X-Men Unlimited #43 leads with a reunion of Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz, commemorating the twentieth anniversary of New Mutants.

Not, admittedly, the twentieth anniversary of Sienkiewicz's debut on the title - that didn't happen until 1984.  And if you want to be picky, while the cover date for New Mutants #1 was in 1983, the team actually debuted in 1982.  But that would be nitpicking.  It's the Claremont/Sienkiewicz run that still stands out as the most memorable and distinctive period of that title.  When you read Claremont's fans complaining about the prospect of getting Igor Kordey on X-Treme X-Men, you have to wonder what they would have made of Sienkiewicz's work on New Mutants.  His design for Warlock as a cubist Gerald Scarfe cartoon plagued more conventional artists for years after he left.

Technically, this isn't all that great a story.  It's set in the present day and it's basically a reunion piece for the founding five New Mutants - Sam, Dani, Bobby, Rahne and Shan.  There's another four former New Mutants who joined early on, but two are dead and the other two have been changed beyond recognition by a series of ill-advised retcons, so we're better off without them.  These five, aren't just the founders, they're also easier to work with.  Most of them haven't really deviated that far from Claremont's established directions for them - Sunspot eventually ended up associated with the Hellfire Club, but that's the storyline which Claremont spent years pointing towards.

The device to get them back together is a rudimentary plot about the theft of Rahne's necklace (which she picked up from Robert the Bruce in a slightly strained time-travel story back in the day).  It'd be a strain to say there were any great insights or points being made here.  To be honest, Rahne's blithering about keepsakes from her king is a bit silly, but who cares?  It's all an excuse to bring the characters back together for the first time in over a decade, and play to the nostalgia angle.  Sienkiewicz doesn't get a huge amount to work with, but then he doesn't really need it - he can produce unique art out of virtually anything.

Now, New Mutants was the series that originally got me into comics, and therefore I have a nice warm glow and am all happy.  Those of you who don't remember the book from first time round may think it's simply a rather average exercise in nostalgia with somewhat unusual art, and I couldn't objectively disagree.  But I think it's important to stress that I don't care.  It still makes me pleased.

The other half of the issue is a Lockheed story by Steven Grant and Paul Smith, which sets out to provide an explanation for his absence from Kitty's recent Mekanix miniseries.  Apparently he's been left behind in England after an unpublished story where he was missing, presumed dead.  (I could have sworn we had a scene where he was with Kitty in Chicago, in an X-Treme X-Men annual.  But it doesn't matter, because it works better this way.)

The angle is that Lockheed finds himself in a small town held in thrall by two evil sisters with magic powers.  It's pretty clear that for purposes of this story Grant is running with Lockheed as an animal, albeit an intelligent one, who doesn't entirely grasp what's going on around him.  Purists might not like that, but it works for me.  He's a pet; that's his role.

The story has a rather self-conscious tone of 1950s school hijinks, with some weird transfiguration scenes thrown in.  It's fairly well trodden territory, and it's not really got a great deal to do with Lockheed, but as a tongue-in-cheek story about the girls it works.  It's been a while since I've seen any art from Paul Smith, but he's on top form here.

With admitted subjectivity, a fun issue.

Rating: B+

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