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Underground > Comic Books >

New X-Men #154

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advancedplastics

00:35 / 31.03.04

OED: nice analysis. is there [going to be] a New X-men annotations thread, wiki, etc?

back to the first page, tho: is anyone else reminded of PKD by (among other things) the first page of GM's storyline? it depicts Cyclops blasting a Sentinel in the middle of head, at the 3rd eye area. the image keeps reminding me of the 'pink laser', the beam of light that PKD reported as having experienced.

...am i just stoned?

either way, i totally agree w/ OED on how this 1st page sets up a lot of the themes for the storyline. also of note, maybe, is that wolverine is attacking the body, cyclops the head -- the seat of intelligence (& the hand is covering ugly john). and, as other have noted, the sentinel is colred similarly to magneto, and (i dont think this is irrelevant) the mighty galactus...

02:01 / 31.03.04

i was just totally confused, because i was thinking OED = Oxford English Dictionary =) . call me diz.

i think you may be onto something with regard to the laser and the 3rd eye. the pink laser experience has already been integrated into GM's work in the form of Barbelith, and GM's a big fan of revisiting and reinterpreting his own stuff.

other random thought w/regard to Thelemic Aeons: Scott is Osiris in his self-torturing martyrdom, and he's locked into stasis reliving his own ego death in a sense until Jean pushes him out of martyr mode into a more active and more Horus-like mode of action. similarly, the X-Men come to be more proactive as well.

21:02 / 31.03.04

Just finished reading PKD's "Valis" and can understand fully the connection / repetition with Barbelith in the Inisibles. But what in NXM represents Valis / Barbelth?

Valis = Barbelith = ?? (Cerebra maybe?, the 3 in 1?)

21:08 / 31.03.04

Valis = Barbelith = The White Hot Room/Phoenix Force?

21:53 / 31.03.04

Oh totally.

Barbelith is the placenta of the Invisiverse. The Phoenix Consciousness is the placenta for the Marvelverse. See the Dark Jeanix/Mister Quimper comparison?

advancedplastics

21:53 / 31.03.04

VALIS (acronym of Vast Active Living Intelligence System from an American film): A perturbation in the reality field in which a spontaneous self-monitoring negentropic vortex is formed, tending progressively to subsume and incorporate its environment into arrangements of information. Characterized by quasi-consciousness, purpose, intelligence, growth and an armillary coherence.

- Great Soviet Dictionary, Sixth Edition 1992

22:09 / 31.03.04

So should we begin to annotate every page of New X meN?

Persumeably FQ would carry this visual symbolism off quite well. Makes me want to re-examine that page of Jean entering Charles' mind durring the silent issue.

05:43 / 01.04.04

I think that Grant's whole run hinges on a single mantra-Every diamond has its flaw. Beast, Emma, Scott, Jean, Beak, Omega Gang, everyone is flawed. Everyone is a perfect diamond,isn't that right little speck? Everyone is a star. I love how No-Girl thinks and dreams in cartoons.

The Great Jor of Babylon

18:33 / 01.04.04

I just want to know one thing: Why was Rictor immune to Weapon XII's infection?
Ric might be immune but this plagues my mind...

ha.

Matthew Fluxington

18:56 / 01.04.04

Diz, that big post of yours is one of the best analyses of NXM I've read, and one of the best posts I've ever seen on Barbelith in four years.

19:18 / 01.04.04

His big Invisibles posts were pretty good, too.

Interesting, isn't it, Diz, that Emma's description of Emma on kick - "I felt angelic and violently insane...." - probably describes Sublime's personality and sense of himself completely? Aerosol Sublime, indeed.

Cool.

CremasterOfPuppets

19:19 / 01.04.04

Grant has allowed me to once again give a rat's ass about the X-men, but as I read the final pages of this story arc my head sloutches like a confused pitbull. Argh?
Sublime? What is this thing sublime? I accept readily the concept that the Phoenix entities are assigned to bring order, and clensing by way of fire and light incarnate to the inevitable genetic chaos that takes place on infinite worlds of the multiverse. So what is Sublime besides a way way over rated band from the LBC?

help please.

19:26 / 01.04.04

Grant's really obsessed with...err...alternative media, isn't he? His stories are always seething with different ways to download the information: aerosols, wombs, "smart" drinks. And it's all so intimate and physical: inhaled gases, birth, fusion with black bug viruses and intelligent liquids.

He's a right sensualist.

Ah, good to see the Braille Enclopedia current's alive and well.

19:31 / 01.04.04

Sublime's essence-of-darwinism crushed into a little, blue and furry bottle and set loose on the inhsbitants of the X-verse. Perfectly cool way to round off a book about evolution.

Oh, and he's also Apocalypse done better like.

20:15 / 01.04.04

Rictor was once part of the Weapon X Program YEARS AGO on a team with Kane and a Wendigo, I think. Anyway, that little side comment affirms the amount of researching continuity Grant put into his X-Men assignment.

Imaginary Mongoose Solutions

02:01 / 02.04.04

Rictor wasn't actually one of the Weapon X-ers. Sorry. Sadly, I remember way too much about that version of Weapon Ecchs.

09:17 / 02.04.04

Wonderful thread.

Now it's over, I'm going to have to go back and reread the entire run.

Uncle Grant has added so much to the X-Men myth during this shortish run. I won't be hanging around to see what the unholy mess other (lesser) wordsmiths will make of his X-events though.

Many thanks to all poster here - for a smashing read.

11:12 / 02.04.04

Rictor was TOO part of a Weapon X team! Turns out it was a Canadian strikeforce Weapon PR.I.M.E., whatever THAT's supposed to mean. Now, is Weapon Plus and Weapon X related in some way to Wepon P.R.I.M.E.? I would friggin assume! Anyway, Rictor WAS drafted by some government squadron designed to take out Cable. I have no recollection of who drew it, but it was darn ugly; I remember that much.

13:18 / 02.04.04

Okay.
2 things...
The latest issue of New X-Men confirms that Cassandra and Ernst are one in the same. Well the letter page does...Chuck Austen's story actually contradicts that statement...but I'll let ya'll decide who to believe. I'll go with the editor's comments in the letter page...

Which leads me to the second thing. Both Uncanny and New X-Men, this week, springboard off of Grant Morrison's stuff, but new X-Men starts off cool but becomes really derivative. Uncanny is a little better...but again it falls apart towards the end with a stupid revelation. So far, it's not horrible with Morrison just medicore

15:40 / 02.04.04

Oh SPOIL it already... save us the $2.50

19:34 / 02.04.04

I don't know if you have ever discussed this topic. I have a strange thought about Emma Evolution. Before Morrisson's run, she was the white queen, a character inspired by the chessgame piece, she was a part of a manichean universe (the chessboard). During morrisson's era she becomes the queen of diamonds. In the 32cards divination system, the queen of diamonds equals the queen of wands in the tarot system...
White queen: a major pieces in a manichean game
Emma Frost: a major figure in a divination system, who takes her whole sense with the other figures (New X-men cast)

19:36 / 02.04.04

Dan Panacella drew the first appearance of that Weapon X team, Chad.

Happy days.

20:23 / 02.04.04

Queen of Diamonds is the Queen of Pentacles, otherwise known as Ms. Experience. Seeing as how her "experience" is what defines her so drastically from the otehr New X-Men, I see your analysis very appropriate. It's her experience that catalyzes her own evolution, and her experiences that catalyze everyone else's.

Queen of Wands is Ms. Confidence; Cups, Benevolence; Swords, Intelligence.

20:39 / 02.04.04

[b]Grant's really obsessed with...err...alternative media, isn't he? His stories are always seething with different ways to download the information: aerosols, wombs, "smart" drinks. And it's all so intimate and physical: inhaled gases, birth, fusion with black bug viruses and intelligent liquids.

He's a right sensualist.

Ah, good to see the Braille Enclopedia current's alive and well.[/b]

he tends to feminize it, too... the JLA Information Womb, Cerebro into Cerebra...

15:15 / 03.04.04

Fine I'll spoil it...

New X-Men 155:
Scott and Emma kiss some more at JEans grave. Then Scott talks to Beast about opening the school. Scott and Beast think it's a bad idea. Emma gets pissed and walks away. She goes into town to the X-Corp offices in Salem Center, where people are rioting and attacking the children who have been bunking there since the school is destroyed. Meanwhile, Scott and Beast realize that Cassandra Nova is underneath the mansions rubble and she may have gotten free. They go to look for her holding cell, but training robots from the Danger Room attack the both of them as they have to defend themselves. Gay.
Just counting the days til' Astonishing X-Men

The Natural Way

15:36 / 03.04.04

Sounds fucking awful.

And Cassandra Nova's just some baddie now?

I knew the rot would set in quickly, but....

'fuck's sake....

15:41 / 03.04.04

Not necessarily. My imagination found a way around it, maybe Austen's will. So the teachers think Cassie's in a cell downstairs, that's been demolished... but if we DON'T see a body, the teachers will think she's escaped, when we all know she's Ernst.

So Cyke and co will be running scared from something that's already in their protection

advancedplastics

15:48 / 03.04.04

this thread has links to scans of NEW(X)MEN #155:

http://www.barbelith.com/topic/16603

21:14 / 03.04.04

Hey all. Just got 154. I don't think I would have understood a single page without you, so I say thanks from the heart of my bottom.
I feel a bit odd about the middle pages though and vaguely remember someone recommending a reading order that made sense and involved removing staples.
Can someone remind me? The thread is just too big to re-check right now.
oh. Triplets do indeed rule.
My apologies for the "n=14". I was just wrong.

Dan Fish - @Fish1k

13:28 / 04.04.04

It would be cool to have the annotations somewhere as part of Barbelith, like www.barbelith.com/bomb/
Maybe www.barbelith.com/atom/ or www.barbelith.com/X/ ?

14:05 / 04.04.04

www.barbelith.com/whitehotroom ?

14:51 / 04.04.04

Chad votes for /whitehotroom

08:02 / 05.04.04

Stupid question time...yet again. I know I'm totally off topic with this, but I just really, really would like to know something from you genius (99% sarcasm free) lithers, (obligatory ass-munch out of the way, let's continue). If Wolverine is Weapon Ten and not Weapon ecks, then what are Sabretooth, Silver Fox, Maverick and the like, classified as. If they are Weapon 9, 8, 7, respectively, then why have they, on numerous occasions been revered to as Weapon ecks and have been identified as experiments created by the Weapon ecks program? Just wondering.

And lastly, the reason why Sublime choose Beast as his carrier host is for the soul reason that Hank is mutant perfection incarnate albeit the occasional bouts of killer dandruff. He is brilliant in the head and quite strong in the muscle region. He's superior to most of his X-colleagues in almost every way. The smartest and the strongest all rolled up in one convenient, fuzzy, blue package, just waiting to be jacked.

Add my name to the petition for a shapy new White Hot Room, I think it's a spiffy idea...

Killer_BeeZus, you truely are a miracle worker.

excellation_u

08:55 / 05.04.04

Weapon X (that created Wolverine) is weapon 10.

Weapon X (after Wolverine) is the offshoot of the Weapon Plus version X(10).
So therefore you can have lots of derivative characters/creations born from Weapon X research/experiments etc but they're not directly related to the original Weapon X(10) program. Like a further research team that get interested in a tiny part of a larger problem and go off and do more work on it that isn't related to the original appointed problem/task.

Theoretically for each Weapon Plus generation there could be countless variations (and there probably will be).

09:56 / 05.04.04

Good post...doll, long time no see. Sorry about the name. I've devolved into a less pragmatic variation of himself, now called Bumble_BeeZus. All apologies...for any confusion caused.

Weapon X...Weapon +...it's all shit, I tell you. I think this is all just about a tepid writer disguising himself in a cloud of esoteric thought bubbles and hiding behind what the meek-mind would label "strange and wonderful" plot twists. It really isn't that difficult to throw spanners into the works and watch things explode. Chaos is easy. Perverting ideologies and restructuring age-old mythologies in your own image is childs play.

All this god-worshipping reminds me of a tale where a mild manner San Diego businessman's plane crashed over a small village in the middle of no where. The villagers were barbaric, cannibals who mistook him for a god. They all sat around him, wide-eye, in awe. He spoke and told them about the world outside their village, he told them about how mankind had progressed and about all the wonderful innovation he had seen. They couldn't understand a word but they tried too puzzled it all together and were impressed by the bits they could understand. As the years passed along his tales dried up and seeing as they couldn't understand him, in any case he started from the beginning and retold everything he had already told them and they were still impressed. They eventually killed him and ate his intestines but for a small time he was able to trick them into thinking he was a god. He also taught them about capitalism and poisoned their minds with his filthy stinking memes.

I hate it when people are so enamored with something, which they fail to see past the obvious. I'm not just another angry black (and yellow man), my cause is true...

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