James Nicoll Reviews

Teenage Mutant Blues

Young, Gifted & Queer (Cute Mutants, volume 2)

By S. J. Whitby

3 Aug, 2023

**Miscellaneous Reviews**

0 comments

2020’s Young, Gifted & Queer is the second volume in SJ Whitby’s Cute Mutants series. The first volume was reviewed here.

Imbued with superhuman powers, Dylan “Chatterbox” Taylor and her friends saved New Zealand from a supervillain. Collateral damage was light: only a few lost limbs. Their exploits were sufficiently public and their efforts to conceal their identities sufficiently inept that the government easily tracked down the so-called Cute Mutants to offer them a choice: submit to sanctioned training or face prison.

Dylan and the Cute Mutants chose training. It’s not clear that this was the correct choice.

Sheer Confusion

Mutant Pride (Cute Mutants, volume 1)

By S. J. Whitby

15 Jun, 2023

**Miscellaneous Reviews**

3 comments

2020’s Mutant Pride is the first novel in SJ Whitby’s Cute Mutant superhero series.

Teen Dylan Tayler has always felt like a screw-up. Now it’s worse. Her pillow is talking to her. Other inanimate objects are waking up around her, suddenly becoming animate and chatty¹. As this continues, Dylan (a long-time fan of X‑Men comics) is becoming increasingly sure that she’s a mutant and must have a superpower.