Issue(s): New Mutants #57
Cover Date: Nov 87
Title: "Birds of a feather"
Credits:
Louise Simonson - Writer
Bret Blevins - Penciler
Terry Austin - Inker
Ann Nocenti - Editor

Review/plot:
Oh, god, it's Birdbrain.

I sympathize with you, Magneto. I really do. You once led the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, trained them to be warriors against the human oppressors. And now you're dealing with this.

I've said that i've liked Bret Blevin's art on this title for his ability to depict teens as teens...

...but once you throw in Birdbrain it gets too cutesy and goofy. And the characters start acting like 10 year olds instead of teens.

Before i get to the Birdbrain stuff, let me show this panel because it sets up the punchline. You can see from above that this is the issue where Magma actually leaves the team, and Magik, who was also shown to be boy-obsessed last issue, suggests that she's leaving because the Hellions have more boys on the team.

Ok, now Birdbrain. For some reason, the New Mutants decide to dress him up and take him to the mall and pass him off as human.

They go to the Googam family restaurant (first seen in Power Pack).

Birdbrain makes a big mess, and then they take him to see a movie (House II; Marvel was doing the comic adaptation). Birdbrain predictably freaks out in the movie theater (while stopping him, Cannonball is called Comet Man).

When they get home, they find out that Magneto is aware of the disaster they caused, and he threatens to send Birdbrain to the authorities.

But he apparently relents (off panel) when Doug, who previously was resisting using his language powers to understand Birdbrain because he was jealous of the attention that Rahne was paying to him, finally is able to understand him.

And now, the punchline.

It's all just dumb. The New Mutants had been a very dark book for a long while, and i don't mind a lighter tone. But that doesn't mean the characters have to start acting like idiot children. They should know better than to take this wild thing to a mall. And what's the point of the character? Everything done here was done better with Warlock and the last thing this team needs is more non-mutant creatures. It really seems like Louise Simonson didn't know where she was going with this book, and that will become even more important when Birdbrain become the focus of the New Mutants' portion of Fall of the Mutants.

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: Last issue happened "yesterday".

References:

• Cerebro was destroyed in Uncanny X-Men #213 but Magneto is able to get the analyzer working well enough to confirm that Birdbrain is "not entirely human" and "an anomaly of some kind".

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

This was the period on the title you couldn't pay me to read back then. I was just a kid but even I knew crap when I saw it and Birdbrain was unequivocally crap.

Dan Abnett actually managed to tell a decent story using Birdbrain in the most recent New Mutants series. There really are no bad characters, just bad stories and writers not sure how to properly use said characters. Although I'd have wagered money that Birdbrain was just a bad character.
Yeah, New Mutants got pretty bad for a time until Inferno, but I kept reading because I had to keep up my New Mutants collection.

Taking Birdbrain to the mall is something 10-13 year olds might have done, but not anyone 16-18.

The character might be less ridiculous if he looked more human. He's just too alien looking for the plot being done.

And. . . . . now the book is doomed.

Everyone on this site seems to hate Rob Liefeld, and I myself think his story-telling is pretty bad and his art at times is simply ludicrous. But I have to say he saved this book. I think the constant X-crossovers are the only thing that keeps it going until he arrives and he becomes the only reason it makes it to #100.

Birdbrain is atrocious. What were they thinking?

I rolled my eyes HARD when I saw that House II was the movie they went to (reading this issue, and all of these books, for the first time in 2017)

They had been advertising that movie in the last page (inside of the back cover) in a number of the X-title issues around this time.

Cringe