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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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New X-Men Xtrospective Part 1: E is For Extinction “They Will Need Us”

I am SO fucking excited for this one. As might not be obvious to ALL of my readers but should be obvious to some, I fucking love the X-Men. They are one of my favorite superhero teams period as are several of their spinoffs such as X-Factor (All versions), New Mutants, and Marauders. I love the wide cast, the hugely vast universe within the already vast and wonderful marvel universe, and the sheer amount of GREAT stories. I own all 11 movies, have several action figures, and two posters from Jonathan Hickman’s current and utterly dynamite run right above me right now as I work, as well as a marvel 80′s themed poster behind me that’s at least half x-men for good reason. I love this gang of mutants and I have not talked about them enough.

I”ve done some X-Men stuff sure: I’ve talked about hickman’s time as head writer of the books a year in earlier this year, I did a few scattered reviews back when I did single issues of comics, and then we get to the one I beefed big time: covering ALL of X-Men evolution. While it’s a noble endeavor I freely admit to overexerting myself: I recapped the episodes way too closely, gave myself no real schedule and did so while I was already covering two shows a week at the time. My point is it was a good idea, but the timing was REALLY fucking bad and if I do it again, I intend to do it right and iwth a proper place in my now properly paced schedule. I also planned to do the movies which, unlike evolution, I have solid plans to do once I clear out some of my projects. Point is I burned bright and then exploded and took a whole projecet with me phoenix style.

I had until this moment yet to do a really big x-men project, something digging into the comics, something that could help fans both of the comics and not get familiar with something really good, and help me dig into both the good and bad of something. I jsut needed the right start.

Then Christmas gave me that spark, that project that gave me the idea for a butload more x-men content on here and was the perfect starting point for some. See my friend Marco lives in Honduras, and so since i couldn’t afford to send him anything for christmas in the mail, as i’m not exactly rich, I instead offered him three reviews of anything.l He still hasn’t taken up two of them, nor one I gave him for graduating college, but the first one was a doozy, something he hadn’t read due to not liking the art, which is fine as I have some art in comics I don’t like everyone has diffrent tastes, at least for the first arc, and something VITALLY important to x-men as a whole and that’s the backbone of hickman’s current run: the first arc of new x-men, e is for extinction. And given New X-Men is one of my faviorite comics of all time I not only lept on it.. but decided fuck it I’m covering the whole thing. So every so often on here from now until I finish, i’m going to be covering Grant Morrisons ground breaking, mind shattering, status quo destroying run on the children of the atom. This.. is going to be fucking awesome. Buckle up.

New X-Men came about in 2001. Stop me if you heard this one: The X-Men, once marvel’s best selling title and one of i’ts most beloved, had been set adrift in a seal of editorial bullshit, bad writing, bad storylines and a stale continuity where not much could change or grow and things always reset to about the same place it was last week. If this sounds familiar it’s because it somehow happened AGAIN thanks to Ike Perlmutter’s bullshit, hence the current hickman run, but we’ll get into all of tha tsome other time. Point is as it was in 2018, so it was in 2001: The x-men were in bad straits and marvel reached out to a host of various creators to swing for the fences and find a new direction, something to bring sales and life back to the book. To my shock they actually took a LOT of diffrent pitches in before Morrisons won and from huge names: Geoff Johns, who had not yet returned to DC never to leave, Alex Ross, Keith Giffen.. all huge creative types. but in the end the best man won.

For those unfamiliar with him, Grant Morrison is a gloriously batshit scotsman with a long, storied and delightfully insane history in comics, mostly at DC before and after this comic. This is for good reason: DC scouted Morrison specifically because of his early work at 2000ad. See at the time Alan Moore had hit it really big with Swamp Thing, taking a d list, so so book and making it into an utter masterpiece and giving it thoroughly interesting mythology. Given it was a blockbuster hit that’s still widely loved and discussed, as it should be today, DC decided to repeat the strategy of asking British indie comics creators to come do the same to another property. This same experiment is why Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman exists, so.. yeah it was actually a great strategy and naturally Grant had their first big hit with Animal Man, a metafictional take on a b-list hero that made him a loveable family man, while also putting him through hell and playing with the medium and dc’s vast history, the last two being Morrison’s trademark from then on out.

They’d next go on to reinvent one of my other faviorite teams: THE DOOM PATROL! The patrol are a bunch of victims of strange accidents who got powers out of them that are basically curses... and Morrison solidified that concept, taking over after a weak run that ironically enough was trying to imitate the x-men’s success at the time. Instead Morrison just went all out with his weird shit for the first time and made them a team of broken but likeable people with weird powers fighting just the weirdest most incomprehensible shit, a run i’ll likely be digging into eventually along with the team as a whole. It’s also, along with Gerard Way’s recent run, the bedroock for the current and utterly masterful doom patrol series I need to catch up on. They also apparently once wrote a satrical comic starring and lik mocking hitler... a fact I somehow JUST learned but naturally doesn’t surprise me at all.

Morrison’s career at dc, after doing some creator owned stuff there when Vertigo opened up, hit it’s peak in the late 90′s as they were given the go ahead to reinvent the Justice League, with the wildly successful and awesome JLA, another book I probably need to take a look at that put the big 7 back into the team. And by now your probably getting the point of me covering his career pattern.. besides giving morrison the praise they deserve, and they’d have some really great runs after this.. and some terrible ones but no one’s perfect. My point is that at this point in their career Morrison’s greatest skill was taking something that had grown stagnant or been forgotten, blowing it up and reworking it into something glorious and new. Taking what worked, scraping away what didn’t and on the whole making something fucking glorious out of it. So here we are. The X-Men needed a new coat of paint and uncle grant had their lcd laced psycadelic paint bucket and brush shaped like a pidgeon at the ready. And for better, way better and admitely sometimes here and there worse,they changed the x-men for good. Some changes were rolled back out of spite, others finally got their chance after said rollback recently, and some were just outright thrown on the grown and smashed with a hammer. But for the most part Grant left a huge impact on the x-men and i’m here to show you why, warts and all. To me my x-men, this is new x-men. Now naturally there’s even more exposition but i’ts more in what COULD’VE been. Originally while Wolverine, Cyclops, Jean Grey and Professor X were all part of the team the other two members of the slim roster for this run, Beast and Emma Frost.. weren’t. Originally Morrison was going to have Colossus and Moira Mactaggert, long time team ally, token human until very recently, and now thanks to hickman one of the most important x characters peirod and long before that a fan favorite of mine, on the team, with Moira taking over for beast.

This.. didn’t pan out since Marvel apparently either didn’t give a shit about their plans or already had things in motion as the climax of the longtime legacy virus storyline killed both off. Colossus until Joss Whedon, bastard he may be, brought him back for his terrific Astonishing X-Men, and Moira SOMEHOW stayed dead until House/Powers of X. See this speaks to one of the big roadblocks morrison faced: Jonathan HIckman currently has absolute power and all his writers working in concert, a new way of doing things comic companies shold honestly copy en masse as it’s really working wonders. Grant.. was just one of many writers and one of three main x books the others being Chris Claremont’s XTREME X-MEN, basically “let the legend do what he wants since he can’t get freedom on the main book” and another writer on uncanny... before eventually chuck austen took over and I will tackle that horrible mess some other time. Point is while Morrison was setting the tone, costume style and making the big waves, they still didn’t have full power and thus had to play nice with eveyrone else. So their next idea was Rogue, making mer more like her x-men evolution version.. except Chris wanted her, so that was out, though being a decent enough guy he willingly gave up Beast since the moira thing meant Morrison needed a science person. As for Colossus replacement, as it turned out a fan had suggested Grant do something with Emma Frost since Gen X was canceled and while Morrison had zero intention for it clearly Emma clicked with hthem and she was soon both a main part of the cast and one of their biggest contributions to X-Men as a whole.

As for what I think of the needed changes.. they ended up being for the best. I do like Moira... but Hank ended up being a much better fit for the team dynamic wise and power set wise, while Emma was the same. While Colossus, Rogue and Moira are all fantastic characters, I think what we ended up with was just a better mix overall. I DO think the team is incredibly white, but that’s a general x-men problem, even with having an assload of diverse and intresting characters, so it’s not entirely his fault. All in all it’s a fantastic roster: four of the x-men’s best, their leader in the field for the first time in forever, and a new and intresting wild card. IT’s a nice ballance of characters and we’ll get more into it as we go. Now all the expositions done, we can finally dive head first into new x-men. I hope you survivie the experince under the cut.

After an utterly gorgeous and striking cover, the one used up top, we get one solid page to introduce us to Morrison’s mission statment, how they feel and how good Frank Quitely’s art looks

I cropped it best i could for tumblr but this one image immidetly says a lot. Our heroes are just.. easily taking down this sentinel, an old model... the same one we’ve seen a dozen times. What were once the grim, possible destroyers of an entire race of beings in days of future past and devistating killing machines in the present.. had become stale easily defeated murder bots There had been noble attempts to really make the sentiinels work again like the horrifying omega sentinels, humans forcibly converted into sleeper agent killing machines, during operation: zero tolerance, but otherwise they were mostly just a prop for the x-men to knock down. And that.. really is morrison’s whole point. Lampshading and mocking the fact the x-men had grown stale, things hadn’t really progressed.. and that it was time to move on. But to Uncle Grant’s credit, they not only uses this as a mission statment but it’s plot relevant: this mission will both be explained soon and explains why Logan and Scott are out and about enough to end up where the plot will soon need them. It also helps, via the sight of the syndey opera house establish something Morrison made a staple of their run: the X-Men going global. While the x-men were never really NOT global post claremont, Morrisons run has them handling rescue missions and what not worldwide far more often than most runs before it sans Claremont, and really made it feel like they weren’t just another super team but a global force of good with a specific goal and mission. More on the global aspect next time, as that’s where it really comes in but I felt it was important to show it was there for minute one.

So yeah before we move onto the first full scene of the run, let’s talk about the costumes.

We’ll talk about Emma’s later since she’s not introduced to the story for a while but yeah. There’s a sharp, obvious and immediate change just in the outfits, which take after the movie’s more military look, having the x-men not only look more like a unit but more like a professional orginization. Someone to come and help when needed. While this would take on more siginifigance in a bit, we’ll get to it, it also fits Morrisions own views that the x-men were less of a traditional superhero team and more something different on the edges that fought things out there, sorta what like he did with doom patrol. And it’s honestly a valid interpretation as the x-men are often seen as outlaws and misfits by society for beingn well.. mutants. Not as trusted as the avengers. So having them adopt this look played into that: Having them look more professional and focused as The X-Men have a less blanket mission statement than the avenger.. but also mildly threatning. Something to alarm the humans. It’s an utterly brilliant look thrown best together by the big yellow x’s, still giving it a nice flash of color to show off and show this is still a comic and this is still damn colorful.. this just isn’t your AVERAGE supherhero comic or the x-men your used to. IT’s a real shame the only fox x-men movie to use it was fucking dark phoenix.. a film where it didn’t even fit as xavier was getting flashier and more reckless so why wouldn’t he have more garish and colorful and more traditional superhero outfits. They did look good in their variants in first class though. Props there. Point is this is a classic, utterly stunning look, and tha’ts coming from someone whose fine with goofy superhero outfits and perpetually bitter hawkeye is almost never allowed to wear his actual comic outift and is instead stuck with shades instead of you know.. a mask. Or anything resembling an actual good looking costume. This though this is how you do a less superheroy costume: practical and realistic, but still cool looking and comic book friendly.

We cut to a mysterious lady, we’ll come to know her as Cassandra Nova and while I know her origin... i’m saving it for later as the comics themselves explain it eventually, and a simpering dolt she brought with her, Donald Trask, a distant relative of the creators of the sentinels who, via holograms she’s showing cro magnons slaughtring the neanderthal. Her point is that Mutants are going to do this and she’s clearly fearmongering him and trying to talk him into genocide: to wipe them out before they wipe out humanity. And it’s here we get one of hte most important plot points of Morrisons run and one of the most intresting: according to cassandra’s research Humanity will be no more in 4 generations. Mutankind is on it’s way to overtaking them at last.. i’ts still a few decades off.. but it’s coming. It’s sometihing that the whole decimation nonsense sadly snuffed.. and John Hickman has thankfully brought back. I’ll get to his run once i’ts complete in a few years, but point is it’s an utterly marvelous plot hook: Humanity, whose already attempted genocide a few times, is now in real danger of what their petty, racist, fearful attacks have been about: being replaced. It’s one of the central themes of the work the other two being “Just what IS mutantkind and what will it be”. WHat are they as a people? We’ll dig into these as we go but the threat of exctincion is the backbone of this arc... and will lead to something truly ghastly.

It’s then we get our title page.. which nothing really to add it just looks really good and helps show off who are cast is and what they can do with striking simple art.

And since we’re already talking the art of the book, let’s take a moment to discuss an intresting detail of this run: despite it’s short length there’s quite a few diffrent artist, who we’ll talk about of course as we get to each one. The most common and notable though is Frank Quitely. Frank Quitely is one of Morrison’s closest and best creative partners, having a unique, squishy art style.. i.e. the one my friend didn’t like which is why i’m covering this. And while I like the art style quite a bit, I do get why it’s not everyone’s cup of tea: His art is squashed, weird, and admitely some faces can be good god no incaranate. But it’s also why I like it: his characters feel unique, each body and figure feels like it was custom made and thus feels.. real. Like this is a person before you. And given comics can often surrender to having everybody look the damn same, this is nice. His faces may sometimes look similar but his bodies are where the action is. But while having a realistic feel his work also has a weird alien quality that perfectly fits Morrison, and thus his run on x-men. I will say while I love All-Star Superman, his art fits less there in the more hopeful silver agey story, so he’s not an artist for EVERY STORY OF EVERY TYPE.. but when it comes to sci fi weridness, he fits it like a glove so i’ts unsuprising he and morrison are practicaley soul mates, nor that his art sets the tone perfectly for the run: this is something new, diffrent and strange.. and what says x-men at it’s best more than that?

So after our opening titles we cut to the mansion where Hank is showing off his latest and greatest invention: Cerebra. Cerbebra is a massively upgraded version of Cerebro, aka Professor Xavier’s iconic helmet that allows him to track mutants to help them out.. and covertly backup their conconousness for his long game plan, but shhhh, don’t tell anyone yet that’s not going to be retconned in for a few decades. Though i’m damn certain if Morrison has heard about the current era of x-men and how it both builds on what he built, shatters the status quo and is incredibly weird, he’d be damn proud. As for how it’s diffrent Cerebra not only has a large dome around it but said dome allows the machine to amply Charles powers to a global reach. He can now see mutants all over the world anywhere in the world, something I didn’t realize wasn’t ALWAYS a thing because it seems so simple. It’s also likely to bring it more in line with the movies. And while marvel has done TERRIBLE with bringing things in from the movies or in line with them in recent years, i.e. making star lord more like his movie self while forgetting that’s how he already used to be in canon before later writers thankfully did hte better step of merging the two, Hawkeye’s outfit, Cap’s outfit or Nick Fury Jr. But for every mistep there’s also been tons of times it’s worked out really well such as here, as well as bringing hulk into the avengers for the first time since the founding, making tony stark more like the mcu version and less like a nightmarish self righetous dicktator who rightfully gets beat up and called out a lot, making Scott Lang prominent since he became prominent in the MCU, Wakanda being a major force in the marvel universe as it always should have been and various titles that have popped up to tie into movies, often bringing back a team or property that hadn’t had a book in some time like Ant-Man, Black Panther, and Shang Chi just to name a few. It’s not always hawkeye looking all jeremy renner is what i’m saying.. though thankfully comics clint isn’t that uninteresting. Hopefully the series will change that.

So yeah along with a bigger shinier cerebro we’re also introduced to a big change in Hank whose taken on his lion form rather than his classic gorilla with a weird haircut or his return to that except bald. Here he’s more like aslan in a human body and I.. love it. It looks great, helps sell hanks delima of being brilliant while looking like a beast and makes sense: he kickstarted what was likely his own secondary evolution by drinking the potion that made him bestial, so it only makes sense his body wouldn’t be all that stable even if it took years to change again. And even that makes sense as hank was breifly turned back to his original hairless ape mutation during x-factor, easily one of the books.. worse decisions honestly and one that louise simonson thankfully later undid. That probably bought him some time hence why it’s only mutating further now. It also adds an intresting wrinkle which the run will explore further: how far does this go? Will he regress? and how much hank will be left? And how will society treat his new form?

For now he’s actually extatic. While he’s going through hormonal changes, and giving out some excellent banter with Jean

Which also includes one of the greatest lines in comic book history, one that’s been in my head for decades and made me absolutely love henry mccoy.

He’s just great is what i’m saying. As you can tell it’s stuff like this why i’m glad Moira fell through. While I love her.. Morrison’s hank is just a delight and one really questionable subplot aside, we’ll get to that, he’s one of the highlights of this run with an intresting internal struggle, and great chemistry with EVERYONE. And that is the main reason i’m glad Moira fell through as his history with everyone but Emma, who he still has a great raport with, means each interaction has weight. He’s close friends with both scott and jean and thus serves as their needed confidant, while still being able to buddy and banter iwth good old weapon x, and speak with his mentor charles as an equal. While I love moira... Beast just fits into the cast too perfectly and I 100% suspect Morrison was only using her because, while she’s awesome, Claremont wanted her and thus gladly snapped her up when he no longer had a science person. I’ll get into his Jean soon enough but she’s likewise fantastic and easily my faviorite version of the character.. not that until very recently there was much honest competition.

So Cerebra fires up showing a massive cloud of mutants, showing just how much of a huge spike theirs been with Xavier wondering what it all means.. and Hank seeing a weird flare on the mointor for just a second with his special eyes. But since Xavier isn’t stupid and isn’t the kind of idiot who just dismisses it as a fulke, and since Scott and Logan are in the field, he decides to confrence call them in to see if they can go take a look.

And naturally we get to see what their up to and get context for what the hell happened in the first page. Our heroes were on a rescue mission to save Ugly John, tha’ts what people called him, a three faced mutant who ends up passing out as they head out of the atmosphere for a second. Wolverine is regenerating and smoking out of his neck becaue he could still smoke back then before marvel decided “he’s setting a bad example”.. in a comic meant for teens and adults.

I mean I get it on some level as the x-men cartoon was a huge thing in the 90′s and Ben Grimm is basically a giant children’s toy with the mind of a surly 40 year old jewish man from yancy street, but stilll it’s just.. why. I may not like smoking but it’s not like it was SPIDER-MAN saying

It’s a grown man.. whose not a sterling roll model and who Claremont went out of his way to have Logan point out his healing factor means it really dosen’t hurt him in the long run and when Kitty, an actual teenager, tried one of his cigars she choked. I know it’s a weird thing to get hung up on but while i’m all for keeping kids from smoking, this was a really clumsy way to try and hehlp that that made no sense and will never make any sense.

One tangent later we find out that Cassandra was showing Trask a simulation on a flight to, unsuprisingly, south america, to a sentinel blacksite. Between covertly funding civil wars as they do, the US Goverment naturally founded an experimental sentinal project, and a second master mold during the production of the first line... when larry trask asks where it could possibly be well...

Subtly was not the trasks strong point.. or common sense... or.. not realizing their creations would dominate humanity too or not dying.

Anyways we then cut back to the x-men, as their having a psychic zoom meeting with Charlie giving one of his patnted big speeches.. and like a lot of this comic it’s too damn good not to use

The reason I couldn’t should be obvious: This one speech sums up the x-men, why their great and why their necessary in a nutshell: in a world full of prejucided morons.. there’s plenty of scared kids who NEED the x-men to protect and guide them, and with a surge in the mutant population, their needed now more than ever. We also get a good explanation in universe for the uniform change: Charles had them in the superhero outfits hoping humanity would accept them if they were packaged as something they know. Since that clearly hasn’t worked he’s trying new ways to reach out and thus going with a diffrent more rescue team approach to the uniforms. He assigns Wolvie and Cyke to go check out the flair as you’d expect and the meetings over. On the blackbird we get our first hint at a subplot as Logan noticed Cyclops couldn’t wait to get out of there, and is being a tad distant to his wife. He actually has reasons for being kind of cold for once instead of just bad writing as he just came back from being possed by apocalypse. Yeah that happened. So the experience has rattled our boy some what. More on that as we go. But Jean ducks the subject with hank but does breach the fact that Charles has been going kind of crazy with the spending, new uniforms and ambition lately. Hank explains it perfectly: After all the death, suffering and misery the x-men have endured lately, the aforementioned deaths I talked about that took Colossus and Moira off the roster, have lionzed Charles to make sure it was all worth something and look towards the future.

But enough hope time for horror as Cassandra makes her first direct move, trying to take over Charles brain , make his body her own and use cerebra to kill lots and lots of mutants. We then get one of the best moments of Morrisons run with Charles response to a horrifying monster trying to take his brain

While it is shocking to find out Charles has a gun..it’s a grim but kind of understandable precaution. The guy once got fully taken over by a brood, assembling the New Mutants in part because the brood wanted to create more of i’ts kind with more super powers. You’d be paranoid too if some of your beloved students were brought together partly due to your good intentions and partly because a space monster wanted to make more space montsters out of helpless teens, and even horribly gaslighted one of them. We’ll get to that some day. Point is Charles brain is one of the greatest weapons on earth and if the wrong person got a hold of it, it’d be the end of said earth. Thankfully Charles does not need plan gun, as Jean yanks Cerebra off him but the sheer HATE Charles felt from Cassandra, the sheer power has rattled him.. and also told him she’s in Ecuador and his X-Men need to be warned NOW. It’s a great way to set up just HOW powerful Cassandra is. Speaking of which as our first issue of the arc ends, we find out two things: Cass faked being int he government but really just used dead soldiers as prop.. and just what kind of sentinels are out there.. wild sentinels. Easily my faviorite variant of the old killing machines and one that’s barely used despite being really damn awesome. Their adaptive killing machines, designed to mutated just like their pray and take tech from around them, as a result they look like a jumble of guns and parts.. but not only does it give them a unique, cool look.. but it makes them ten times deadlier as instead of being big bricks of robots that while intimidating, the x-men know how to kill... their unpredictable variable killing machines. You can figure out how to kill one sure.. btu the next might be entirely diffrent. They are one of morrisons best creations and I hope someone uses the idea again.. aka hickman. Please use it jonathan I know your focused on nimrod but come on.

And we end on one of the best lines of the entiire run as we close out the issue

Yeah it goes without saying but i’ll say it anyway; Morrison is really damn good with dialouge and being damn quotable.

So we open with another great quote “When I got up today I didn’t expect to kill 20 million people”... and Cassandra being aware Wolverine and Cyclops are on their way and sending the Wild Sentinels to dispatch them. Also our heroes brought Ugly John along while while a dumb move, Wolvie does point out how dumb it was to divert to Ecuador with a civlian in tow.. after the plane crash of course. As for “wait what plane crash’, the sentinels attack and start picking it apart... and since letting them have such good tech is a terrible idea, Scotty blows up the damn plane. So to recap our heroes are stuck in ecuador, surrounded by murder machines, and oh look their there and knock off cyclops viser. Fantastic. So yeah our heroes are fucked. And naturally captured by the enemy.

The rest of the x-men are doing SLIGHTLY better. While beast makes a note for his girlfriend, more on that later on, Charles is in bed, half alive, explaning the rationale I gave for why he has the gun with Jean refusing to let him get back out of bed and you know.. put on the device that just nearly killed him. But when beast announces they lost contact with our boys.. yeah that ceased being an option.

Back in the Ecuadorian Genocide Factory, Cassandra does the obvious and kills donald trask as his real purpose..was to stick around and be stupid for a bit while she copied his dna so she could have full control of her new murder toys.She soon uses them, having a horrifying death chamber slaughter john.. or at least flash fry him. Wolverine takes it how you’d expect and since the sentinels need to “perserve trask dna”.. they can’t fire on him without killing her. Scott escapes.. and in a heart wrenching scene mercy kills john.. before getting badass.

To anyone who says Scott Summers is boring, unintersting, or a stupid asshole idiot head I present exhbit shut the fuck up. Morrison gets scott just right, deconstructing his emotional suppression, while showing him off as a dedicated, companionate man who gets the job done and who seconds after tearfully having to mercy kill an innocent mutant whose death was partially his fault, wastes no time making it painfully clear to the person responsible she WILL die if she tries that again. Logan however realizes she’s already won in some fashion as she’s grinning.. and yeah never a good sign when a genocidal madwoman is grinning like a loon.. and when we find out why.. it’s even less good> We cut to Genosha. A lot of you probably know what happned to Genosha but in case you don’t know what it is it was once a horribly racist country that genetically enslaved mutants and used them for slave labor. It was freed, but still struggled to truly move on.. till Magneto showed up, took the country for himself and made it a home for all mutants. When we last saw him he once again tried to take over the world leading to Logan seemingly killing him. Right now though Emma Frost finally enters the scene teaching some mutants.. when a young one named Negasonic Teenage Warhead.. yes that one and yes she was entirely chosen for deadpool for her name, reveals, via precognition, that their all going to die.. right as the sentinels attack.

Genosha.. is gone. In an eyeblink 16 million mutants are dead, a possible future gone, and one of their greatest leaders is no more. Yeah Magneto WAS alive.. but paralyzed so he could do nothing when his island was utterly slaughtered. Only a handful of mutants will be revealed to survive. Humanity had done a lot to mutants before .. but for once.. they’d succeeded in wiping a massive chunk out. What was an x-men location for DECADES at this point.. was now a smoldering crater. A what could of been that would hant the x-men ever after, even now into utopia it remains the darkest day in mutant history outside of hte decimation. It is a truly horrific moment.. and if the changes already hadn’t made it clear this is morrison saying “NO character is safe, nothing is safe, and nothing will be the same and I damn well mean that”. In one act of hate the world has changed. And it hasn’t finished changing yet.

Issue Three opens hammering in things, as Jean and Beast are in the ruins of genosha, with Xavier having found ONE surivor among the rubble, and our heroes sturggling to find even them, though Jean eventually picks them up and uses her TK to sift through the rubble.

They find Emma who emerges from a bunker in shock, clutching NTW... and not realizing she’s dead until later and revealing she now has diamond skin, her own secondary mutation. Secondary Mutation was a birlliant idea, new powers sprouting up within established mutants.. it’s just morrison barely used this great idea as did hardly anyone else. Only X-Men Blue ever really dug into it and those were artifical at that. IT’s a great idea..it’s just barely used and at most heavily implied to explain changes in powers like Jamie Madrox Multiple Personalities later on or Doug Ramsey’s vast increase in power. Disapointing.

While Charles takes in the tragedy and the fact his old frienmie is dead, the x-men wonder what the fuck Cassandra is and what to do with her.. why did she kill 16 million people, and what the fuck is she. I mean I know, but as I said i’ll explain that when the story does. IN the other room Beast tends to Emma who wants none of not fucking killing Cassandra.. and is utterly right. Bitchy, because i’ts Emma, but right: she killed 16 million people. Say what you want but while it may not be up to the x-men to kill her.. she shoudln’t be living much longer. She commited genocide. Emma decides fuck that and prepares to leave summoning a cab and making peace with being a glorious living fabrige egg. Emma did apparelty change in generation x.. but Morrison is responsible for returning her not only to being a bitch, but a gloriously delightful one And really I don’t think they reset her character entirely: she’s not the heartless monster she started out as: she has empathy, grace, and caring.. she just buries it under a lair of absolute bitch and after you know, surviving a fucking genocide who can blame her? And honestly.. I love their verison of her. She provides a nice contrast to the more idealistic, even logan, x-men and a nice contrarian voice in the room without being obnoxious and her style and sacrastic swagger makes her endlessly entertaning. Thanks to morrison she’s stuck around to this day and went from a pretty good character.. to a great one. And what makes her this way, or as jean puts it “such a bitch?”

With that settled, Hank explains what Cassandra is: a competing species. As he puts it sometimes evolution takes a quantum leap forward.. and Cassandra is the result. Thus she wants to wipe out the compettition and is so far above humanity, she dosen’t need them... especially since she knows what Hank now knows: humanity is at an end. As hank puts it we have an E Gene, one that basically shuts off a race.. and thus the x-men now know what we learned earlier and that cassandra wasn’t lying: in 4 generations there are no more humans and something has to repalce htem. And Cassandra wants it to be her.

Before Logan can do what he does best, and asks why she looks like charles, Cassandra escapes, and Scott briliantly urges them to fight only on instict as she’s a telepath. A damn awesome fight insues including Cassandra donning Charles Psoonic battle armor, Scott being put in his black bug room and the general good looking chaos you’d expect from a superhero fight. While this goes on Emma has an ephinany and realizes she likes to teach, the x-men have a school.. and she shoudln’t give up on helping kids just because of what happened and turns around.

Cassandra is near victory, slipping her way to Cerebra.. and planning to kill only one mind before getting to the millions she wnats, a horrifying slug manifesting around her.. only...

So the x-men accept this and cassandra rises.. seemingly saying “I am charles” Huh... and then charles uncaracteristiacally shoots her saying things must change

We’ll get to what all of that means next time as we close on Jean and Scott in bed. Scott explains why he’s been so distant as what I said earlier: fighting off apocalypse stripped away a lot of illusions about himself and he’s having a hard time walking back from that but Jean is willing to help.. but before they can resolve their issues.. charles has an annoucnment to make and grant has one last whopper of a suprise to end his opening arc on, and just like genosha...it’s a game changer of titanic proportions

No longer is Xavier’s School hidden. Their walking into the light now and so is charles. Hope they surivive the experince. Obviously this move is brilliant: while it removes the veil of saftey the x-men had it also brings on tons of new possiblities and unlike secondary mutation, this one not only stuck but would impact the x-men for good: no longer would they hide and cower.. their mutant and proud.. and their here to stay. E For Extinction is one of the best x-men stories period. Blisteringly paced, full of great character, great concepts and utterly terrifying and terrific moments that would impact the x-men all the way to present day. It’s beautifully drawn, well paced, and a masterwork. I highly recommend it and it’s a great kickoff to a great run. Shame the run couldn’t of ended on this kind of high but.. we’ll get to that. For now this is a masterclass in how to start a run and if you haven’t read it do so NEXT TIME ON NEW X-MEN: A bunch of weirdos try to harvest mutant organs, the x-men get a brain in a jar and a new teamate, and Scott maybe cheats on his wife. Until then, goodbye goodbye goodbye.

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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X-Men: The Animated Series – The Worst of Charles Xavier

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Decades ago, in Uncanny X-Men #168, Kitty Pryde dared to say something bold yet true, “Charles Xavier is a jerk!” She was right, and the world has been better for it.

Professor Charles Xavier’s jerkdom transcends all media he has made an appearance in; it’s that powerful. He is an omega level clown, which is probably why he treats his X-Men like circus acts. You have to wow those humans in hopes of getting them to treat you like your mutant life matters, at least according to Xavier’s teachings. Now that X-Men: The Animated Series is available to stream on Disney+, here is a list of episodes filled with all of the Professor’s best-worst moments and how he is more of a danger to the X-Men than anyone else.

Enter Magneto and Deadly Reunions

The first season of X-Men is overflowing with moments that make you want to pop Charles upside his bald held. I consider “Enter Magneto” and “Deadly Reunions” as a two-part story since Magneto plays the second most significant part in both of them. He comes second only to Charles’s choice to not say a word about Magneto to any of the X-Men in all the years they’ve been on this team he put together. He didn’t utter a single word to his young team about an old frenemy who could cause them big trouble if he ever came back into the picture.

Spoiler alert: things go wrong when Magneto shows up.

Well, that’s not wholly true. The first time he appears, he successfully breaks into the Mutant Holding Facility to break out Hank Mccoy, who is in jail thanks to Charles. However, Magneto is unsuccessful because Beast wants to wait for his day in court. I know he says it himself, but I’m blaming Charles for this as well.

The rest of the episode is all about the severe danger Charles carelessly inflicts on his precious X-Men. Why wouldn’t you at least tell the guy on your team with an adamantium skeleton that you used to know a guy who has powers of magnetism? The X-Men are so ill-prepared to take on an extremely angry Magneto when he comes back ready to bring the pain to the human race. Things escalate quickly, nuclear warheads get involved, all because Xavier didn’t finish the job the first time around with Magneto. If it weren’t for Storm, a few cities would no longer exist.

Charles’s hypocrisy is also on full display in the subplot of these two episodes, which involves Sabertooth and Wolverine. Charles puts Sabertooth under his care for mind probing despite Wolverine wanting him nothing short of dead. Xavier goes as far as to pull rank on Wolverine, demanding Sabertooth stay untouched, but then orders Wolverine, Storm, and Cyclops to take care of Magneto at any cost. As Logan says to his face, “So we have to go easy on my enemy, but it’s okay to go trash yours.”

X-Men: The Animated Series – The Essential Episodes

By Michael Mammano

Justice League Unlimited: The Essential Episodes

By Jim Dandy and 3 others

In true Charles fashion, he doesn’t realize the error of his ways until after everyone has had their lives threatened by both Magneto and Sabertooth. I forgot to mention this earlier, but at one point in “Deadly Reunions,” he leaves newbie X-Men, Jubilee, in charge of Sabertooth.

Honestly, it’s genuinely no wonder Morph didn’t make it past the pilot episode.

The Unstoppable Juggernaut

The Professor isn’t in this episode, but he doesn’t need to be in order to succeed in making sure yet another enemy of his past blindsides the X-Men. Only six episodes after “Deadly Reunions,” Xavier’s vengeful step brother shows up, and once again, he is another person they knew nothing about.

The mansion is in shambles, and Xavier is nowhere around. He didn’t even have the decency to leave the insurance policy number around so one of them could file a claim. So, not only do the X-Men have to deal with Juggernaut, but they also have to become construction workers.

When the X-Men finally encounter the Juggernaut, it takes all of them plus Colossus to subdue him. Jean, Storm, and Rogue all managed to pass out at some point in the process. Again, I’m blaming Charles because it’s clear they were tired from all of the construction work they had to do earlier in the day. All that devotion and free labor in exchange for near-death experiences, a room, and costumes they probably sewed together themselves.

Cold Comfort

In “Cold Comfort,” an old member of the X-Men who had enough sense to leave returns. It turns into an episode of Dr. Phil because Xavier treats his mentees/employees like his children sometimes.

To make matters worse, Xavier isn’t exactly a great “dad.” He plays favorites.

So when Bobby “Iceman” Drake comes back into the fold briefly and reluctantly, it triggers some feelings Cyclops hasn’t let go of yet. The entire episode is full of Xavier undermining and gaslighting Scott about how differently he treated Bobby compared to him. Scott isn’t wrong this time.

In this episode, we also see how important Charles considers his self-appointed role of the go-to mutant to solely work with the government because he is incredulous when he discovers the government has been working with Forge and his X-Factor team. There’s no doubt he probably made a call to the White House to complain about this the moment he returned to the mansion.

One Man’s Worth Part 1 & 2

Finding love can already be quite complicated at the best of times. Now imagine finding love in a post-apocalyptic world and having to give that love up because one man’s life was supposedly worth more than your happiness. It’s a raw deal, and that’s what you get when Charles Xavier is in your universe. In the two-part story, “One Man’s Worth,” Bishop and Shard travel to a future to recruit Wolverine and Storm to prevent Master Mold from assassinating a young Charles Xavier. They even have to find a way to convince him that his dream of humans and mutants, living amongst one another in peace, is his destiny.

Honestly, the post-apocalyptic world was way less of a challenge and headache. If you can believe it, older Charles is terrible, younger Charles is even worse, and ten times more infuriating. He doesn’t want to listen. He’s so stubborn he manages to get himself killed, forcing everyone to try again.

Ultimately Bishop, Shard, Storm, and Wolverine get the job done, but it also means Wolverine and Storm’s relationships are no more. They don’t even get a full day to spend together before those versions of themselves cease to exist. All for Charles Xavier, who does nothing but keep secrets away from them and interrupts their days off with stories no one asked him to tell.

Proteus Part 1 & 2

Last but not certainly not least on this list is the “Proteus” two-part story from season four. I saved the best for last. Part one contains one of the best Charles Xavier origin stories. It’s tragic but full of delicious drama. The montage of heartache shows Charles certainly has a thing for redheads.

Kevin, also known as Proteus, is the son of Moira MacTaggert and ex-husband, Joseph MacTaggert. His powers are out of control, and he is on a quest to meet a father that has wanted nothing to do with him. Charles swoops in to “help” Moira and her son, but it’s quite obvious it’s because he wishes Moira had married and had a family with him.

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Charles (of course) ropes some of the X-Men into his quest. He is hellbent on showing Moira that he was always the best man for her and her son. And because he is sometimes the Caillou of the Marvel universe, he takes his frustrations out on Wolverine, Beast, and Rogue throughout both episodes. And even after Charles does everything to “help,” Kevin and his dad end up reconciling, leaving Charles as the odd man out in Moria’s life yet again. You kind of want to sympathize with Charles until you realize how disappointed he is about Kevin and his dad working things out.

The post X-Men: The Animated Series – The Worst of Charles Xavier appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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gerec · 4 years ago

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AU-gust 2020 Prompts

AUs 1-10 on Ao3

11. Farm/Ranch AU - Cherik Xavierine, Cherigan?

12. Crime AU - Cherik

There’s a beer already waiting for Erik when he arrives at MacTaggert’s, and takes his usual spot in front of Moira at the bar. It’s been a long day – a long week in fact, in an already long month – and Erik doesn’t even hesitate before he picks up the tall glass and drains half of it with a grimace.

He sets the glass down, and wipes his lips with the back of his hand. “Thanks. I needed that.”

“I could tell as soon as I saw you come in,” Moira says, setting a pitcher down on the tray with two glasses and waving one of the servers over for pickup. “Let me guess. No new progress on the case, and Shaw is breathing down your neck for results?”

“Right on both counts.” He takes another long drink, and pushes the nearly empty glass back over to Moira for a refill. “There’s a lot of pressure on the department from the Mayor’s office; apparently it’s bad PR when you have a serial killer on the loose two months before re-election.”

Moira rolls her eyes, and slides Erik his refill with a snort. “What? You don’t think Trask is wants justice for those poor murder victims? Why Detective Lehnsherr I do believe you’re being too hard on our illustrious Mayor.”

“I don’t care what that idiot thinks,” Erik says, setting the glass down hard enough to warrant Moira’s warning glare. With a sigh he adds, “They’re thinking of adding a consultant to my team. A behavioural psychologist. An empath. I fucking hate empaths.”

“Well that’s going to be an utter shit show.” She’s grinning fondly at him, which takes the sting a little from her pointed – and highly accurate – observation. “Who’s idea was it to do that? Shaw knows you don’t play well with others.”

“Doesn’t matter. What matters is I’ve got three dead bodies and nothing concrete after a month’s investigation. If Forensics doesn’t give me something useful soon I’m going to lose my damn mind.”

“Oh it’s way too late for that,” she says, and her dry delivery makes him shake his head and laugh. Then she leans a little closer, and nudges him discreetly towards the opposite end of the bar. “Just so you know that cute guy nursing the single malt has been checking you out since you got here. Time to put the shop talk away and work your magic.”

Erik grimaces. “I didn’t come here to pick anyone up, Moira.”

“By the looks of it he’s probably going to pick you up, so do yourself a favor and let him buy you a drink, and forget about work for the rest of the night, okay?”

She leaves him then with a quick pat on the cheek, and heads over to help the other bartender with his orders. Curious, he sneaks a look where the cute guy is sitting, and finds himself locking eyes with a man staring very intently in his direction.

He feels lightheaded, like all the air has been sucked out of his lungs, as the man picks up his drink and makes his way towards Erik. There is something incredibly arresting about him – early thirties, wearing a blue dress shirt and khakis – and he doesn’t understand why until the man is standing right in front of him, and giving him a friendly, flirtatious smile.

His build, his dark hair, blue eyes and impossibly red lips…

He’s a dead ringer for every one of the victims murdered by Erik’s killer.

“Hi, I’m Charles,” the man says, and something wild and possessive lodges itself deep in Erik’s gut. It can’t be a coincidence that he’s here, can it? Meeting Erik, when he matches the victims’ physical profile so closely it makes every hair on his body stand on end?

“Erik,” he answers, his eyes darting around the room to see if anyone is watching. He can’t shake the feeling that this might be a setup; that the killer might be in the room and planning this man’s murder while simultaneously messing with Erik’s mind. He’s got to get Charles out of here, and someplace safe where Erik can keep a close eye on him. “Can I get you like another drink?”

Charles smiles. “I’d love another drink.”

---

They end up going to Erik’s place, where Charles promptly makes him forget why it’s a bad idea to get involved with a potential target.

---

He wakes with his head pillowed in Charles’ lap, looking up at the killer’s face.

“Hello darling,” Charles says, carding his fingers through Erik’s sweat soaked hair. He can’t move his limbs, or open his mouth to scream, as the memories – blue eyes, blood, the way Charles made him scream as he - come flooding back like a deluge. “I’ve missed you.”

---

He wakes up with a pounding headache, and spends most of the morning cursing Moira for letting him drink too much, knowing that he’s got an early meeting with Shaw at the precinct. A shower and some aspirin gets him up and alert enough to get dressed, though he spends most of the ride in feeling exhausted and unsettled. Once they solve this case he’s going to take that long holiday he’s been planning, someplace warm and far away…

He needs to relax or the job’s probably going to kill him.

Shaw is waving him into his office the minute Erik walks through the door, and nodding at him to take a seat next to someone he’s never met before.

“Lehnsherr, this is Dr. Charles Xavier. He’s been assigned to help with your case—”

Erik snaps. “I told you I don’t need help from a shrink!”

He gets a warning glare from Shaw that’s even more vicious than normal. “Not my call. And not yours either. Now get out of my fucking office.”

He does exactly that, with Xavier following promptly at his heels.

“Look, I don’t know who you are or what’re you’re doing here—” he snarls, though he stops abruptly when he whirls around and finally sees the man’s face. It’s…familiar somehow, though Erik can’t imagine why, that is until he realizes that Xavier shares some similarities with the victims in his case.

“Detective Lehnsherr, I’m not here to get in your way,” Xavier says, which mollifies Erik’s temper a little, even if he’s still annoyed at being unceremoniously saddled with a ‘consultant’ he doesn’t need. “This is your case, and I’m happy to take your lead.”

“Right.” He takes Xavier’s offered hand and shakes it, and resigns himself to another long and unproductive day. “Let’s go meet the others, and I’ll brief you on the details of the case.”

#gerec writes #cherik #crime au #au-gust 2020 #august writing challenge #day 12 #serial killer au #dark!charles #i'm behind i know but i'll try and catch up

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kaydeefalls · 5 years ago

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Chapters: 1/11 Fandom: X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier Characters: Erik Lehnsherr, Charles Xavier, Hank McCoy, Armando Muñoz, Raven | Mystique, Moira MacTaggert, Remy LeBeau, Tony Stark, Bobby Drake, James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Obadiah Stane, Alex Summers, Emma Frost, Angel Salvadore, Janos Quested Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Murder Mystery, Slow Burn, Historical Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Pastiche, Plotty, Ensemble Cast, medieval warfare, Action & Romance Summary:

Medieval mystery AU. In the aftermath of a bloody siege during the 12th-century English Anarchy, the monk Henry and tradesman Erik discover evidence of murder: one corpse too many hidden among the fallen rebels. To see justice done, Erik must tread carefully through the conflicting and treacherous loyalties of civil war, as well as the potentially dangerous schemes of the enigmatic young Lord Xavier.

Ah yes, the Cherik medieval mystery AU the world’s been clamoring for -- and by “the world”, I mean, like, maybe five people. Gonna be posting one chapter per day until it’s all up!

#fic #cherik #charles xavier #erik lehnsherr #my fic #medieval au

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davidmann95 · 5 years ago

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Simply doing a full review round-up this week, since I got questions about a couple different books and there’s plenty worth at least touching on this week, though of course I’ll be going into a few spoilers:

Justice League #29: It’s weird to do a thinly-veiled recap issue when the Apex Predator arc itself worked so well as a jumping-on point, but this was still a delight that managed to palpably raise the stakes as the cherry on top. And as evidenced by what I saw of his time on Injustice, Bruno Redondo is built for this kind of charming, character-driven storytelling that still captures the fundamental bombast of the figures involved.

Year of the Villain: Sinestro: Fascinating to see Mark Russell having to reign it in and tell something not unlike a ‘normal’ superhero comic for, other than that little Superman story with Bryan Hitch, the first time in his career - or at least, close enough to it to not completely shatter the illusion of this being part of the larger Justice/Doom War narrative - and he really shines. It’s still fundamentally of a piece with the rest of his oeuvre, but played just straight enough to work on a totally different frequency. Hopefully it didn’t chafe because I’d love to see him pursue this particular vibe further.

Doom Patrol: Weight of the Worlds #2: I liked the original Way Doom Patrol plenty, but Weight of the Worlds has been firing on all cylinders from word go and it’s precisely what I want from weird-ass superhero comics.

The Green Lantern #10: I almost feel bad that this is my favorite issue of the series so far, both because it’s Morrison returning to so many old haunts and because it’s where he finally up and abandons the premise of this not being yet another “Green Lantern deals with the Biggest Threat Ever!” story the way he promised (even if I suppose it’s justifiable as the kickoff of the ‘season finale’). But I can’t really bring myself to care because this absolutely rules, and also because even if he doesn’t bring Red Racer back from the icy grip of the reaper as delivered by the truly abysmal Multiplicity, he DOES - perhaps accidentally, which I’d still certainly be fine with - undo its dull-as-dishwater conception of Earth 14. Also Halk Kar and superheroism in general being gently condescended by the Lanterns is A+.

DCeased #4: Truth be told? I think some of the weird propulsive energy of the first two issues is, appropriately enough, bleeding out. Still definitely in the tank for the last two though.

Batman #76: It keeps on keepin’ on. I’ve appreciated the last several months for what they were, but City of Bane is feeling like something of a return to form for this run, and Tony Daniel’s turning in his best work in years. And I love that, aside from the backmatter of #75 as mandated by Year of the Villain shenanigans, Bane himself thus far exists only as a silent force here.

Lois Lane #2: It’s good in exactly all the same ways #1 was good, and you should be getting it if this sort of thing is even remotely up your alley.

DIE #6: Damn. I think I’ve already hit the part in pretty much every Kieron Gillen comic where I completely lose the plot, but damn.

No One Left To Fight #2: Not quite the same impact as the first issue, but this is still a really fun, emotional little book people should be paying attention to. Not sure about that last page though.

Future Foundation #1: Liked the art well enough, but sorry folks, this one’s a dud as far as I’m concerned.

Absolute Carnage #1: I’m embarrassed I slapped down $8 on this bastard in large part just because I want the Miles Morales and Immortal Hulk tie-ins, and equally shocked that dang folks, we’ve got a live one here. This is a top-tier event comic kickoff, certainly Cates’ best work in a minute, and even the backmatter managed to work pretty well (though holy shit, Cletus Kasady isn’t even two years older than me?!).

Daredevil #9: It isn’t picking up the same kind of attention as Life Story, and it surely doesn’t help that Checchetto isn’t here for this arc even though Lalit Sharma’s work is an excellent fit for the material at hand. But Zdarsky’s still doing the best work with Murdock and company that they’ve seen in years, easily in Marvel’s top 3 ongoings. And this issue in particular made me go “oh, god dammit, Matt”, the one true mark of a quality interpretation of the man without fear.

The Immortal Hulk #22: It’s a new issue of Immortal Hulk. Barring a truly bonkers new twist to mull over, whaddaya expect me to go over that I haven’t said already? Other than that Hulk says trans rights.

House of X #2: I’ve got a ton of smaller reactions and theories that don’t really fall under the purview of even the meager critical analysis I offer in these little quickfire reviews - at least, not unless I wanted to spend half of this post on it, which I’m not feeling tonight - but even as someone who maybe knew about a paragraph’s worth of information about Moira MacTaggert this issue blew my damn socks off, so I can’t begin to imagine how it must have read for people who’ve been following the X-Books for years or decades. As a fucked-up life story, and a simultaneous mediation on the X-Men’s narrative history and assorted philosophies of radical social change in general, this was as already usual easily the jaw-dropper of a clearly competitive week. And as I noted and someone also pointed out in my ask box, it feels like profound statement of intent that there is now no longer, and never has been, a truly major token good human in the X-Men’s orbit.

#Week's Comics #Opinion

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eddycurrents · 5 years ago

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When they said that the event calendar for the release dates of House of X and Powers of X would feature major events that recontextualize and change how you think about the entire event, they weren’t lying. If anything, based on House of X #2, it was an understatement. As much as the first issues of both series have already changed the landscape of Marvel’s merry mutants, changing the characters, and changing the rules, House of X #2 makes you wonder about everything that you’ve seen previously.

This issue also sets in stone that House of X and Powers of X are inseparable. You need to read both, not one or the other, in order to get the full story. They play off of one another more like one continuous narrative, with notes flitting back and forth between the two books, than two discrete stories. The differences are really just a matter of perspective and scope. One book looks at the story from one particular angle, and the other zooms out, looking at a different composite. The way the two play off one another, even this early into the event, is very impressive.

Jonathan Hickman and his collaborators already set a new standard with the first issues of HoX and PoX, House of X #2 takes it a step further and fundamentally changes the rules of the Marvel Universe even. It takes an already existing high water mark and raises it further.

Pepe Larraz and Marte Gracia continue to be a shining light in this story, especially when it comes to permutations. And this issue may well have one of the most pored over and inspected infographics yet.

It is truly astonishing what Hickman, Larraz, Gracia, Cowles, and Muller are doing here.

There will be spoilers below this image. If you do not want to be spoiled on House of X #2, do not read further.

SPOILER WARNING: Below I’ll be discussing the events, themes, and possibility of what’s going on in House of X #2 and beyond. There are HEAVY SPOILERS beyond this point. If you haven’t read the issue yet and don’t want to be spoiled, please stop reading now. You’ve been warned.

PREAMBLE | First Impressions

All I can really say is holy crap. I’ve been highly impressed so far with what House of X and Powers of X have been doing so far, but this one blows all expectations out of the water.

House of X #2 is a truly incredible story that completely reinvents the character of Moira MacTaggert, retcons decades of X-Men continuity in the process, but does so in a way that opens up endless possibilities, new stories, and more, rather than being any kind of forced insert. It’s brilliant. And it makes you wonder about all of the X-Men stories in the past, especially reading interactions with Destiny and Magneto in new contexts, and those that we’re currently reading.

Basically, Moira’s a mutant with the power of reincarnation. She keeps coming back and attempting new solutions and experiments to solve the human-mutant problem like a mutant take on Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon’s Daytripper.

It also makes a lot of the speculation that many of us, myself included, about what’s going on in the first couple issues possibly entirely wrong. Because it changes the rules. I love it. It’s amazing and ballsy for a series as potentially dissected and analysed as this to just outright break the standard framework entirely.

Also, in regards to Pepe Larraz’s art this issue, it shifts depending on the life that’s being discussed. While Moira and the people around her are mostly the same, the panels shift and take on different shapes and angles per period. It’s a very nice and easy way to show visually that we’re seeing a different life being lived with minimal confusion or reliance on the text.

Marte Gracia continues to deliver exquisite colour art. Like Larraz’s layouts, the colours shift and change, in some ways subtle, in other ways explosively, across the different lives. It’s also impressive whenever a colourist can make an apocalyptic landscape feel dark without it looking like mud.

And Clayton Cowles and Tom Muller remain the cherries on top with letters and design respectively.

ONE | Time After Time

Throwing that spanner in the works of every theory, assumption, and possibility of the first two issues is Moira’s reincarnation abilities. It is a huge retcon that makes you question everything.

It starts out unassumingly enough with an ordinary life, lived to an ordinary span. in an ordinary way. Life One is an interesting way to lead us into this radical change to Moira’s character because it’s ordinary. It’s brilliant to present such a huge shock to the system through such a simple, unexpected life story.

And it spirals out from there as we’re taken back to Moira’s discussion with Charles in Powers of X #1, given more details and explanations of here different lives. From simple destruction chance of Life Two being cut horrifically short to the far flung length of joining with Apocalypse in Life Nine. Some lives an elements are familiar, others radically different from what we know, each apparently giving Moira a different piece of the puzzle in order to figure out the solution to the extreme division between humans and mutants.

I find it somewhat funny, given the text piece in Powers of X that sending mutants into space isn’t one of the primary proposed ideas through any of these lives, but maybe that’s something we’ll see when and if she finally gets things right.

I also find it interesting that one of the lives that gets the most attention is when she picks man over mutant in Life Three. It’s one of the ones that goes horrifically wrong as she decides that mutants are a disease needed to be stamped out, coming up with a cure to eradicate them. It establishes Destiny as an arbiter of justice to temper if Moira decides a similarly destructive path.

The various differently lives briefly shown throughout the story are also fascinating. They beg to be expanded upon through a series of specials and mini-series mining the different possibilities of these alternate existences. They feel rich and well-realized with interesting events informing on Moira’s decisions through her lifespans.

Although they can be left as throwaway ideas within the larger framework of the House of X/Powers of X event, there’s fertile ground here to expand upon in time. Moira VII Assassin could be an interesting, dark, and cynical thriller, especially as compromises to morals and ethics become hollow as the machines manifest anyway. A new Age of Apocalypse in Life Nine practically screams to be explored. It’s fascinating how all of these lives combine, recombine, and mix different common elements and themes across X-Men history and spin out something new.

It also makes you wonder about those time periods in Powers of X #1. We think that X0 through X3 are the same timeline. This issue opens up the possibility that that may not be the case. The futures might be from one of Moira’s previous lives. We don’t know yet what exactly we’re seeing and that uncertainty adds a fair amount of excitement to see what’s coming next.

What we’re seeing in House of X and Powers of X could be Life Eleven, since there are already some radical departures in how Krakoa seems to work, and all of the people who are now alive that were dead. I’ve gone through thoughts as to how it could be messing with time, but Moira’s reincarnations seems to eliminate that theory entirely. It’s also easy in story terms since it would essentially give a blank slate to establish the rules of this new reality, but I think that’s too simple.

I think, however, that we’re currently witnessing Life Ten. For one, we’re referring to Moira often in these series as Moira X, which would seem to infer more that this is her tenth life, rather than necessarily X as in Xavier or X-Men or even as a placeholder X for her multiple possible surnames (Kinross, Cowan, MacTaggert, Xavier). It also potentially rewrites the meaning of the title Powers of X as being more personal, not just referring to the time periods, but these being the “Powers of [Moira] Ten”. It takes all of the huge, reality and time-spanning ideas and humanizes it, making it a personal tale of one woman’s struggles.

I think Life Eleven is triggered at the end of House of X/Powers of X and is the seed for the “Dawn of X” titles spinning out of this story.

TWO | Entanglements

The wider implications of Moira’s powers are felt in how long you’ve been reading X-Men comics and whether or not you want to do a deep dive into the past. It could be fun, it could be maddening, and ultimately the story in House of X and Powers of X doesn’t necessitate it. You can read this still without having ever read a single X-Men comic and enjoy it.

But over-complicating things is a pastime of longtime X-Men readers. These books were written for a long period of time by Chris Claremont, after all.

One of the major things that this shows in various permutations throughout the story is redefining Moira as one of the primary movers throughout history. She serves now as a catalyst for events and direct causes for divergence points creating alternate timelines. In some ways subtle, in others profound.

I’ve stated and speculated previously that Xavier seems different through the first issues of both series, in terms of the X1 Xavier potentially exhibiting telekinetic powers he never had and his kind of creepy character affectations (that could have been continuing on with X’s behaviour from Astonishing X-Men) and the seeming oddity of not knowing who Moira was in X0, which I thought could have been put down to time travel shenanigans, but that seems moot with House of X #2. It’s probably just a new reality that we’re dealing with.

It raises questions as to whether or not Xavier is really a puppet master as previously believed, or just another cog in the Moira Machine, figuring out that possibly the only way to answer the Man-Mutant conundrum is to get Xavier, Magneto, and Apocalypse (and possibly the machines) all working together.

And then there’s Moira’s run during the ‘80s. The Muir Island X-Men. Magneto’s rehabilitation. Working with the New Mutants. Aiding Xavier throughout. It takes on an entirely different element knowing that she was knowledgeable of various events beforehand. It takes working with Freedom Force in an entirely different light. There’s undoubtedly a lot you could dive deeper into in order to figure out how things stack up in this new light.

THREE | Number Six

Curiously missing from the infographic giving Moira’s timeline is Life Six. There’s a gap between Life Five and Life Seven that remains unaccounted for. Nor does it come up when she’s talking to Charles Xavier explaining to him who he is.

For a story that is built on detail and complexity, the omission has to have a reason. And because it’s missing, we can potentially get endless speculation as to why it’s missing.

Personally, I think it could be because it’s actually the baseline Marvel Universe that we knew. Life Ten would appear to be that, being consistent with what we know, but there’s doubt. We’ve been told through Moira’s conversation with Destiny that she has a limited amount of reincarnations, ten, with possibly an eleventh if she got things right.

Or I could be completely wrong and it’s something else entirely.

CONCLUSION | I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts

It’s taken me a while to put fingers to keyboard on this one for a number of reasons, one of the primary ones being that this story just left me gobsmacked. It presents so many different possibilities and reinterpretations that you’ve practically got to tear up the script as to what you thought was going on. It makes you question whether or not anything at all that you’ve read before is in a particular frame or even relevant to a particular frame.

It’s incredible.

Hickman, Larraz, Gracia, Cowles, and Muller have managed to take an already impressive new approach to the X-Men and elevated it further beyond imagining. It’s very exciting. House of X #2 represents an even greater sea change than we were led to believe.

d. emerson eddy is fairly certain he doesn’t reincarnate into the same life if you kill him, so please don’t try.

#Examinations #X-Men #House of X #2 #Jonathan Hickman #Pepe Larraz

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