestalt persona of a team of toy-licensed stunt cyclists, yet could not accomodate the notion of a pocket Roman empire hidden in the Brazilian rainforest. Perhaps it was because I had reached that awkward stage in every nerd’s life where he or she considers the improbability that the U.S.S. Enterprise could encounter Greek, Roman, Nazi, post-nuke America, and Old West planets during its five year mission. (Yes, I know there are “canonical” answers for this besides “cheap set and wardobe rentals.” I still don’t want to hear them.)

Nova Roma, as the little island of anachronistic grandeur is called, has been paralyzed by a power struggle between the senatorial class and the cult of Selene, a femme fatale who feeds on life energy and enjoys seducing underage girls with her dark arcane powers (Claremont Trope #1). Selene sets her sacrificial sights on Amara Juliana Olivia Aquilla (“Amy” for short), the hot blonde daughter of one of the senators.

Despite the best efforts of the New Mutants to free the girl from Selene’s drug-assisted mind-control (Claremont Trope #2). Amara ends up taking a header into an active volcano…

…only to emerge reborn as the tectonically-powered Magma.

With Magma’s rather dubious help, the New Mutants are able to foils Selene’s plans and restore Nova Roma’s ogliarchial republican government to power. Amara’s father bids her to accompany the team back to modern civilization, so as to better learn to control her powers and also because raising a teenage girl is a headache enough without the risk of triggering a massive earthquake every time you tell her she can’t borrow the family chariot.

Besides forming one side of a love triangle between teammates Cannonball (goofy hick) and Wolfsbane (repressed Scottish werewolf), Magma’s role as a member of the New Mutants was twofold.

As a female possessed of great power…

…she was obligated to engage in purplish inner dialogues about the seductive and dangerous nature of her abilities (Claremont Trope #3).

…while her exotic origins obligated her to parrot patronizing observations about how unfamiliar and scary the crazy modern/western world was (Claremont Trope #4).

There was also the time in Uncanny X-Men #189 (January 1985) where she and Rachel Summers, the daughter of Cyclops and Phoenix from an alternate future, dressed up in French maid costumes to infiltrate Selene’s penthouse…only to be captured, leashed, and psychically forced to engage in gladatorial combat (Claremont Tropes #5 through #67).

Rare is the X-franchise character whose lily hasn’t been gilded past the point of recognition. Early traces of this abound even in the generally solid early run of the title, but the advent of the Terrible 90s kicked the process into a baroque overdrive where even such elegantly simple concepts as “Russian farmboy who can turn into metal” or “German acrobat that looks like a demon” could be warped into waking nightmares devoid of all charm or sanity. Magma, already born of a convoluted mess, was no exception.

First came the startling revelation that Nova Roma was actually created by Selene and populated with brainwashed and kidnapped British people as part of her master plan to see how well pasty folks with bad teeth coped with wearing togas in the middle of the Amazon jungle. (I didn’t think there was a way to make the concept even stupidier, but more fool me for underestimating the depth of Marvel’s well of stupidity.)

As a result, Magma was not really a psuedo-Roman princess, but a girl named Alison Crestmere. The conflict between her original and imposed personalities caused the usual series of hero-villain-hero transformations, team jumping, and puerile psychic traumas one expects with characters whose ties to a residually popular franchise keep them locked in a perpetual cycle of progressively awful reboots.

As a greasy knot of Claremontisms dressed up in the trappings of a rejected Fruit Stripe gum mascot (Claremont Trope #68), Alison Amara Amy Juliana Olivia Aquilla Crestmere more than deserves the designation of being Nobody’s Favorite.

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