God damn it Illyana is so cool. She is as profoundly affected by the death of Doug Ramsey as anyone else, but she’s not going to let it cloud her judgment when it comes to the well-being of her brother. And being the only adult in the room and the person who is ultimately responsible for not watching his kids close enough, Magneto is left to clean up the mess of Doug’s death. I have to say, this was a spectacular issue of the New Mutants. The emotional ramifications of Doug’s death are handled with a great amount of realism and consideration. We aren’t immediately flying off to the next plot point, which tends to be the case with a lot of comic book deaths. We spend the whole god damn issue dealing with it. It’s a hard stop as far as the narrative goes. All of the characters are reasonably traumatized, and there’s a sense that we’re all going to be dealing with this for some time to come. (The New Mutants #61 – Mar 1988)
