Monthly (Comic) Book Club - April - New X-Men17214
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Monthly (Comic) Book Club - April - New X-Men: E is for Extinction & Imperial  New X-Men #114-126, 2001 Annual Week 1 (3/28-4/3): New X-Men #114-117, 2001 Annual Week 2 (4/4-4/10): New X-Men #118-120 Week 3 (4/11/-4/17): New X-Men #121-123 Week 4 (4/18-4/24): New X-Men #124-126 Discussion topic ideas: * Thoughts on the story or artwork * Details in the story, artwork, or presentation * References to outside events or other works of fiction * Making of/Behind the Scenes details * Editions you will be reading from * Items in your collection pertaining to this week’s selection |
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| As a backdrop for the series: in the first half of 2001, X-Men and Uncanny had a crossover called Eve of Destruction. Scott Lobdell comes back to finish some thoughts he had on the Legacy virus, and art (across the two titles) is by Leinil Yu and Salvador Larocca. Magneto decides that Colossus' sacrifice to end the Legacy virus by killing himself was a grave error on Xavier's part. He kidnaps Xavier and takes him to Genosha, ties him up in the town square, and starts recruiting mutants to make a Genoshan army. He basically creates a mutant state and dares humans to come at him. Most of the X-Men are elsewhere, so there's more of a sneak-attack angle than a giant fireworks show. Magneto starts a brutal battle but when he moves to take Wolverine's skeleton out again, finds that Xavier was actually freed and tricking him with telepathy. Wolverine stabs Magneto and the X-Men leave, despite Magneto still obviously planning to turn Genosha into a mutant country. I would have to read it again to have a more detailed opinion, but I would say it wasn't an inspired series per se. Yu and Larocca are good artists but as far as the story goes it doesn't show a lot of thought on the part of the X-Men. Magneto has tried to create mutant-only areas before and they usually kick him out; this time they left him with a whole country to organize. Maybe they thought beating him up in front of everyone would make him lose his leadership. Any which way, this is the state of the X-Men world right before Morrison and Quitely come in. X-Men would change its titling (but not numbering, and most places consider 'New X-Men' to be part of the X-Men series) and Uncanny would go into its Poptopia storyline. |
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| You know, Lobdell is a name I know but I don’t know his writing style well enough to have an opinion. I know he was all over the X-Men books in the ‘90s, including the major crossovers like Fatal Attractions and Onslaught. When jumping back and forth between series in those crossovers I didn’t get much chance to really get to know one writer’s particular style. What I’m trying to get at is that I don’t know if Lobdell’s weak writing on Eve of Destruction are typical of him or if it was just an uncharacteristically weak effort | ||
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| I wouldn't say that Lobdell's writing was weak without going back and reading it. More that I don't think the crossover was amazing. But yeah, he wrote a ton of X-Men amongst other things. He wrote Uncanny in the late 290s/early 300s, including X-Cutioner's Song and Phalanx Covenant. He also wrote Generation X, Excalibur, and X-Factor. He was involved in the Age of Apocalypse. The Eve of Destruction arc was a return. It was meant to set up Morrison's run so I'm sure he was boxed in at least a little. | ||
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| #114 kind of throws you into the middle of what's happening. Beast had recently been in the X-Treme X-Men title, took a beating, and came back to the mansion to heal. He apparently began another physical transformation and spent some time upgrading Cerebra. There's also been a mutant baby boom, as well as many existent mutants having secondary mutations. Also prior to the series, Cyclops was joined with Apocalypse (literally) in the The Twelve crossover. He's obviously been recovered, but he was missing for a bit and went through some stuff. As far as the current plot is concerned, the important stuff is that we are introduced to Cassandra Nova (unnamed), who psychically attacks Xavier and is leading a Trask relative to a forgotten Master Mold and its wild Sentinels. Beast's more feral form is just the beginning of the Morrison/Quitely weirdness as we also quickly get a mutant with three faces and Wolverine smoking through his neck while healing from a Sentinel fight. I feel like Quitely's art giveth and taketh away. His tendency to add extra lines makes Jean look about 80 in the panel where she hands Beast a soda. In the very next panel, I like the touch of Beast opening the soda but tearing the whole top off. Going back to our previous Morrison/Quitely reading (https://forum.cbcscomics.com/topic/15357/page/1/monthly-comic-book-club---august---batman-amp-robin-1-12/ so it's handy), I said that the first issue there had some backstory to help orient. Here I feel like the backstory is hinted at but more opaque. I knew the stuff from the beginning of this post, and an earlier post, from refreshing my memory of things I had read before. I'm not sure how well it reads if you weren't familiar with the characters and recent events. |
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| #115 is the comic that I have first in my memory for this arc. The important part is also at the end, with the gigantic wild sentinel wiping out millions of mutants on Genosha. It's an event that will become a key point for the X-Men, like Days of Future Past. They know that someone or someones will hate them enough to try to kill literally all of them unless they do something about it. Before that, I have a little bit of a Watchmen vibe. The sentinels launch from Ecuador before Wolverine and Cyclops arrive, and Cassandra does most of her bad stuff before the good guys are really there to try and stop her. It establishes her as more of a competent, cold-hearted villain; there's no monologuing or strutting around to give the heroes a chance to stop her. She's committed to accomplishing her goal. There's an overall hard-boiled vibe to the book, too. Wolverine and Cyclops' conversation in the cockpit is snappy and tough, and Ugly John's death is gnarly. Plus there's whatever Cassandra does to Trask. #116 reveals Emma's secondary mutation, which is turning into diamond. It's a little interesting because she looks pink through the diamond and Beast refers to it as an exoskeleton. In later issues it seems like she's entirely diamond. We'll have to see if that's an explicit change or if they just kind of do it along the way. There's more of a power display by Cassandra, who heals from a few different things, phases through a wall, and seems to dissolve Wolverine and form an armor around herself just by wanting to. There's also more of the hard-boiled gross/weirdness, with Beast's dialogue in Genosha, the Black Bug room, and Xavier shooting Cassandra and getting blue blood everywhere. Everything seems very serious but the dialogue is still flippant. I feel like these issues are a fairly quick read. Maybe it's by comparison to Shi's internal dialogue and odd asides/series jumping? Maybe it's because I have a physical copy of these books instead of electronic? Maybe it's just me. |
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| @xkonk I think the story reads fairly well without intimate knowledge of the events leading up. Some things are definitely opaque, like Scott and Jean having some sort of rift, but otherwise the issue very much feels like a starting point. It’s clear Morrison wants to start something “new”. You get this feeing throughout of new beginnings. New Cerebra, new school term, new uniforms, a new generation of mutants, and even new sentinels. Morrison is also bringing to the fore the very X-Men themes of evolution and bringing in the counterpoint of extinction. Humans are likened to mutants in that they were both new evolutions that drove (or will drive) their predecessors to extinction. In the light of this Nova suggests extinction of all mutants is the only defense and their tool for that are evolved sentinels. I’d say this fees like a very subdued start for Morrison, which is saying something if a three-faced mutant, wolverine’s face burned off, Professor X threatening to kill himself, and wild sentinels butchering a squad of psychically controlled meat puppets is tame. One thing to point out is that similar to the Batman reading, this Morrison work came out shortly after a big movie brought the subject matter into the popular culture. Batman and Robin was released about a year after The Dark Knight and this story started almost a year to the month after the original X-Men film. I had mentioned that in some ways it felt like Morrison was bringing elements from the Dark Knight into the comics and I think we see a little of that here. The new black uniforms are far closer to the movie look than any of the outfits seen in the comics before. Clearly the talk of evolution has been present in X-Men comics for a long time but the way it’s presented here is very reminiscent of the films. That said, I wonder how the previous arcs, which were releasing closer to, if not concurrent with the movies compared. I do believe you mentioned Magneto was a big part of the preceding arc and he was famously the main villain of the first film. So far he’s absent in this issue |
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Quote:Originally Posted by dielinfinite That's a good catch. The X-Men movie had a line where Wolverine comments on the leather uniforms and Cyclops makes a crack about spandex. Maybe it's Quitely's artwork but I'm not sure that I would call the comic look 'realistic'. |
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Quote:Originally Posted by dielinfinite I don't think there's anything very direct. There was a different Magneto story in 1999 but it was more about his recently-introduced clone Joseph. The bigger '99 crossover was The Shattering, which focused on the X-Men falling apart and various people going in different directions. It's the story where they reveal Wolverine was Apocalypse's new Death. That segued into Apocalypse: the Twelve in 2000. So Magneto shows up here and there like he usually does but I wouldn't say anything was particularly trying to line up with the movie. There was a little story at the beginning of 2001 where Mystique tried to kill Robert Kelly, but it was a two-part Uncanny story and not all that big. Otherwise it's just Colossus sacrificing himself to eliminate the Legacy virus and then the Magneto Eve of Destruction crossover. |
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| Annual 2001. The annual is a divergence because it's a different artist (Leinel Yu) and it's in flipbook orientation. It's also the first appearance of Xorn and John Sublime. Plotwise, Emma starts hitting on Scott at least a bit. And Sublime introduces the U-Men, which is an effort to graft mutant abilities to normal humans. Morrison keeps up his weirdness by having the Chinese government mutant, Ao Jun, have the 'power' of his shed cells turning into golems of himself. This is practically unlikely; your entire skin surface turns over in a month and a half, which is a lot of golems. There's also some kind of caterpillar mutant. Also in the 'I find it unlikely' list, Scott sleeps without lenses on. He doesn't need them with his eyes closed but I feel like someone as anal as Scott, whose main personality trait flows from a fear of loss of control over his eye beams, would assume that he doesn't blink or wake up from a nightmare or something. Art-wise, I like Yu's work. I think the flipbook style is a missed opportunity though. It makes the pages long instead of tall, so you should have a lot of panoramic views and wide frames and whatnot. And there are some here but they don't seem as impressive as they should be. Maybe it's just my impression. |
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| I didn't realize 117 was listed for week 1. That's a lot of reading to catch up on! Morrison keeps leaning into the freaky side of mutancy by introducing Beak. The issue focuses on the un-"cool kids", some of which are in the hallways. Glob is there in his first appearance, although he goes unnamed. Beast, while being a longtime hero and having looked less than human for a while, gets dumped (re-dumped?) by Trish Tilby for having changed too much. Maybe to emphasize the changes, new artist Van Sciver has Beast's lower legs reversed at the knees. At least early in the issue; later they look normal. Xavier is showing off some of his well-known shitty decision making. In a contrast for casual fans and/or people who only know the cartoon or movies, Xavier continually makes bad decisions instead of being a smart leader. In this case, he outed himself as a mutant and drew a ton of protestors to the school. Then he flies off to Shi'ar space, leaving the X-Men to watch things. In the Annual he put two people in charge of watching all of Asia. Although perhaps it isn't Xavier's shitty decision-making but Cassandra Nova's actions? That said, it does fit with Xavier's pattern of making bad decisions. |
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| #118 picks up with the X-Men running the school while Xavier is gone, as well as Sublime from the Annual. Scott, Jean, and Emma go out to confront the people in front of the school, and later go talk to Sublime after a couple of inspired shootings make the news. Emma shows her more straightforward approach in both situations. This issue feels a little less impactful than the others, but it's also the first in this mini-arc. I'll give it some slack there for setting things up. The issue continues introducing new characters. She isn't named when she is seen but Martha Johansson is No-Girl. The Stepford Cuckoos show up. She goes unnamed but the girl with wings and acid spit is Angel Salvadore. I don't know that I made the connection before explicitly, but she's Zoe Kravitz' character in X-Men First Class. |
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Quote:Originally Posted by xkonk lol, I think that was a mistake on my part. Week 1 should’ve just been E is for Extinction and the Annual. I knew E is for Extinction was a 3-issue story but I didn’t count issue 114 when I wrote the list I don’t think you’re wrong in feeling that the issues go by quickly. Part of it is definitely the lack of long monologues but it very much feels like Morrison isn’t so much out to tell a story with this arc. Instead this feels like a statement of intent. A fast punch to the gut to establish that this is in fact a new X-Men. That said, damn, it’s a bit eerie that Cassandra Nova’s attack on Genosha occurred in the August 2001 issue, complete with what looks like a plane hitting Magneto’s tower, and the September 2001 issue opens with Jean and Beast digging through through the rubble. I lost a bit of writing here but I noticed that the idea of extinction hangs heavy in the arc. Beyond Cassandra’s attack we also learn that humanity has an expiration date, destined to be replaced by something else. Possibly mutants or possibly whatever Cassandra Nova is. The book also has a harsher tone than you’d expect from other X-Men books. While Wolverine has always been wild and willing to kill, it’s a little strange seeing Cyclops almost on that same page and you definitely don’t expect Professor X to pull out a gun and just shoot someone dead. Yes she’s responsible for killing millions so it’s difficult to judge him too harshly but you also expect a bit of inner conflict before or after a hero has to kill someone but Xavier is fairly decisive. I didn’t realize that Frost’s diamond skin ability, seen in X-Men Origins and X-Men First Class, had been introduced this late. I always figured it was older. We also get a brief look at Negasonic Teenage Warhead who was made famous in the Deadpool movies. Here she seems to just be precognitive. I believe Fox had to get permission from Disney/Marvel to change her powers and ended up having to allow Disney/Marvel to use Ego for Guardians of the Galaxy vol 2 since I think he fell under the Fantastic Four license that Fox had. Finally, since we spend so much time with Professor Xavier in X-Men comics, it’s easy to forget that his identity as a mutant is secret from the general public. That is until the end of this arc where he basically pulls an “I am Iron Man” moment. Though it is kind of a dick move since he basically also outs everyone he works with or teaches as possible mutants |
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Quote:Originally Posted by dielinfinite I'm saving it for the end of the month but I think this is one of the conceptual points that carries through X-Men and is still a big point today. This run has me relating to things in the current Hickman-guided storylines. Quote: Originally Posted by dielinfinite Yeah, she was changed pretty thoroughly for the movie. They obviously picked her because her name is begging for jokes. In the comics she has precognitive and some psychic abilities and the strong goth look, and this is really all you see of her for a while. She shows up later in Deadpool and looks more like the movie version (see her main Wiki picture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negasonic_Teenage_Warhead) along with some more powers. |
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| #119 spends most of its time with Wolverine and Angel. As one would imagine, there are a lot of X-Men stories where a new mutant discovers who they are and doesn't like it. I find this one to be a better example thanks to Morrison's weirdness and the generally dark storyline. In a lot of issues or in one of the movies when someone says "I don't want to fly, I'm a freak!" while looking incredibly attractive and surrounded by bright, attractive people, it falls a little hollow. Angel, with her insect wings and acid spit, is much more sympathetic when she talks while Wolverine is pulling shrapnel out of his neck. The restaurant owner kicking them out while saying he killed his son like it was some kind of favor is effective, too. The other half of the story ramps up the Sublime action as his U-Men attack the mansion. It brings to memory a line from not one but two X-Men movies: I feel a great swell of pity for the pour soul who comes to that school looking for trouble (my school when McAvoy said it). |
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| #120 is the third and last part of the Sublime arc. Along with the restaurant owner from last issue, this one lays on how other people think about mutants. The U-Men have a clear distinction between mutants and 'a guy', and they view mutants as supplies to advance their own "species". One of them also says that mutants (suggesting all mutants) have a different nervous system and don't feel pain the way they do. It's reminiscent of a lot of real-world attitudes toward a multitude of "others". Jean gives the U-Men the business but works herself up to the point that she manifests the Phoenix flame. That's usually a bad sign, or at least a sign that things are going to be messy. Emma gives the U-Men the business at Sublime's building, then Martha makes Sublime commit suicide. Not everyone has Cyclops' sense of morality. And our kicker moving to the next arc is that Beast is awake and has figured out that Xavier and Cassandra Nova switched bodies. On the art front, the first three issues were Quitely, the next two by Van Sciver, and then 119 and 120 by Igor Kordey. Van Sciver and Kordey are more typical artists, for lack of a better word, than Quitely. I think the art was still good though, and they both did a good job of keeping up the gross factor. All in all I wouldn't say that I'm missing Quitely. Looking at the credits on MCS it looks like we'll have Quitely back for 121, 122, and 126 with Van Sciver on 123 and Kordey on 124 and 125. |
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| Zoom meeting I don't have to pay close attention to means time for some reading. 121 is a silent issue that fills us in on Cassandra Nova. There is a little symbol stuff that takes the place of speech, a few of which I found tough to figure out exactly, but the journey through Xavier's mind is largely pictorial. Jean does the heavy lifting, breaking Xavier's mind out of Cassandra's mental bonds while Emma is jammed up fighting a door. But the end result is that Jean finds out that Cassandra Nova is Xavier's twin sister and he tried to kill her before they were even born. Somewhat recently there was a homage to this entire issue. Hickman and Dauterman did Giant Size X-Men: Jean Grey and Emma Frost, which follows the same idea of Jean and Emma doing a psychic rescue but for Storm instead of Xavier. It isn't a slavish homage, like the recreation issues Marvel has made recently, but it's also largely silent and some of the panels follow the same as 121. Storm's mind is very different from Xavier's so it makes sense that there would be differences. As far as providing a comparison, I like Dauterman's art better than Quitely's. That's generally true but in the case of these two issues, Storm's mind is aesthetically nicer than Xavier's prison even when she's putting up defenses. But I think Quitely does a good job of making things look ugly, which is appropriate for the story. Another difference is that Jean and Emma are much more equal in the recent issue. I'm not sure if that's supposed to be a nod to Emma being more of a 'good guy' these days or if she's supposed to be a better psychic now. |
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| I’m planning to catch up on the first two weeks’ reading today but I did spot the mention of the silent issue. I just thought I’d chime in. Nuff Said was a theme Marvel did with issues in early 2022 where the challenge was to create stories without any dialogue. In total there are 24 issues including entries in Bendis’ Daredevil & Elektra (considering how much I criticize Bendis’ overly talky writing, I might check these out), Ennis’ Punisher run (though this issue was written by the artist, Steve Dillon), and pretty much the rest of Marvel’s titles at the time |
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| 122 picks up in media res as Cassandra is using Xavier's body and powers to attack the Shi'ar. It sounds like Lilandra is trying to protect Earth though. Back on Earth the X-Men are making plans for their new world. They're changing the curriculum, which had been based on human methods, and Scott is worried about how humans will respond to them acting like a 'master race'. Jean is more worried about Xavier and fills us in on Cassandra some more. She wasn't actually Xavier's twin sister but some other entity that basically cloned him from conception. She also gave her reformed body a host of crazy diseases to kill Xavier after switching minds. This gives Scott the idea to rope Xorn back in to the series as he apparently has healing powers on top of a black hole for a head. I feel like Quitely's art is a little less Quitely this issue. There's also a lot less grossness and weirdness. The issue does end on a good funny note, as Smasher crashes to Earth with a dire warning... for cows. |
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| 123 kicks the art back over to Van Sciver. He draws more conventionally so Jean and Emma look more attractive and Scott is a bit less of a beanpole. Also, Emma has a bandage on her nose although she didn't the past two issues. I guess Quitely didn't get the notice that she was still recovering from the U-Men thing. This one gives us a little more character work. We see Angel still being angry and aggressive, we see that the Cuckoos are a hive mind but still somewhat individualistic, and we get another comparison between Jean and Emma's approach to dealing with humans. A media visit goes well despite Emma's aggression but then everything goes to crap when Beast discovers that the flu going around the school is actually nano-sentinels and the Imperial Guard arrive to wipe out mutants (along with capturing Cyclops and Xorn). I can't help but wonder what Van Sciver thought while working on X-Men books, especially ones as explicit about their overarching theme of bigotry and social justice as these are. Like, does he agree with the humans being worried about mutants for being some weird, powerful 'other'? Does he agree with the mutants having a right to create their own world because of their power? Does he just think of it all as fiction but nod along with lines like "everyone wants to be a persecuted minority these days"? I'm sure he's written his opinion somewhere and I don't actually care to know it, but I wonder vaguely since it seems like such a mismatch assignment for him. Maybe a paycheck is a paycheck. |
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| I agree that the orientation of the Annual doesn’t feel very well used. Am I mistaken that the storytelling in it can feel a bit choppy? Like people will switch subjects or skip ahead in time without a whole lot of explanation. I’ll admit I wasn’t devoting the entirety of my attention to every page but it certainly didn’t feel like it flowed as effortlessly as the previous issues. I do like the U-Men as villains. Sort of like radical transhumanists except instead of wanting to move beyond humanity into a technological space they want to become mutants, the successors to humanity. It really feels like Morrison wants to explore what lies beyond human-looking mutants. By that I mean, pretty much all the main X-Men are basically humans with some additional abilities. Beast being the exception in this book and even he is further mutating to look even less human. Of the new mutants we’ve seen, Ugly John, Ao Jun, that Caterpillar-looking girl, and even Xorn, none can really pass for human in a crowd. As illogical as some of these mutations can be, they are certainly unique and infuse the story with a bit of body horror that makes the threat feel different and more intense. Speaking of Xorn, I have read the run before so I’m aware of the big revelation much later on but I have to wonder if what’s revealed could actually reconcile with what we’ve seen and did Morrison plan that from the start or did he decide on it after introducing the character? It sounds like he was imprisoned by the Chinese government for several decades and we are shown some demonstrations of his abilities. |
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| In 117 I think it’s pretty clear that a lot of Xavier’s recent decisions were Nova’s doing. She specifically mentions wanting to burn down all Charles had built and making him watch. It makes more sense why he was so decisive in shooting Nova; she was already in Charles’ head and having everyone think she died helped her stay hidden. Outing the X-Men as mutants, drawing protests to the school’s door and leaving, possibly to take advantage of of the Shi’ar’s technological prowess. The creative team certainly tried their hardest to make Beak’s beating of Beast as tragic as possible. |
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| 118 definitely feels more world-building focused than plot focused. We see how the transpecies movement is being adopted by violent fringes of the public while at the same time a “mutant culture” seems to be in vogue. Morrison also seems to be renewing the mass public hatred towards mutants. This has been pretty central to the X-Men books for ages. I don’t know if it had waned somewhat in the previous arcs or if they simply focused more on the big epic events that they didn’t have time to show angry mobs in mutants’ day to day lives but Morrison is bringing it back to the X-Men on the back of Professor X outing himself and his whole school to the world. Morrison has basically positioned mutants in between two dangers. The people that hate them for being mutants and the people that want to kill them to become them. You could almost think of it as being stuck between racists that want you dead and those that want to appropriate your culture and identity until you cease to exist. I thought it was a little strange, given Morrison’s leaning into the weird, that Angel goes through a cocoon phase, though not a ton of attention is drawn to it, and she emerges looking exactly the same, except now she has wings. |
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| 119 definitely feels like it’s turning up the heat with Sublime and the U-Men capturing Cyclops and Emma Frost and their imminent attack on the school. So Wolverine had mentored Kitty Pryde and Jubilee in the past as well as Rogue in the first X-Men film and is filling the same role here with Angel. Angel’s story here shares some similarities with Rogue’s but as you mentioned, it’s also a fairly common story in the world of X-men so I don’t think we can attribute it to Morrison mimicking the movie in this case. Beyond the Angel/Wolverine subplot we also move a little closer to Jean discovering Nova’s involvement with Beak’s attack on Beast. |
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| With an arc this fast 120 didn’t waste any time and got straight to resolving the main threads. Wolverine is fighting again with Angel as they road trip back to the Mansion…Okay, THIS might’ve been inspiration from the movie. While Wolverine and Rogue weren’t necessarily heading to the mansion, they did have a bit of a road trip and ended up at the mansion after being rescued by Cyclops and Storm. I’m not sure if Martha had released her hold on Emma or if Emma had cowed Martha out of her head. In part because the arc moved so quickly, we didn’t get much character development, much less for a character that’s just a brain in a jar. I wonder how many brain characters Marvel has. I’m particularly fond of Brain Drain  I definitely get some Hulk vibes from Jean enjoying releasing that Phoenix power, if only briefly. We also get another weird mutant in Irina, the girl with multiple mouths around her neck that can throw her voice. |
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Quote:Originally Posted by dielinfinite I know the reveal also and am trying to keep an eye on what they do with him to see if it makes sense. The Wiki article for Xorn says the reveal was later retconned. From what we've seen so far, I don't see how the reveal would be plausible (keeping the reveal quiet in case there are lurkers who don't know what it is). But maybe there will be an opportunity for a swap in the middle. |
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| I thought 121 was an ambitious story to tell without text and I think it mostly worked except for the couple of cheats with the floating letters and the very last panel. I feel the floating letters were a little unnecessary since Jean’s expression definitely gets the idea across. The star is definitely in the abstract, surreal, and sometimes disturbing compositions and imagery. I wonder how much of the weirdness was there for the sake of being weird and how much has hidden meaning to it. Emma with the door seems mostly for comic relief and to show less capable or less focused than Jean. In the dungeon you have male and female figures flanking Xavier, representing Xavier and Cassandra, and an undeveloped fetus that was never born. I feel like the letters blocking the entrance to tower should mean something but nothing stands out to me. There’s also the hanging brick-a-brack in the next frame that I can’t find a reason for. |
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| 122 starts off almost like a horror story. The monster is out there and the survivors are trying desperately to warn the outside before all is lost. I think we see some of Morrison’s unnecessary complexity seep in with Cassandra Nova’s origin. Her simply being Xavier’s killed-in-the-womb twin wasn’t enough there’s the layer of her being a formless energy entity that tried to be born but was “killed” but also didn’t die… Morrison’s mission to inject weirdness continues. We don’t see them but Jean mentions a mutant boy whose skin is super sensitive and has to live in a force field and Beast mentions someone that mutated into a bug/virus. I guess in the past we’re used to seeing mutants where mutation was simply a shortcut to giving them a superpower. Some had drawbacks like Cyclops’ eye beams and Rogue unable to touch people but they were still essentially human. Less human characters like Beast and Nightcrawler were exceptions. Morrison seems to be focusing less on the superpower and instead focusing them on making his new mutants less human, maybe to emphasize them as a different species from humans. It seems Xorn has healing powers now that others have observed. This makes the reveal later less plausible without some major loose ends to explain |
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| It feels like a lot happens in 123. It feels a little odd after the previous couple of issues but I really enjoyed how much of the issue was just hanging around the school. I agree that we do see a lot of character work being done. We’d only seen the Cuckoos briefly before but here we see them reacting to one of their ranks finding a boyfriend. We also get to see Emma Frost’s more maternal side. She’s often very outwardly cold and uncaring. We certainly get to see some of that here as well, but she speaks frankly to the Cuckoos about dealing with one of them having a boyfriend and even at the end hopes it didn’t put them off boys while shielding them all with her own body. Of course she also explodes at the reporter for being rude to Beast. Again, a very protective reaction. The idea of a telepathic press conference was really neat. Though did they have to wipe the entire viewing audience’s memory after Emma blew up at the reporter? And what about the recordings that will show 30 seconds of footage nobody remembers? The revelation of microbe-sized sentinels was foreshadowed way back in the first issues of the run but the reveal remains frightening and unexpected. We get more strange mutants in the background scenes. Someone that looks an awful lot like Nightcrawler. One mutant with a gaseous, genie-like appearance, a tree-like mutant and more. I don’t know if he’s a new character but STUFF’s microbial appearance is also fairly strange. I am not too familiar with the Van Sciver stuff and from the little I’ve read it’s not something I care dig into anymore deeply. It seems like though his political leanings have always leaned one way, the batshit craziness is a little more recent. Looking just at the work, his opening splash page certainly makes a statement with it’s intricate details. That continues throughout the rest of the book though I’m not sure what is happening in that last frame of Xavier plugged in to Cerebra |
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Monthly (Comic) Book Club - May - The next Crises  Zero Hour: Crisis in Time #4-0 Identity Crisis #1-7 Week 1 (5/2-5/8): Zero Hour #4-2 Week 2 (5/9-5/15): Zero Hour #1-0 Week 3 (5/16/-5/22): Identity Crisis #1-4 Week 4 (5/23-5/29): Identity Crisis #5-7 Discussion topic ideas: * Thoughts on the story or artwork * Details in the story, artwork, or presentation * References to outside events or other works of fiction * Making of/Behind the Scenes details * Editions you will be reading from * Items in your collection pertaining to this week’s selection |
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