The Last Dream of Professor X

 
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“The Last Dream of Professor X”
Powers of X #1 (2019)
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by R.B. Silva
Color art by Marte Gracia

Last week in House of X we were presented with a new status quo for mutants in which Charles Xavier gave them a homeland in the form of Krakoa, and they were poised to inherit the world within two decades. For the first time in ages, the future was bright for the X-Men! But here we are one week later in Powers of X #1, and we are confronted with the notion that just because nature dictates a mutant future, humanity can still intervene and change course in a genocidal act of self-preservation. Bleak visions of the future are a big part of X-Men mythology, but the futures presented in Powers of X may be the most upsetting yet if just because they are contrasted with the radical optimism of Krakoa and the potential of a mutant planet. It resonates with our moment in history too much for comfort – the threat of seemingly inevitable progress kicking oppressive forces into overdrive as the powerful desperately cling to their position. 

Jonathan Hickman pulling the rug out from under us straight away focuses the story on the central theme of X-Men: The dream of a better world, and the nightmare of what happens if the dream is not realized. In what is effectively his second issue, he’s established the stakes of his X-Men. The story, particularly the sections that are presented as historical texts, reveal that the establishment of the Krakoan nation state sets in motion a battle between mutants and humans – and their machines – that’s not resolved for hundreds of years. Dr. Alia Gregor’s forecast of mutants becoming the dominant species doesn’t turn out to be the case. 100 years later and there’s just 10,000 mutants left and almost all of them are living in Shi’Ar space. It’s heartbreaking.

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Powers of X tells a story in four time periods: The very beginning of the X-Men, the present tense of the X-Men ten years later, the remaining X-Men of 90 years from now, and the distant future of the X-Men in their 1000th year. The pages set in the present mostly move along a bit of plot with Mystique carried over from House of X and allow for a bit more time with the current Xavier, though he’s no less inscrutable than he was in House of X. This scene is mostly interesting in setting up a question of what exactly Mystique has stolen and brought back to Xavier and Magneto, and for establishing that Hickman has a good handle on Mystique, a woman who is always working in her own interest and is constantly running some con or another. 

The oblique opening scene set in the past is the most fascinating bit of a rather dense and eventful issue. The young Charles Xavier is confronted on a park bench by Dr. Moira MacTaggert, who speaks rather cryptically but reveals that she knows him rather well though he believes he is meeting her for the first time. This is a puzzling moment for longtime readers as it is long established that Moira and Charles were once young lovers and that she was a crucial figure in helping him establish the X-Men. The scene ends with Moira inviting a confused Charles to read her mind, and with his surprise at what he finds there. We won’t know about what he sees in her head for at least another week or so. 

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Something is off about Moira. That much is signaled in the moments just before Charles sees her, as he looks up to the sky and watches birds circling overhead – traditionally a bad omen that can signal a coming storm, or the hunting of prey. Moira’s tone is knowing but ambiguous, and she is coming to Charles just after his great epiphany about “a better world and my place in it.” Her timing seems rather deliberate. Is Moira a predator of sorts here? Is Charles her mark, or a patsy? 

Moira’s most cryptic dialogue accompanies images of three tarot cards which are illustrated with images of characters and settings from the X-Men’s 100th year, which make their proper debut a few pages later. 

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I have minimal knowledge of tarot, but crowdsourced a reading of these three particular cards on Twitter and every interpretation was about the same. Here’s a few of the ones I found particularly resonant with the themes Hickman is laying out with regards to Charles Xavier:

you're absolutely positive about a course of action, but it's going to lead to a major shakeup in ways you didn't expect and will be uncomfortable (this doesn't mean don't do it). don't rely on substances/sex to get you through, they will make the discomfort worse. https://twitter.com/noradotcool/status/1155939469582721024

my read would be the magician is the path you wanted, the tower came in and shook everything up radically, and the devil is how you deal with the aftermath, probably you've been indulging in some harmful behaviors and need to stop to keep moving/heal. https://twitter.com/cortneyharding/status/1155951708284968960

Pride goeth before the fall, which you know, but you just can’t help yourself  https://twitter.com/redrawnoxen/status/1155937015809970176

The magician is the goal
The tower what needs to fall for that to come through
The Devil the catalyst for the next transformatio
n https://twitter.com/henrydarthenay/status/1155944493125758976

It seems likely Hickman is establishing the primary theme of Xavier’s arc not just for House of X and Powers of X, but for his entire run to come. The goal, the obstacle, and what must be done to overcome it. So…is Xavier’s plan with Krakoa in the present the goal, the obstacle, or the catalyst for the next transformation? 

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A century later things have gone terribly wrong. Hickman and artist R.B. Silva present a vision of the future that borrows thematic and visual elements from the most famous dark timelines of the X-Men’s past – “Days of Future Past,” “Age of Apocalypse” – but mostly feels fresh and distinct. The X-Men of this era are vaguely familiar – entirely new characters who look like mash-ups of classic characters. Hickman relies on historical information in text pages to establish the backstory of this future and keeps the story pages focused on emotion and action. Long story short: We’re in the last days of a war between the Man-Machine Supremacy and what remains of the mutants, and these X-Men are the product of a breeding program by Mister Sinister that goes horribly wrong, mainly because the mutants decided to trust their future as a species to a Machiavellian mad scientist who calls himself Mister Sinister. 

Our three main characters in this era represent three forms of bred mutants. Rasputin is a Chimera class mutant, a nearly unstoppable being made from the combination of Colossus, Kitty Pryde, Quentin Quire, Unus the Untouchable, and X-23/Wolverine’s genes. Cardinal, basically a red Nightcrawler, is an Outlier, a mutant designed for war who nevertheless developed spiritual and pacifist tendencies. Cylobel is a hound with an unreadable “black brain” bred by the Man-Machine Supremacy to infiltrate and betray her own kind. Cylobel is captured by the machines and brought to their leader, Nimrod the Lesser. Cylobel’s programming backfires on her masters – she has betrayed them, and not the X-Men. Her last act before being deposited into a system that will break her body and mind down to nothing more than data to be processed in the interest of further understanding “the mutant anomoly,” is an act of defiance. She embraces her martyrdom and swears that even if it takes “a thousand years,” mutants will endure and wipe out their oppressors. 

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Hickman’s Nimrod is delighted by her spunk. This version of Nimrod resembles the character created by Chris Claremont and John Romita Jr but has the personality of an effete elite who masks their inhumanity in politeness and shallow declarations of empathy. In addressing Cylobel, Nimrod prefaces extraordinarily cruel statements and actions with effusive apologies. You immediately recognize this guy. You’ve read his op-eds. You’ve seen him on cable news. He’s what happens when polite society is built on systemic injustice that stops looking anything like cruelty to the people on top. Nimrod doesn’t hate the mutants, he pities them! He is so sorry they are not at his position in the hierarchy. It’s so sad they must be killed! Silva draws Nimrod as a pastel behemoth with broad and cartoonish mannerisms not too far removed from the cute and cuddly Baymax in Big Hero 6. The design is just a tweak on Romita Jr’s original look, but it’s smoothed out a bit so he looks more like an Apple product. He’d make a great stuffed doll. 

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Cylobel may have accidentally predicted the future with her “a thousand years” line. In the issue’s final scene we’re a thousand years from the day Charles met Moira, in the era of “ascension,” and meet a bald blue humanoid called Librarian who is attempting to recover information from Cylobel’s preserved body in Nimrod the Lesser’s archive. The Librarian is accompanied by a small drone – Nimrod the Greater. This scene is rather oblique, but ends with two important bits of information: The “human-machine-mutant war” has ended in a surprising way, and the current residents of Earth have kept some remnants of humanity in a place called The Preserve. The issue ends with a shot of a man and woman lurking in The Preserve in shadows. They look a bit like…Mystique and Toad?

A few stray notes:

• In the tarot sequence, the magician card is Rasputin and the devil card is Cardinal. This makes some sense in that context, but I’m more intrigued by the way these two characters essentially split the spirit of Xavier’s ethos in half – one represents the idealistic fight, and the other the dream of peace. Rasputin is bred for war, but Cardinal retains too much of his ancestor Nightcrawler’s spirituality to embrace the potential of his weaponized genes. 

• Much in the way that Pepe Larraz stepped up his game in House of X, R.B. Silva reveals the full extent of his talent in this issue. Silva has been working on X-Men comics for the past couple years but has mainly been working on rather bad material – he drew a good chunk of the absolutely dire X-Men Blue/X-Men Gold series written by Cullen Bunn and Marc Guggenheim. But whereas those comics were largely exercises in rote continuity mining and pointless nostalgia, Powers of X gives Silva the opportunity to create, and a lot of the energy of this comic comes from his obvious delight in designing his own world. You can see the influence of modern video games as well as traces of Joe Madureira’s designs from “Age of Apocalypse.” He also integrates the particular geometric elements of Chris Bachalo’s design for Omega Sentinel in that character’s descendent here without compromising his aesthetic identity. There’s still a good amount of Stuart Immonen influence in Silva’s art, but that’s receding as Silva asserts his own identity with crisper, cleaner linework that leaves more of the lighting effects to colorist Marte Gracia.

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• This issue gives us our first look at a “No-Place,” which was mentioned in passing in House of X #1 in the text page outlining the use of Krakoan fauna for mutants. A “No-Place” is a Krakoan habitat that exists outside of the Krakoan collective consciousness and is created by an artificial Krakoan flower. The No-Place, a zone that should not be, is depicted as dark and upside-down to great, mildly unnerving effect.

• Charles Xavier seems to have developed telekinetic powers in the present. He has canonically only ever been a telepath. 

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• All four sequences of this story involve an attempt to access forbidden or lost information, but we do not know what that information could be or why it is needed. The story threads in the present and in year 100 leave off with emissaries passing off information to their superiors – in the case of Mystique, to Xavier and Magneto, and in the case of Rasputin and Cardinal, to a superannuated Wolverine and the remnants of the X-Men. 

• The heavy themes around betrayal in the future sequences of this issue suggest Moira and Mystique are not to be trusted in the past and present. (Of course Mystique is never to be trusted.) 

The House That Xavier Built

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“The House That Xavier Built” 
House of X #1 (2019)
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Pepe Larraz
Color art by Marte Gracia

House of X begins in the aftermath of extraordinary world-transforming change, and leaves the reader scrambling to catch up with what has happened in a sequence of vignettes and text pages that convey a huge amount of exposition and world building. Jonathan Hickman has been experimenting with this formal conceit for a little while, particularly in his excellent Image series The Black Monday Murders with artist Tomm Coker, but this is a more sophisticated iteration that is more integral to moving the story along.  There is other precedent for using text pages as part of a comics story, like Alan Moore’s Watchmen or the Keith Giffen/Tom and Mary Bierbaum version of Legion of Super Heroes, but in those cases the pages mainly provided context and subtext. Hickman is using text and charts to advance plot and to deliver crucial narrative reveals. The radical and inventive approach to storytelling emphasizes that this is a drastic break from previous X-Men comics, but more importantly throws the reader into the deep end of the plot without relying on any particular POV character. The scope of the story is important, and the text pages communicate that as well as a great deal of knowledge that only some scattered characters are privy to.

The story begins two months after Charles Xavier has established a mutant nation state on Krakoa, the living island that was both the setting and antagonist of the first “all-new, all-different” X-Men story in Giant-Size X-Men #1 from 1975. The X-Men have harnessed the unique properties of Krakoa to create mutant-only habitats around the world which are connected with “gateway” teleportation portals. Xavier and the X-Men have synthesized three drugs from Krakoan flowers – a pill that can extend human life by five years, another that cures mental illness, and a third which is an adaptive universal antibiotic – and are offering them to human governments in return for accepting Krakoa as a sovereign state. It is later implied that Xavier pursued drug angle to deliberately destabilize the pharmaceutical industry. Xavier has also developed a mutant language which he has spread telepathically as a means of advancing a distinct mutant culture.

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We catch glimpses of Xavier in this story, but we barely hear from him. This version of Xavier, as designed and illustrated by Pepe Larraz, is a gaunt and vaguely dainty man wearing skin-tight black clothing and a giant Cerebro helmet that covers his eyes. The design is remarkably similar to that of The Maker, the evil version of Reed Richards who was a recurring nemesis in Hickman’s earlier Marvel work. The first scene of the book is ambiguous and creepy, as we see the new version of Xavier watch what appear to be adult clones of Cyclops and Jean Grey emerge from pods in some strange birthing chamber on Krakoa. His only line of dialogue is his catchphrase from the start – “To me, my X-Men.” It’s extremely unsettling, and immediately casts some suspicion about what he’s really doing. The only other time we see Xavier in this issue is when he greets Jean Grey and a young mutant on Krakoa. Larraz makes him appear entirely inscrutable, but also delicate and serene. 

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House of X introduces a new form of human antagonism in the form of the Orchis Protocol, a “doomsday network” pooling the resources of many organizations – mostly AIM and SHIELD, but also stakeholders in SWORD, Alpha Flight, and Hydra – to keep mutants from disrupting human economies, taking over territory, and overtaking humans in population. The latter is a pressing concern as Dr. Alia Gregor, an AIM scientist and key member of this initiative, has discovered that mutants will inevitably become the dominant species on the planet within 20 years. Hickman is bringing back an idea from the start of Grant Morrison’s New X-Men in the early 2000s which had been undone by Marvel editorial in Brian Michael Bendis’ House of M in 2004. We’re back to a world where mutants are indeed the inevitable next wave of human evolution, and humans must either resign themselves to this fate or attempt to stop this, or at least hold on to power and privilege for as long as they can. It tilts the concept of the X-Men franchise to be more relevant to what has been happening in the world over the past few years, as right wing extremists rise up in a desperate bid to squash progress that is somewhat inevitable given societal trends and shifts in population.

The Orchis Protocol scenes establish a serious threat to mutants in the form of a Master Mold – a mother Sentinel that creates other Sentinels – bonded to a rebuilt Sol’s Hammer, an incredibly powerful Dyson Sphere designed by Reed Richards and Tony Stark as a planet-destroyer in Hickman’s New Avengers series. The device captures and harnesses the power of the sun to create new Sentinels, which is somewhat ironic given that in Roy Thomas and Neal Adams’ classic Sentinels story from the late ‘60s, Cyclops defeats them by using logic to trick the mutant-hunting robots into flying into the sun. The image of the Master Mold/Sol’s Hammer hybrid – which the Orchis doctors call The Forge – is rather striking, with the extreme Kirby-ness of the Sentinel design contrasted with a mosaic of solar panels. It’s like the Death Star reimagined as a hanging mobile in outer space. 

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The issue is mostly focused on world building and introducing new human antagonists, but Hickman spends a good chunk of the issue (re)introducing two of the franchise’s most crucial characters, Cyclops and Magneto. Cyclops appears midway through the issue to establish the new role of the X-Men in this post-Krakoa world. Cyclops arrives in Manhattan through a Krakoan gateway to apprehend Sabretooth, who has just been captured by the Fantastic Four after robbing a Damage Control facility with Mystique and Toad. (Damage Control has been reimagined by Hickman as a corporation mainly interested in stealing and archiving the work of superhero scientists like Reed Richards and Tony Stark, which explains how Orchis managed to build their own Sol’s Hammer.) Cyclops explains that he wishes to take Sabretooth back to Krakoa, and the Fantastic Four understandably object – the guy is a hugely prolific serial killer and had just injured or killed several guards. The X-Men are now granting amnesty to all mutant criminals to build their mutant nation. And really, why not? Virtually every member of the X-Men is a criminal one way or another anyway. Cyclops just spent several years of publishing as a noble sort of terrorist revolutionary. 

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The scene with Cyclops and Reed Richards sets the tone for Hickman’s version of the X-Men’s leader, and given that Reed Richards was the primary hero of the writer’s previous epic Marvel story through Fantastic Four, Avengers, and Secret Wars, it’s a clear passing of the narrative baton. Hickman’s characterization of Cyclops is close to that of Kieron Gillen and Brian Michael Bendis – he’s intense and altruistic, and is monomaniacally obsessed with the survival and advancement of mutant culture. He’s very cordial with the Fantastic Four – he’s been friends with them since he was a teenager – but he can’t help but be a little condescending to them, and doesn’t seem to get that he’s being a little creepy when he tells the Richards to let their mutant son Franklin know that he can join his family on Krakoa any time he likes. His non-mutant parents, of course, aren’t welcome. 

It’s unclear how much Hickman will reference previous stories in this run, but it’s worth noting that what Xavier is achieving with Krakoa is a bolder and more all-encompassing version of what Cyclops was attempting with the island of Utopia in the Matt Fraction/Kieron Gillen era. The key difference is that Utopia was the makeshift tactical solution of a soldier – a fortress under siege, more like a cult compound than Xavier’s vision of an entirely new culture and homeland for mutants. At this point in time, no one is expected to be a soldier on Krakoa.

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Magneto appears in the issue as Xavier’s proxy, serving as an ambassador greeting a handful of human dignitaries at the Krakoan habitat in Jerusalem. (Hickman is not shying away from the Zionist parallels of Krakoa by setting this plot there, and centering it on Magneto, a Holocaust survivor.) Magneto is clearly overjoyed by what Xavier has accomplished, and why not? It’s the mutant supremacist separatist culture he’s always envisioned rather than the assimilation fantasy that Xavier had always pursued. Hickman wants the reader to question this – how did Xavier arrive at this reversal of intentions? He also wants us to think about why Magneto was never capable of doing this himself. 

Magneto was given the task of confronting these humans about Xavier’s deal precisely because he is an intimidating presence who is unafraid to tell them that that Xavier’s offering is a gift and an incentive, not a negotiation. He’s serving as Xavier’s enforcer, but even at this early stage it’s clear that getting the thing he’s always wanted in life will not mellow him out even a little bit. With this leverage, and with Xavier’s encouragement, he appears ready to take everything too far. His entitlement knows no limits, and his rage and fascist impulses cannot be quieted. At the end of the issue, he gloats about the power mutants now have over humans, and the inevitability of a mutant future. One of the dignitaries – who is established as neutral in all of this –asks him, “Do you know what you sound like?” Magneto tells him that, yes, he does. The question of who he sounds like is left ambiguous – Hitler? A God? Just an overzealous douche? It seems obvious that this question will be the central theme of Hickman’s Magneto going forward.

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Pepe Larraz is a revelation in this issue. Larraz has been a strong artist for some time, and turned in excellent work in the recent X-Men event miniseries Extermination. His art still greatly resembles that of Stuart Immonen – hardly a bad thing given that Immonen is one of the best artists working in the medium – but he in some ways surpasses Immonen in this issue. Larraz and colorist Marte Gracia realize Hickman’s concepts with vivid detail. Many comic book artists struggle with drawing evocative settings but this is where Larraz thrives – he nails the natural but somewhat alien beauty of Krakoa, and the way the mutant vegetation of its habitats looks lovely but surreal in the context of human cities. The interior of the Orchis station at The Forge is also quite evocative. Those designs are more familiar from the visual vernacular of science fiction, but Larraz fills out the cold, sterile, and cavernous spaces with atmosphere and details that feel slightly off. A long shot establishing Orchis experimentation on Krakoan vegetation in the station is a subtle bit of foreshadowing that also emphasizes the contrast between the crushing machinery of mankind and the organic beauty of mutant biotech. 

One Down

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“One Down”
All-New X-Men #26-29 (2014)
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Pencils by Stuart Immonen
Inks by Wade von Grawbadger

Stuart Immonen has been working steadily in mainstream comics since the early 1990s but has over the course of this decade become one of the best and most widely imitated artists in the industry. If Marvel has a “house style” in the mid-to-late 2010s, it’s a post-Immonen look, and the two artists drawing the initial wave of Jonathan Hickman X-Men comics – R.B. Silva and Pepe Larraz – are highly gifted pencilers whose aesthetics nevertheless boil down to “I can’t believe it’s not Stuart Immonen.”

It certainly takes a lot of skill to mimic Immonen. His draftsmanship is excellent, he’s brilliant with facial expressions and body language, and he’s particularly gifted in rendering lighting for dramatic effect. Larraz and Silva, while each having some identifiable stylistic flair on their own, have come to draw their pages with very Immonen-ish designs and rhythms, and the particular line weights of his illustrations. They didn’t always draw quite like this, so it seems like a reasonable assumption that they’ve adjusted to market demands. If that’s the case, the very fact that they are drawing the ultra-hyped House of X and Powers of X launch would prove that to be a winning strategy. 

Immonen himself has not worked for Marvel for over a year, and has shifted his attention to other projects after completing a run with Dan Slott on Amazing Spider-Man with issue #800. This was the culmination of a period in which Immonen was clearly Marvel’s top artist, during which he only worked on high profile comics with top writers – Fear Itself with Matt Fraction, All-New X-Men with Brian Michael Bendis, Captain America with Rick Remender, and Star Wars with Jason Aaron. Though Fear Itself was the flagship title of a crossover event, his work on All-New X-Men was his true star-making work. Immonen, whose aesthetics have shifted over the years while always retaining core strengths, had fully solidified into what is now his iconic style with All-New X-Men. His style was a fresh look for the X-Men – very earthy and grounded in its action, and elegant in rendering the emotional details of Bendis’ very soapy approach to the series.

All-New X-Men #26 is the opening chapter of Immonen’s final arc on the series before handing the book over to rising star Mahmud Asrar. The story is mostly about the return of the future Brotherhood, who were the antagonists of the “Battle of the Atom” crossover from a year before. The primary cast of All-New X-Men were the time-displaced original five X-Men from the ‘60s – teenage versions of Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, Iceman, and Angel. They were brought to the present by the adult Beast to emotionally torture the adult Cyclops after Cyclops appeared to have murdered their mutual father figure, Charles Xavier. 

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The future Brotherhood, who originally present themselves as the X-Men of the future, are mainly focused on trying to get the original X-Men to return to their place in the timeline, but turn out to be driven more by a hatred of the X-Men and their failures. The future Brotherhood is led by a son of Charles Xavier who looks just like his father and has all of his powers, and has a grudge against the X-Men for not honoring his dad and his vision. “They stand on my grave and they speak of his legacy and they have done nothing but make a mockery of it,” he explains near the end of this arc. “The X-Men murdered him and then went on like nothing happened. They moved into his house and they took his money and they didn’t even have the courtesy to keep his name on the school he built.” 

Charles Junior may be a psychopath with childish grudges, but he’s not entirely wrong. His read on the X-Men and their reckless behavior – “You don’t think about how your actions affect the future!” – is entirely correct. Bendis was affectionally critiquing years of X-Men comics, and tying together the larger themes of family and legacy at the center of his X-Men. Everything in the Bendis period comes down to the question of what the X-Men ought to be in the absence of Xavier, and there’s never any tidy answer. Charles Junior, who turns out to be the secret love child of Xavier and Mystique, has valid concerns about what the X-Men do in his father’s name but despite appearances, he’s very much the product of Xavier’s absence. He looks just like his father and is also a powerful psychic, but he lacks his old man’s moral compass and humanitarian vision. He’s much more like his spiteful and manipulative mother. 

There are two sequences in the “One Down” arc that stand out, almost entirely as a result of Immonen’s top-notch artwork. The first is the opening scene of #26, in which the adult Cyclops checks in on the teenage Jean Grey in her quarters. The two characters had mostly avoided one another up until this point in Bendis’ story. It’s very uncomfortable for Cyclops to be in the presence of the teen version of his late wife, and ultra weird for the teen Jean to be around the adult version of the guy she finds out she marries later in life.

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Immonen illustrates this scene with remarkable nuance – you hardly even need to read the dialogue to pick up on exactly how the characters feel and are relating to one another. Immonen captures the odd emotional reality of the situation, and the confusing intimacy of their conversation. Cyclops feels an easy rapport with any version of Jean, but is doing everything he can to behave appropriately around her despite his feelings. Jean can’t help but be attracted to him, and admits she prefers the adult Cyclops to his younger self. “It’s like, instead of hoping you’d grow up to become this man, you DID become this man,” she tells him. He does the right thing and pulls away in this moment, and Jean is visibly frustrated.

The second is the extended sequence in #27 in which the future Brotherhood ambush the X-Men in their own home, which at the time is the former Weapon X facility in Canada. Raze, the future son of Mystique and Wolverine, has entered the building under the guise of a wounded X-23, warning about the presence of a shape-shifter. Triage, the X-Men’s young healer, tends to her wounds. “You’re the healer?,” Raze says as he transforms into his true form and slashes his throat. “You first.” Immonen nails the beats of this reveal, and then goes on to perfectly render a sense of claustrophobia and terror as the Brotherhood cut out the power in the facility and start picking off team members. 

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Bendis is known for writing to artists’ strengths, and it seems clear that he took note of Immonen’s skill for lighting when deciding to set a key action scene in an underground bunker lit only by creepy pilot lights. Colorist Marte Gracia does great work here too, presenting all of these scenes in a wash of dull red ambiance. A lot of superhero comics suffer for a vagueness of setting, but Immonen and crew keep you in fully aware of physical space in these issues, and it enhances the overall tense and anxious feeling of the story.  

The Omega Mutant

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“The Omega Mutant”
Uncanny X-Men Vol. 3 #26-31 (2013)
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Chris Bachalo (25, 27, 29, 30, 31) and Kris Anka (23, 24, 26, 28)


“The X-Men are a family” is a trope I’ve never been all that invested in, as I tend to prefer stories in which the X-Men are more of a movement. Some writers can pull off the “found family” aspect better than others – Chris Claremont established it in the ‘80s, and Scott Lobdell was particularly good at sentimental beats in the ‘90s – but I find that a lot of writers use this as a lazy shorthand for character connections, mostly just leaning on nostalgia for those Claremont or Lobdell back issues than what is written into their own stories. The one writer who really took this idea and pushed it to a logical extreme was Brian Michael Bendis, who over the course of his parallel runs on Uncanny X-Men and All-New X-Men essentially wrote one big story about what happens to the X-Men after their paterfamilias Charles Xavier is killed by his surrogate son  Cyclops in a Phoenix-fueled rage. This story thread comes to a head in “The Omega Mutant,” an arc that is framed by rival X-Men factions having to come together for the reading of Xavier’s will. 

Bendis’ X-Men is a family divided. Cyclops, who was radicalized in the prior runs by Kieron Gillen and Matt Fraction, was already at odds with the X-Men based at the school and was now a full-on pariah. At the start of Bendis’ run, Beast – long Cyclops’ closest friend, basically more of a brother to him than his actual biological brother, Havok – was so furious and deep in mourning that he ripped apart the space-time continuum to bring their teenage selves to the present just to spite him. Wolverine had reclaimed the old school, and passive-aggressively renamed it the Jean Grey School. Storm is frustrated by Cyclops’ tactics (though they aren’t very different from how Claremont wrote her in the ‘80s…), and Iceman outright loathes him for his role in Xavier’s death. This is the X-Men as a grieving dysfunctional family, and it rings more true than the idealized sentimental version of the idea. Ideologies clash, long-simmering resentments flare up, and love/hate relationships abound. 

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Bendis’ Cyclops is a glorious mess of self-destructive impulses and monomania. He’s obsessed with redeeming himself while proving that he’s always been right, but so wracked with guilt that he’s constantly sabotaging himself because he wants to be punished. His only allies are ethically dubious figures – his ex-girlfriend Emma Frost, his longtime enemy Magneto, the generally amoral Illyana Rasputin – and he’s being watched over by Kitty Pryde, a character prone to harshly judgmental moralizing. He’s absolutely miserable, and every decision he makes just makes everything spiral further into chaos. 

When the X-Men are summoned for the reading of Xavier’s will, the school-based characters are all convinced that their worst fear is about to be realized and Cyclops would be granted full control over the school and the X-Men. But before getting to that part, they’re informed that Charles is married to Mystique – wait, whuuuut? – and that he needs them to look after a mutant named Matthew Malloy so absurdly powerful that he’d spent decades suppressing his godlike reality-warping abilities. Cyclops is furious to discover Xavier’s hypocrisy, and when he’s sent with the X-Men to confront him, he attempts to recruit him to his cause. It’s an act of hubris that, or course, backfires horribly. 

Matthew Malloy is grieving too. Without the psychic blocks Xavier put in place, he’s aware that he killed his parents, and is understandably overwhelmed and confused by his extreme level of power. Malloy is not a villain, and he’s barely an antagonist. He’s just a traumatized guy with a shaky handle on reality who happens to be able to do pretty much anything he can imagine. He’s just a guy who was living a normal life unaware that he was a mutant, and suddenly has Cyclops and Magneto vying to influence him, and S.H.I.E.L.D. looking to eliminate him. He’s pushed over the edge, and it goes very badly. Cyclops dies. A lot of people die. 

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There is a deus ex machina in this story in the form of Eva Bell, a time-hopping mutant Bendis and Stuart Immonen introduced who has been mostly a student of Cyclops’ through the run. Over the course of 20 issues or so, Eva has transitioned from being starstruck by Cyclops to becoming a harsh critic of his methods and unstable mental state. She takes it upon herself to fix the Malloy problem by going back in time to a point where she can convince Xavier to do something far worse than simply block a mutant’s powers and erase their identity – she has him make it so his parents never meet. Matthew is wiped out of reality, and the story resets. But Bell goes out of her way to make sure Cyclops knows what really happened, partly to scare him straight and partly out of spite. It’s puzzling why this character has barely appeared since the end of the Bendis run. She’s fascinating and sets up a lot of story possibilities, particularly in her rather bitter relationship with the X-Men at the end of his long-term story. 

The art in this arc is handled by two different but complementary artists – primary series artist Chris Bachalo, and Kris Anka, a rising star at the time. Bachalo, a veteran of several X-series, is so distinctive and stylized that it can be quite difficult to pair him with other artists. Anka, who is also quite distinctive, doesn’t alter his style to ape Bachalo’s but does match his aesthetics and tone. Both artists go for big panels and an emphasis on wide open space in pages focused on Malloy, and allow a lot of room to let the colorists carry emotional tone with a lot of pastels and ultra-saturated primaries. Anka is particularly good at drawing facial expressions and body language and thrives in the family feud scenes, while Bachalo really sells the psychedelic terror of Malloy’s power. They both make a lot of dialogue-heavy scenes look fresh and dynamic. 

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“The Omega Mutant” is effectively the climax of Bendis’ Uncanny run. The remaining issues mostly tie up loose ends, often in abrupt ways that suggest that he did indeed leave the X-Men a bit earlier than he had originally planned. It’s a very Bendis sort of climax, focused mainly on several of his core characters – Cyclops, Beast, Iceman, Eva Bell, Magneto – acting out on the emotions that have been driving them through dozens of issues. The Malloy plot is interesting, but is mostly just a backdrop for a story about Cyclops’ reckoning and the X-Men’s various ways of processing grief. The emotions are vivid and the interpersonal dynamics are nuanced. It’s a very bold take on the X-Men in general – more of a philosophical family soap opera than a straight superhero thing. 

Precipice

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“Precipice”
Uncanny X-Men #238 (1995)
Written by Scott Lobdell
Pencils by Joe Madureira
Inks by Tim Townshend

Most of the best X-Men stories are, in some way, about failure. The heroism of the X-Men is more in how they persist in trying to do the right thing and stand up to oppression, not in them frequently succeeding in their goals. “Precipice,” a high point in Scott Lobdell and Joe Madureira’s mid-‘90s run, is largely about the X-Men acknowledging the limits of their idealistic philosophy and suffering for it. 

The story starts with Charles Xavier confronting the X-Men’s prisoner, the murderous psychopath Sabretooth, and admitting that he’s given up on his attempts to rehabilitate him and give him a second chance among the X-Men. Xavier is magnanimous but stern when confronting Sabretooth – it pains him that he can’t figure out how to curb Sabretooth’s homicidal rages, or integrate him into the group as he had with Wolverine, Rogue, or Gambit. Sabretooth is too far gone, and he knows it. He taunts Xavier, bragging about how he never wanted to be saved, and that he loves having the power to kill with impunity. Xavier can only counter Sabretooth’s argument with moralism and reason, but he knows he’s wasting his time. More than any other major X-Men antagonist, Sabretooth represents pure amoral id. He has no ideology, no agenda. He’s just a sadist and a savage. Xavier owns up to his failure, and decides to pass him along to government custody. 

Sabretooth is, by design, the dark opposite of Wolverine. They have more or less the same powers – healing, claws, enhanced senses – but Sabretooth is bigger, and stronger. Wolverine has a nobility and morality in contrast with his violent rages, but Sabretooth is a total nihilist. The only thing he seems to care about at all is causing pain and satisfying his base urges. “Precipice” is the conclusion of a long-running B-plot through much of the mid-90s in which Sabretooth is held captive by the X-Men in the mansion, where he largely behaves like a mutant version of Hannibal Lechter, with various women in the X-Men – Jean Grey, Boom Boom, and Psylocke – playing the Clarice Starling role in different ways.

All three of those women appear in “Precipice.” Jean, who had previously intimidated and belittled Sabretooth, sticks to the sidelines and supports Xavier in his decision. She certainly sees no point in trying to redeem this guy. Boom Boom, a compassionate but not particularly clever member of the junior X-Force squad, faces Sabretooth on her own, furious to realize she had fallen for his ruse when he had been pretending to be mentally impaired following an encounter with Wolverine that seemed to partially lobotomize him. “I trusted you!,” she shouts while slapping him in the face. “I believed your brain was all out of whack! I was there for you when everybody else had written you off!” Sabretooth, ever the sadist, just tells her that she’s an idiot, and then plays on her considerable insecurities about her white trash family and feeling like a loser among the X-Men until she retaliates by hitting him with an energy blast that sets him loose.

Sabretooth’s casual manipulation of Boom Boom is so heartbreaking. She’s not stupid, just guided by raw emotions and obvious self-loathing. Her compassion is real, but also just a transparent desire to stick up for broken losers – like herself, like her own father. Sabretooth and Boom Boom’s dynamic is a dark mirror of Wolverine’s more wholesome relationship with Jubilee, another teen character with a very similar personality and superpower. What if Wolverine was a sociopath? What if Jubilee had no self-esteem whatsoever? 

Psylocke observes this moment between Sabretooth and Boom Boom, and is there to intervene when he’s set free. Psylocke and Sabretooth have a shared history – the two faced off in the issue during the Mutant Massacre storyline in which she joined the team. Back then it was a deliberately mis-matched fight, with the frail and demure Psylocke seeming like easy prey for this brutish psycho. She managed to defeat him, and proved herself as X-Men material. This time around, the duel seems more evenly matched, as Psylocke is now in her Asian ninja body. But it doesn’t go nearly so well, as her attempt to use her psychic power backfires on her, and he eviscerates her. 

The issue ends with Sabretooth having escaped, Psylocke being on death’s door, and Boom Boom in tears, knowing that her emotional weakness may have led to Psylocke’s death, and the inevitable deaths of whoever else gets in the path of this unhinged maniac. The issue starts with Xavier and his top lieutenants having to admit they can’t redeem Sabretooth, and ends with them being proven correct in the most awful way. Boom Boom has to face up to the reality that her faith in the notion of redemption had only made her the perfect mark for an ultra violent con man. 

“Precipice” is more upsetting in the context of Lobdell and Madureira’s previous story focusing on Sabretooth in the alternate reality Age of Apocalypse event. In this world, where Xavier died young and the X-Men were founded by Magneto, Sabretooth is a heroic figure and essentially has Wolverine’s role in the group. Madureira, whose art is so stylized and dynamic that some might not notice the elegant nuances of his cartooning, draws these Sabretooths very differently. The AOA Sabretooth stands tall with good posture, and carries himself with obvious pride. The “real” Sabretooth is always slouching, and moves like a cross between a tiger and gorilla. Madureira draws him with vacant eyes and cruel toothy grin, like The Joker as a wild animal. 

The heroes in the story have softer features, and emote with big eyes and display their confidence – or lack thereof – in how they carry their arms and shoulders. Madureira portrays Jean Grey as empathetic and uncertain, Cyclops as strong and decisive, Bishop as angry and conflicted, and Xavier as cold and aloof. Psylocke appears bold and defiant, while Boom Boom looks defensive even when she’s being confrontational. Madureira rightly gets a lot of credit for his excellent sense of design and his intuitive skill in making his pages look vibrant and uncluttered, but he’s just as brilliant in conveying a lot of information about characters without the writer needing to explicate much about their interiority in dialogue or exposition.