Escapade and the New Mutants do their best to escape the U-Men in New Mutants #32, by writer Charlie Jane Anders, artists Alberto Alburquerque, Ro Stein, and Ted Brandt, colorists Carlos Lopez and Tamra Bonvillain, and letterer Travis Lanham. This issue is good, but it doesn’t hit the heights of the last run.

Escapade is switched with a U-Man when the issue opens and goes about looking for Cerebella, sabotaging weapons, and basically doing infiltration stuff. She finds Cerebella, who wants her to kill her. Escapade won’t, but before she can figure a way to get out, Sublime comes. Cerebella and Sublime spar, and then Escapade switches places again, allowing Cerebella to escape and free the others. She then switches places with the guard again, putting herself back in the cell with Morgan. After that, Wolfsbane learns there’s a new form of Kick ready to go out, Cerebella and Leo hide but are moments from getting found, and Escapade and Morgan find themselves on the rooftop from her vision.

So, the thing about this issue is that it isn’t bad per se. It’s just not as good as what readers got before. This story is basic, and that’s a problem in a book like New Mutants. See, this story is automatically compared to Vita Ayala’s stuff, and their stories were just way better. This sometimes feels like fanfic - Escapade is definitely a Mary Sue OC - and often just feels painfully average. That’s the worst thing. This is an average story.

There’re glimpses of greatness, like everything with Cerebella and Escapade and then Sublime. However, other than that, everything is just sort of there. It also feels weird for Anders to just end the issue with the Escapade prophecy cliffhanger. It’s almost anti-climactic in a lot of ways to get to this point in the character’s existence after her third appearance.

Alburquerque’s and Lopez’s art is also fine, but nothing special really. Strangely enough, their art is also the best when Cerebella is the focus. They capture her anger and desperation so well. Beyond that, Alburquerque’s style is perfectly okay while being basic. Lopez’s colors are really nice. He uses a palette that keeps things bright. If there’s any problem with the art, it’s that it’s a tad too cartoony for a story that gets this dark. The flashback sections by Stein, Brandt, and Bonvillain are good, aping the Peanuts style well. It’s fun to see Bonvillain doing an old-school color dot style.

New Mutants #32 is pretty basic, all things considered. It suffers from coming so soon after a defining run on the book. All of the creators are good, but they’re just not as good as what came before. This story is average at this point, but there’s room for improvement.

Grade: C