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Underground > Comic Books >

New X-Men, Sigils, Symbol(ism)s, Queries

  
 
This Sunday
15:49 / 30.01.04
I apologize for the rant-like nature of this, which is the result of (a) too little sleep, (b) too much coffee, and (c) it's this or actually go help friends plan what was described to me as 'a be all, end all tour of fetish clubs, goth clubs, and lowlife bars through LA ending with loads of bad ideas seen through to their ends' and frankly, New X-men seemed less scary, and I'm a coward/lazy.
So, here's me, rereading the series and actually paying attention to stuff, probably more intensely than is good for me. Too much long BSing about magick, life, and why it's all predicated on small dogs and large trees, and now everything gone meaningful in the world again. And there's entirely too much meaning in this series (and everything else Morrison's done - and even those old Kirby Fourth World books!) to be entirely healthy for nice consumer-driven, conform-to-nonconformity silly society. Which makes it good comics, and good in general, but still, I'm missing stuff.
Other than the narrative magicky bits with sefira, qillipot (and, yes, I know it's spelled wrongly...), tarot, and fun with ego/id/superego mappings, what sigils and magickal stuff has anyone picked up in the art itself? There's the 'sex' in every page bit from one issue, the logo of course, and various x-symbols on the Lilandra cover... and something going on with the cover showing Angel. She's got stuff on her helmet (and do we ever see that in the series?), like a little fly head, and an A inna circle 'anarchy' emblem, and then there's stuff that's impossible for me to make out since the trades reprint it at less than half size. Is there anything meaningful there, those of you who've got the individual issues?
I'm just reading the tpb reprints, so I'm only up through 'Assault on Weapon Plus', but I'm horribly spoiled as to, well, everything I can find online to spoil me regarding plot-points and what not.
For that matter, going back and revising my intent, anyone feel brave enough to tackle all the narrative magickal bits?
There's the obvious birthing theme, coupled with the upload-to-bigger/higher-reality theme (am I wrong to adore Weapon XV so?), which is pretty much the same thing. Scott and Emma as the tarot lovers, Hank as... Magician? Xorn as Tower? Fantomex has his Fool/Trixster/Death God thing going. Jean almost seems to be working her way UP the tree o' life, inasmuch as she's exhibiting various traits at various stages, and I still don't hold with her (reichian, but no less cruel and vindictive and pissy) assault on Emma as anything but Geburah (at best); of course, the crown's got it all anyhow, rigiht, so it could just be she's all of the sefira and I'm being picky. There's the three-in-one meme that seems to be everwhere from 114 onward (Cyke, Wolvie, pig feller in the jet; Jean, Charles, Hank in the mansion... fast forward through to 123 and Angel (1) moving to Jean and Emma (2), and then Jean, Emma, and Angel in one panel... and Magneto, Toad, and renegade Cuckoo?), culminating in the Stepford Cuckoos ([fanboy whining, you're warned] they're remaking 'The Stepford Wives' for some reason! Why? Bad enough we got 'Children of the Damned' redone [back to the regularly scheduled fanboy whining/theorizing]) being three in the 'Here Comes Tomorrow' issues, right?
Which reminds me: Musical allusions, references, and quotes I should be getting and probably aren't? The Monkeys, Bowie, and Monster Magnet I get, and a friend of mine is convinced the whole thing is (with Warhol as Xavier) Lou Reed and Nico and the Velvet Underground with superpowers (other superpowers, anyway), but surely there's more? Surely, there's Morrissey?
And, entirely unmagickal (well, everything's magick looked at right, but, anyway): Am I the only one who hasn't been bothered by a bit of characterization, a bit of plotting, or Beak's accent/speech patterns, in the whole run (well, what I've read of it, anyway)? Seems like everyone's always crying foul, and I just don't read it that way.
And, is the Xavier-as-fictionsuit just because of the bald factor? Part of me (the St. Swithin's Day/Mystery Play part) wants to say it's Scott, while another (Invisibles) part is shooting for Hank 'witty, classy, queeny teddybear' McCoy. If he's not Hank, can I be? Better living (vicariously) through blue fur and all, and he's not surrounded by gun nuts and lesbians, and the all-too-frequent lesbian gun nut - and has a proper laboratory. Come to think, Morrison as Cyclops works both to force himself through angst, shittiness, and whining, to come through as a hero and successful and well, Scott Summers done proper. And, it pans out for Emma Frost being his girlfriend as somebody or other speculated.
And surely the grail, the Knights Templar, rosey cross, and blood-on-the-wall-that-will-never-be-directly-addressed-but-shows-up-in-every-other-Morrison-comic-I-can-think-of can be fitted in, right? Anything not being tied into the Templars is just sheer laziness (which is why I haven't done it), and surely you fine lot cannot let such a thing stand waiting? I hope.
And was the Fantomex = Cyclops de-analized ever actually made into a workable theory besides the only visible bit being his eyes?
 
 
Aertho
16:56 / 30.01.04
Although this SEEMS interesting, could you spend a moment to consolidate your thoughts and speak in bulletpoint? Your rant-like nature has prevailed.
 
 
Aertho
16:58 / 30.01.04
Although this SEEMS interesting, could you spend a moment to consolidate your thoughts and speak in bulletpoint? Your rant-like nature has prevailed.
 
 
Aertho
17:45 / 30.01.04
Nevermind. I read it and I think I understand.

Wanna talk themes? New X-Men is about EVOLUTION. AKA the King of Pentacles, and the force of manifestation. Now, everything happening on the page is about THAT.

Too big? Too bad.

Where simple single-powered mutants were commonplace and somewhat understandable as "types", we get rather extraodinary secondary mutations. Telepathic type Emma now exhibitts a physical mutation. Superstrong type Shaw exhibits a telepathy talent. Where big hulking Sentinels became redundant and easily dealt with, robotic artificial intelligence trumps human creativity and makes the wild sentinels of South America. Super-secret governement agencies responsible for Weapon X develop a more interesting and diabolical programme with Weapon Plus(!). Ordinary humans who aren't to be left behind develop into the Third Species cult and become U-Men(s) instead of Humans.

It's also about Learning. New X-Men is the first time in a LONG time that Xavier's had been treated as a school, where evolution is examined, and learned from in a very gnostic fashion.

I'm not going to be so solid as to assign a Tarot trump for each character. I think they're all climbing in some way. Charles is falling out of his "arrogance", and the school will benefit for it. Jean is pushing the gamewalls of her ability and powers, and growing ridiculously confident and intuitive. Scott is shedding his self-imposed laws in order to become more honest and true. They're all being brought into Tiphereth through the Devil(rational limitations) and Death(emotional limitations) cards, not necessarily with the influence of Geburah.

Now, Weapon Plus has its own kind of Evolution being played out. I've already posted how each generation of Weapon is actually a personification of a Spiral Dynamic vMeme, as each one is a more successful evolution of the one that came before. Fantomex isn't an analogy for Scott so much as a foil for the rules and impositions that the X-Men live by. I wish XV had lived too, but he would've defeated the enemy much too quickly in Planet X.

Cassandra, the first Weapon Plus operative was described as being the next evolution of mutancy, but in fact is evolving more than ever due to her educational learning experiences as Ernst.

All in all, the oppostion presented to the X-Men has been described as being analogous to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The Riders, in themselves, are representative of evolution and the learning process. First Rider is Pestilence, the opposition from without that invades and attacks the self. In New X-Men, we have Nano-Sentinels. Second Rider is War, the self and the Other in direct conflict, causing mass chaos and riotous anger. We get the Super-Sentinels of Weapon Plus for that. Third is Famine, where the self is entirely wasted and has all former sustanance extracted. Magneto represents the extraction of Xavier's ideals and integrationalism. Lastly, we have Death, the self devoid of all prior notions of "self-knowledge". The Phoenix itself serves as the way out of the mire of the past, as it burns away old knowledge and gives birth to the new. It's about Learning and Evolution.

It's also significant that the Weapon Plus and X-Men share the same identification sigil, the exact same one as Kabbalists use for denoting Malkuth. (cross in a circle)

This help?
 
 
This Sunday
09:42 / 31.01.04
Okeh, I'm going to try and reorganize this into more comprehensible packets of thought. I'd actually ended up writing that twice (and then sleeping for hours), because my machine crashed after the more rational, paced post was nearly finished. But, somewhat refreshed, rested, here it goes again.
I'm going to completely disregard the tarot for now, just because it isn't much my bag, aside from fun with patterns. And, I'm going to agree that every character (at least, of any focus) has been shifting along the sefira throughout the story. For some reason, it seemed like only the Phoenix (and Jean, if they're necessarily separate in any meaningful, quanitfiable way), to be moving, while the others sort've remained static and provide a pattern/shell for her to grow in. Well, seemed a good idea at the time, but Chesed makes a better pattern of it, than I did, so I'll sign on to that set up.
And I was really being facetious about things being too big or whatever, although rereading my post, it doesn't seem to come through. Just seemed the most common complaint about New X-Men, anything else by Grant Morrison, and loads of other books, films, comics, et al... but do these same people making the complaint of 'there is too much information' or 'it all goes by too quickly' stand outside, looking to the horizon and thinking, 'Damn, it's all so big and immense and complicated and it's all there at once, which is too fast' or am I missing something? It's not quite compacting human history into a guy watching young girls in a garden and being picked up by the cops for trial, you know? But it's not just Cyclops posing on a cliff with a big yellow belt o' pouches over his chest and yellow outer-underwear, repeating the same favorite-son platitudes over and over, either. Actually, for a death-to-resurrection count, or issues between 'major' changes that go away in more 'major' changes (that reestablish the status quo of before), New has a lot slowwer, more methodical pacing than the last, what, ten years of this title?
And, I don't see why Grant or anyone else can't be every fictionsuit in the deck, so to speak, so I'll leave that to those who may know better.
I will clarify something, though:
The narrative symbol(ism)s, sigils, and patterns of New X-Men:
(a) Birth/upload/evolution symbolism, from Hank's new look (and future - not Hank? - Beast's new, new look), to Xavier's rebirth through Jean and Cerebra, Magneto to Xorn to Magneto (to dead and petty; I'm not really content with the idea of 'regression' or retrograde in terms of human development, because, face it, you can't really go back all the way and purely, can you? Even ranting, destroy Manhattan Magneto hs to be viewed differently after Xorn), and of course, Weapon XV or EVA or Fantomex moving out of The World.
(b) Simulated or forced evolution, in the form of Jean/Phoenix's 'rushes' or Emma's (desire/need for) repression puttng her in a diamond casing, kick usage (has anyone actually come out on top through using this?), U-Men version transhumanism, melting/boiling/freezing the timesolid in The World.
(c) The changes that I can't readily attribute to either of the above, exclusively, such as the movement from Sentinel to Wild Sentinel to Super Sentinels (or Weapon 0 through fifteen onward, for a separate-from-killer-pink-robot track). Was Xorn just a charade, or something more innate? Was Scott's temporary loss of eyebeams necessary to his maturation, literally allowing him to shed every bit of X-baggage long enough to pull himself together and return? Would explain the shucked X-jacket, too, for those who 'vandalism on this level' wasn't sufficient for. Hank's mutation - stress and bodily damage, or...?
And yes, I realize, all the above are most definitely just facets of the same thing, in the end. But it isn't the broad, totally encompassing, enveloping, supreme solid truth I'm really too concerned with. To go back to the staring-at-the-horizon metaphor, it's just the landscape, not the bits and pieces and fragmented twists that actually comprise the heart and interesting bits of that landscape. Not to get all wrapped up in tiny boxes and pick things apart until they lose potency and meaning (everybody sing, 'I hate the trees and the flowers, and I hate the buildings, and the way they tower, over me..."), but isn't just putting everything down as 'evolution' less killing the investigation and more just seeing forest without seeing the trees. That's mangled metaphor, yes, but it's as clear as I can make it. The whole is the most important, but the intricacies, the patterns and seeming-patterns are more fun.
And, then, somewhere in all this is the real/not-real issue, which I think is as gnostic as it gets, since the evil/dirty-good/pure dual universals seems to be presented as outdated here. Xavier says to Xorn, something about 'the idea of the monster being more real and dangerous than the monster itself' which seems to sum up almost everything we've seen so far. And, then, the speculation that the Murder at the Mansion arc was on a mental plane, or the Bollywood (spelled wrong, I'm sure) issue, The World's explosion, time seepage... well, it's all fake, innit? It's all fiction, and putting it through unfamiliar (sub)cultural frames just seems to heighten the fakeness.
The visual stuff:
(a) Sex on every page issue, from the word to the cow being milked. This has been covered enough, maybe.
(b) 119's Angel cover, and the symbols on her helmet. Anarchy-style A in a circle, a little fly head, and...?
(c) The American flag right behind Sublime's head when he meets with Scott and Emma.
(d) Emma's padded crotch, which shows up (I think) first in the same issue.
(e) The roses everywhere, starting with Hank's lab (and ending, at least as far as I've got in the series, with Hank heading to Emma's room where she's smashed).
(f) 121, the (mostly) silent issue should probably be handled elsewhere/later, as it's just loaded.
(g) 123, and the seemingly repeatng one to two to three character set up. Angel to Emma and Jean to all three, or Angel, Logan and Angel, and then Logan, Angel and Emma. This goes on, so I think it's either intentional, or just fun enough to ponder anyway.
(h) The three-in-every-scene thing throughout 'E is for Extinction' - Beast, Jean, Xavier; Scott, Logan, Ugly John (?); Cassandra, Trask, Mastermold.
(i) Headmaster's psychic office room. The symbols across the background mostly seem relatively pertinent to whatever's the matter at hand, but I just don't get all of them, and they probably all mean something. Just noticed a moment ago, the pentacle with Quentin at the top, and the initials of his gang over the other extensions, or the circular patterns that remind me of nothing more than Frank Cornelius' womb fetish drawings, from Moorcock. But this thing that looks like a c with another backward-c barely touching it; just a fancy X, or something more?
(j) 131 has crosses on Beast's book's spines, the W in the logo of Emma's mag with an extra slash to make an X. Is this a Weapon Plus/X and X-Men/Plus-Men (scientists, sadist, and super-sentinels, I guess), are just the same sort've thing from a different angle, or am I on a totally wrong track? And the issue's done with lots of red, yellow, green... more than usual, anyway.
(h) The yellow of the uniforms becomes less bright dayglo and more prosaic yellow. Commentary on the direction their lives are taking, from the shiny newness to dingy and dim? Or is it something to do with the color-pattern-recognition, as with the purple and magenta helicopter bit where Scott and Hank discuss figuring villains by their selected colors?
The music:
(a) Monster Magnet and their song, 'Negasonic Teenage Warhead'
(b) Revolting Cocks on Beak's shirt
(c) 'Zappa' on a shirt in the school photo cover
(d) The Monkeys' 'Here Comes Tomorrow'
(e) Bowie (Diamond Dogs era?) 'Glam, Industrial...'
(f) Orfeo, even if it was cancelled live, telepathically induced into Hank
(g) Various, Marvel Universe, in story bands and musicians, like Sentinel Bait, Juggernaut, and so forth.
(h) Pink Floyd and the spaceship on the darkside of the moon
My general, don't go anywhere questions:
(a) Was Zona Cluster whatsisface intended to be(come) the Huntsman?
(b) If the future arc is a result of The World's controlled-time seeping out in welts and spurts, could Wolverine's appearance there just be him from today, walking there? Just taking a few steps east through a hundred years?
(c) Why exactly did Weapon XV just punch Scott? I figured it was like asking why Superman with his eyebeams and superbreath and all just goes about punching things mostly, but that's stretching, maybe.
(d) Even though I said I was letting the fictionsuit thing die a death, and don't see the baldness of Charlie as indicative of Morrison working through him... Could Sublime's baldness in at least two permutations ('Germ Free...' and 'Assault...') mean something? Again, stretching, and it probably doesn't matter in the long run.
(e) Has Cassandra Nova (gee, I should just have a thread on the meanings and symbolisms in that name alone), been outed as a Weapon Plus creation, or is this just supposition?
(f) What's supposed to be wrong with Beak's accent/speech patterns? I don't see a difference, issue to issue, aside from maybe hs first appearance.
(g) What plot points or characterization elements did people have problems with? Not in a 'just don't like it' sense, but as far as, not making sense or holding together. Again, I just don't see it, but I'm willing to accept that all these wide masses might not be wrong. I don't see lots, even when it's right there and screaming in my face.
(h) The uniform colors. Wasn't there something about The Filth using reverse-colors from the standard sefira? Something relating to the qilpot, but I don't quite see how the shells have reverse colors of their insides, so much as an absence-of-that-color. So, if the uniforms in that were wearing purple, can we switch that to our 'positive' world of New X and make it the yellow? Maybe this book is more manichean/gnostic demiurge-was-blind-and-dumb than I'd like to think.

And, anyone who responds, and to those who have, thanks quite a bit. Being too lazy to pull all this together and interpret everything, so as to foist it off on this board, may seem a bit petty and unappreciative, but really, I'm immensely thankful for any possibilities someone 'not thinking like me' comes up with. And I'm not through trying to piece it all together anyway - just need a week of no food or water, surrounded by cold ocean and hot sun on plane shrapnel. And blue fur, which I still hold to as the key to this whole thing.
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
12:44 / 31.01.04
Just to point out: The idea that Cassie was a Weapon hasn't been confirmed, in fact it's been more or less denied, and to be honest I think it's a crap idea (sorry)
 
 
Aertho
16:00 / 31.01.04
We'll see if it's crap. It may never even be addressed, like a lot of things in the book.

Okay, a quick recap in Kabbalic Tarot associations: You got Sephira 6(The Soul) set at the top of a diamond shape, Reason on one side, Emotion on the other, and Imagination on the bottom. Tarot cards exist as lines connecting each of them, and trouble occrus when somoen tries to get to the Soul from anywhere exept Imagination. When someon has to let go of Reason and rational control in order to transcend their role in a particular situation, they can be said to be passing by the Devil. If someone has to let go of their emotional passions and individual drive and trust another, they can be said to be going through a Death. When someone concentrates on letting the Soul manifest through the capability of the Imagination, you get Art.

Jean's the only character(maybe Hank too) who's been doing the Imagination and Art thing to get to Soul. The other characters like Charles, Scott, Emma, Magneto, Cuckoos, Special Class as a unit, Cassnadra/Ernst are all buffeting betwen and getting beat up by Death and the Devil during all their transformations.

(a) Was Zona Cluster whatsisface intended to be(come) the Huntsman?

Yes

(b) If the future arc is a result of The World's controlled-time seeping out in welts and spurts, could Wolverine's appearance there just be him from today, walking there? Just taking a few steps east through a hundred years?

Interesting, but I don't think so...

(c) Why exactly did Weapon XV just punch Scott? I figured it was like asking why Superman with his eyebeams and superbreath and all just goes about punching things mostly, but that's stretching, maybe.


Because XV was learning about Scott by hitting him, not trying to "destroy" him with a head-blast.

(d) Even though I said I was letting the fictionsuit thing die a death, and don't see the baldness of Charlie as indicative of Morrison working through him... Could Sublime's baldness in at least two permutations ('Germ Free...' and 'Assault...') mean something? Again, stretching, and it probably doesn't matter in the long run.

I think Cassandra's bald too. Grant's playing ALL his characters as his voices. I'm sure you have more than one voice in your head.

(e)Has Cassandra Nova (gee, I should just have a thread on the meanings and symbolisms in that name alone), been outed as a Weapon Plus creation, or is this just supposition?

nope, not yet

(f) What's supposed to be wrong with Beak's accent/speech patterns? I don't see a difference, issue to issue, aside from maybe hs first appearance.

Crazy Dutch kid, trying to master English speech methods, and learning bad habits from Angel, no doubt.

(g) What plot points or characterization elements did people have problems with? Not in a 'just don't like it' sense, but as far as, not making sense or holding together. Again, I just don't see it, but I'm willing to accept that all these wide masses might not be wrong. I don't see lots, even when it's right there and screaming in my face.

I felt that Professor and Jean's world trip story ended much too suddenly... and Dust was never followed up as the character we all thought she was going to be.

(h) The uniform colors. Wasn't there something about The Filth using reverse-colors from the standard sefira? Something relating to the qilpot, but I don't quite see how the shells have reverse colors of their insides, so much as an absence-of-that-color. So, if the uniforms in that were wearing purple, can we switch that to our 'positive' world of New X and make it the yellow? Maybe this book is more manichean/gnostic demiurge-was-blind-and-dumb than I'd like to think.

Magneto wears purple... he's the X-Men's Qlippoth, Famine, and Meaninglessness.
 
 
Never or Now!
12:47 / 01.02.04
Fuck the Templars.

New X-Men as a hypersigil: I think on one level Grant's still talking to the people who were reading "The Invisibles" and who are reading it now, and particularly the ones who took it kinda seriously; and asking what next? After you've ponced around with sex magic and martial arts and zooming around the globe trying to look really cool, then you...? And then he gives the Quentin Quire kids a big nudge in the direction of XORN NOT MAGNETO. The whole thing recapitulates the final page of the penultimate "Invisibles" with Jack in Sir Miles's tie, taking the piss out of Reynard, and then showing her the blank badge.
 
 
XXII:X:II = XXX
02:14 / 03.02.04
Snoody sniffed: And then he gives the Quentin Quire kids a big nudge in the direction of XORN NOT MAGNETO. The whole thing recapitulates the final page of the penultimate "Invisibles" with Jack in Sir Miles's tie, taking the piss out of Reynard, and then showing her the blank badge.

I'd always thought that Quire was a porting of Reynard with her purple hair and twisted conservative dress.

Was the cover to that issue with all the teachers standing in a circle and looking at one another brought up? I think something about their lines of sight probably traces something out. Anyone got any idea what?

VJB2
 
 
H3ct0r L1m4
02:37 / 04.02.04
very interesting topic, though I don't know how deep Morrison has gone in this sense with the series. regarding fictionsuits, it's apparent and I guess he confirmed on one or two interviews that in the comic he was sometimes Scott, but a lot of times Emma. we can see that the character in most need of growth in his run is Cyclops and that says something.
 
 
chairmanWOW
06:31 / 26.02.04
I've just finished reading issue 152 (I live in a third world country). Half way through, on the double page spread, I started noticing something. I don't know what happens after 152 and whether I'm just grasping at straws but did anyone else notice the Wizard of Oz thing (the books not the movie, seeing as my supposition includes Ozma and Tok-tok). On that double page, they set out along the yellow brick road to find the Wizard/Dark Beast/Wicked Witch and there they are. Tom Skylark is Dorothy, who arrives on the scene, sort of confused and new to everything, along with her little dog Toto or in this case his enormous robot dog Rover (the Sentinel could also represent Tok-tok). Next to Tom, you find E.V.A or in Oz context the Tin Woodsman. Then there's Wolverine, the cowardly lion. A once glorious warrior reduced to nothing more than an old woman's toothless watchdog. And finally you get the Scarecrow who is represented by New Beak. He's tough on the outside but inside he's just a scared little child trying to live up to his grandfather's legend. Oh, and Cassandra with Martha in hand is of course (of course!) Glenda the Good Witch with the ruby slippers (or a brain for E.V.A perhaps). They each, like their Wizard of Oz counterparts, are searching for something. Wolverine wants to relive his past glory and he wants to be the hero again (courage?). E.V.A, like the Tinman wants a brain or in her case a central nervous system, more specifically the nervous system of Fantomex. Beak's little parallel doesn't pan out as well as the others but it still kinda makes sense. He wants a heart and well...no it doesn't pan out at all. And then finally Martha (is that name even correct). She seems inconspicuous but maybe her part will be just as important as her equivalent, the ruby slippers. Even Cassie said it; she'll be the engine. They even start out in Munchkin-ville (?) and when they embark along the brick road, they are even cheered on by Munchkins. They don't skipping along on their way because this isn't The Wizard of Oz; it's the edgy gothic revamp of the classic children’s tale, ooo dangerous. If you need any more to convincing you can just cast a glance in the direction of the Beast/Sublime. I mean come on...his castle looks almost exactly like The Wicked witch's. He even uses flying monkeys to do his bidding (maybe that witch was a wayward geneticist herself) for Pete’s sake. If hidden allusion and seditious analogies to The Wizard of Oz was good enough for Pink Floyd then I'm sure Morrison wouldn't mind recycling these stale ideas again for his own nefarious ends (like usual).

P.S. Phoenix is Ozma.
 
 
CameronStewart
06:44 / 26.02.04
Didn't you already post that two days ago in the NXM 153 thread?
 
 
This Sunday
11:35 / 26.02.04
It's weird, but was compiling tree o' life related symbols for someone, and here I am, looking at this (picture of a) woodcut with the sefira and paths and little lettering/symbols etched in... and suddenly, my brain jumpcuts to 'New X-Men' and I realize, here's a lot of the symbols I didn't recognize in the telepathic headmasters' office. The C and backwards-C just barely touching (which I'd previously convinced myself was the holographic-universe-a-and-b badly inked) and a few others. It seems like, at least when they're discussing Quentin, the symbols actually work out to map a sort of path through to kether.

Also, finally noticed, just sort've glancing through the trades (but not reading, per se), the significant amount of color coding. Blue and red/pink (mostly, as psychic or meat happenings), of course, but some subtle use of other colors, as well. And that bit where Cass-as-Chuck shoots eir old body, its in both bright blue and red, right? One more subtle hint that (cue ominous music), all is not as it seems?

Haven't read anything past the 'Assault...' tpb, but the Oz thing intrigues me, since I've been on a bit of an Oz kick lately (tiny Ozma meme on the cover of an anthology I was designing, use of Oz and neighboring countries as a map for somebody else's website). I'd pin Cassandra for the scarecrow though; got her own brain, but it's external, and her consciousness has been re-placed (Wizard putting quality knots and and such in the scarecrow's head and wasn't the scarecrow reincarnated from some yellow-peril-type in one of the - horrible - Ruth Plumly books?).

How many people have two consciousness, or two brains, in this thing, anyway? Cassandra/Chuck; Fantomex/EVA; Martha/Ernst; Phoenix/Jean; Cyclops/ESN; Everybody infected by Zona; Xorn/Magneto (despite what ye faithless might believe; Xorn lives, baby!), them five - no, four - no, wait three smart blondes; Multiple Man; smart-lizard-Braniac-knockoff; Araki (unless they don't make a new one until the current dies)... and anybody else?

Oh, and, last because I forgot even though it was the original point of this post - In the issue in the Hellfire Club, is that circle fetish something in the script or did the artist just like using them? Every page practically - in that issue especially, but the rest of the arc, too. Circle tables, circle panels with the stripper... oh, wait, when Emma and Scott do their freefall that was in a series of semi-circle panels, right? Must be a scripted thing. Any guesses (wilder the better) as to what circles have to do with Scott 'not allowed to be anything but a superhero because he's everyody's fave' Summers?

Not really related, but since I'm here anyhow: Is there a date for the last trade(s)? Is the last two storylines going to be one tpb or two, anyway?
 
 
advancedplastics
01:15 / 31.03.04
i made some notes on the "NEW X MEN: logo, which i'm posting below:

[ NEW (X) MEN ]

  • Symmetry of logo;

"NEW":

  • refs "New" Mutants, Claremont;
  • offsets Morrison's run/revamp

"(X)":

  • Symmetry, Yin-Yang
  • Multiplication of 2+ elements, resulting in Product;
  • Biology: denotes crossbreeding of diff species or varieties; implies mating, ReProduction, evolution;
  • X : has same shape as chromosomal pair!;

  • Chronos, God of Time (evolution is bioflux over time);
  • Circle / 4 Elementals;
  • Malkuth;
  • Yod;
  • Wheel of Fortune Tarot Card;

  • X = 10 : 1 & 0 - binary; 10 is binary for 2; 0 vs. 1, "in vs. out";

"+": X = Cross = Christ = Logos = Word Become Flesh
 
 
Mario
11:04 / 31.03.04
I need more time to muse upon this, but don't forget the symbolism of the various chakras, especially the Crown and Forehead Chakras.
 
 
diz
11:59 / 31.03.04
Just to point out: The idea that Cassie was a Weapon hasn't been confirmed,

this is true.

in fact it's been more or less denied,

this is not. i'm under the impression that the general consensus of most long-term posters is more-or-less in favor of the idea that Cassie is Weapon XI, even though that's not confirmed.
 
 
advancedplastics
15:03 / 31.03.04

speaking of Cassie... where the hell did she come from?

why did she choose that particular moment to strike Xavier's? what'd she been doing previously/otherwise?

those are rhetorical questions... this might be the wrong forum for this discussion, but could it be that Cassandra Nova ('Future New') is from the future? i have this feeling that the whole thing is one of those time-loop storylines, that somehow after the HCT story arc, she transports back to somewhere before issue 114, that her actions are more complex than they'd first seemed...
theres that whole 'cassandra complex' thing...

whatdyathink?
 
 
advancedplastics
09:44 / 01.04.04

oops, the cass thing has already been addressed:

http://www.barbelith.com/topic/15122/from/200

cassie is a Feeder, thought-parasite species from the future.
 
  
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