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New X-Men #153

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17:51 / 20.02.04

Something I noticed while re-reading NXM#114 the other night; as Xavier is about to test the brand-new Cerebra, Beast says: "it all seems pretty natural. everything okay, Professor...? You know what Jean and I are like once we get started." Weird how this particular line echoes/foreshadows the current storyline, doesn't it?

yawn - thing's buddy

19:31 / 20.02.04

thanks for the reminder mister monolith.

ps. gutted for rover.

19:47 / 20.02.04

Well, how about Alzheimer's being the ultimate deterrent/defence to the "telepathy as ultimate weapon" thread we had earlier? If that were the case, though, the NXM would all be eating American burgers....

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

19:59 / 20.02.04

I don't know if Rover's dead, he's a tough bastard...

Matthew Fluxington

19:59 / 20.02.04

Falcon, you're right. I don't know where I got that Chloe thing from. I just checked, and it's Phoebe that's first mentioned in 149.

You're probably right about it being Daphne. Maybe we'll get a in-jokey Daphne and Celeste joke in the next issue.

yawn - thing's buddy

20:21 / 20.02.04

i was gutted for rover's broken heart.

thanks to monolith's reminder I'm reminded now of gm's fantastic four and the way he painted their personalities and dynamics: primal, fundamnetal, raw.

so too then with new xmen - where gm has distilled the essence of each character and then got drunk on the results.

i don't mind that it's all a simulation.

snot a cop-out.

swot stories ARE innit.

and in the context of xmen continuity, its a solid n tidy idea.

and might as well say this now:

bad guy with helmet called MAG-NEH-TO.

Not magNEATo.

unless you say Magneat when you verbally describe a red u-shaped electrically charged chunk of metal.

magNEATo!

pah!

20:55 / 20.02.04

A Magneto (Mag NEAT O) is actually a term for a mangetic reaction, I believe... I'll have to double check...

21:06 / 20.02.04

Yawn, I have slowly been going through the run and I am becoming more and more certain that the structure is fractal/recursive. Everything refers to something else within the story and a careful reading reveals these small nuggets of story or sheds new light on them. When Cassie Nova first attacks Xavier while he is using Cerebra she refers to her telepathic attack as 'what is eating his mind'; if you look at NXM116, you will also see that the creature emerging from her head looks like a feeder. So is Cassandra/Ernst a retrained feeder from the future?

01:23 / 21.02.04

WHOA! WHOA! WHOA! HOLY FUCK! Dude, My mind is blown! I think you got something with Cassandra being a feeder from the future! Damn!Why didn't I think of that! I'm going back and reading it all!

03:10 / 21.02.04

In 126, when Jean/Charles descibes the Mummudrai concept with realtion to Cassandra: "Imagine a bodiless parasite species..." and later "I felt her crawling monstrous thoughts. I sensed a raging hunger, vast enough to consume me and the whole world..." and finally Cassandra "Divide unn Replikate unn Feed on this world all mine now..."

Wahatever the feeders are, they're connected to Cassandra. I'm betting she planted the one The Beast found in the crawler.

Esme claims to be providing the experience of accelerated (deluxe?) alzheimer's for Erik in 150, right before he sends in the earrings.

And in 126 Henry hits Cassandra-in-Charles with two syringes like he does with Erik in 150. And, incidentally, gets a dose for himself in return.

03:31 / 21.02.04

Re: the feeders / Cassandra... that sounds kind of cute, but I've got to wonder if it's not just one of Grant's pet obsessions/ideas turning up more than once in the overall storyline -- you've got to admit, the idea of something that "eats thoughts" is fairly generic and, from a writer's perspective, a nice dialogue hook to hang a telepathic villain on. It's not automatically a link.

If it is explicitly (or at least strongly implicitly) shown to be the case in 154, though, then consider my ass kicked.

05:32 / 21.02.04

:: I just mean, I would have liked to see more emphasis on the panel "we were sooooo hungry" (tiny one, bottom right) so it's more obvious what has happened, rather than on the big beast crawler going "hhhhhhauuuuu". It's just a really little panel.::

Agreed, although after re-reading it, I'm feeling rather dense in regards to not realizing what the crawler was doing. I'm going to have to look for that 'stairs' reference myself, though.

10:23 / 21.02.04

"like the time we fell down the stairs?"

remember when charles attacked cassandra in the womb? when their mother fell from the stairs?

that's what came to mind.

11:49 / 21.02.04

:: I'm pegging MILLIONS!!! on the remaining Cuckoo being named Daphne now. Kudos to Ganesh on that score. ::

I missed that post. What was the rationale?

13:17 / 21.02.04

I agree with the "stairs" theories about Charles, Cassandra and mummy. It is the first thing that I thought about, a very powerful image from the Nuff Said issue.

insert- isn't it odd how well Quitely could depict Grant's ideas without words in that issue and in subsequent ones (with other writers) the words and the images just don't mesh at all?

This circular narrative has me intrigued... Cassandra is a bodiless nemesis concept given form through Xavier's amazing telepathic powers (which he wouldn't have had in the womb, anyone thought about that?).
Now she's in the future holding up his memory in a total about face to when she first went after him.
I have a vague feeling Cassandra may be a "feeder" sent back in time to face off with Charles and so create the being known as Cassandra... its a very paradoxical idea but definitely something I think Grant would use.

Martha having alztheimers is a nod to quite how old she must be by now, the only thing left to disintegrate is her mind after all.

I expect there will be more answers next issue but not enough.

13:18 / 21.02.04

edit: by "writers" I of course meant artists... doh.

14:26 / 21.02.04

"isn't it odd how well Quitely could depict Grant's ideas without words in that issue and in subsequent ones (with other writers) the words and the images just don't mesh at all?"

Agreed. Frank Quietly and Grant Morrison are match made in heaven (or hell depending on your take)...right up there with Byrne and Claremont, Lee and Kirby, etc. Too bad Quietly couldn't get on the ball with his schedule, if he was able to do the entire run that would have made things the more sweeter.

I'm in agreeance about Cassandra being a feeder from the future. I mean she is way too powerful she has to be Sublime's ultimate experiment in grafting different powers. I mean she has Charle's telepathy, Kitty's phasing, energy projection, a healing factor (possibly from Sabertooth or Lady Deathstrike), she even can do that hand through your head thing that Tatto did in Riot at Xavier's...Honestly, I was kind of iffy on the whole Apocalypse concept that people were throwing around, but this to me is the best explanation. And I keep going back to the things Grant said about his story in the Wizard interviews, how everything is circular and he wants it to read like one big novel.

Matthew Fluxington

18:38 / 21.02.04

Yeah, the feeder thing makes sense. I'd been thinking that Sublime created Cassandra for a while now (see: What Is Cassandra Nova? thread), and I think we've got the final bit of the Cassie puzzle now.

19:23 / 21.02.04

These questions are very important to me. I wasn't sure where to post them.
1. Did Superman and Batman lie to protect their secret identities, or did most authors have them just being evasive when asked where they went etc.?
2. Does any of Grant's work on JLA have Superman and Batman lying to protect their secret identities?
3. What are Grant's birth date and time?
4. (This one is a bit longer.) In Grant's New X-Men, what scientific fields does Beast seem to be a master of? Probably genetics and particle physics, but what else? I don't remember if he was a physician & could perform surgery or not. Astronomy? Geology? ??thanks.

P.S. I also appreciate replies e-mailed directly to me at three50125go@aol.com.

21:52 / 21.02.04

>>>bad guy with helmet called MAG-NEH-TO.
Not magNEATo.
unless you say Magneat when you verbally describe a red u-shaped electrically charged chunk of metal.<<<

Both Stan Lee and Jack Kirby have been recorded - actual video and audio, not print - pronouncing the name as MagNEATo.

So when the two creators call him that...that's how it's pronounced.

02:15 / 22.02.04

"So is Cassandra/Ernst a retrained feeder from the future?"

Maybe that's what's wrong with time - Cassandra/Feeder was sent back from the future to Charles' womb. But Cassie and the X-Men beat Beast in 154 to prevent that from happening.

05:03 / 22.02.04

I doubt that... Cassandra has Xavier's DNA throughout her, and more than that the Prof has memories of her....

09:13 / 22.02.04

Given the structure of Morrison's run and patterns that have emerged in the arcs, I've increasingly suspected there might be a Donnie Darko-esque time loop going on. Planet X and Here Comes Tomorrow suggests this is something to do with entropy. All those words from the future.

Mike-O, given the amount of false memories floating round NXM I see no reason to take Xavier's memory of Cassandra as fact. Although the comment about falling on the stairs might suggest it is.

Note how Morrison's is pointing to an explanation of the past destruction by 'Dark' Phoenix. I think you can take Jean's action/comments in this issue to mean either that the Brocoli people of D'Bari were an evolutionary blip, or that the incubation period was previously messed with by Mastermind - hence she does not follow 'correct procedure'. Ties back to the point I was making during Planet X that maybe Jean couldn't carry out the dissinfection because her human compassion was restraining her.

11:46 / 22.02.04

I was thinking that Cassandra/feeder thing was sent back to face Charles in the womb when I posted my theory but I'm starting to think perhaps she placed some fake memories in his head when she attacked him in Cerebra in the first issue (114).
She's got Charlies DNA... well doesn't the Beast of the future have EVERYONE'S DNA to play with? Why not Charles'?

I don't think the X-men of the future will beat Beast. I think we'll come to realise that "Here Comes Tomorrow" is actually the prequel to "E is for Extinction" and will explain where Cassandra came from originally.
Nothing at the end of 150 is changed, Mag's is still dead, Phoenix is still dead, Scott and Emma are together and considering taking over the school, Charles has stepped down as headmaster.
The only thing that needs a hell of a lot of explaining is the whole New York incident. Perhaps the cuckoos or Charles does a bit of mindwiping/altering to fix that one up. When you're a telepath anything is possible...But most of that can be covered in a page or two.

17:04 / 22.02.04

Yeah, did we ever find out what Cassandra ingected into her neck way back in e is for extinction? I don't remeber.

17:25 / 22.02.04

The only thing that needs a hell of a lot of explaining is the whole New York incident.

I'm really surprised that everyone is so hung-up on New York being wrecked. This is the Marvel Universe, people -- they'll do A Very Special Issue of THOR where he's fixing everything, because he can, and he learns the true meaning of compassion and selflessness from a fireman, and he'll conclude the story by saying "Truly, Gods do walk amongst mere mortals" or something like that. How many fuckin' times have they completely rebuilt New York now? Why does ANYBODY still live there? (I assume constant destruction keeps real estate prices down in the Marvel U?)

17:39 / 22.02.04

Its more the physical destruction that can't really go unnoticed... and also the resulting mutant terrorism from Magneto and all his followers (the holocaust of the humans...) these things should be addressed at least in the pages of New X-men.

Cassandra injected herself with:
1. Nanosentinel tech so that when her blood splattered all over the X-men they were also infected.
2. Various virus' so that Xavier's mind in Cassandra's body couldn't survive much longer, even if the body survived the gunshot.

Whats more questionable is what did Beast inject in Cassandra back in E is for...?

23:05 / 22.02.04

Clearly a big dose of MDMA, so that the title conformed to the trade descriptions act. See her leg jiggling in time to a non-existent breakbeat? No? Ah, well.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it Henry who diagnosed the whole nano-sentinels thing anyway? If he had such an overarching plan, why did he 'cure' everyone? The point I'm leading to is just WHEN did Beast go rogue? IIRC, the very first time we see him in Grant's NXM is when he's being dumped over the phone. Setting something up so early and apparently so innocently is quite a nasty thing for GM to do. I buy the whole circular/bubble universe idea.
Makes sense and means that (despite Jean being FINALLY dead-dead (until the XMEN 3 film)), nothing much has changed in the continuity, so later writers won't feel compelled to screw with Grant's ideas and retcon his run.

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

23:07 / 22.02.04

It's not beast, man. I don't think he ever went "rogue".

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

23:19 / 22.02.04

(probably)

02:17 / 23.02.04

IIRC, the very first time we see him in Grant's NXM is when he's being dumped over the phone

That's four issues into the run, dude. He'd been in three issues before that -- we first see him in the Cerebra lab with Jean and Charles, peeling back the Coke can lid and talking about how his secondary mutation makes him feel like a Hindu sex god. It's the first X-Men scene in Grant's run. Beast never went rogue -- there are some outstanding questions about what, exactly, he figured out while marooned with Emma, but he never "went rogue."

02:19 / 23.02.04

Wasnt the injection that Cassandra was giving herself explained, I swore it was to make her immune to something (my memory is kind of spotty but I will be reading this all again).

I'm pretty certain Beast is John Sublime, grafts and all! I agree with the sentiment that Here Comes Tommorow is probably going to be a prequel to E is for Extinction.

Now chew on this...
We are all asking how if Cassandra was created by Sublime to take down Charles in the past, why does charles have these memories of her falling down the steps. Well, I say look towards Martha Johansan. They seem pretty close and Martha has telepathic ability of very intense nature. While Cassandra was in space fucking up the Shi'Ar Empire, Martha was making sure that if Jean tried to crawl in Charle's mind that she would get misinformation. Hence making that entire story of "falling down the stairs." I may be off but I seriosly believe that Cassandra and Martha are the two to watch carefully. Cassie aint done, I mean anyone who read the Imperial storyline --- did you really think she was done?!

06:33 / 23.02.04

The injection, boys, was to boobytrap her body with the diseases/nano-sentinels.

06:43 / 23.02.04

::nothing much has changed in the continuity::

Magneto being dead, too... thank god for that. I think Magneto stopped being an effective villain a long time ago, and I absolutely love how pathetic Grant made him seem.

On that note, if future writers somehow retcon him back to life after being beheaded, someone dies.

06:56 / 23.02.04

Stand corrected over Beast.
Also stand woozily after one too many ales before posting last night.

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