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Underground > Comic Books >

New X-Men #153

  
  

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Tom Coates
18:45 / 29.02.04
It's interesting how in the same thread we've talked about Phoenix as the representation of evolution and the Sublime dark beast entity as someone directly opposed to evolution (or at least opposed to variety - presumably survival of the fittest doesn't fit well with assimilationist politics or recognising and celebrating variety). W/R/T the Beast, my assumption was - if the creature is indeed John Sublime - that he'd killed Hank and had his brain transplanted within his body - that being completely in character for the U-men generally. My subsequent assumption was that John Sublime was some kind of representation of a much much older entity and that the recent references to apocalypse are in fact some kind of statement that ties them together - ie. apocalypse as some kind of cosmic presence that predated humans, destroyed the dinosaurs, inhabited Scott for a while, then moved to John Sublime and then subsequently becoming 'sublime'. It's only very recently that I came to believe this stuff, not as a result of the discussions on the board, but because increasingly the ambitions and methods of Sublime and Apocalypse seem to have merged - individuals being created or enhanced, attempts to find some form of genetic perfection through strife and destruction etc.

It seems to me that one of the things Grant has done throughout his run is to leave considerable amounts of plot off-camera. This could, in fact, be his way of avoiding direct confrontation of some of the lamer aspects of the characters he is reusing. We could - in fact - be supposed to understand Sublime as an incarnation/reimagining of Apocalypse but without it being spoken overtly the new character makes a break from the cheesiness of the earlier version. Certainly it seems a more compelling and terrifying version vision than the guy in the blue 50s outfit with the funny mouth and the arm tubes.

The other thing I'd like to say is tha having reread the whole run this morning, I too have been astonished by how much more coherent it feels. And I think you have to go right back to the very first episode to see what it's all about - it starts with a species conflict, neanderthal vs. human and it will end with one, although I suspect that the end of the run will be an attempt to subvert the 'who wins' ideology and aspire instead towards a quantum leap over and past simple dualistic combat (or at least a reconfiguring of that battle as not between human and mutant but between control and diversity).
 
 
MFreitas
10:21 / 01.03.04
Quoting: “I don't get the obsession with Dummy. He's clearly the NXM version of those guys in the red shirts on Star Trek, just like Darkstar in the New Worlds story.”

Oh… come one, Flux! Indulge me my own obsession, ok? Yours is ESN, mine is Dummy

Quoting: “The guy who writes the X-Axis reviews thinks Sublime could be Morrison's interpretation of something called That Which Endures created by John Byrne.”

- That’s not been exactly created by John Byrne, though he applied that theory to comics and defined its sentience. That’s somewhat akin to Richard Dawkins’ Selfish Gene.

And pleeease, no more ESN theores!!! ESN was a mutant, who wanted the fitest mutants to survive. Sublime wants to destroy mutants for HE to survive. I’ll say it again: if I’m wrong, I’ll be the first to assume, but BEWARE if I’m right J

And I reafirme we can’t mix Sublime with JOHN Sublime. Sublime is the uber-entity; John Sublime is a mere lobotomized puppet, who wants to be whole again, who had always dreamed of Phoenix grafts and currently goes by the name of Appolyon
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
10:51 / 01.03.04
I think the That Which Endures theory is kinda silly, because it's sooooooo left field. With En Sabah Nur, it's a character who has been mentioned several times over within the run (sometimes when the plot doesn't even demand it), a major X-Men character who as Tom points out, has had most of his MO on display in a tweaked form in the evil Beast/Sublime character - whereas That Which Endures is some obscure character coming out of nowhere. If this were a Mark Waid comic, then hey, sure, maybe. But Morrison doesn't play that game. It's either En Sabah Nur, or an original character which effectively replaces En Sabah Nur.
 
 
Quireboy
11:38 / 01.03.04
Yeah, or it could be a Morrison take on a Byrne idea that effectively replaces/retcons ESN. Morrison's dug out A.I.M. for Assault on Weapon Plus, so why not this? I don't think he'll say it's That Which Endures, as much I doubt he'll say it's Apocalypse (not least for the conflict in Sublime and ESN's aims).

Sublime could just be Morrison's selective amalgamation of ESN, Sinister, the High Evoluntionary (I know little if anything about him either) and That Which Endures. If you're going to try to square the circle that is the Phoenix continuity, why not wrap up all those evoluntionary tyrants into one entity while you're at it?
 
 
MFreitas
12:40 / 01.03.04
Guys, guys... you must think outside the box. We're dealing with evolution, so it's absolutely normal it resembles ot it is related, at its core, with every evolucionist madman there ever was. But it doesn't mean Grant HAS to amalgamate ESN, Sinister, Dark Beast, The High Evolutionary or That Which Fucking Endures!

Morrison is rather doing an amalgamation of Howard Bloom's Lucifer Principle and Global Brain, Richard Dawkins' Selfish Gene and Theory of The Meme, and Tipler's Omega Point Theory. That's the way to go
 
 
Quireboy
12:51 / 01.03.04
I'm not saying he HAS amalgamated them, jus that there's a lot of these evoluntionary tyrants to draw on.
 
 
Quimper
13:50 / 01.03.04
To support the MattFlux's ESN suppositions, you cannot argue against the Pestilence, War, Famine and Death motifs applied respectively to each major villian/ally of the Beast.
 
 
Yotsuba & Benjamin!
14:03 / 01.03.04
A.I.M. is one thing, most people recognize the iconic helmets. Most readers, on the other hand, would have nary a clue who the fuck That Which Endures is/was supposed to be.
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
14:10 / 01.03.04
Oh come on, that theory was tenuous at best. This isn't Apocolypse, it's too old and it's MO is all wrong.
 
 
Tom Coates
15:04 / 01.03.04
Hm. I mean - obviously it's all speculation at this point, but really - it's hardly ridiculous. He stands up and says, "Prepare to die in this Apocalypse" in the first issue we meet him, where apocalypse doesn't really need to be capitalised except with regard to the book of the bible. He breeds and/or improves people's genetic potential and power in order to bring destruction with a eugenic air to it. There are differences in spoken agenda, yes, between encouraging survival of the fittest and attempting to create the fittest, but both have the stated agenda of getting rid of those who do not fit their genetic criteria and the differences aren't actually that dramatic.

Again - not to say that this is the case, but I hardly think it's a ridiculous thing to say. It really isn't like they haven't mentioned ESN throughout the run. They have! So it's either someone new (and linked in with John Sublime in some significant fashion, who has just been revealed to either not have been a mortal U-man who died by being thrown out of a window or to be someone else claiming to be him for some obscure reason) or it's basically Apocalypse. Other options would seem rather random considering that they've never been mentioned in the run and it's the final couple of issues now. Surely it would be a bit like Xorn turning out to have been not Magneto but Thor all along?
 
 
Quimper
15:17 / 01.03.04
The ESN theory is sound. Weird flu. Starvation in the streets. Impending war. Species-wide Death. These all seem like part of a bigger picture to me. And there IS a bigger picture. Beast said it on the wing of the Blackbird. Besides

the Beast = enemy to an intelligent evolutionary process

Apocalypse = enemy to an intelligent evolutionary process

the Beast = controls evolution to what he deems as "fit to survive"

Apocalypse = controls evolution to what he deems as "fit to survive"

the Beast = "I had to make them fight!"

Apocalypse = always making the muties fight to see who is the fittest

the Beast = chooses his four allies carefully

Apocalypse = chooses his four allies carefully

You simply can't discount it.
 
 
Aertho
15:28 / 01.03.04
I thought Xorn was Weapon XVI? (He is, but that's beside the point.)

Why is it so hard to acknowledge that the persona of En Sabah Nur was only a host to the mental force that we know as Sublime? You've got ESN discovering for himself the ramifications of being a mutant, plus the global brain-force tapping into him and filling him up with lofty "evolutionary goals". Drop him into a Celestial machine, and he lives forever as the permanet host for the Sublime entity. It's a bit like the Tyler Durden/Narrator relationship, only with a MUCH more subtle Brad Pitt guy.

Now, you've got a 3000+ y/o persona being fed these "ultimate being" ideals, and he thinks he has to PERSONALLY evolve to become a god. Enter the 12 Story, which ultimately frees ESN's mind from the host-cycle altogether. He doesn't turn into another Shadow King, he upgrades into a persona for the mind-force that was feeding him the whole time. He realizes he was never JUST En Sabah Nur, he was always the evolutionary drive mind-force that ESN carried.

Sublime is EVERYWHERE. In everything. The persona of the Sublime Beast is only the index finger of the creature that's gonna push the button on the end of the world. Phoenix is the only threat to him becasue she challenges the nature of his mental existence.
 
 
MFreitas
07:56 / 02.03.04
EXCELLENT, Chesed! THAT actually is a great theory regarding ESN and might even explain the profound contradiction between his and Sublime's goals.

BUT, it revolves too much around The Craptacular Twelve saga, so I don't know... We just have to wait and see. One more week and the advance copy should be out somewhere. I just hope is somewhere in capable hands and not those who read and claim nothing relevant happens.

And how come XORN is WEAPON 16? Is that just a V-Meme level related theory or something else you came up with? Care to share?
 
 
Quireboy
11:48 / 02.03.04
Chesed I'm not disputing that at all - only saying that at all - everything in the run points to that (esp when Apocalypse was purged from Scott's consciousness only months before Morrison's run). But it's not beyond possiblity that Morrison might have drawn on That Which Endures in his re-interpretation of Apocalypse.

There are clear similarities between the Beast's agenda and ESN's. - But the Beast seems to want to wipe out mutants as they've evolved beyond his expectations/control. Note how both Cassandra and Dr Sublime also intended to wipe out the mutant gene.
 
 
FinderWolf
11:51 / 02.03.04
>> "I had to make them fight!"

Yeah, I thought this line must have had some meaning too.
 
 
Aertho
12:14 / 02.03.04
Quireboy - I didn't think we were disputing in the first place... I suppose I shouldv'e have used "That Wich Endures" in place of at least ONE of the times I said mind-force. I'm just looking at ALL the evidence here and a bit of what we can assume from Grant. What if Sublime is the manifested psychic force that sublimated from the cyanobacteria billions of years ago? What if, over time(and as its constituent organisms evolved), it became known as That Which Endures? What if it tapped into HUMAN consciousness back when human consciousness mutated, and lodged itself like a fishhook inside an Egyptian named En Sabah Nur? What if, over time IN CONTACT with En Sabah Nur, the mind-force was granted a semblance of consciousness... making ESN only "the house where I live?". I'm not hindging on the 12 story, it's only circumstantial to the fact that the ESNxSublime entity no longer thinks that it lives in only one house.

MFreitas - I've postualted that Grant developed the Weapon Plus enemies according to Ken Wilbur's definitions of VMemes. The postulate follows that the Weapons may also be grown from Charles Xavier's DNA. For evidence, look sideways at the use of telepathy times the circumstances that engender a vmeme. Cassie was violently telepathic, Zona had a viral group mind that only Xavier confronted head on (heh heh), Fantomex uses misdirection against the two best telepaths on the planet, The Cuckoos are young but operate simultaneously, XV philosophises and is super-super-powered, but ambiguous.

The 8the VMeme is Turquoise, holistic, integrated, and understands the flows of human growth in relation to the world. That's exactly teacher Xorn from the Riot story. Xorn is Xavier's ideal mutant, and has a STAR FOR A BRAIN. He infiltrated the Xavier mansion and softened them up a bit. Sublime double-doublecrossed Magneto and used his knowledge of Xavier to beat the X-Men just a little bit. Maybe Magneto's inner star from 149 was Sublime? Still looking sideways at this?
 
 
Quireboy
12:18 / 02.03.04
Chesed - I don't think we're in disagreement. By the way - what colour meme does anyone who knows about that theory think the Beast would be?
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
12:23 / 02.03.04
I wouldn't get too hung up on the difference between Sublime and the old Apocalypse's motives necessarily meaning that it's not En Sabah Nur. For one, if it is ESN, it's just streamlining the concept and throwing out some things that didn't quite make sense while keeping up with the Evil Spirit thing. (Remember, that's how ESN has been defined from the beginning of NXM - he's an evil disembodied creature, just like the Mumudrai from Imperial. Second, Grant's fudged some continuity stuff before in NXM, the best example being that Sebastian Shaw is suddenly a telepath for no good reason. It's nothing to worry about unless you really want to take the 90s x-comics extremely seriously to the detriment of Grant's story.

I'm starting to think that in the next issue, we'll see Sublime stripped away from his Beast body, and we'll see the same creature from Imperial - the "immensity."
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
12:25 / 02.03.04
Oh, it'd be great if when Phoenix confronts Sublime, she calls him Beast, and he says "Beast is only the house where I live, Jean," and THEN we see the Immensity.
 
 
Quimper
13:11 / 02.03.04
That AND Scott and Jean reunited in the white hot room, a la Robin and King Mob, to foil the black bug room from the beginning.
 
 
Aertho
13:15 / 02.03.04
From Beack and Cowen's Theoretical model:

VMeme 9: Coral - Sublime Beast ...Weapon XVII
Express without shame or guilt for evolution's sake


VMeme 10: Teal - Phoenix ...Weapon XVIII
Sacrifice self to emerging existential potential

Ken Wilbur attributes levels 9 and 10 to alterred mental states, and he may yet be right. However, the pattern that Clare Graves set up in his original draft contains explicit enough definitions for each. I think of them as options for being as a memetic self. Political Leaders, Religious leaders, and parents tend to behave at levels 9 and 10.
 
 
MFreitas
14:41 / 02.03.04
Nice. And the green, level 6, V-MEME has EVA written all over it. Certainly not the Stepford Cuckos.
 
 
Aertho
15:48 / 02.03.04
That MAY be true that EVA is the green one, but the Stepford Cuckoos fit the bill better in both character development and dialogue.
 
 
Simplist
19:47 / 02.03.04
An alternate Spiral Dynamics-based take on NXM:

I see Morrison's overall arc as tracing the failure of Xavier's naive, green vMeme "Dream" of egalitarian inclusiveness in the face of the actual human realities of lower-meme intransigence (red "Magneto-ists" and blue "Humanists" have no interest in getting along, either with each other or with Xavier's crowd, and no amount of green evangelism will change that until the parties in question have played out their vMeme-appropriate dramas and are ready to move forward on their own). Taking Morrison's statements about self-conscious comic universes into account, each of the characters and/or ideological trends in the series could be seen as individual strands within an overall self-conscious X-narrative, predominantly green in orientation (the main characters, the "good guys") while still beset with internal conflicts (the "bad guys" and the many neutral or ambiguous characters) as any conscious being is.

From this perspective, NXM represents Morrison's attempt to goad the X-entity beyond the green vMeme era of its development, forcing a crisis by pushing the internal contradictions of the green worldview to their logical conclusion. The end of Planet X, then, is the "bifurcation point" at which the "dissipative structure" of the green worldview dissolves, leaving the conscious narrative system poised for the leap to 2nd-tier cognition. However, "something's gone wrong with the whole universe now"--the differentiation/transition failed, or was corrupted in some way, and Here Comes Tomorrow dramatizes the breakdown of the X-entity into a chaotic mass of 1st- and 2nd-tier pathologies (thus the scattered, disorienting quality of the narrative at this point) rather than a healthy, coherent 2nd-tier consciousness.

I only wish Grant was sticking around for another 40 issues to present a healthy version of the transition back in the present day once Here Comes Tomorrow is over.
 
 
Aertho
19:57 / 02.03.04
Oh that's exactly right. The Institute was faltering becasue it relied too much on the Green philosophy. Stagnation and decay ensues. The overarching themes of evolution and learning have been New X-Men's trial at getting into the 2nd tier way of superheroics. Riot is probably the best example of that theme and idea in effect. Kids have to grow up. Adults have to grow up. Culture has to grow up. We have to transcend, and crack the ceiling of The World, like XV, and behave like little Buddhas as Xorn.
 
 
Jackie Susann
03:58 / 03.03.04
I don't really think this will happen, but I can't resist the crazy fanboy speculation - maybe in 154, Cassie is infected by a feeder, turning her back into the evil Cassie from Grant's first issue, and then she gets sent back in time to start the story over again. I mean, she pretty much looks like she did back then again now.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
08:43 / 03.03.04
I'd love Chesed and Simplist to present these philosophies in The Head Shop stripped of the X-Men stuff (and explaining the bits that have been left out due to irrelevence) because I'd love to talk some more about this stuff...
 
 
TroyJ15
13:16 / 03.03.04
Has anyone else noticed that in "Here Comes Tommorow" Xavier's Dream becomes fully realized. Humans and mutants are living in a coexistence. It may be under a circumstance that means they have to work together to survive, but it has become fully realized. There is no malice or ill-will between the humans and mutants just one common goal.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
13:59 / 03.03.04
Hoom, the proud people called themselves humans but they had superpowers too... 150 years might be just long enough for that extinction gene to have kicked in, if Beast hadn't had a chance to fix it first.
 
 
neuepunk
14:47 / 03.03.04
Since we're throwing every theory at the wall to see what sticks, how about this: What do we know about Martha?

Martha was John Sublime's pet brain that he used to control mutants in his presence. Presumably the syringes sticking out of her container are what, exactly? I initially thought they were some sort of drug used to control her, but if so, why would they persist after she showed up at Xavier's? Maybe they also contain some sort of nutrient solution to keep her alive. Or maybe they're full of kick.

Martha made Sublime jump out a window, despite his supposed control. What if Martha's been acting of her own free will all along, and she's actually one of the major players here? Ernst needed someone to be responsible for. What did Martha need? What did she get?

I'm still a believer of the whole "Beast controlled by a bodiless entity/force of nature" theory, but what if it's just Hank? Being the only one to counteract the extinction gene, trapped in a feline body... it's possible he cracked. That said, I'm eagerly anticipating #154 where we'll all be shown exactly how wrong we've been.
 
 
Quimper
15:26 / 03.03.04
And speaking of wrong...

I say Xorn shows up during the Phoenix/Wolverine battle. Jean's memories come flooding back upon seeing the mask of Xorn. That's right. Xorn appears during the battle to tell Phoenix that she must help heal the broken universe. He comes out of nowhere, and says that he's learned much since leaving his iron prison. He's learned who he is and who he wants to be. He is a healer. He wants to fix that which is broken, ever since he broke his prison, his home, so many years ago. That's right. The "iron prison" he means is The World. And Xorn is revealed to be...

Weapon 15. He did not die on Asteroid M. Or maybe something happened to him when the Phoenix was reborn. He studied these X-Men who he encountered on The Day It All Changed, the ones who set him free, and realized that they were what he wants to be. Especially the legendary X-Man known as Xorn. Weapon XV, Xorn, now uses his energy powers to heal. He and Phoenix mend the universe, restore time and we are back at the present day. With a Xorn now in regular continuity.

Yeah, right. I'd love to see it though.
 
 
MFreitas
17:37 / 03.03.04
Hummmm... you know, Quimper, that may prove to be wiser and more possible than even you were thinking.

I always noticed some similarities between Xorn and Weapon 15: the helmet, the philosofing and especially the energy power - as with Xorn's face, anyone exposed to Weapon 15's gaze would melt.

"I could have become a painter". What if he became a healer instead?
 
 
CPedro
18:41 / 03.03.04
re-read issue 144. Look at Fantomex speech: " My Generation lay down in these cells battery hens. Battery supperman and women, absorbing LIES in the form of NARCOTIC NANO-SENTINEL pollen."
Who do we know that was feed with lies from Sublime and absorbed nano-sentinels to spread a disease in the institute?
Yup. Our lovely old Cassie.
 
 
CPedro
19:11 / 03.03.04
Just have antoher (maybe stupid) thought.
If we see the same Fantomex speech in 144 he teels us about the story of a time traveller that EVA told him. How could EVA knew this story from the future if that occured in the future? Only if she could see " through time and space" how Cassandra Nova could. This might prove the conections between Xavier/Cassandra Nova/ and the Weapon Plus program.
Anopther thing.
Read 153. Look to Tom's speech when Rover "dies": All my life... He raised... He brought me food when I was a baby... you don't understand..."
Now look again to Fantomex's speech in 144. What if the Time traveller wasn't travelling from the past to the future but from the future to the past? That time traveller could be Tom. Look to Quentin Quire and to Tom. The could be the same person, none of them have biological parents, both have brown hair, but one is a mutant and the other is a human. This could fuck things up. But what if when Tom travveld through time he died and reencarnated into a new person whithout memories from this life before, what if he reencarnated into a mutant? What if Tom and Quentin are the same Person? Then we would have the time traveller.
(okay it might be a real stupid thought I know, but it felt good to write it down)

And Freitas, if we think about it, painting is a way to heal your soul ^_~!
 
 
Aertho
19:47 / 03.03.04
I have NO IDEA what you're talking about.

Where is this dialogue about a time traveller? What does he say? EXACLTY, mind you, becasue this IS Fantomex, reknowned liar extraordinaire. I'm interested, but I don't think it's plausable that QQ and Skylark are related. If anything, QQ may have been a rejected Weapon XV prototype.
 
  

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