The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics by Ramzi Fawaz (review)

The title of Ramzi Fawaz’s The New Mutants is reference to a 1965 essay in which literary critic Leslie Fiedler describes new forms of literature that envision “the transcendence or transformation of the human” into a race of “mutants.” Fiedler views this transformation as both fantastical and real; elsewhere in his essay, he claims the hegemony will recognize these mutants as members of the increasingly influential counterculture. The New Mutants is also, of course, the title of a long-running Marvel comic book, in which a group of superpowered teenagers are, as one old tagline put it, “feared and hated by the world they have sworn to protect.” This dual reference serves Fawaz well, as his book’s central topic is the interconnection of postwar super-hero comics with the same era’s history of liberal, progressive, and radical thought; in this, Fawaz interprets the mutant protagonists of postwar superhero comics as countercultural heroes who both reflect contemporary upheavals and imagine future changes even as they keep the world safe from the egomaniacal machinations of Magneto and Dr. Doom.

Across seven chronologically and thematically organized chapters, Fawaz charts what he describes as the evolution of the American superhero “from a nationalist champion to a figure of radical difference mapping the limits of American liberalism and its promise of universal inclusion in the post-World War II period” (3). Each chapter advances this thesis by analyzing a particular comic book series or group of series as a reflection of, and reaction to, certain sets of historically relevant themes. Chapter One reads early issues of The Justice League of America as evidence of an increased sense of international responsibility within 1950s American culture. Chapters Two and Three read early issues of The Fantastic Four in conversation with the Cold War, radiation fears, and the rise of second-wave feminism. Chapter Four reads space operas from the 1970s starring the likes of the Silver Surfer and the X-Men as reflections of a nostalgic longing for the previous decade’s promises of transformation. Chapter Five investigates the rise of “working class” consciousness in comics from the 1970s, and Chapter Six reads demonic possession stories in several different superhero comics from the 1980s as critiques of the “Me” decade’s “[s]elf-interest, overconsumption, and profligate investment in immediate pleasure” (200). Finally, Chapter Seven argues that the increasingly traumatic, intergenerational, and intersectional conflicts within The New Mutants series from the 1980s represent the end of an era, evincing the decline of the postwar fantasy of universal citizenship in favour of a newly fractured, but also newly multiple, view of American society and culture.

In each chapter, Fawaz’s inventive analysis highlights the sophistication and complexity of popular texts that remain underexplored relative to contemporaneous films and television shows. More than this, Fawaz argues that superhero comics might be unique among popular texts in their ability to explore progressive themes and ideas. Throughout, Fawaz asserts that characters who are defined by their non-normative bodies and multiple identities, and who continually transform from one person (or thing) into another, are ideally suited to articulating anxieties and fantasies related to the changing nature of postwar American society, and the changing boundaries of human identity and potential in postwar American culture. Admittedly, the radical or subversive capacity of the superhero body is not a new concept, having already been identified by Scott Bukatman and Aaron Taylor, among others. Yet the creativity and passion of Fawaz’s analysis and the thematic and historical breadth of his examples makes an old argument newly convincing. Fawaz’s style is another boon. Throughout, Fawaz’s writing is infused with infectious energy; he knows these comics, but he also clearly loves them, and he embraces that love to propel his investigation into why so many people have found these stories so appealing for so many years.

Unfortunately, however...