The New Mutants has had a long rough road on its way to movie theaters, and now that it’s out, the hits just keep coming. In addition to bad reviews from the handful of critics who risked COVID to see it, with a scorching 20% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes at time of writing, the characters’ co-creator Bob McLeod has denounced the film on social media. While McLeod seems primarily disappointed in the film’s questionable casting, the icing on the cake is that his name is misspelled “MacLeod” in its credits.
“I was very excited when I heard they were making a New Mutants movie,” McLeod wrote on both Twitter and Facebook. “I thought making it into a horror movie was perhaps an interesting idea, but not at all how the characters should be introduced to the public at large. But, hey, my characters in a movie! I never would have thought that would actually happen.”
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“But then, I was disappointed when they didn’t give Dani braids, although I like Blu Hunt,” McLeod continued. “I was disappointed when Rahne wasn’t a redhead with spiky hair, although I adore Maisie Williams. I was disappointed that Sam isn’t tall and gawky, although I do like Charlie Heaton. But mainly I was very disappointed that Roberto isn’t short and dark-skinned. Yet another example of Hollywood white-washing. There’s just no excuse. So basically, Josh Boone erased everything I contributed to the way the characters look. And now, the movie has come out at last, and apparently they’ve credited someone named Bob Macleod as co-creator. They couldn’t even be bothered to check the spelling of my name sometime in the last three years. And that can’t be fixed. That will be on the movie forever. I think I’m done with this movie.”
McLeod is a veteran penciler and inker in the American comic book industry, with a long list of credits on Marvel and DC titles, including Action Comics, Detective Comics, Amazing Spider-Man, and The Incredible Hulk, that goes back to the 1970s. He co-created Cannonball, Sunspot, Mirage (then known as Psyche), and Wolfsbane in 1982’s Marvel Graphic Novel #4 with writer Chris Claremont, and penciled the first eight issues of the first volume of the New Mutants monthly comic. (The fifth original member of the team, Karma, first appeared in Marvel Team-Up #100, by Claremont and Frank Miller, and has yet to appear in any live action adaptation. Illyana Rasputin, a.k.a. Magik, technically appeared for the first time in Colossus’s introduction in 1975’s Giant-Size X-Men #1, by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum; however, her later superhero persona was co-created by Claremont and Sal Buscema.)
Since 2000, McLeod has been relatively inactive in comics work, but has been a regular in artists’ rooms on the American comics convention circuit. He’s also written and illustrated a children’s book called Superhero ABC and did a stint as a part-time instructor at the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design. McLeod received an Inkwell Awards Joe Sinnott Hall of Fame award in 2018 for his years of work in comics, primarily as an inker.
The New Mutants’ other creator, Claremont, is generally inactive on social media. However, Claremont is famously opinionated, so it’s only a matter of time before the world finds out what he has to say about Josh Boone’s New Mutants. If there’s ever another comic book convention, look for Claremont on a panel and hope somebody brings a video camera, because if McLeod is this annoyed, Claremont’s going to be volcanic. Notably, the plot of The New Mutants is largely based on Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz’s “Demon Bear Saga,” which ran in issues #18 through #20 of the first volume of New Mutants.
It’s worth noting here that many of the creators who have worked at Marvel over the years were doing so on work-for-hire contracts, which meant the characters they came up with for the comics were thereafter the exclusive property of Marvel Comics. As such, the various film companies who’ve adapted those comics for film are under no legal obligation to cut those comics’ original creators in on any of the profits. This has been a regular source of controversy over the years, and means that McLeod’s misspelled credit in The New Mutants movie may in fact be the entirety of the compensation that he’s ever going to receive.
New Mutants director Josh Boone’s next project is directing Stephen King’s The Stand, coming to CBS All Access in December.
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Source: Bob McLeod/Facebook
