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New X-Men #150

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10:24 / 23.12.03

. 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

He's like a white guy trying to help some black panthers, and the black panthers laugh at him and stuff, but then just when things are getting all messed up the white guy shows that he's as down for the cause as the rest of them and they become buddies! I know I should have more specific examples of this character in the movies but I'm drawing a blamk right now.

13:30 / 23.12.03

Rebis! ...nice one, Radiator.

"sorry, all humans look the same to me"

Isn't that just Hank's dry humour?

13:33 / 23.12.03

Sorry, who is Rebis - I haven't read Doom Patrol. What are the similarities in the stories?

15:54 / 23.12.03

I think the event that dicked up the timestream definitely is the murder of the Phoenix, and not something else -- the Cuckoos don't say that time has gone wrong before the event; they just say "Magneto's doing something weird to gravity and time" -- they can feel the power of what he's got holding back inside him. It's only when Jean is actively falling apart in Scott's hands that they say "See? Something's gone wrong with the universe now..." I find it extremely hard to believe that Esme would be so important as to fundamentally alter space and time -- she's just got an interesting character arc.

Ditto ditto DITTO on NXM #148 being the emotional heart of PLANET X -- and in a lot of ways, the whole run. I FREAKED THE HELL OUT when I read those last eight pages -- seriously, I was calling people up and squealing, it was so unbelievably pathetic -- and they instantly catapulted into my Top Five X-Men Fanboy Moments Ever. Might've been the only point in Morrison's whole run where he really did tap into a sense of the archetypal X-Men experience and reconfigure it into some new event the X-Dorks (like myself) can treasure forever.

13:26 / 26.12.03

I was just thinking...
The Phoenix is something like the sum of the life-force of the whole universe, No? ("life and passion incarnate...")
Wolverine killed Jean to free the Phoenix... Magneto used the power he had piled up for days to kill the Phoenix with a EMP...
Magneto killed the Phoenix, thus the life-and-death cycle is broken...
Thus, nobody dies in 150 years, and the Phoenix egg is important to re-stablish the cycle.
Also, "Magneto is doing something weird to gravity and time", because he was focusing his magnetic powers to change the gravity of the earth (to move the poles) and altering gravity alterates time (general relativity?)

18:47 / 03.01.04

Look at the globe on the last page...

Matthew Fluxington

18:53 / 03.01.04

Ah. That could just be a weird trick of perspective from the moon...

...or it could explain a name like "Transatlantis."

19:42 / 03.01.04

The latter, I'd think, given the premise of 'Planet X'.

Fairly vital, I reckon. Just noticed today.

20:31 / 03.01.04

just a few thoughts:
in #127 xorn says "that is my gift. i like to mend..broken things"
later in the issue says "when i look over this man's shoulder INTO TIME, i see my uncle and his grandfather..." and "in ten days it would have become something new and beautiful"
Does this mean that xorn has time related powers? in #150 the cuckoos say that "magneto is doing something to gravity and time" and when he's beheaded the girls say that "something's gone wrong with the whole universe now"
Maybe xorn is some kind of energy lifeform that was trying to manipulate magneto acting as the inner star inside erik in order to mend what is wrong with the universe. Apparently he failed because phoenix died and i believe that the disinfection was necessary to restore balance in the universe. Maybe there is a connection between quentin quire and xorn, because quentin also saw trough time and xorn says that there was something like him in QQ.
But what is wrong with the universe?? the radiation of the sun that somehow is causing the secondary mutations and triggering the E gene?
i cant wait to see how this all ties up!!!

Matthew Fluxington

21:21 / 03.01.04

Maybe xorn is some kind of energy lifeform that was trying to manipulate magneto acting as the inner star inside erik in order to mend what is wrong with the universe.

I'm going to guess no. I think Xorn was nothing more than a ruse, but also a way of making clear just how schizoid Magneto's personality had become - he'd split his good and bad sides into two.

21:26 / 03.01.04

something that im really curious about is how some of the hidden plots are gonna tie up.
some stuff i think i figured out like the cassandra/weapon plus connection. she is one of their researchers (in #114 she says that she is a researcher for the government) and the dna source for weapon development, cuz in imperial cassie says "all of this.. all of this is mine!" a phrase that weapon XV constantly repeats, and fantomex real name is CHARLIE CLUSTER 7, maybe thats because he as some of the professor's dna. Another clue that leads to this direction is what beast said about cassie, that she was a new form of life, something that they have never seen before, and in #130 fantomex says "IM A NEW FORM OF LIFE and this place is so much bigger than the world"
Something that i cant forget is the possible dummy/kick connection, when this character appears in riot, it's described as a living gas that smells like fart, a smart fart; and in later issues basilisk is constantly saying that someone farted, and always when magneto/xorn is around and magneto is always high on kick!! Is dummy the Kick source??? And why did Tattoo say "secret x-labs. i smell kick"? is Beast somehow connected to kick?
how is magneto connected with the weapon plus? he lured wolvie and jean to the asteroid m after the weapon plus HQ exploded. how did he know they were there and that the weapon plus HQ existed in space? not even fantomex knew this.
who is the weapon plus informant within the institute? martha? ernst? dummy? No-girl?(lol!)
who was phoenix refering to when in #150 she said "i dont know how long they will let me stay". Who are "they"? Magneto/Xorn?

so many questions!! only one story arc left!!

Our Lady of The Two Towers

20:09 / 04.01.04

SPECULATION : (moderators, feel free to move this elsewhere if you think it fits)

Hmmm, According to an old storyline from around X-Men 12, back when I was still reading it, Xavier's Dad was involved in the Weapon X program. Also, didn't Xavier surrender to the Government after he became Onslaught (wasn't reading then). Both times give the Government access to Xavier DNA if you want to consider they created Cassie from it. Both scenarios give them time to develop something, if it was Xavier's Dad that gives them thirty or forty years, it also means they could use the brainwashing techniques they used on Logan and Creed to obscure from Charlie the truth about what happened (the Weapon X programs used on Logan were based on negative emotions, what better than to make Xavier feel his first conscious action was to 'kill' his twin sister in the womb?) If it were done when Xavier surrendered to the Government then they have the time element (in that they could shove their experiments into the World and press ffwd) but not the chance to do anything to Xavier's memory, him being a powerful telepath and all.

This could mean that Charlie or Cassie was Weapon I. (or whatever the earliest mutant weapon was)

22:27 / 04.01.04

I think it's fairly-well established that Captain America is Weapon I, and the bloke from Truth is 0. But, otherwise, I like the idea.

15:50 / 06.01.04

Not just the last page Falcon, it's in the majority of the background of the "future" pages. Guess Mag's succeeded after all.

And a nice touch and little thing I got was in the close up on Beasts eyes during his "chat" with the president. The phrase "power corrupts" sprang to mind in connection to what we know about what is to come in the next four issues.

17:51 / 06.01.04

Remember Mags' map of the world upside-down that he puts on the walls of the Special Class right before he reveals himself as Xorneto - I just remembered that while reading these speculations.

02:24 / 13.01.04

surely the "they" that Jean refers to is some higher level barbelith/The Hand/old ones sorta cosmic force that exists in the cracks of the known universe. And she has now awoken to "their" presence and the true nature of the universe. Jean knows time is an illusion of perspective and she will soon rotate into the supercontext.

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

11:03 / 13.01.04

But come on, for an X-Men comic this run has been top notch.

Finally got this issue, best ultraviolence ever.

17:43 / 13.01.04

I am not sure that I would rate Grant's run as especially exciting in the context of the X-Men. I think that the excitement of a superhero story is relative to the reader's age, and so it is unlikely that I wil ever enjoy any New X-Men stories more than the Claremont stories that I picked up from the local newsagents when I was 12 or 13.

In any case, that is not the point. I take Grant Morrison seriously, and expect his to, ahem, "blast my paradigm". He has been called the "heir of Burroughs"- and if he wants to live up to this, he has to do more than retread past ideas. Even if we agree that all post-modern writing is about retreading the past, we can still long for soemthing other than a glossier reprint and more violent mimickry.

Is it taboo to bring up the bearded English writer on this board? I think he provides a very interesting parallel here.
I hate the ultra-violence, too.

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

18:01 / 13.01.04

Come on, the violence was great! Blasts in the face, twattings with helmets, matrix-esque removals of kneecaps, that horrible thing with the earrings, decapitation!

Regrettable Juvenilia

18:03 / 13.01.04

Is it taboo to bring up the bearded English writer on this board?

Nah, you can talk about Howard Jacobson as much as you like.

I have a lot of issues with some of NXM so far - most importantly, the pacing, and the lack of issue-to-issue continuity. But I definitely don't think that the problem is that Morrison isn't invested in it sufficiently, or that he needs to do something weirder - NXM was still a lot better than The Filth, in my book. And in fact, the charactisation in this title has been its main selling point as far as I'm concerned - Space Cadet Summers has become someone I like, and even identify with, whilst things like the relationship between Emma and Hank (which I can't believe some people have seen as "Hank's secretly in love with her" - Jeez, talk about misreadings) have been very deftly handled. I rhink some people just don't even look for that in Morrison's work - they look for the big crazy ideas, and NXM hasn't had that many noticeable examples of those (apart from Xorn = Magneto, which I think irritated most the people who want to believe they weren't reading an OTT soap opera) - and so people are missing what the strengths of NXM have been.

Matthew Fluxington

18:27 / 13.01.04

Flyboy is right. The characters - Emma, Scott, Henry, and Beak - are the best thing about NXM. That's the reason to love it.

Matthew Fluxington

18:29 / 13.01.04

I think Hank's secretly in love with Emma, but also never got over his crush on Jean. Poor guy must be so lonely, with all of that animal lust, and so much unrequited love.

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

18:31 / 13.01.04

It's the sheer, unbeatable quality of the writing that does it for me.

Has done since 2000ad.

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

18:35 / 13.01.04

he used to be a hit with the ladies (one of his more understated powers), now he's a big fucking blue lion with a barbed penis- I'd be depressed too.

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

18:41 / 13.01.04

Sorry, who is Rebis - I haven't read Doom Patrol. What are the similarities in the stories?

Flux could tell you better, but basically rebis was a merged being empowered by a cosmic force, who was suddenly wasted by the big bad (the candelmaker) in an epic showdown, but reborn through an egg on the moon.

But really you should read Doom Patrol. EVERYONE should read doom patrol.

18:53 / 13.01.04

Doom Patrol should be taught in schools. But you should really just stop reading NXM if you think it’s so bloody awful, Ignatian.

11:55 / 14.01.04

As a side note, on the actual issue of Weapon X, there are some scenes on the Weapon X complex, and some screens show images of the fight between Magneto and Fantomex, which could be seen from the perspective of ]Esmeralda or E.V.A.
And this could be related to the old plant from weapon plus in the x men...

12:58 / 14.01.04

I think Fantomex is working for the bad guys. Or the Bad Guy, in particular. It was his engineering of the scenario that put Scott and Wolvie(eat it Byrne) on the space station. I bet he, Sublime, and Magneto were both being fed info from the same source. And I think he supplied the diamond bullet to Esme.

21:18 / 14.01.04

The scenes in Weapon X are lifted directly from New X-men so I wouldn't worry too much about the "perspective". Its just an old school art/time saving device.
The very fact that Tieri has used these ideas is fantastic though. I think we'll see a better realisation (maybe) of Grant's wild imagining only once he's left the series. He comes along, injects a bit of weirdness and now the current crop of X-writers can spend the next few years playing with the ramifications.
All of our questions and theorising could end up ina future X-title.

ie: "What happened to John Sublime?"

16:37 / 19.01.04

I have one specualtion that I haven't seen bought up here.

When Wolverine decapitates Magneto, in the panel before (as Xorn/Mags decalres that he wants to be immortal) his eyes are glowing. The glowing eyes are always a signal of Xorn using his powers. What is he using them for at this point in the story?

I would argue that it is quite possible that Magneto suicides by controlling Wolverine via his adamantium skeleton. This is why Wolverine does not have a reaction panel to Jean's death which sparks his attack -- he does not make the attack and is, in fact, sticking to the pacificist Xavier creed and not putting Magneto down like a mad dog.

This makes his sudden berserk rage after the attack more understandable (he is reacting to both jean's death and his powerlessness in the face of it all).

Now if this speculation is correct the next question would be who is speaking from within the Xorn mask and prompting Magneto's suicide? Is it Magneto himself opting for death (which would seem out of character) or one of the mysterious other players in this little drama (Marta, Ernst etc.)

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