The New Mutants coming home to find Magneto running Xavier’s school is a huge change before anybody even enters the Danger Room. These kids know his reputation. Some have fought…

The New Mutants coming home to find Magneto running Xavier’s school is a huge change before anybody even enters the Danger Room. These kids know his reputation. Some have fought him. Now the person responsible for their education and safety is someone they have every reason to question. This thread starts with New Mutants #35, cover-dated January 1986, following Xavier’s decision in Uncanny X-Men #200. The class at that starting point is Cannonball, Mirage, Sunspot, Wolfsbane, Karma, Magma, Magik, Cypher and Warlock. Magneto gets his own post as their headmaster. He is responsible for the group, but he is not another student on the roster. There is a lot packed into this stretch. The Beyonder leaves the students traumatized. Their temporary placement with Emma Frost brings the Hellions into their lives in a different way. The Mutant Massacre makes the danger outside the school impossible to dismiss, while trouble in Limbo and with Warlock’s father reaches into the supposedly safer world of the younger team. The relationships matter as much as those threats. Sam has a family and a girlfriend beyond the mansion. Karma has younger siblings to protect. Illyana has a whole realm whose problems cannot be solved by finishing her homework. Doug and Warlock depend on each other in ways that affect both of them. This is the class through #54, with absences and departures kept in their actual places. The later losses, Bird-Brain and Inferno belong to the next phase. Here, the central question is whether Magneto and these particular children can learn to trust each other while the world keeps giving them reasons to be afraid.