New Mutants: Dead Souls #6: Love is a Virus; Love is a Drug

The greatest strength of this (sadly) limited series has been the writing, but that is a statement which does a terrible disservice to the extraordinarily high quality of the art. Ultimately, the reason that this book was such a tremendous success hinges on the fact that everything, both the writing and the art, focuses on the characters they feature. Dead Souls was, in many ways, an extended character study with a tacked-on plot – and that has made it one of the best X-Books produced in recent memory.

Let’s take a closer look at this.

In our day-to-day lives, we are as much defined by our small actions as by our larger failures or heroism. Our natures are as much revealed by how we treat the postman as they are by what we’d do if we saw someone take a swipe at a child, and (because of this) the humanity of superheroes is conveyed more by what they do in their downtime than by the quips they fire off in the middle of battle.

So, here, we see Tabby sleeping in until noon. We see Rhane knitting (of COURSE she is a knitter – she’s basically a young, hairy aunty-in-waiting); we see Shatterstar cooking, naked (oblivious as always to societal norms) while Rictor sits back and enjoys the way that this irritates Shan while reveling in the view of his boyfriend’s ass. Dani, even infected by Warlock, radiates warmth and strength. Shan acts like an addict who cannot reach her drug. Ilyana reveals that so much of her confidence is a cover for her terrible self-doubt.

Rosenberg revels in these little moments. And he has the skill to insert them, seamlessly, into the story without altering the pace of the plot. But the writing really represents only half of the brilliance, here. It was Rosenberg’s script, Rosenberg’s dialogue, but there is a brutal nuance to Gorham’s art that intensifies the impact of the writing. Gorham is unafraid to allow his female characters to be ugly in moments of strong emotion – and that’s both vital to producing the effect required by the writing and vanishingly rare. Women, real women, cannot look pretty when they are frightened or in pain. Because they are human. Because they are animals.

In terms of plot, the series basically boiled down to Shan being corrupted by the spirit of the brother she absorbed and becoming obsessed with rejoining him. It was a simple plot, not much of a mystery (it was clear from the beginning that all was not well in the house of Karma) but it wasn’t intended to be complex. It was an excuse for the writer, the artist (and therefore, us) to examine these characters closely and through a slightly different lens. As such, it was a rousing success. And the fact that it ended on a cliffhanger (one which will have serious repercussions for the characters, but which can be resolved fairly easily by Rosenberg or any other writer) will bait the hook – either for a sequel or for events in future books.