Marvel Team-Up Annual #6 “The Hunters and the Hunted” (October 1983)

Focus characters and theme: Rahne and Roberto in an urban crime/ "Science creates a monster" pastiche

The Story: In the same month as New Mutants #8 (The beginning of the Amazon River caper) came this story featuring the kids along with Cloak & Dagger and Spider-Man. It divides very neatly into four acts:

The Exposition (8 pages): Spider-Man helps Cloak & Dagger defeat a ring of auto thieves who were also hooked into the gang of drug dealers that Cloak & Dagger usually hunt. The action showcases Cloak and Dagger’s power, while the text is mostly Spider-Man recapping their origins to himself and thus to the reader.



The Kidnapping (7 pages): The New Mutants are in Manhattan to see the musical “Cats” on Broadway. Instead of going home afterward, Roberto drags them all to a video arcade where he plays Space Invaders for an hour while Rahne gets harassed by some street toughs. Things escalate, and soon Bobby and Rahne are lying unconscious in a culvert, to be dragged away by henchmen in the drug trade.



The Team-Up (6 pages): Spider-Man tracks Cloak & Dagger to the Holy Ghost Church on 42nd Street where they often hide out. Sam Guthrie and Danielle Moonstar see the open church door and seek refuge inside, where they learn from Spider-Man and Cloak & Dagger that Roberto and Rahne have probably been kidnapped as experimental subjects by the drug lords who hope to replicate the circumstances leading to Cloak & Dagger gaining their powers.



The Climax (11 pages): In the back rooms of a meat packing plant on West 14th Street, the captive Rahne and Roberto are indeed injected with experimental drugs. This transforms them into rampaging, ultra-powered monster versions of themselves. Rahne kills one of the gang bosses (the caption says he’s just unconscious, but the art says otherwise) before Cloak & Dagger can arrive to absorb Bobby and Rahne’s powers (respectively) into themselves.



Then Cloak and Dagger merge together momentarily, canceling out each other's extra power and returning to their usual selves. They turn down an offer to come to the Xavier School with the usual and bafflingly foolish “We must learn about our powers alone.”



My Two Cents: The best place to fit this Bill Mantlo story within Chris Claremont’s continuity is between issues 4 and 5, just prior to the county fair where the kids met Team America. That’s the last time the kids are in New York before Dani is kidnapped at the fair, causing the kids to travel to Big Sur, California to rescue her, then immediately go to Brazil, not returning home to New York until issue #13. Xian Coy Manh should have been with the team at any point prior to the Big Sur trip. But that’s easily explained as Xian having to go take care of her siblings while the other kids are having fun in Manhattan. A tough break, but easy to believe.

Both Bobby and Sam transform from street clothes to costumes when their powers activate. This is not a thing. Why were any of them besides Rahne even wearing their costumes to go see Cats? I could have sworn the New Mutants already had seen and discussed Cats in an episode of their own comic book, but maybe I was thinking of their trip to see the film E.T. at the Westchester Mall in issue #2.

Speaking of Cats, Rahne is scandalized by the slinky costumes and dancing, as well as by the general ambience of seedy early 1980s Times Square, which includes a hooker and a peep show. But in the early 1990s, the Disney Corporation bought a theatre in the area on the condition that the city government evict the porn peddlers and improve police services in the area. This led to a wave of upscale tourist attractions setting up camp in the area, including Madame Tussaud’s, numerous restaurants and shops, a modern multiplex movie theater, and the studios for ABC TV’s “Good Morning America.” A state-led nonprofit consortium renovated stage theaters in the area, leading to a renaissance of Broadway musicals which continues to this day.



At the arcade, Bobby is shown playing the 1978 video game Space Invaders rather than one of the new hits of that year like Star Wars, Mario Brothers, or Dragon’s Lair. Maybe they only had old games in Brazil?

Rahne is knocked unconscious when the bullet bounces off of her forehead. Yow! That's one thick skull. Also, the human hand in the second panel below implies that she switched back to girl form before she was shot. Why did she do that?



Spider-Man is almost incidental in this story. He throws a few punches in the final battle, but his main contribution is to lead Sam and Dani from Holy Ghost Church to the meat packing plant to which Cloak & Dagger have already teleported. For some reason Cloak & Dagger don’t immediately attack the mobsters after arriving; we don’t see them intervene until Spider-Man, Dani, and Sam break open a wall, just after Bobby and Rahne have been injected. Did Dani have to run from the Holy Ghost Church (42nd and 9th, a few blocks from Times Square) a mile and a half to 14th Street on the south end of Chelsea? Sam could fly, but at this point he had never carried anyone with him. Maybe Sam flew and Spidey carried Dani. Or maybe she took the A line on the subway? Yes, I am overthinking it, but I’m having fun.

Mantlo’s dialogue is serviceable, heavy on exposition, with some light characterization but none of the self-doubting internal monologues that mark Claremont scripts. Bill Mantlo wrote Cloak & Dagger’s debut in 1982, so he knows the characters well. The art by Ron Frenz and Kevin Dzuban is perfectly fine as well.

Is Cloak a rewrite of DC’s Raven, who was introduced in 1980? Their powers and darkness theme seem similar. Cloak and Dagger’s “fighting drug crime in Hell’s Kitchen” premise seems like a slam-dunk to join Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and (sigh) Iron Fist in yet another Netflix series for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But nope, their 2018 TV series takes place in New Orleans and is broadcast on the Freeform network instead. Seems like a missed opportunity for crossovers.

On its own, this is a typical "one and done" issue of Marvel Team-Up. But with Chris Claremont, it's "waste not, want not," so elements from this story will be woven into his own increasingly elaborate X-Men mythology in upcoming issues, which is why we had to cover it before moving forward to New Mutants issue #13.

Alright! I've been waiting for this New Mutants thread to be created by rberman . I just have a slight suggestion. I was wondering if you could also add that one sentence theme for the issue, that you included on the Astro City review thread for each issue? Thanks.

#13: “School Daysze” (March 1984)

Main Character and theme: Amara settles in

The Story: The kids return to the Xavier School for the first story since issue #4, bringing Amara along. A hamburger cookout is fraught with teen drama. Dani is jealous of the attention that Roberto gives Amara, who realizes that she has overdressed.



Sam tries to show off for Amara but ends up drenching her in soda. Amara loses control of her powers, starts a small volcano, and flees, humiliated, contemplating whether the world would be safer without her in it.



At Project Wideawake, Valerie Cooper, Agent Gyrich, and Sebastian Shaw watch a test Sentinel go berserk. Back to the drawing board! But what made the Sentinel go nuts? Turns out that Kitty Pryde is over at the house of her buddy Doug Ramsey, and the two were hacking into the Hellfire Club’s computer to spy on Sebastian Shaw’s activities. This accidentally gave them access to Project Wideawake.



Xavier telepathically commands Kitty to return to the mansion, which apparently is not far on foot from Doug’s house. It seems she has skipped an X-Man training session to be with a boy. Kitty cuts through the woods and comes across Amara, sobbing inconsolably. Kitty tries to be nice, but Amara will have none of it, and the other kids are quite surly as well when Kitty crosses their path on the way home. The cookout has gone sour, and everybody’s in an infectious bad mood. Xavier chastens Kitty for calling the new students "X-Babies."





Rahne and Sam are flummoxed in computer lab, while Amara picks up on this modern contraption fairly easily. Eager to find something she’s better at than Amara, Rahne, seeking attention, does a werewolf trick in dance class, earning a rebuke from Stevie Hunter for her lack of discretion.



Xavier has recreated Amara’s bedroom from her home in Nova Roma, but she’s less comforted by the familiarity and more creeped out that he invaded her mind to get the image of her bedroom. I don’t blame her! He says he won’t enter her mind again but almost immediately finds an excuse to establish an ongoing "low level psychic rapport" with her. Later, Amara has her first session in the Danger Room, with Stevie Hunter bizarrely at the controls. Xavier says he will monitor her power usage telepathically. This seems like precisely what he promised not to do earlier, so she calls him a liar and flees. But that night she overhears Xavier wistfully communicating holographically with his interstellar girlfriend Lilandra. This humanizes Xavier in Amara’s eyes, so she decides to give him another chance.





My Two Cents: After several plot-heavy issues, this one is completely characterization, showing the emotional aftermath of recent events while setting the pieces in place for future storylines. Chris Claremont was really good at doing this without feeling decompressed. This issue is all about Amara’s integration into life in Westchester, and how her innocent beauty alters the team dynamic, with both guys desirous of her and the other two girls jealous.

The episode title “School Daysze” is an obvious portmanteau pun that would have worked better as just “School Daze,” cliché though it is. Here’s a 1942 cartoon of the comic strip character Nancy, one of the many previous “School Daze” stories:



Xavier calls the team “The New Mutants” on page 1. Xavier also gives Amara the codename “Magma.”

The sequence with Kitty and Doug accidentally hacking into a government system was an obvious homage to the 1983 film Wargames which starred Matthew Broderick as a teen genius who accidentally sets off World War III while hacking into a military computer, thinking it hosts a video game company’s work. Kitty and Doug are shown working on separate computers in a study upstairs in Doug’s house. A two computer house would have been quite rare in 1984. (Even a one computer house was uncommon at the time.) The ability to dial out on two computers simultaneously would have also been very rare, since each computer required a dedicated phone line in those days of the 300 baud modem.

Kitty compares herself and Doug to Stradivarius (a famed violin maker) and Itzhak Perlman (a famed violinist) since she writes the computer code that he uses. John Byrne has expressed his disappointment that Chris Claremont made Kitty into a computer genius rather than a regular girl, but Claremont wanted a character who could play scenes like this one. She does end up being something of a Mary Sue though: Mutant, ninja, computer hacker, physicist, politician, etc.



Xavier reminds himself to check whether the events of Marvel Team-Up Annual #6 have wrought any permanent changes on Rahne and Roberto. Did he follow through? If so, he missed the boat, since several issues from now we will indeed be seeing further effects of the drug with which  they were injected.

Living with a telepath ought to be highly unsettling, especially when he has a tendency of saying things like “I don’t pry, but you were broadcasting your thoughts so strongly that I couldn’t help noticing…” Yeah, sure! In fact, Xavier has one of these encounters with Rahne later in this very issue when she’s feeling down on herself for not being smart.

Meanwhile in X-Men (#179): Kitty escapes marriage to Caliban the Morlock, and Colossus is saved from being a living statue. The four issue X-Men/Micronauts miniseries, published in Jan-April 1984, takes place concurrent just after this issue. The less said about that, the better.

#15: “Scaredy Cat!” (May 1984)

Focus Character and theme: Illyana spills the demonic magic beans

The Story: Illyana Rasputin travels to Massachusetts in astral form and finds that Kitty Pryde is the prisoner of Emma Frost, who threatens to ruin Kitty’s parents unless Kitty joins the Hellfire Club. When Emma dissipates Illyana’s astral form, the psychic backlash releases a horde of demons from Illyana’s body back at the mansion. This draws the attention of the other kids, who ineffectually battle for several pages until Illyana wakes from her trance and banishes the spirits. This is the first time the kids have seen Illyana in demon-mode, and they are understandably alarmed.




Learning of Kitty’s distress, Roberto calls around for super-hero help and finds that the X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Avengers are all unavailable, thanks to the Secret Wars. Time to spring into action! But how are they going to get from Westchester, NY to the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts? For once, transportation is presented as an actual challenge, and the kids pool their piggy bank money to buy bus tickets from NYC. (I guess they took a bus into NYC first?)

This road trip gives plenty of space for several conversations between the kids. On the bus, Sam gives Rahne a two page pep talk that God doesn’t hate her for being a mutant just because Rahne's stepdad was a mean pastor, and he lets her snuggle up to him as he calls her “My friend. Our friend.” Hey, watch the mixed signals there, buddy!



Once they get to Massachusetts, the kids are quickly penned into a room by Emma Frost who says that she already has their bodies, and “very soon now, your minds and souls will follow.” Claremontism!

My Two Cents: Illyana dons an X-uniform in this issue and is effectively a member of the team from here on out, though Xavier is not around to declare her so, and besides he doesn’t even know the extent of her abilities. She represents every kid who feels like she has a shameful secret that would destroy her friendships if it were revealed. We also get the second example in two issues of "Illyana saves the day." This will be a common occurrence; she simply has too many powers compared to the rest of the kids: stepping discs, magic sword, magic armor, whatever Doctor Strange-like powers a given situation requires, etc.

Illyana is the second blonde girl to join in just a few issues, and with Kitty Pryde and Doug Ramsey hanging around and Xian Coy Manh gone, the scene is looking whiter every minute, as Shaxper noted in his own New Mutants thread. Amara was supposed to be half-Inca, but there’s never a hint of it in the art, just as Nova Roma bore no evidence of Inca culture, despite Claremont’s aspirations in that direction.

“I will ruin your parents financially” is an odd threat for Emma Frost to hold over Kitty’s head. She’s a telepath! Doesn’t she already have the ability to make Kitty want to be in the Hellfire Club? As frequently happens in comic books, the power level of both heroes and villains fluctuate wildly to meet the demands of the individual story, which is why Daredevil survives more than five seconds punching The Hulk.

Claremont drops his first hint that the souls of Kitty and Illyana have been bonded. If this was intended as a long-term build into a romantic relationship, it was aborted in favor of a Kitty/Rachel storyline that would take literally decades to evolve. But for now, Emma taunts Kitty about her mutual attraction to Doug Ramsey.




The Massachusetts Academy is in the fictional Snow Valley in the Berkshire Mountains.

Claremont devotes two pages to Rahne and Roberto thinking about their Cloak and Dagger misadventure. I admire Claremont’s ability to keep these plates spinning until he is ready to bring those stories to their conclusion, or at least their next segment. I love that when Illyana is thinking “Rahne hates me for being demonic,” Rahne is actually thinking, “I hate me for being demonic.” Claremont writes self-doubt and existential loathing like nobody’s business. Everyone is the hero of their own story and spends too much time thinking that everyone else is thinking about them all the time too, which is pretty accurate.




The Massachusetts Academy looks more like a college campus, with multiple buildings and spacious lawns. There are some nice prep schools out there, I suppose. Do the students know that their headmistress dresses like a dominatrix? Why does Emma Frost want to have this day job? Running a school is incredibly taxing. The Firestar limited series will deal with this further in 1986.



Meanwhile in X-Men (#181): The Secret Wars having concluded, the X-Men are dumped in Tokyo, where they defend the city from a giant dragon. The Mutant Control Act gains traction in the U.S. Senate.

#16: “Away Game” (June 1984)

Focus Character and Theme: Crosstown rivals. The whole team faces an equal and opposite reaction.

The Story: In a Hellfire Club facility buried beneath the Massachusetts Academy, Amara’s magma-control powers expand to include more general Human Torch capabilities, as she produces a nova flare to blind the guards while an earthquake disrupts the electrical supply throughout the Massachusetts Academy. After hiding in a storeroom, they ambush two female Hellfire guards who were strolling by. Dani and Illyana don the Hellfire uniforms but thoughtfully dress the captive soldiers in their own X-student uniforms, which I suppose was to spare Roberto and Sam the temptation of ogling the two bound women. Thoughtful all around, our heroes.



Amara, meanwhile, finishes the job on the electric system, taking out the backup generators. Academy students, perhaps wakened by the earthquake, pour out of dorms onto the campus commons, creating a crowd through which Sam and Amara slip into the night. Roberto sticks with Rahne, who is trying to track Kitty’s scent in her werewolf form.

What happens when the heroes split up? Separate encounters, of course! Each of our three pairs meets a pair of Emma Frost’s proteges, corporately known as the Hellions. Roberto and Rahne are incapacitated by Thunderbird and Roulette.



Dani and Illyana do better against Catseye and Tarot. Before tangling with Jetstream and Empath, Sam and Amara also run into Doug Ramsey, whom you may recall was visiting the Massachusetts Academy for a scholarship interview. He’s shocked to see them in the dormitory, moreso because they’re dressed in their uniforms, which he has never seen before.

But when the rocket-powered battle between Sam and Jetstream starts tearing up buildings and ancient trees on the Massachusetts Academy campus, Emma Frost decides that enough is enough.



Emma neutralizes the heroes telepathically, sending Doug Ramsey back to bed without his memories as well. Incidentally, does this first panel not have the most typical Sal Buscema face ever?



When Emma tries to pull the same trick on Dani and Illyana, they flee into Limbo through a stepping disc.



My Two Cents: This issue finally provides the New Mutants the nemesis team they’ve been lacking for the last year. A rivalry with another school of super-kids is a perfect element to introduce, and Claremont gives the Hellions distinct personalities. They banter with each other just like heroes do. Some of them seem sadistic or selfish, but others like Thunderbird are noble. Tarot is French and spacey. They even have their own lycanthrope, a were-cat who hates her human form and uses babytalk like one of the sprites from Elfquest. The three separate fights make good use of the issue’s narrative space. The Hellions flush out the New Mutants so that Emma can deal with them.



Sam lets slip his interest in Amara, calling her “sweetheart” right before Emma gives him a fantasy vision of romance with her.

Emma calls the kids “The New Mutants.” It’s one of those breadcrumbs for new readers that I wish wasn’t necessary. She may not have telepathically altered Kitty’s mind, but she’s not above gaslighting her with “I have already made you my minion” taunts. Kitty makes a reference to the time that Emma was struck catatonic by Mastermind during the then-recent Madelyn Pryor storyline.






Tarot fights Dani with a card-summoned demon which wraps a wicked chain around her neck, “corrupting body and soul.” Claremontism! That must be his favorite merism.



Meanwhile in X-Men (#182): Rogue rescues Michael Rossi from murder by the Hellfire Club, drawing the attention of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the process.

#17: “Getaway!” (July 1984)

Focus Character and Theme: New Mutants vs Hellions battle royale

The Story: The scene opens on a three page spat between Jetstream and Empath, the latter of whom is short on temper and long on ambition, which makes him a dangerous asset for Emma Frost.



The New Mutants are stuck for a week in a dorm room which deactivates their powers, chatting about their plight, while Roberto convinces Kitty Pryde to give him a back rub. Yes, really.



Dani gets her first look at Limbo, where Illyana’s stepping disc took the pair of them last issue. S’ym gives them sexy duds: a buckskin bikini for Dani, a cleavage-baring gown for Illyana. I have no idea why the girls would wear these clothes instead of the extremely functional Hellfire suits they were previously wearing, but I have a pretty good idea why Claremont wants them to. Dani is understandably confused that S’ym, who fought the kids two issues ago, is now kowtowing to Illyana and calling her “boss” and “magus.”




A first attempt to “step” back to Earth takes Dani and Illyana a year into the future, where they see their teammates incorporated into the Hellions.



They return to Limbo and try again, this time landing in the right time (a week later, but close enough). Illyana calls the mansion, but nobody answers. (Rogue missed the call in last month’s X-Men issue.) Dani wonders aloud why she and Illyana ditched the Hellfire uniforms. I wonder too. Anyway, soon enough the New Mutants are facing off against the Hellions in Emma’s Danger Room (apparently every super-team has one of these), starting with a Cannonball vs Jetstream flying duel.




Several pages later, Sam has prevailed, but the arrival of Emma Frost and Sebastian Shaw makes the contest moot. In the confusion, Kitty phases into the Danger Room circuits, sending its hazards going haywire. The New Mutants gather, and Illyana teleports them home, giving everybody a good look at bad Limbo in the process.



Finally, the last three panels set up the following issue: Dani gets a dire warning from a ghostly shape speaking Shakespearean English that the demon bear which killed her parents years ago is after her now.



My Two Cents: A good conclusion to the first Hellions encounter. They already seem like real characters with individual agendas of their own, not just generic baddies. James “Thunderbird” Proudstar in particular declares that his intention is to avenge his brother John, who died back in X-Men #95 (1975). Add to that the inconclusive nature of this first face-off, and we’re left wanting more, which we’ll eventually get down the line. Sam even raises the prospect that if Xavier and the X-Men (off in the Secret Wars) don’t return, the kids may be forced to let Emma teach them in his stead.

Where previous issues showed conflict among the New Mutants, these last few issues have shown them coming together in the face of various external threats. None of this “what do my classmates think of me?” introspection in the face of more pressing concerns.

This issue features a striking cover of dueling Jetstream and Cannonball, with art by June Brigman and Bill Sienkiewicz. The shape of things to come! Plus, check out the reaction shot in the corner head box.



Dani calls Thunderbird a “brave.” Is that how Native American women talk about the men in 1984?

Meanwhile in X-Men (#183): After Peter breaks up with her, Kitty packs her bags and returns to Chicago. Logan, as the voice of Chris Claremont, is not pleased with the editorial edict separating the lovebirds Peter and Kitty. He takes Peter to a bar where a fracas with Cain “Juggernaut” Marko ensues. This issue shocked 12 year old me because Kitty got quite a haircut, and I didn't recognize her any more. It was my first awareness that this was a thing that people (especially girls) do, and it can significantly alter their appearance.

What I remember about this run?

I definitely started liking the character of Magik at this time, I felt like she was such an interesting character. I also remember really staring to dislike Kitty a lot, the whole "X-babies" thing really was grating my nerves.

Was there ever an issue of X-Men where Kitty addressed why she disliked the New Mutants so much? I know she wasn't happy with being demoted from the X-Men, but it always seemed like there was more to that story.

I also enjoyed the Hellions, but felt that Tarot was under-used. I always wanted to see more of her in the stories.