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from Ellis' mail list:
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[BAD SIGNAL]X-Thing
bad signal
WARREN ELLIS
Since I let you know I'm no longer exclusive to DC, I've
received a zillion emails that all read pretty much the
same. So much so that I suspect collusion among the class.
The basic model reads: "Are you going to take over NEWXMEN
after Grant, and what would you do with it?"
Well, I'm not. And putting in three or four years on any
company-owned book is not exactly my gameplan. Although, you
know, the gameplan is changing all the time. These are weird
days for comics, and I may talk about that soonish. Plus,
well, I've been in the X-Office before, and the idea of all
that continuity and soap-opera and group coordination is just
a nightmare, one I lived through. The time I spent on EXCALIBUR
was one of my least favourite experiences in comics.
As to what I'd do... well. Imagine a big lecture hall full
of mutant kids, tricked out with holographic projectors
creating CG imagery around the speaker -- I've only read a
few of Grant's issues, but let's say it's Emma Frost and
assume he didn't kill her or turn her into a hat and a pipe
or something. Imagine a lecture:
###
You're not different.
The world has spent forty years telling you you're different.
Some of your own teachers have doubtless told you that you're
different, with the best of intentions.
But you are not different.
You are new.
Yes, you are mutants. But so are the Basque people of Spain.
Did you know that?
They have a gene that protects them against heart disease.
It is a gene that no other people have.
That, by definition, makes them mutants.
Do people without that gene go to the Basque region with
pitchforks and torches? Do people seek to outlaw them?
Have people, in fact, designed and constructed giant robots
to hunt and kill the Basque populace?
No.
They are simply part of the human genestream.
The genestream is the human torpedo, fired out of Africa at
the dawn of intelligent life.
Think of it as a contrail, shooting out of the past as
roaring into the future.
It curls around the world, thickening as it gathers pace. The
African human is part of the genestream. The Ainu, the Inuit,
the Caucasian, the Sumerian. The Basque. All of these are
part of the human genestream, powering forward into future time.
And at the front of the genestream is us.
The human warhead of the evolutionary missile.
Some people have called us Homo Superior, which is supposed to
mean superior human, superhuman.
That's crap.
Our genus is in fact Homo Novus. We are, quite simply,
New Humans.
You are not different. You are simply new.
The people who don't like you have a name, too. Neophobes.
Those who fear and hate the new. And I bring good news.
Neophobes die early.
It's true. A recent scientific study shows that neophobes
experience such stress when in the presence of the new that
it signficantly shortens their lifespans.
By hating you, they're killing themselves.
By now, I'm sure most of you have spotted the fatal flaw in
my Basque analogy. The Basques look like every other
standard-issue human on the face of the planet, and you don't.
Many of you, I'm glad to say, do not look like standard-issue
Homo Sapiens. And that, you believe, is why the outside world
does not accept you.
I have good news on that score, too. I'm just a little ray of
sunshine today, aren't I?
All you have to do is look out the window.
Look at your human peers, the teens and twentysomethings.
They're twisting themselves into something other than
standard-issue human.
They're changing themselves, with piercings and brandings,
and implantations and surgeries.
There's a surging body modification movement full of people
sinking feathers into their backs with hooks to make wings,
and splitting their tongues in two, and connecting extra arms
to their nervous systems.
Do you know why they're doing that?
Because they want to be you.
They want to be new humans.
They are testing the absolute boandaries of their own bodies
because they want to become what you are naturally.
There's a word for them, too. Neophiles. People who embrace
the new. And they live longer.
You think you're never going to be accepted? Look out the
window. The current generation of the previous model of human
is cutting itself to bits to try and be mutants.
They want to be you because you break all the rules they
hate just by existing.
Every last one of you is a subversive icon. Every last one of
you is a genetic superstar.
You are the genestream A-list, blasting the world into
the future.
And everywhere you go, you make the world new again.
###
(C) Warren Ellis 2003 All Rights Reserved
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though he has played with people's expectations before. |
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