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Underground > Comic Books >

New X-Men #150

  
  

Page: 12345(6)7

 
 
Rawk'n'Roll
20:43 / 19.12.03
Bittersweet issue.

Loved:
Some of the dialogue, esp Emma and Hank. Why wasn's this happening in the rest of the book? Why doesn't this feel like the same writer who came up with the snappy one liners in E is for Extinction?
The fact that GM address's the government's retaliation. Still no-one thinks to send in the Avengers?
The uber violence, Toad is now crippled? Yes please. Scott gets some cajones and will finally let loose with his powers (also the way he was more annoyed at being lied to by Xorn than Magneto destroying NY and cremating lots of humans).
Emma's scene with the dying Esme. Anyone notice how she's feeling emotions in her diamond form all of a sudden?

Hated:
Pretty much everything else.
The art was atrocious. I love Jiminez's work on the Invisibles but his X-men work has been terrible.
And due to this incosistancy of art there were so many scenes that just didn't make sense. The page turn when Wolverine decapitates Mags is one of them, where did he come from?
What was the point of the scene with the police officer? What was the point of the police officer at all in fact?
How does Esme know who weapon 12 is (I don't for one second buy into the cuckoo's being "weapon something else"). Why does beak lead the charge against Magneto? Why does Fantomex make the second attack? Where are the frickin X-men?
Too much speculation, too much guess-work and plot hole filling by the reader.

Grant isn't presuming we're intelligent and can read between the lines of his dialogue, he's rushing the story and hoping no-one will notice.
I hope Here Comes Tomorrow is better.
 
 
Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!
21:26 / 19.12.03
Concerning the art: Atrocious is a very, very harsh jusdgement. And I don't think Jiminez can really hold any of the blame for the Wolverine "page-turn". That's purely a script issue, and I believe it was intended to be a shock.

And I really don't think we need to worry about whyever whoever was attacking first. That's just silly! Of course Grant wants to play with his toys!
 
 
Rawk'n'Roll
21:36 / 19.12.03
The splsh page change makes no sense. It's way too much of a jump cut, I certainly wouldn't think anyone else would draw it like that. There seems to be a panel missing showing Logan react to Jean's death, it'd make more sense then.
And I have a feeling its not only Jiminez who I'm not feeling the love for but Andy Lnaning the inker. It's his over inking that I'm not liking (aside from the mutating Beast faces etc). Jiminex needs crisp lines not cross hatching.

And as for the attack co-ordinations. Would you really send Beak in with a baseball bat first even if it was just a distraction? Could we not have him whack mag's whilst he's blinded by Scott? A big team work effort should have been in place, instead we get a few lone attacks that aren't particularly backed up by any of the other X-men.

My feelings are that Grant's been bored of writing the X-men since Riot. His dialogue and pacing have been very off-colour ever since.
 
 
Rawk'n'Roll
21:37 / 19.12.03
damn my typing is bad tonight.
 
 
Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!
21:58 / 19.12.03
I think the point is that IS Logan's reaction to Jean's death. Probably as it was in the script. I just think people are often quick to blame the artist, and the art was, for the most part, pretty solid in this issue. Give or take the odd funny looking Beast face and some cross-hatching (although I hadn't noticed that myself. But I think I'd suggest that being the assisting inker, and entirely forgivable considering the whole "double sized" nature of the ish. It is double, right?).

And maybe attack orchestrations just don't bother me, but it seemed orchestrated well enough to me. And, Cyclops was pretty much the only X-Man present at that time, wasn't he? I'm just assuming that from memory, btw.

I don't want to seem like I'm disputing your points for no reason, because I can see why you'd feel that way. However, I always feel strongly about people just dismissing the artist's efforts! So unappreciative! I just can't see how solid work like this can be atrocious - isn't this how big bombastic superhero antics are supposed to look?
 
 
Imaginary Mongoose Solutions
23:11 / 19.12.03
"What was the point of the scene with the police officer? What was the point of the police officer at all in fact?"

One of the high points of the previous issue is when Cyclops refers to the assembled ragtag rebels as X-Men. The point of the police officer is that he's a human cop but just as valid a member of the team as Sentinel, the fucked up bird kid, or the experienced mega-poweful mutant.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
23:11 / 19.12.03
There's a very simple goddamn reason why the other X-Men and the Avengers and the rest of the Marvel Universe aren't in Planet X: because NXM is a self-contained comic. The philosophy from day one has been stridently anti-crossover, and there have been almost no guest stars aside from a few X-Men from other series popping up for individual stories. Though it may be obnoxious in terms of overall continuity, it makes sense if the only Marvel comic you read is New X-Men, which is the case for a big chunk of NXM readers. You can easily pretend that the entire NXM story from 114-154 existed in its own self-contained world. A world where you can easily assume that Rogue, Gambit, Spider-Man, Reed Richards, and the Avengers don't even exist.

Also, I'm backing up Seudehead in the defense of Jiminez's work in this issue, and on Planet X in general. He's a very talented artist, which strong illustration chops. #150 in particular suffers from rushed pacing, confusing narratives, sanitized off-panel violence that is occasionally difficult to follow, and periodic lack of backgrounds which make mapping out the action very difficult to follow, but I think that mostly comes down to flaws in Grant's script and deadlines. I have no doubt that this issue would be much better and more easy to understand if Frank Quitely drew it, but Jiminez put in a heroic effort.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
23:14 / 19.12.03
In addition to what Kevin says, the X-Men are using the cop to bait/distract Magneto. They are using Magneto's nature against him so that they can get Beast in position to drop in on him.
 
 
Ben Danes
03:42 / 20.12.03
The Mags death scene was brilliant, as he realized he was more influential/powerful dead than alive.

Is it out of the question that they would rehabilitate Xorn if he was alive?They did it with Cassie Nova.

Wolverine killing Mags is so perfect. All he is and was created for is killing, and he knows it. So when Mags says kill me, BANG. Loved that bit.
Makes a lot of sense when placed in context with what Logan has discovered/been through.
 
 
doyoufeelloved
04:51 / 20.12.03
I enjoyed the issue, but I'm largely on the side of people who think the whole thing was compromised by Morrison's rush-jobbing -- we know he plowed through his final scripts in one huge block in order to finish the run way ahead of schedule and allow for simultaneous art chores, and yes, ever since the end of RIOT AT XAVIER'S it does feel like he's really dropped the ball in terms of dialogue -- everyone's on Morrison vocabulary and phrasing auto-pilot. Magneto has popped eardrums because Grant always goes for the big bang, the obvious semiotic phrase that means "head damage" -- the actual mechanics of what a popped eardrum is don't enter into it, he just wants a phrase or idea that you can comprehend quickly and think of as severe. Little substitutions like that are all over the scripting of PLANET X and they really, really, REALLY hurt the consistency of something that we're supposed to think is the most intricately choreographed part of the NEW X-MEN experience.

I liked Jiminez's art on the whole, but the Wolverine jump-cut with the Magneto-slaying was way too harsh. I really thought I'd skipped a page, or one had been misprinted out, for a second.

I don't remember who it was that suggested the "headless Magneto actually becomes Xorn" theory, BUT THAT IS ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT. If the next writer went off onto that tangent, it would be a truly beautiful thing.

Why, why, oh why didn't Magneto's head explode when Cyke blasted him? And speaking of Cyke: Has anyone figured out the rhetorical function of him not having his optic blasts in ASSAULT ON WEAPON PLUS? I assumed it was a trailer for Grant's "big character change," which I had fanfic-pegged as Scott finally gaining control over his blasts and ditching ruby-quartz 4evah. But that, obviously, is not the case. So was it just an impotence joke? I don't see any real point in the plot of WEAPON PLUS that would change if Cyke did have his snazzy lazer eyez. Scott's my favorite super-hero too (just re-read IMPERIAL) and the "best friend" thing was unbearably sweet (in every sense of that phrase)...

I continue to love what Morrison is going for at the end of the series, but I'm starting to realize that I'll always be disappointed in the justice he did to it.
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
08:38 / 20.12.03
I quite like the thought that Magneto doesn't need eyes or ears to see or hear, that he could do it all by EMP.
 
 
Quireboy
09:28 / 20.12.03
It did seem rushed, even reading the entire arc again, it seems rushed. Too many ideas not enough structure. I doubt that all the plot holes will be filled by the next arc either, as it's only four issues. From reading NXM151 first I expected Phoenix to go out with a bang, given the state Manhattan's in, instead it was more of a whimper. It wasn't consistent for Phoenix to come back from the dead, having been gutted by Wolverine and burnt up by the Sun, but not survive an electomagnetic pulse - even a planet shifting one. The books starts with her making abig deal about having total molecular control and hyper-telepathy, so why should we believe she can't anticipate Magneto's attack or deflect it. yes it sets up the next arc, and maybe it's about shoing how she's retained her compassion, despite her transformation, but it seemed a lame way to finish her off. Very anti-climatic. However, 151 is a much better read.
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
09:54 / 20.12.03
Yes, presumerably the Xorn helmet is quite thick and proofed against various things including esp, so Xorn would have been interacting with the world through energy all the time (although he might have fooled say Cyclops or Xavier, I think Beast would have enough scientific nouse to get suspicious if Xorn said he was 'talking' through energy waves and not just using his big voice.

And now, some comments on other things said:

Flux and Quireboy, Is it really so difficult to not spoil for future issues in a #150 thread?

makeitbleed Anyone see the Phoenix egg in 1602 and think it would be somewhat redemptive for that series if this storyline caused that one?

Interesting. The treasure of the Templars isn't the egg and the identity of the old man are made plain in this issue (which I'm now really starting to like), it might make sense for why the MU is happening early (I like the opening page where Gaiman assures us this is part of the plot) but we've also been told that it's just the sixties MU, so as part of the post Stan and Jack years I think that rules the Phoenix out. I'm going for Galactus. But I'll dig out the thread and contribute there.

rawkusboi Grant isn't presuming we're intelligent and can read between the lines of his dialogue, he's rushing the story and hoping no-one will notice.

Dead on. So a couple of days in EVA cured Scott of his blasting problem? Plenty of time to think about his problems? How nice. And Beast's rambling on the downed Blackbird, I hope that the last story isn't set entirely in the future as I'd hate to think that Grant won't explain exactly how 'Sublime Pharmaceuticals, Feng Tu, the Kick drug, human aggression, the riots' etc add up to anything in Beast's mind. And considering that they were in a wrecked Blackbird, then in the Phoenix ship, where exactly did Beast get a Kick counteragent from? I presume the recapitulation (if that's the word I'm looking for) of scenes from Imperial pt. 6 were deliberate (Beast throwing himself at Mags, Scott cradling a weakened Jean (who's got someone else in her head) and some students ready to fight the menace.

But, Morrison either doesn't have a handle on, or doesn't care about power levels. When Cyclops shoots Magneto in the face, when a Magneto who has lost his Kick enhancements and is barely able to stand after attacks from Fantomex, Beast, Cyclops, Esme and Xavier is able to kill Phoenix is just laughable. It's a secondary concern that none of the characters really act like I remember them acting when I collected the series.

And Beast has figured out how to counteract the execution gene? Why? IIRC, the human race had two or three generations left before extinction. In comic terms that's a time we're never going to reach. So I don't see why Grant feels a need to undo that as well. All that we need now is for the Phoenix to use her psychic powers to make the world forget that Xavier came out as a mutant and I think everything Grant changed is undone.

So Magneto's dream doesn't work? I fail to see why Xavier seems to think his dream doesn't work either, after all a coalition of mutants and humans brought down Magneto. I still don't understand how Quentin Quire and a few thugs going off on one has destroyed Xavier's faith in his dream.

Morrison has said that the entire series has gone how he wanted it to and ended where he'd always intended it to end. I see only two options: 1) He's lying, or 2) The series was always a favour to Quesada and he never intended to put much effort into it.

About the only thing I liked was the continuing Xorn/Magneto thing. But with Mags beheading even that's fairly ruined. The whole thing with 'was it Xorn speaking through the helmet, was it Xavier?' is forgotten now, and Xorn has no influence over Magneto at aall this issue, which makes me wonder why Grant bothered to raise it last issue. I do quite like the thing of Magneto getting angry because the X-Men don't care about whether they're fighting him or Xorn, that in many ways they don't care about Magneto but they're angry Xorn betrayed them. If Magneto lived beyond the end of this issue there could be potentially interesting storylines about Gollum-Magneto versus Smeagol-Xorn. But I'm revising my expectations for the last arc down as far as I can.
 
 
sleazenation
10:56 / 20.12.03
re- cyclops i always read scott losing his optic blast as something akin to impotency to echo the emotional impotancy he feels with jean and when forced to meake a decision between jean and emma - its only when scott makes his own decision that he frees himself is emotions and hisrage from his self imposed impotence.

Depending on how charitable people are being i think morrison's run is heading towards being
A) a hoax, a dream, an imaginary story.
B) the introduction of hypertime into the marvel universe - if you liked the story it is part of continuity, if you don't it did didn't happen.
 
 
Kirk Ultra
10:57 / 20.12.03
I think Xorn will end up being more real than Magneto.
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
12:29 / 20.12.03
I can't help but feel that Claremont dealt with the optic blast issue better in his last X-Factor story, where Cyclops is so anguished at the thought of loosing his son that he's able to fire a blast so strong it destroys Apocalypse.

But anyway...
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
13:43 / 20.12.03
Sleaze, if my theory about Cassandra and the final arc are correct, then I think you may be totally on the money.
 
 
Bed Head
19:01 / 20.12.03
Contributing nothing to the discussion...I liked it. I’ve never been a big fan of Jiminez, but I’ve enjoyed NXM more and more in the last few months. I always avoid these preview threads or anything spoiler-ridden until I’ve actually read the issue in question, but once I’ve got it straight in my head, I always come here to find out which are the bits the group mind is grappling with. NXM has been much better with a commentary track provided by the assembled brains of Barbelith, it’s become the comic I most look forward to. Ta.

Er, carry on lads, carry on...
 
 
gotham island fae
19:34 / 20.12.03
So Magneto's dream doesn't work? I fail to see why Xavier seems to think his dream doesn't work either, after all a coalition of mutants and humans brought down Magneto. I still don't understand how Quentin Quire and a few thugs going off on one has destroyed Xavier's faith in his dream.

"They have ideas of their own. Perhaps it's time we put away the old dreams, the old manifestos [both plural]... and just listened for a while."

Sounds to me like Charles is gonna listen to the QQ's of the NU world, Lady.

I'm REALLY not over concerned with the specifications of Scott's weird psycho-kinetic eyes. He never meant to full-on, let loose on Magz. Hence the surprise after. I'll grant that not explaining how Scott's blast does anything other than project out and burn and blast things is a niggling annoyance. Aw well. I've been annoyed by far less dramatic things before.

And I've had one ear drum rupture and could still faintly hear out of it. Don't know about both going, though. And besides, regardless of his pathetic-ass sorry-excuse-for-a-super-conqueror stance up to now, we are talking about Magneto, first foe of the X-Men. Supposing both that the Cyclops blast was never a killing blow and that it also was effected by [whatever], I'll cheaply buy that Magneto could stand and kill Phoenix with the built up E-M power he assumedly was accumulating throughout the buildup. Especially if he comes back without a head.
 
 
Simplist
21:59 / 20.12.03
My reaction to the book was not in all respects positive--while I like what Morrison was trying to do with it, it very much reads like he realized at some point that he'd miscounted the number of issues left until #150, and had to squeeze the last three or four into this one so as to land the big finish on the magic multiple of ten. OTOH, it may read better in collection--I'll reserve final judgement until the hardcover comes out late next year.
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
07:27 / 21.12.03
But the problem with that is that Morrison is imagining Xavier's dream as some big oppressive thing, shaped like a double-decked bus perhaps. But the X-Men weren't going out beating up mutants until they agreed to abide by it, they were allowing mutants to choose, right up to the point that their choice hurts other people, both humans and mutants. And what if mutants say "Fuck humans! We want to take over the world!" is he going to say "alright then! I can use my psychic powers to make the Potus think he's an alsatian!" My impression is that Morrison is saying that Xavier's dream is as bad for people as Magneto's one, if so I disagree with that strongly.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
18:42 / 21.12.03
I don't think it is like that at all, Flowers. Going on everything that we are told that Charles wanted to do with the school throughout the run, what he says to Magneto at the end basically comes down to "my ideas about integration, peace, and communication are what people want, and your violent directionless separatism is not" - it was a validation of Charles' ideas more than anything else.
 
 
Jack Denfeld
02:32 / 22.12.03
"Xavier school is the best school!"
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
07:49 / 22.12.03
It was such a validation that he was stepping down from the school. Unless Morrison meant that Xavier was going to run for political office instead... What sort of things did you have in mind about what Xavier wanted to do with the school?
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
09:38 / 22.12.03
Re: Jean getting fucked over in climatic final battle by big bad dispite being possessed by weird powerful energy force then reborn through egg found on the moon:

It's fucking Rebis all over again, isn't it Doom Patrol fans?

Man, you're all slippin' not to catch that sooner. I award myself ten pounds.
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
09:46 / 22.12.03
Also, Jean took that blast because she had to to save the planet. That power was intended to flip the earth on it's poles. Her compassion saves the day.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
11:43 / 22.12.03
Radiator, you brilliant bastard. How did I miss the Rebis thing? I feel like an idiot or something!

Lady - go back to Imperial, New Worlds, and Riot. In each, you find plenty of examples of the ideas that Charles has for the school.

I never quite understood why Charles decides to retire at the end of Riot. I think that thread has yet to be resolved. I think that Grant was just taking him out of the way so that Scott could take over in the end.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
12:31 / 22.12.03
I think it's pretty simple: Xavier decides to step down at the end of 'Riot' because he's incredibly disillusioned by the idea that given a free choice, young mutants would choose to embrace Magneto's ideals rather than his own (remember that Quentin was his "prize student"*). But at the end of 'Planet X', it's clear that this isn't the case once people actually see Magneto's way put into practice (and presumably Charles also now realises that the riot was part of Magneto's plan to undermine him, or even just a smokescreen to detract attention away from Xorn and his influence on the Special Class - there are unanswered questions about this still, like who *was* selling Quentin the Kick?).

Y'know, reading some of the comments on this issue it occurs to me that while the pacing in NXM is sometimes way off, and while certain pieces of key information are conveyed in too eliptical a fashion, or even omitted, people are also guilty of sloppy reading. There's no excuse for thinking that Fantomex is dead at the end of this issue (unless one means that he dies with everyone else when the universe goes wonky). Equally, people talking about Jean's death being the cause of the universe going 'wrong' need to go back and re-reaD: the Cuckoos clearly state that this is happening several pages before Jean dies, in fact if anything they imply that it's Esme's death that does it.

Mind you, to pick an example of where Morrison really does mess up: Office Foster must be the most pointless character in the whole of the NXM run. Oh, it's clear what he's there *for*: to counter the incisive criticism someone on this board (seth?) made near the start of the second year, namely that for all their supposed integrationism, Morrison's X-Men don't seem to work with, know or even like many humans. But when he's first introduced, he seems to be just an annoyance - not just to the readers, though he is that, but also to Hank and Scott, who treat him with open distain ("sorry, all humans look the same to me"). And now suddenly here he is, he's one of the good guys - one of the X-Men, even - and he's making buddy-cop-movie jokes with Hank and facing down Magneto and oh my God, he's fucking shit. And I think we were supposed to like him.

But to balance again: I haven't mentioned how much I too loved Scott cutting loose on Mags, or Emma cradling Esme and telling her how proud she is, or even - am I alone in this? - that righteous Wolverine fury, off with his head!
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
13:19 / 22.12.03
I reread Planet X is one go last night, and it's a much smoother read that way, I think. I get what Grant was going for - I think with each issue, we get strung up in expectations of what should happen, particularly at the end when we want so much explained. Going through Riot -> Murder -> Assault -> Planet X rapidly is the best way to do it, because the events are all happening very quickly one after the other, there's no gaps of time from one story to the next. It helps to have that timeframe in mind. The end of Planet X only seems to happen about two weeks after the riot at very most.
 
 
Krug
16:20 / 22.12.03
I'm hoping for a personal apology by Grant to every reader when he appears in the last X-Men issue to explain why the stories have been average at best.
That's the only way to explain it all.

Another Deus Ex Machina.

Heh.

On a serious note: I really disliked this run a lot. IMO NXM features some of Grant's poorest work.

Pointless bloodly finale to a long wank.

And calling it a favour to Quesada is very insulting I think but it does seem that Morrison isn't even trying to write good dialog and make excuses for plotholes.
 
 
Quireboy
16:41 / 22.12.03
Flyboy, I think you're being too kind to Morrison here. I know the other Cuckoos made that comment about Esme, but until now the series has been buidling up to the disinfection of the Phoenix, which doesn't happen. Maybe Esme is the key but that just adds to the general confusion. Perhaps the kindest thing to say is that Morrison's ideas are too ambitious for his medium. Regardless of that, I now think this issue is one of the worst of the entire run. Still miles better thean other X-Men titles, but that's not saying that much. NXM151 is far better, so I have some optimism he can turn this around before the end of his run.
 
 
The Falcon
21:19 / 22.12.03
Cyclops force blast can be controlled, via visor adjustment, for power and diffraction. You can see him doing so after he breaks through the floor. Otherwise, why did he not blow Radian's legs off at the end of 'Riot...'?

Honestly, any x-geek knows that.

No-one seems to have noticed/mentioned that Esme is dressing like an Omega - or, more specifically, Quentin. [Put me down for the time-traveller, if not the son of Slim and Emma, theorem, by the way. Everything else comes to pass.] The whip, the red-black colour scheme... Ah, maybe she's just revelling in the mutant slaver lifestyle.
 
 
ciarconn
22:14 / 22.12.03
Perhaps Morrison is going to leave some dangling plots to be resolved by the next ploters? It has been the style since Claremont...
 
 
Quireboy
09:26 / 23.12.03
When I read Planet X, the emotional highpoint is NXM148 - Jean and Logan heading into the sun - IMO the most satisfying issue in the arc. I'm sure it will all read better in the hardback anthologies but that's not how the story is primarily being read. I would imagine that Morrison intended NXM150 to be anti-climatic in some sense, especially with regards to Jean's fate, as that sets up the final act. The highpoint of 150 for me was Emma scene with Esme.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
10:16 / 23.12.03
Has anyone mentioned the "I don't know how long they'll let me stay" line yet? Does Magneto's fatal attack on Jean correspond to her allotted time running out, or come too soon?
 
  

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