I love how there's a good number of people here who seem to want Grant Morrison to only ever tell one story over and over - and yeah, he does do that - but what if, y'know, this was just a different story? What if Grant Morrison didn't have illusions about what he was doing, and was just telling a kick-ass superhero/sci fi story?
i doubt it. everything he's done, especially since The Invisibles, is a project with a specific endpoint in mind. That's why he got so bent out of shape about Marvel Boys 2 & 3: they're his gonzo Aeon of Horus project and the culmination of everything he wants to accomplish by working in a pop medium. and he's talked about NXM in terms of the Qabalistic significance of each character's arc through this story and who's which Tarot card and all of that. it's not just about writing a kewl superhero story for him, and it's not even about Art per se, it's more about magic(k) and memes, about infecting society with Grant memes in order to cause change in accordance with the Will.
speaking of what he wants to accomplish in a pop medium, he has stated multile times that he wants to reshape the X-Men from a story about bigotry and resistance to a story about radical change and the accompanying generational power struggles.
the most telling part of all this, for me, so far, is QQ's death/transcendence scene. the most striking thing about that scene, to me, is that Professor X just doesn't get it. QQ is operating at a level higher than Xavier and sees things in a totally different way, and he tries to tell Xavier, but Xavier just doesn't get it, just can't get it because he's still stuck in the mutants vs humans, Mags vs Xavier dialectic. because he's stuck in the old conflict and doesn't see the new one.
i don't have the issue in front of me, but the most glaring example is when QQ is telling Xavier about how everyone's trapped in their little boxes, and Xavier says something like "Yes, life without telepathy. I know, I've seen it." and I just wanted to scream "NO, YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT. It's not life without telepathy, it's LIFE WITH SUBJECTIVITY AND THE ILLUSION OF INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY that he's talking about. QQ is seeing that you're all a bunch of fictionsuits but you can't hear him because you think you already know what he's talking about, you silly old man." Their whole conversation is like that: QQ sharing some cosmic insight and Xavier being unable to step beyond his own train of thought because he's from the wrong generation: he's been surpassed and he doesn't really even understand the full implications of that, and he's very much stuck on the idea that he's the mentor, not the student, and as a result doesn't even realize how much he needs to learn. however, Xorn gets it, Xorn steps up to the plate and does what needs to be done.
the whole book, so far, has been about making the Xavier/Magneto conflict obsolete. the "mutant baby boom" makes questions of human/mutant cohabitation totally irrelevant: humans are on their way out. the fashion thing makes mutant political power irrelevant too, because mutants are "cool" now and they dominate the mental and cultural landscape, which supersedes gross political power, at least in GMs mind. Magneto's dead, and the new Xavier is a very different beast, sort of an early stage synthesis of the two poles of the Xavier/Magneto dialectic: peaceful, friendly, but openly mutant and openly proud of that and embracing the fact that mutants are different, and, on some level, better, or at least full of new ideas that can be brought to human society.
the Phoenix invites Charles to come closer to her, the force of raw change itself, but he can't without being annhiliated because, essentially, there's too much "him" there. the Phoenix tells him he will only lose things that he doesn't need, but he declines. he cannot both be the Charles Xavier that he knows and fully immerse himself in the torrent of change that's running through this book, so he steps back. he chooses continuity of identity over change, and, as such, change ultimately leaves him behind. QQ tries to explain it to him on his way out, but he's not listening, or, more accurately, he can't hear. |
