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Underground > Comic Books >

New X-Men #152

  
  

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FinderWolf
22:47 / 24.01.04
I think you nailed it with your post above about the Jean/Sublime evolution/no-evolution concept, perceval.

>> "I'm sorry... I was in the crown..."
Jean comes back, burning like a star, from Kether itself.

I love how it seems like for Jean, it's mere seconds after she last "died". There is no time in Kether.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
22:58 / 24.01.04
Simplist, I wasn't complaining about the wild sentinels not being in Here Comes Tomorrow (you're right, that wouldn't make sense), I was lamenting that they were never used to their fullest potential in general terms. It's definitely one of the best stray ideas left behind for future writers to play with.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
23:01 / 24.01.04
Perceval, that isn't Henry McCoy.
 
 
diz
01:41 / 25.01.04
If I'm disappointed by anything, it's that the wild sentinels never came up again in New X-Men.

i was always under the impression that the Wild Sentinel adaptations caused them to evolve into the Nano-Sentinels. oh, well. whatever.

i'm with Herr Fluxington on the issue of Marc Silvestri. major nostalgia for one of my favorite eras in X-history. so unbelievably happy with the art.

on a side note, GM seems to have a really pronounced affection for supposedly outdated tech and a healthy skepticism of the trend to pronounce things obsolete when a newer version comes out. Fantomex assumed that he and Logan couldn't take Weapon XV, because he was two generations more advanced. Logan scoffed and the old bastard took Ultimaton to school. the same sort of thing applies to E.V.A.'s pronounced admiration for Rover, which brings things full circle in many ways, since NXM opened with the symbolic death and obsolescence of the old-school Sentinels - Logan hacking one to pieces while Scott tells him he might as well stop because it's dead.

it's really interesting to me how central the Sentinels have been to NXM.

as many have noted, i also think it's interesting how much the world of the future has bascially become The World.

i love this arc like few others so far, but i have no freaking idea how he's going to bring this together in just two issues.
 
 
Ben Danes
03:23 / 25.01.04
Re the wild Sentinels: I was so sure we were going to see those Sentinels, in particular the ones that destroyed Genosha, in #150. In #149, Scott is having his meeting with the New X-Men, and one of them aks how are they going to get rid of Magneto's shield over New Genosha. Scott says he has a couple of Sentinels on hand.

I would have loved this, because it brings things full circle again. I'm a bit disappointed he didn't use this thread (he still might).

Anyone else feel that this arc reminds them of "E is for Extinction"? Most of the stuff brought up in "E" has happened in "Here Comes". And the spread page, with the Cerebra like display is a definite nod to "E", not X2.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
19:18 / 25.01.04
So, we all agree that Apollyon used to be Fantomex, right? It seems likely...

A bit more on Apollyon: he crops up in the Revelation of St. John the Divine (Ch.9), and is the leader of the "locusts" - demons escaped from the Abyss - which ties in quite nicely with the 'Crawlers. The name just means "Killer" or "Destroyer" (ancient Greek - Απωλλυμι - I kill or destroy utterly) - which seems to fit the assassin Fantomex quite nicely.

I'm honestly not sure how I feel about this arc; it's fun, but it does remind me awfully of the Age of Apocalypse, and I'm just not sure Morrison has the resources to sort that out. Is anyone expecting a Zenith 4 ending, where this has all been going on in the World, which the Phoenix purifies and then pops out of as Jean Grey again?
 
 
Mike-O
19:29 / 25.01.04
I thought of that, actually Haus... but it would definitely take away from the poignancy of the story, IMHO. I'd say Apollyon is likely Fantomex, given how tragically EVA refers to "what happened to him"...
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
19:31 / 25.01.04
Hmm. I'm not sure if The World is going to make a comeback in this story. Maybe it will, I'm just not feeling that.

I think it is pretty clear that we're getting the Dark Phoenix thing in the next two issues, with Sublime attempting to corrupt her for his purposes...

Dizfactor, I really like your interpretation of old technology and the sentinels throughout the run.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
19:39 / 25.01.04
Ah, but then again, if the past several issues have all been happening within the World, it would explain how the destruction of NYC will be dealt with by the rest of the Marvel Universe. The World gets fixed by Jean, and everything that's happened since 143 has occured, but not in the regular world. But it all DID happen, ie, Magneto did take over NYC and die, Esme is dead, Jean did die and return in the future to save the world, etc.
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
01:18 / 26.01.04
If the world's so much as mentioned in this arc again I'll vomit. Seriously. I think Sublime manipulated Mags into taking down the Phoenix, you know.
 
 
Mike-O
01:23 / 26.01.04
How do u figure he did that?
 
 
Ben Danes
02:19 / 26.01.04
Anyone else think we're going to get a "Rock of Ages" type ending, with the future stopping something occuring in the past that led to that crappy future occurring. (In JLA, it was Superman destroying the Philosopher's Stone, in NXM it may have been Mags killing Jean).

This would solve the problem of New York being destroyed, Magneto would presumably not be killed (and perhaps rehabilitated instead, ala Cassandra, and the Phoenix can get to do her disinfection.

How would this happen? The Super-Sentinels of course. Cyclops uses them to breach Mags shield, and then all the X-Corps come in or something like that. Probally nothing like that all, but I can't shake the feeling that Cyclops mentioning the Super-Sentinels is really pivotal.

I'd rather this happen, the last arc being retconned, rather than the whole of Grant's run being retconned.It seems plausible, because it would appear there is no way Grant could wrap this all up in 2 issues without doing something like this, and as it is being told in the future, some time travel seems inevitable.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
08:42 / 26.01.04
When Cyclops refers to "two" Super-Sentinels, I think it's pretty clear he's referring to Fantomex and E.V.A. as two separate entities.

I still can't ignore the fact that the Cuckoos say that something's going wrong with the world "now that Esme's dead". Although I know everyone else is disregarding it, including the Three-In-One, who you'd think would remember and say "hey, hang on!" when Cassie bangs on about something going horribly wrong, "we have no way of knowing where the break occurred"...

Anyway, I'm also going to go with Fantomex = Apollyon, if only for the tragic symmetry that he now seems as "unfulfilled" or as he puts it "incomplete" without E.V.A. as she is without him.

Generally, I liked this issue, and I like this arc, but I'm a bit concerned by two things:

1) The questionable likelihood of Morrison being able to wrap up the overall plot of his NXM run in two issues.

2) Silvestri's questionable familiarity with the female form. This works okay with E.V.A., who is supposed to be a smooth, shiny, nipple-free piece of sculpted liquid metal. But 'Jean' in the last couple of panels is embarrassing - I liked the bit where she's all melty and re-forming, that's pretty cool if a bit too Robert Patrick, but the end result, Hot Fire Chick, just looks daft, and nothing like the Jean we've seen before.

Something I did like a lot: the grin on the Beast's face when he says "it burnzzz".
 
 
DaveBCooper
09:34 / 26.01.04
I’m with Uncle Retrospective on this one, unfortunately – I actively thought when reading this issue that I’m pleased Grant’s run’s coming to an end, which is something I’ve never thought about his work before; it all feels very rushed, and very thin, and the art's not exactly helping either. In some panels I have no idea what’s going on – less so than the Bachalo issues, but more so than the Igor Kordey ones, which I didn’t enjoy the look of much either.

So many gaps in the stories which so many people are filling by reference to mystical knowledge and the like, or even issues of the series from yonks ago, or whatever; which isn’t what I pay the money for, or what storytelling’s meant to be – there’s a vast difference between crafty allusions which add to the depth of a story and just lazily leaning on exterior material.

There are a lot of very articulate theories being suggested on this board by people whose knowledge of the X-Men and qaballa and whatnot is clearly greater than my own, but unfortunately all that really does for me is highlight the ingenious and associative minds of many of the posters here, and the weaknesses in Grant’s writing in this comic.

And similarly, without the nostalgic thrill of Silvestri’s art reminding me of previous runs on the books, the pages for me are just muddled and hard to follow.

If the Matrix or Donnie Darko are the screen equivalent of the Invisibles, then I have the horrible feeling that the nearest equivalent to Grant’s X-Men run for the last six months or so would be Scary Movie; that is, really nothing at all when you take away all the external material it supposedly leans on.

Really very disappointed, and hoping that the last couple of issues come together with an almighty bang, Real shame, wish I could get the excitement from these comics that so many of you clearly are.
 
 
perceval
10:23 / 26.01.04

Jean stopping Mags before he can start wrecking things would seem the ideal spot, whereupon she and Chuck can start giving him the therapy he needs. GM said he was going to put the toys back in the toybox intact, and a beheaded Magneto and destroyed NYC wouldn't do that. There had to be some point of bringing up Mags's peaceful side so much during that last arc.
 
 
Sax
10:29 / 26.01.04
Apollyon's Warren Worthington III. Didn't he lose his wings at some point? And there was a little angel motif on his costume. He's begging Beast to give him grafts and transplants - he wants his wings back. Maybe.

Loved the Proud People, but why do they get to wear sexy costumes when the rest of intereuropa's residents have to make do with cast-off peasant costumes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail? Surely fashion sense isn't bred out of humans by 2154.

Something about that "it burnzzz" - a bit insectoid, innit?
 
 
diz
11:36 / 26.01.04
Hmm. I'm not sure if The World is going to make a comeback in this story. Maybe it will, I'm just not feeling that.

i wasn't even speaking literally, just thematically, as a sort of giant petri dish. it's a very GM thing - the structure of the the smaller thing being reiterated on a larger scale.

I think Sublime manipulated Mags into taking down the Phoenix, you know.

How do u figure he did that?

arrange for Cassandra Nova and the Wild Sentinels to kill Genosha, but leave Mags some sort of escape route, then have a bunch of Chinese mutants approach fugitive Mags and have them blow a lot of smoke up his ass about how inspiring he is, and how they think it might be a good idea to put on this helmet and pretend to be dead so as to infiltrate the Xavier School. everything else almost follows from there...
 
 
Aertho
11:42 / 26.01.04
Why would Jean even have to go back in time to "fix things" or disinfect?

If she thinks she can do it, she does it. And she might have "died", only because she thought she should have. What if she zooms back into the past from the future as only a tulpa(like Rachel), and telekinetically fixes everything as we left it in 150. It wouldn't be very difficult for her at all to reattach a severed head, ressurrect a few hundred homo inferior, repair NYC, and rebuild the mansion. I think the Planet X story should stay in realtime.
 
 
Sax
12:48 / 26.01.04
Wow, that's a new concept for Grant. Beautiful red-head goes back in time to save the world.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
12:59 / 26.01.04
Appolyon is most likely Fantomex for all the reasons everyone else has mentioned, but also for the fact that he's not a mutant, and thus can become a U-Man. Mutants don't become U-Men!
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
13:03 / 26.01.04
His speech patterns aren't anything like Fantomex, though.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
13:06 / 26.01.04
150 years of brainwashing can change a fella.
 
 
MFreitas
15:12 / 26.01.04
I've been leading some research on the matter and that's what I've come up with (thousand appologies if anything is too scientifically inaccurate, but this is just the product of a cross-browsing):

The cyanobacteria (aka blue-green bacteria, also erroneously called blue-green algae) appeared about 3 BILLION YEARS AGO. They were probably the first bacteria able to perform photosynthesis, which lead to the Great Oxygen Poisoning. As the oxigen burnt ("It burnzzzz!" , most of the proteins and chromosomes inside other bacterias died, probably causing an evolutionary stagnation or delay of sorts.

As the 3-In-One point out, Sublime's victory would lead to a evolutionary stagnation as well, at least a natural one. With humans gone due the e-gene extinction trigger, and the extermination of mutankind, only Sublime's 3rd Species would endure. Possessing the entire genome code in his hands, he would be something akin to a God, controlling "evolution" as he'd saw fit.

This is something similar to what Cassandra Nova tried to do: as an entirely new species, she saw mutants as the only relevant enemy, since humans were as good as dead. Which brings forth a global connection between several key players in Morrison's run: remember when Quentin Quire says "Just the same stupid thought divided into ignorant boxes, jabbering itself so hard it can hear itself thinking."? What if "Sublime/Cyanobacteria" is spread throughout characters like Cassandra Nova, Martha, Beast or Magneto, and uses them to his/its conveniences, though they're completely unaware of it? They are, after all, "ignorant boxes"...

There's an example of this at the end of "Imperial", when Beast is trying to make some use of the U-Men nanosentinel technology. He looks utterly depressed and powerless and says something to Jean like "Why is everybody speaking at the same time? I CAN'T HEAR MYSELF THINKING!".

But there are still two wildcards remaining:

- The first is Phoenix. Why is Sublime looking for her? Is she the last piece missing from his genetic code pool? Is he awaiting a Great Burn again?

- The other one is Quentin Quire. Will he come up again? Maybe he will arrive in the future when everything is already destroyed and will be forced to travel back in time to try to fix things. Since his BRAIN CELLS were converted to FASTER THAN LIGHT ENERGY, who says he isn't XORN's STAR BRAIN (yeah, yeah, I know Xorn is supposed to be Mags in disguise)?

Enough for now. My brains are frying...
 
 
Rawk'n'Roll
15:23 / 26.01.04
Lots of you guys seem convinced QQ is gonna turn up again but I really doubt it.
He was youthful exuberance vs sensible experience. He was a paradigm for Xavier to shift, to change. He was important for all of 3 issues and now he's dead.

Can't we just leave him be?
 
 
Aertho
15:42 / 26.01.04
True dat.

We got two issues left and we're stranded in the biblical future. A lot of people think we're gonna have this ultimate family reunion of every story Grant's written thus far. I mean, as cool as it would be to see, I really don't think the Phoenix is gonna resurrect Darkstar and send the wild sentinels after Magneto's new star-brain, inciting Bishop to go after her for flagrant miracle working and implicating her in the murder of Jumbo Carnation, only to realize that Sublime Pharmacueticals was being run by Fantomex all along -who's really a grown up Quentin Quire, who teleported to the World years ago.

I was wrong about Henry being Sublime Beast, s'cool. Still think Esme and the girls are Weapon 14 though.
 
 
Krug
15:50 / 26.01.04
I agree with Uncle R.

It's really the worst comic I've read in months. I'm sorry, no offense to all you brilliant people here but just about every flaw seems to have excuse rather than a reason. All the dialog is poor and this kind of art should've been left back in whatever shitty comics Silverstri drew in the 90s. I'm not interested in a single thing here, it's no different than any mediocre What If? story set in the future. What surprises me though is that we're giving too much credit to Grant for his poorest work to date. If this was a mini series written by Chuck Austen the reaction here would've been entirely different. I don't see how anybody couldnt have done the same book only without the Morrisonisms which aren't really more important than art and story.

It's just the Morrisonisms chums, just Morrisonisms.
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
16:28 / 26.01.04
Dude, if you hate it so much then don't read the fucking thing.
 
 
diz
17:15 / 26.01.04
What surprises me though is that we're giving too much credit to Grant for his poorest work to date.

honestly? weird. i'm just totally not on the same page, then. this is easily one of the best, if not the best, arcs of GM's entire NXM run. it's very nearly everything good he's ever done on the book all coming together at once. i read #152 and i was giddy with excitement, though slightly confused as to how he's going to wrap it all up.
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
17:26 / 26.01.04
I don't know, Schlacthof Funf. Second to the characters (Scott, Henry, Emma, Quentin, Beak, Xorn/Magneto, Esme), my favorite thing about New X-Men is that it's a big puzzle. Here Comes Tomorrow is the biggest puzzle-story of them all, and so I'm getting a lot of enjoyment from it on that level. I think everyone who is into this would agree with that.

I wonder if the folks who are hating this story would have liked it more with Frank Quitely on pencils.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
17:28 / 26.01.04
I'm ejoying it as a comic but as an X-Men comic that's coming at the end of Morrison's run on the series I'm a bit concerned. I'm going to vote for Beast not being Apocalypse purely because even though Grant's writing has been off for a while now I don't believe he's going to try for the bad guy disguised as good guy thing three times.

Is the alternate Beast from the Age of Apocalypse still kicking around? The question is, when did Beast turn bad? It now seems likely that it was him that was manufacturing Kick as a means to try and enhance mutant powers, and I can see him getting involved with The World as it would provide a means to enhance the evolutionary process a lot. But I just don't see a time frame for setting it up. Last I checked, Beast doesn't have a handy army of followers to do his bidding like some other criminal madmen we could name. So are we saying that this will be retconned to start pre-Morrison?

Of course, it was Beast that 'discovered' this kill-switch in mankind's DNA, and to be honest I never thought that was anything for Cassie Nova as was to be interested in, she seemed more concerned with revenge against Charles. And what if that time he spent in the ocean was not working out how to deactivate it, but working on some means to actually introduce such a gene into the human genome?

So all we need is ultimate motive for turning evil and explanation for what's with the John Sublime we believed created and run the U-Men and how Beast, if it is the Hank McCoy that we've followed through the series, managed to shield his thoughts from several of the world's most powerful telepaths. I've got a feeling that if there's an explanation for that one then it's going to be a bit wanky.
 
 
MFreitas
17:52 / 26.01.04
I think EVERYBODY in his right mind would prefer this (or any other) storyarc drawn by Frank Quitely. I'm actually planning on kidnapping good old Frank and chaining him at a drawing board for the next couple of years, so he can redraw every New X-Men issue he didn't do
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
18:29 / 26.01.04
What is it with some of you? It's NOT HENRY McCOY! It's Sublime! SUBLIME! SUBLIME! He's wearing a body made out of Henry's DNA! Why is that so hard to grasp, when we have a million guys running around with Nightcrawler DNA?
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
18:32 / 26.01.04
That was meant to come off as a cartoonish steam-out-of-the-ears freakout, by the way. Just to be clear.

Also: Why would it be the evil Beast from the Age Of Apocalypse? That character has never been mentioned in this run, and would seriously come out of nowhere. Has anything else that continuity-heavy come out of nowhere so far? No! So why should it this late in the game?
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
18:38 / 26.01.04
I love Frank Quitely's art, and he's without question the best guy who has illustrated this series, but I don't think he would be as appropriate for this storyline as Silvestri. I think that late 80s/early 90s style really suits this storyline. It could be better with Frank, but it wouldn't be as right.
 
 
Sax
18:38 / 26.01.04
The thing is, though, the Beast looks old, doesn't he? His fur's all white. As though he actually might be 150 years old. Why, if Sublime built the body from Henry McCoy DNA, didn't he clone a body from the time when the subject was in his prime? Presuming, of course, that a younger, bluer Beast is more vital than a white-furred beast carrying a bit of weight.
 
  

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