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Appearing in "A Mutant in Megalopolis"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
- Situation Ethics (Single appearance)[1]
- Vidiot (Single appearance)[1]
- Wobblies Sneaker Gang (Single appearance)[1]
- Mookie
Adversaries:
- Mediamogul (Single appearance)[1]
- M.A.D. (Mutual Assured Destruction) (Single appearance)[1]
- Moopert Rurdock (Single appearance)[1]
- M.C. (Manufacture of Consent) (Single appearance)[1]
- Megazine (Single appearance)[1]
Other Characters:
Locations:
- Marvel Universe
- Megaland (Single appearance)[1]
- Megalopolis
- Third World
Items:
Vehicles:
Synopsis for "A Mutant in Megalopolis"
Boom-Boom finds Wolfsbane upset over all the suffering she sees on TV news and glibly advises her to live with it, only upsetting her further. Rahne shifts into wolf form and runs outside to a nearby river. She drinks from it but immediately spits out the water as it is polluted. Boom-Boom finds her as she laments how useless their powers are at fighting pollution. Boom-Boom tells her they cannot solve all the world’s problems and suggests they go shopping. Some kids watching from the bushes decide to clean up the river.
Back at Xavier’s School, Warlock is watching TV when he detects a new transmission. He extends himself into space, punching through the floors above including Sunspot’s bedroom, and catches an object from an interdimensional portal. He brings it back to the school, Boom-Boom, Sunspot, and Wolfsbane join him, and they find what he caught is a small humanoid with a TV for a head. It introduces itself as a Vidiot from another dimension seeking help against the corporate overlords that rule its world, Megaland.
A portal opens to take the Vidiot back, and Boom-Boom blows it open with a time-bomb, causing them all to be sucked into it. They arrive on Megaland amidst a shower of debris—or “media fallout”—from the wars between the ruling corporations. A woman pulls up riding a limousine of stuff for sale, gives Wolfsbane a makeover, and drives off. Enthralled, Rahne chases after her even as the others fall into a pit. Back on Earth, the group of kids decide to sit in the river on a hunger strike until it is cleaned up.
Boom-Boom, Sunspot, Warlock, and the Vidiot land in a junkyard then hide as media kingpin Moopert Rurdock organizes a broadcast by Rent-a-President to distract the public from conspiracies and cover-ups. Sunspot declares the Megaland public must be told the truth so Vidiot directs the team across a wasteland toward Megalopolis. En route, the enter Third World where locals are under fire from a pair of squabbling conjoined twins called M.A.D. Boom-Boom and Sunspot attack M.A.D., causing the twins to seemingly kill each other. On Earth, news reports arrive at the river to cover the kids’ protest.
In Megaland, the New Mutants reach Megalopolis and fly past Situation Ethics who argues both sides of every dispute. On Earth, the president of Megazine, the company polluting the river, dispatches a public relations officer to address the media. He says Megazine did not know it was polluting and will clean up the river immediately. Meanwhile, the M.A.D. twins wake up and soon find themselves surrounded by the residents of Third World. The Third Worlders see the twins for what they are and stop fearing them, causing them to shrink and run away. The New Mutants and the Vidiot enter Megalopolis’s power center and trash the altar to greed they find inside.
On Earth, a scientist declares the river clean, and a reporter interviews the kids about their successful protest. Mookie, the kids’ leader, hails the power of television and says kids are going to get more political. In Megaland, Wolfsbane is at a dinner table with her ersatz family when she sees the New Mutants on a TV broadcast. Remembering who she is, she shifts into wolf form and runs off to join her teammates. In the power center, the New Mutants battle an army of gun-toting thugs. Rahne arrives, sneaks behind a curtain next to the altar, and finds Mediamogul, the man directing the army. Ignoring his loud, brainwashing messages, she unplugs his equipment. The army, actually nothing but holograms, vanishes, and the New Mutants humiliate Mediamogul in front of the public.
Suddenly, the New Mutants are pulled back to Earth, emerging from a TV set at the school. Disgusted by their experience, they decide to get rid of every television in the mansion. Outside, the team finds the group of kids playing in the river and learns how they used TV to get it cleaned up. This changes the New Mutants’ minds, and they take all the televisions they were throwing out back to the school. Warlock says his favorite show is on tonight, and Rahne reveals her theories about its plot.
Notes
- This issue is reprinted in the New Mutants Epic Collection vol. 7: Cable trade paperback published in 2020.
- At the end of the issue are bonus New Mutants pinups by Bret Blevins (click on a pinup for full image):
Trivia
- This issue is an extended political cartoon lampooning mass media, particularly television, and its effect on politics and public opinion. Several characters the New Mutants encounter in Megaland are either caricatures of famous political figures or personifications of concepts from political science and media theory:
- the woman riding the limousine loaded with goods for sale represents the use of models and sex appeal in advertising;
- Megaland media kingpin Moopert Rurdock is a parody of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch;
- Rent-a-President is a caricature of U.S. President George H. W. Bush;
- the conjoined twins M.A.D. personify the doctrine of mutual assured destruction from national security policy with one twin drawn as Uncle Sam, representing the United States, and the other twin drawn as the Russian Bear, representing the Soviet Union;
- Situational Ethics embodies moral relativism.
- The last pin-up in the issue includes a blurb giving special thanks to media theorists, journalists, and critics including Ben Bagdikian, Noam Chomsky, Marshall McLuhan, Mark Hertsgaard, and Walter Lippmann.
- Among the television shows Warlock watches simultaneously are Alien Nation, Bewitched, Doogie Howser, M.D., Fraggle Rock, and The Simpsons. At the end of the story, Warlock says Twin Peaks is his favorite show, and Rahne explains her theory about its central mystery.
See Also
- Write your own review of this comic!
- Discuss The New Mutants Summer Special Vol 1 1 on the forums
- Images from The New Mutants Summer Special Vol 1 1
Links and References
- The New Mutants at Wikipedia
- The New Mutants at Marvel Subscriptions
- The New Mutants series index at Comicbookdb.com
- The New Mutants series index at Uncanny X-Men.net
- The New Mutants series index at the Grand Comics Database Project
- The Unofficial Handbook of Marvel Comics Creators - accessed on 04/18/2010
Footnotes
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