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New X-Men #141 - Spoilers, no doubt.

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20:24 / 21.05.03

No time for a long post now, but I will say Morrison is really hitting that "Zen & the writing of X-Men" phase of his run. Very in the groove, is Grant at this point. In retrospect this arc (possibly including "Riot" as well) will probably be considered the beginning of the high point of his tenure on the title--think Invisibles Volume 2. The major developments here were quite unexpected (by me, at least), and the future looks very, very interesting...

20:26 / 21.05.03

I know, I didn't spoil anything--no time. I just put it in the title so others could feel free.

20:46 / 21.05.03

yeah. the whole run up to this point feels like setup for what's happening now, which is good and bad I suppose.

Which is not to say the rest has been bad. not at all.

In retrospect, the cassandra storyline in the first year is setting up the emergence of the x-men into society at large, and the second year is bringing the school itself, and the interpersional conflicts to a boil.

Now we have intimations of a 'new world', aeonic stirrings of the phoenix, sex, drugs, children, and emotional upheavals.

"scott needs you..." geez.

Spyder Todd 2008

21:51 / 21.05.03

What I really want to know is that if Jean and Slim break it off, what happens to their psychic rapport? Or am I the only one who remembers this?

22:31 / 21.05.03

Has Beak always talked like one of the gangsters in Guys and Dolls?

Hrrrhhh, I just don't know... the Cuckoos were my favorite character, they're supposed to be a collective...

...is the taxicab conscious?

Matthew Fluxington

22:58 / 21.05.03

1) You know, there already was a thread for this issue. It's always good form to check for that sort of thing.

2) I'm not sure if I'd agree about Grant being "in the groove" at this point - I don't think this storyline has worked out all that well, though I'm sure it will make more sense later on. But for right now, I feel kind of bored.

I'm not a fan of the "whodunnit?" style of the past two issues in the least, I'm certain the same plot ideas could have been introduced in a way that didn't seem so out of place with what the story had been so far. I'm not crazy about all of the dangling plot threads being created in this story - I hope that Grant gets all this Cuckoos/Emma/mystery person stuff over with by the beginning of year 4 in May 2004. Honestly, having this all dragged for two issues is bad enough.

3) I think Jean and Scott's "rapport" from the Byrne/Claremont days has been long gone for quite some time now. In the context of NXM, a) Jean would've known about the affair as it was happening, which is no fun and b) Jean's so crazy godlike powerful now that she could probably have the same rapport with everyone on Earth all at once.

4) I get the feeling that Quentin Quire has something to do with all of this. We haven't seen the last of him.

00:16 / 22.05.03

Loved it & was a bit bored by it at the same time...

Maybe I didn't smoke enough Pot for the proper effect!

"The Cabin was built by Logan durring his "ost Years"

It's these tidbit that really make the book shine!

"Brood is a loaded word."

S P O I L E R S:
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So it seems Emma's Diamond form incases her consciousness...

I wonder if she'll have the imperfect diamond thing going on from this point on, a sign of the los of her "emotional Armor"

Will the next triangle be Scott-Emma-Beast?

While I'm not sure QQ is playing an active role, the background details of the Omega-X sign read like is influence is still very present. Why hasn't anyone bothered to clean that up?

Could the mystery Cab driver be No-girl?
Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Gunman was about 6' tall and able to wipe out Sage's memories? hmmmmmmmm...

Beak was certainly tweaking & motherhood seem to suit Angel very well.

Interesting that of the Cookoos named, one is dead, driven to death by the other?... that seems odd 'cause if siad death was NOT the motivation for the murder then waht was? THE KICK CONNECTION?

Could esme be working for weapon plus?

or as someone mentioned, the Hellfire club?

S T R A N G E...

Phil's art was FABULOUS!!!

I always figured Jean and Scott's "rapport" was a concentual thing... broken off after Cyclop's "return" from being posessed by an evil spirit.

01:31 / 22.05.03

So this totally negates Sophie's heroic act that led to her death? Aw, man. One of the things I liked about that bit was that Sophie really did the right thing, heroically putting her life on the line to stop QQ, but it was a grey area because so many of Emma's students have died -- it was a good way to exploit Emma's fears/insecurities about leading her students into death.

So it was simultaneously heroic and am unitentionally horrible part of Emma's pattern with her students, and Emma will always torture herself with thinking it was her fault, when this particular instance WASN'T Emma's fault, it was Sophie being a hero. But that's gone now, I guess.

I get all the other deductions, but where does Sage have evidence to jump to the conclusion that Esme was looking to take over the collective from a long way back and nudged Sophie into her death??? This sort of just comes out of nowhere, doesn't it?

04:27 / 22.05.03

I don't see a problem with this new topic. True someone started one a month or so ago, but I could start a thread about X Men 196, doesn't mean someone wants to go dig it out. I really think it's better etiquette to start threads on a certain issue within the week of it's release, and ponder on what may happen next in that same thread. Otherwise you get 2 pages of people guessing on what might happen before you can really start discussing the actual issue. I don't think it should be a formal rule, but I think it will just naturally happen that way.

Beak's speaking manner seemed really off, to the point I thought maybe someone was scripting Morrison's plot during all of Beak's scenes. He just talks weird, not in what he's saying, but just his sentence structure and words. I almost thought he was being mind controlled because his dialogue seemed so off.

Looking back at this arc I really liked how Bishop was handled. Instead of the weird future man seeking to change history, he's now a mutant cop, just doing his job. I liked it, and thought Morrison handles other writer's characters with respect.

So Beak and Angel really had babies? Pretty straightforward, and I didn't expect healthy pretty babies, and both of these kids now parents. That just seems really strange that 2 students of the school had a bunch of kids.

Esme, while complaining of Emma's influence, seems to be travelling down the same road. That scene where she leaves reminds me of the 1st arc when Emma left in a cab. Emma came back, Esme looks like she's about to find her own way.

Professor Silly

05:14 / 22.05.03

I agree, Jack! In many ways Esme is the most like Emma, in that she's rebelling, changing her appearance, and aiming to make it on her own.

I have no doubts Morrison will tie up each and every one of the dangling plot threads eventually....

05:40 / 22.05.03

Well, Esme's obviously working with someone, and judging from the way she worded it, it's someone the X-Men know. Maybe the Cuckoos were grown in a lab?

E

06:51 / 22.05.03

in the theme of the previous post could it be that the stepford cuckoos are either weapon 11 or weapon 14?

09:07 / 22.05.03

Hmm, you may well be right about the Cuckoos - after all the viral mind of Weapon XII isn't such a big step from a hive mind.

Do you think Sage's comments about the Sun in a Box referred to Xorn?

And the 6'2 man - Fantomex? Would link the Cuckoos to Weapon Plus and explain the diamond bullet.

Matthew Fluxington

11:04 / 22.05.03

If you go back and check all of Beak's appearances, you'll notice that he always speaks with a slightly-off syntax, it's Grant's approximation of a Dutch person speaking English. It's fairly accurate, I think - I've been around enough Dutch people to recognize it, anyway.

The Natural Way

11:55 / 22.05.03

I really enjoyed this sih, actually.

Flux: this has nothing to do with QQ. Grant's uploaded him into the supercontext, or whatever. He's not coming back down again, except as a weird, many-angled octopus thing. Now look who's off track.

I really haven't got a clue, but perhaps the Hellfire Club could be behind all this stuff - corrupting kids with naughty drugs, fostering conflict and Phoenix egginess. Mind Wars.

And Esme's "I'm nothing like Emma Frost" bit stinks of "I'm haughty and arrogant and every bit like Emma Frost". We might be looking at the new White Queen. Perhaps she's being groomed....

I'm so glad Emma's alive. I thought it was cool to kill her, but it's lovely to have her back. Jean can go merge with the infinite now and leave Scott and Frosty to it. Genuinely warms the cockles of my heart.

12:23 / 22.05.03

Esme's even killed her own sister - just like Emma. Do you really think the Hellfire Club is really up to its old tricks? I wonder if it just hasn't become a bar/private memebers club post-Genosha. Isn't that likely to be misdirection, as there's been no hint of their involvement before, which is why I suspect the Weapon Plus programme.

The Natural Way

12:32 / 22.05.03

Yeah, but why would Esme want to team herself up with an organisation that's all about humanity inheriting the earth?

13:11 / 22.05.03

Because the Cuckoos are Weapon XI.

But if it's Fantomex, well who knows what his real agenda is as yet.

I'm not averse to Esme becoming the new White or Black Queen but it's just been dropped in from nowhere. Depends what we see of the Hellfire Club in the next arc I guess.

13:25 / 22.05.03

Oh that's funny, he does always talk like that. I never noticed before.

Bother in a hat, I just thought of something... the only time the Cuckoos were actually out of commission was when they didn't have Esme, in Imperial. They pretty much didn't miss a beat after Sophie died. So it was Esme all along.

13:39 / 22.05.03

Presumably the three nameless Cuckoos are boosters - biological Cerebras.

But, Persephone, if Sophie was just a booster why would Esme need to kill her? Would it not follow that she killed Sophie because she was the only other Cuckoo capable of acting independently?

13:59 / 22.05.03

In retrospect this arc (possibly including "Riot" as well) will probably be considered the beginning of the high point of his tenure on the title--think Invisibles Volume 2.

i don't disagree that Grant is hitting his stride in NXM right now (well, more with "Riot" than "Murder", but in this time period in general), but i don't know that it's generally accepted that Vol 2 is the high point of Invisibles. i certainly wouldn't agree myself. i'm much more fond of Vol 1 overall, and aspects of Vol 3.

14:01 / 22.05.03

Esme's separation from the rest of the hive has always been apparent since Imperial. Van Sciver drew her very sinisterly in one panel when she is staring at the kid who later turned out to be Stuff. Should have known then that the bitch was no good.

She is obviously a White Queen parallel. The Emma Frost fractal just self-replicated. The murder of her sister. The running away. The rebellion ("I'm nothing like her. Nothing at all!") The wanting to change her physical appearance. "I've called a taxi telepathically." Hell, her name Esme reminds me of "Is me."

Part of me still believes that Xorn occassionally being cast in a suspicious light is meant just to fuck with us. But "sun in a box" was some creepy shit.

Grant's portrayal of telepathy and mind control is getting more and more interesting with each issue. I love how Esme leeched onto Angel's fear of anyone of authority finding out about the babies. Angel said softly, "She found out about something but I don't know what." That anxiety over the words FIND OUT is what allowed Angel to be controlled.

It reminds me of how the words "You've got to get blood on your spacesuit" snapped Emma back into the driver's seat in Germ Free Generation. It was the pain of her broken, gushing nose keeping her in vulnerable diamond form. Once she allowed herself to feel it, to bleed all over her diamond skin, was she able to overcome Martha and the U-men.

The other sci-fi cool moment was "Maybe I'm over reaching. Hank, can you think of a pink door opening?" Jean, mistress of the impossible, realized a limit in trying to put Emma back together and turned to Beast for help. The cooperation of the team is a lynchpin to jean's own confidence-based powers.

And "Scott needs you." I don't think this has anything to do with Jean falling out of love with Scott or turning Scott over to Emma. I think jean knew those would be the words that would sink into Emma the deepest and revive her. She reached into Emma's deepest emotion and pulled her out. As far as jean thinking Emma's love for Scott is funny, that just shows how not jealous and bogged down by negative emotion Jean Grey is. I didn't take that line so much as mocking as I did a testament to Jean's self-confidence.

14:04 / 22.05.03

I guess that Esme's always been the strongest (in hindsight) & the earliest to start thinking on her own --e.g., going off with a boyfriend. Definitely in Imperial, the other Cuckoos couldn't do anything without Esme. That doesn't mean the other Cuckoos wouldn't eventually develop in a similar fashion, only later. Sophie was next. Poor Sophie, she was toast as soon as she got her own name. It was Sophie who chided Esme for challenging Emma about her students being all dead, right? Just that, I think, was too independent for Esme. But she was still weaker than Esme, if you believe Bishop & Esme was able to lead Sophie to her death. At the same time, Esme's own gifts are still developing & now apparently she doesn't need the other Cuckoos at all anymore. It really does make sense as a story of girls growing up. Kind of like Enid & Becky in Ghost World.

14:13 / 22.05.03

Or, more obviously, like 'The Pride of Miss Jean Brodie': one of the girls, hero-worshipping Miss Brodie, goes off to fight in a pointless conflict, and is killed; another of Miss Brodie's creme de la creme who has been gradually becoming more independent and critical of her mentor, is then spurred to break from the group.

14:29 / 22.05.03

Except that Bishop says that none of that was Sophie's own idea, that was all Esme. That's kind of cool... it's like Esme inverting the Jean Brodie story. Like Esme setting up Emma, getting at her weak spot. Emma does have latent guilt about her students' death & Esme purposely played on that. But Emma was not guilty this time. What do you think?

Uatu.is.watching

14:39 / 22.05.03

This issue was great. I've read it twice and the first time, it flew right by. The second time I started to pick up all of the nuances. Esme's protesting that she's not at all like Emma really sttod out. As someone else pointed out, she was walking out to a cab at the time, just like Emma did. To take it a step further, she walked out on her family to make something of herself on her own terms, just like we saw Emma do in her memories a few issues back. I also noticed that when Esme Leaves, her eyes are still glowing white and she's able to call the cab. The eyes of the other Cuckoos, the ones without names no longer have the glow. Maybe it's like the precogs in Minority Report where one (or two, including Sophie) are the strong ones and the others are boosters.

The other thing that got me wondering this issue was Hank. When he was questioned by Bishop last ish, he said something to the effect of "I'm the least and therefore most suspicious person". Now his alibi is gone as well. Could Beast be helping the Cuckoos, and maybe even manufacturing the Kick? Geez, I hope not. I like the big cuddly gay mutant. At least the hand at the end of last ish wasn't furry.

14:52 / 22.05.03

but dizfactor, volume II is where morrison hits his stride, we agree. but let's not get carried away, sapient, just because jiminez is drawing the scenes. it's a strange thing though, this jiminez effect, almost as if the x-men are part of the harlequinade's dirty dance.

thanks, phil.

uncle retrospective

14:53 / 22.05.03

Can we do something about the horrible covers Marvel are putting on this book? I feel dirty enough about buying an X book without wanky Arnie knock off’s on the front.

But this issue was great, loved Angel and Beak's freaky spawn and I didn't see the Esme's turn to the dark side coming. Great stuff.

14:59 / 22.05.03

Is there any *real* evidence, though, that Esme "steered" Sophie towards death, other than Sage & Bishop saying so? I still want to think that Sophie's death was a heroic effort

This issue kicked ass and, as usual, left me hungry for the next one.

16:09 / 22.05.03

My apologies if I transgressed local customs by starting a new thread. I wasn't aware of the accepted protocol.

Do you think Sage's comments about the Sun in a Box referred to Xorn?

Morrison obviously intended us think of Xorn there, but it's probably intentional misdirection, IMO.

Part of me still believes that Xorn occassionally being cast in a suspicious light is meant just to fuck with us.

Exactly. Whatever Xorn's eventual role, we're not supposed to figure it out quite this early.

i don't know that it's generally accepted that Vol 2 is the high point of Invisibles.

I was mainly referring to the effortlessness of the narrative flow, which really kicks in a few issues into volume 2--NXM seems to have entered a similiar space with the last couple of arcs. Additionally, with the groundwork of the first two years now solidly laid, NXM is really coming into focus thematically at this point, IMO.

17:03 / 22.05.03

Could Beast be helping the Cuckoos, and maybe even manufacturing the Kick?

Considering that Henry's been shown to have been maipulated I wonder how feasable that he might have been manufacturing the KICK while under the control of ESME. She having used his vast knowledge in a much simular way as Jean did. Still, this emplies that there was still someone else who originally concieved of the drug KICK OR it was ESME's idea as a means to boost her power level and thus free herself from dependance upon the other cookoos.

This whole turn of events make the Jean/Emma confrontation much more appeasing... it seemed to me so "random" (for lack of a better word)in relation to the set-up for the Murder.

I wonder if Sage was able to access the CEREBRA user logs to find out that Sophie's death was initiated by Esme during that whole QQ confrontation. I'm also wondering if Esme was using QQ's infatuation with Sophie to get him hooked on KICK and thus create a cover for her to illimate Sophie.

Alot of this seems to hinge on the where/why/how of KICK's introduction into the school.

the custom made Diamond Bullet certainly reads PHANTOMX but if Sophie was Weapon XI (which I doubt) Why would PhantomX help her?

17:07 / 22.05.03

"Steering" amongst a group mind seems to be confusing people - I never thought Esme telepathically controlled Sophie into being the Kicked-out Cerebra-sitting Cuckoo. Here's how I understood it:

Sophie was developing a distinct individual personality from within the groupmind of the Cuckoos. Esme, the psychic strongman of the group, saw this as a potential threat, and took some Kick to overpower the other three. I think Esme may have orchestrated the entire Riot to kill off Sophie in a way that might not implicate her directly or cause a rift between herself and the the three already underneath her. I assumed that Esme was a the Kick supplier, and may have even pushed QQ slightly into his crush on Sophie. When the Riot began, Esme stepped back and let Sophie's conscience do what Sophie thought was the right thing to do. Specifically, asking Esme for the Kick and strapping on Cerebra, while her sisters went out to fire her brain-cannon at QQ.

Sophie's death was the whole point of the Riot, that was the point that QQ and Charles missed.

Esme was still dealing Kick when Angel went to the cabin to lay her first batch of eggs, and that's when she was able to override Angel's mind. When the White Queen discovered it was Esme as the Kick dealer, killing Emma became a necessity.

18:28 / 22.05.03

I'm not mad at you for starting a new thread for this issue.

I think it's silly to get annoyed at you for that. The prevous thread was quite old, as I recall, and just had the cover from PREVIEWS or something like that. Unless it really messes with memory and costs Barbelith money to start a new thread, I don't see what the problem could possibly be.

Also, I remember that in his very first appearance, Beak's speech patterns were pretty normal American. A few issues later he seemed to start to show the 'foreigner speaking English' speaking patterns. It seemed to me as if Grant got this idea a few issues after Beak first appeared. Am I the only one who thought this?

Matthew Fluxington

20:23 / 22.05.03

If I'm not going to be super-uptight about thread etiquette and protocol, then who is?

01:47 / 23.05.03

Was a day late in picking up this book. Definitely stands out as the best of the "Murder" arc. I was never crazy about the idea of an X-Men whodunnit. I should have had faith that a GM whodunnit would subvert the whole whodunnit-formula; now a corpse in the study = murder weapon + suspect + motive + mutant mind control + grander motives + intimations of a new world. It strikes me as very Morrison that the third issue of "Murder" raises more questions than the first did.

While I don't consider this to be Grant's best NXM arc, this particular ish is prolly Jiminez's best work on X-Men.

The scene where Jean puts Emma back together is definitely my favorite. Jean's greatest act in recent memory. Liked how the pink door image contributed to the sense of Emma's "rebirth."

I'm greatly looking forward to whatever role the newborn Jacksonymous swarm will play in NXM.

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