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Garder's archive html is all screwed up. Here's the analysis. It's pretty fantastic stuff, and I think he's totally right about almost everything, especially Planet X.
Secrets, cliffhangers and revelations are integral parts of serial storytelling, and that is especially true in superhero comics. Grant Morrison's New X-Men is no different; its 41 issues have a handful of major secrets and a dozen smaller ones. Many of these will be revealed in the following essay, so if you have not read New X-Men #114-154 but think you would like to, I suggest you read the comics before reading this essay. I enthusiastically gush over the series in this previous post, if that helps any. Morrison's entire run is collected in the following books:
Vol. 1: E Is for Extinction
Vol. 2: Imperial
Vol. 3: New Worlds
Vol. 4: Riot at Xavier's
Vol. 5: Assault on Weapon Plus
Vol. 6: Planet X
Vol. 7: Here Comes Tomorrow (not yet published)
New X-Men Vol. 1 Hardcover (collects E Is for Extinction & Imperial)
New X-Men Vol. 2 Hardcover (collects New Worlds & Riot at Xavier's)
New X-Men Vol. 3 Hardcover (not yet published)
PROFESSOR X: Thoughts on the new school uniforms?
WOLVERINE: Suddenly I don't have to look like an idiot in broad daylight.
BEAST: I was never sure why you had us dress up like super heroes anyway, Professor.
CYCLOPS: The professor thought people would trust the X-Men if we looked like something they understood.
PROFESSOR X: That's correct, Scott. However...I've been working on better ways to encourage people to trust mutants. - New X-Men #114
BEAST: Because every few hundred thousand years, evolution, which emphatically does not proceed smoothly, takes huge catastrophic jumps. Old life forms get wiped from the fossil record overnight in periodic mass extinctions, and are replaced. I think Cassandra Nova is the first of a new unforeseen species. I think she'll instinctively use her outlandish natural gifts to wipe us out if she can. This could become a war for the domination of the biosphere.
JEAN GREY: Domination? War? Henry...Can't we think of a better way to deal with this? - New X-Men #116
The X-Men are superheroes. And what superheroes do is fight. They fight supervillains, they fight the giant robots sent by the government to kill them, they fight alien menaces, and they fight each other, endlessly. Unlike most superheroes, the X-Men also fight intangibles--hatred and prejudice--but they do so with their fists and claws and optic blasts. Professor X preaches a pacifist doctrine that seeks to effect nonviolent change, but sooner or later someone always ends up hitting somebody else.
Last week, with the publication of New X-Men #154, writer Grant Morrison finally stated explicitly the overarching point of his three-year run on the series: this fighting, this constant superheroic aggression, is keeping the X-Men from doing what their very premise suggests they should do. It’s keeping them from evolving. And just as the fictional mutants are unable to evolve past their punchups and fisticuffs, so have Marvel's X-Men books been unable to evolve past the formulas created for them by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and later by Chris Claremont and John Byrne. What Morrison offers in New X-Men is a way to move past these old formulas--a way for the comic book itself to evolve.
Morrison, a Scottish writer who had previously explored the limits of comic-book reality by writing himself into Animal Man, revived the moribund Justice League of America, and possibly inspired The Matrix with The Invisibles, took over X-Men in May 2001, immediately renaming it New X-Men. The "New" was not just a cosmetic change, as Morrison introduced new characters (Xorn, Fantomex, and a school's worth of students), new costumes (leather jackets and motorcycle boots to replace yellow and blue spandex), secondary mutations (Emma Frost’s "organic diamond" skin, Beast's new feline form), a new villain (Cassandra Nova), and a new sense of purpose. "Feared and hated by the world they have sworn to protect" has always been the X-Men equivalent of Spider-Man's "With great power comes great responsibility"--it's the basis of the oppressed-minority metaphor the X-Men have participated in for four decades. But in Morrison's third issue, #116, the Beast (aka Dr. Henry McCoy) discovers an extinction gene in the human genome. Humanity will be all but wiped out within four generations, to be replaced by mutants "or something even stranger." While this revelation would give humans a new reason to hate and fear mutants, it also places the struggle between the two species into a larger perspective. Professor Xavier thinks humans and mutants can leave peacefully together; Magneto, the Malcolm X to Xavier's Martin Luther King, thinks mutants should conquer humans, or, failing that, separate themselves from humans entirely (which is exactly what he did, declaring himself ruler of the mutant nation of Genosha). But in the long run, evolution says neither doctrine really matters.
In New X-Men #115, Cassandra Nova launches a Sentinel attack on Genosha, killing 16 milion mutants, including Magneto. In an instant, the ideological struggle between Xavier and Magneto, which had lasted since the very first issue of X-Men in 1963, is over. Xavier wins by default, but Magneto, thanks to the extinction gene, gets the last laugh.
"Your species truly is more aggressive than homo sapiens. And even quicker to persecute and demonize others. We like to model your behavior, you see, to learn from your every move, so we can be more like you. Even the way you sit betrays an arrogance and self-confidence few ordinary humans attain in a lifetime." - John Sublime, New X-Men #118
"You...you run around fighting like Greek gods and...and monsters...If you want the truth, it's that people hate mutants because trouble follows you wherever you go!" - A human journalist, New X-Men #123
"The mutant species has registered toxic levels of aggression--nature itself has chosen to deal with your kind." - Imperial Sage Araki 6, New X-Men #133
The X-Men’s greatest villain is dead, and "after Genosha, the old troublemakers don’t seem to bother," as Cyclops puts it. In the absence of traditional supervillains, the X-Men look for new ways to bring about Xavier’s dream. Xavier outs himself as a mutant and takes the X-Men public, forming the worldwide X-Corporation; the Xavier Institute becomes "an outpost of the future, here and now, where we can actually push at the limits of possibility and rehearse the world of tomorrow." Xavier and his X-Men are actively working toward integration with humans, but, as always, trouble follows them: Cassandra Nova, Xavier's twin sister, who wants to exterminate all mutant life on earth; John Sublime and his U-Men, humans who accept mutant organ grafts to become members of the "third species" homo perfectus; Weapon XII, the latest mutant-killing supersoldier created by the Weapon Plus program, which turned Logan into Wolverine--aka Weapon X--years ago. There is something connecting these new villains, all of whom are dedicated to either destroying the mutant species or to turning man and mutant against each other. No matter what they do, aggression and war always find the X-Men. Or, as Wolverine puts it in NXM #133: "You know? Here's me trying my best to honor the strict pacifist principles of the Xavier Institute...and here's a bunch of slave traders filling me full of lead."
QUENTIN QUIRE: So much for the dream! All my life I've waited for this "dream" to come true! We were promised peace and security! All my life! Where is it? This place has taught me nothing but what it was like to run and fight and hide and--
PROFESSOR X: You could have submitted your critique in the form of an essay, Quentin. - New X-Men #137
ESME: Well...just because Miss Frost’s old students wore spandex and flew around like idiots doesn’t mean we have to be stupid, too.
SOPHIE: Stop fussing, Esme, and hand me the Kick. Haven’t you ever wanted to be a super hero? - New X-Men #137
In "Riot at Xavier's" (#135-138), a group of students led by the powerful telepath Quentin Quire and influenced by the power-enhancing drug Kick take over the Xavier Institute on Open Day, when humans are invited to the school. The students are protesting the alleged murder of mutant fashion designer Jumbo Carnation by a human gang, but the riot is really fueled by a combination of Kick and Quire's feelings of youthful rebellion and inadequacy in the wake of the news that he was adopted. The riot is yet more aggression, this time directed from mutant to mutant, but inspired by the belief that man and mutants are at war. That aggression leads to the student Sophie deciding to be a "super hero" and stop Quire by taking Kick and using Xavier's telepathy-enhancing Cerebra machine to boost her powers, a decision that results in her death. The X-Men subdue Quire, and before he is "liberated from his physical cocoon and born into a higher world," he has a revelation: "What if we were both wrong, Professor X...and it wasn't humans to blame at all? What if the real enemy...was inside...all along?" It turns out Quire is right; the real enemy is inside the mutants, as Morrison reveals in his final issue. But Morrison, through Quire, is making a larger commentary on X-Men and superhero comics in general--the aggression and belligerence inherent in super heroes is what keeps them from evolving, just as the X-Men’s constant battles keep them from achieving Xavier’s dream. "The supermen fight and die and return in a meaningless shadowplay because we make them do it," says that internal enemy in issue #154, and that sentiment could just as easily come from the dark hearts of superhero publishers and writers. The decision to be a "super hero" is the decision to hurt someone, and in Morrison’s New X-Men, that decision leads to death. And you can’t evolve when you’re dead.
"These new encounters suggest puzzles I must solve. Equations of brute force. Calculus of conquest and annihilation." - Weapon XV, New X-Men #144
"Why didn't it kill me, Fantomex? Weapon XV...it was like...it was like running a fight program...like pro-wrestling..." - Cyclops, New X-Men #145
FANTOMEX: This was to be their headquarters...our headquarters. I was supposed to sit here, brooding under the spotlight while we targeted mutant nests for extermination. An unbeatable team of living Sentinels, custom-grown in The World. And Weapon Fifteen there...or "Ultimaton," God help him live that down. And Weapon Twelve..."Huntsman." You see what they were planning, Monsieur Summers? Market research. How better to introduce new strains of highly controversial, genetically-engineered supermen to the public? How else to unleash these hybrids on an unsuspecting population? This genetic cleansing operation disguised as a comic book fighting team.
CYCLOPS: Then it's war, isn't it? Humans never trusted us. They never will. They won't rest until we're all dead. - New X-Men #145
Morrison’s commentary on the limitations of super heroes reaches its metafictional peak in "Assault on Weapon Plus" (NXM #142-145). Wolverine, Cyclops and Fantomex, aka the rogue Super-Sentinel Weapon XIII, infiltrate the Weapon Plus program to find the truth about Wolverine’s past. What they find indicates that Wolverine was born and raised to be nothing but a killing machine--fighting is all he was ever done, and all he was ever meant to know how to do. "They chose me because I like to kill, Jeannie," he tells Jean Grey later, in #148. "All I'm good for's killing." That's true in both the intra- and extra-comic sense. Wolverine is by far the most popular X-Men character (in any given month he appears in at least three different monthly series, along with numerous guest appearances, if that gives you any idea), and that popularity is based largely on the fact that he likes to hurt people. He's the one with the razor-sharp claws popping out of his hands, remember? He's the very embodiment of superheroic aggression: a character who exists only to fight and kill, and who can’t be killed himself. The first page of Morrison's first issue (#114) is a shot of Wolverine tearing a giant Sentinel robot to bits with his claws; Cyclops, standing below him, says "Wolverine. You can probably stop doing that now." In Morrison's final issue, #154, Phoenix warns Wolverine, locked in a battle with the archvillain Sublime, "Don’t let Sublime contaminate you! Don’t fight!" These two bookending statements sum up Morrison’s attitude toward the X-Men’s superheroic aggression, as personified by Wolverine: they can probably stop doing that now. But Morrison knows they probably won't; he allows Wolverine to achieve peace, but he achieves it only by getting himself killed.
The second secret of the Weapon Plus program is that the various Weapon Plus Super-Sentinels, including Fantomex, Weapon XII and Weapon XV, were to be unleashed upon Earth’s mutant population in the guise of a superhero team, one modeled to a degree on the Justice League of America. Here is where Morrison makes explicit the connection between the "toxic levels of aggression" to be found in both mutants and superhero comics. The Super-Sentinels will turn mutant against human once more, and retard the process of evolution by distracting mutantkind with pointless battles, just as traditional superhero comics keep from growing and changing by offering up slam-bang action every month. More specifically, in the case of X-Men comics, the comics can’t evolve and change until they move past the "feared and hated" routine, past the "classic" X-Men trappings. And there’s no X-Men trapping more classic than Magneto.
MAGNETO: Wolverine! Maniac! If I must fight, at least it is for a cause! You do it for pleasure! Too long have I planned, X-Men. Too long has mutantkind suffered! This time, my victory will not be denied!
STORM: It will, Magneto, because it must be! If we are hated and feared, it is in large part because of you! - Uncanny X-Men #150: "I, Magneto" by Chris Claremont & Dave Cockrum, October 1981
"Magneto had become a legend in death, an inspiration for change. Now look at you--just another foolish and self-important old man, with outdated thoughts in his head. You have nothing this new generation of mutants wants...except for your face on a T-shirt. They have ideas of their own now. Perhaps it's time we put away the old dreams, the old manifestos...and just listened for a while. Your way will never work, Erik. This can't go on. I think you've had enough. I think we've all had enough." - Professor X, New X-Men #150
After "Assault on Weapon Plus" comes "Planet X" (#146-150), in which Morrison brings back Magneto in a resurrection that was both shocking and shockingly well-integrated into the series; clues to his reappearance had been planted since his death in #115, but they were so subtle as to be undetectable until the stories were reread, at which point they were unmistakable. Magneto's plan represents old-school supervillainy at its most absurdly grandiose: he had been lying in wait at the Xavier Institute for months disguised as the mutant healer Xorn, recruiting students to his cause, before announcing himself to Xavier and the world, destroying the Institute and taking over Manhattan, declaring it New Genosha. Next he plans to reverse the earth’s magnetic poles, killing every human. But the Magneto here is not the noble ruler he had become before his death; his powers enhanced and his mind ravaged by the drug Kick, he is a power-hungry, human-hating lunatic who inspires nothing but contempt in his newly recruited Brotherhood of Mutants. "This guy’s no hero, he’s a jerk," says former Xavier Institute student and Brotherhood recruit Beak. "Magneto is nothing but a jerk!" Morrison turns the traditional Magneto story on its head here. Magneto’s conviction has always drawn other mutants to him, but now his drug-fueled plans to kill mankind push them away; he is unable to inspire the mutants of New Genosha with his over-the-top speeches, which his lieutenant Toad dismisses as too “Shakespearean.” Magneto, and the cackling brand of supervillainy he represents, is exposed here as a sham. He was able to recruit Xavier’s students only in his guise as the pacifist Xorn. The students were drawn to the gentleness and wisdom of Xorn, who represents everything "new" Morrison tried to add to the X-Men. Once the students see Magneto for who he is, however, they turn their backs on him, and, symbolically, on the old X-Men paradigm he represents. In Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum's Uncanny X-Men #150 from 1981, the X-Men prevent Magneto from destroying the world by showing him the errors in his doctrine; but in New X-Men #150, Wolverine kills Magneto. Morrison knows that Magneto, though he may change, would always revert back to the power-mad supervillain he once was--Magneto was an infection, preventing the X-Men from evolving. He had to be eradicated.
EMMA FROST: Stop trying to live up to such ridiculous, restrictive ideals. Let yourself fall. Stop being such an old super hero, Scott.
CYCLOPS: But I’ve never been anything else...I’ve never been allowed to be anything else. - New X-Men #138
"Scott. You’re my favorite super hero." - Jean Grey to Cyclops, New X-Men #126
What Morrison has attempted with New X-Men is an inoculation. He injected the series with all the old viruses--Magneto, Sentinels, evil twins, dystopian futures, the Phoenix, Weapon X, the Shi'ar Empire--but in altered forms that showed them for the diseases they had become. They worked in the past, but now they keep the X-Men idea from progressing--they keep the mutants locked in an endless series of battles and reworkings of past ideas. Morrison's New X-Men is one last shot of all the old tropes, a chance for the characters and the readers to build antibodies against them so they can't come back. So the X-Men can evolve out of the superhero box they were shoehorned into (given what has been revealed so far of Marvel's post-Morrison plans, there’s only a slim chance of this actually happening). And Morrison's not just talking about the old superhero saws of pacifism vs. violence and should-we-kill? vs. we-shouldn't-kill; he’s talking about the aggression at the very core of superhero comics. Superhero fights started as metaphors, but now they refer only to themselves, and the only progress made is in the level of graphic detail. The idea of the superman, New X-Men tells us, has the potential for much more than just an excuse for earth-shattering wrestling matches. We created the supermen, and there is still more we can learn from them, just as they are capable of more--even something as profound and simple as love.
Cyclops--Scott Summers--is the X-Men's prototypical super hero, their leader and all-around stick-in-the-mud. He's married to Jean Grey, a telepath and telekinetic who every once and a while plays host to the destructive cosmic power of the Phoenix. But Scott's not happy with the marriage, and he can't tell Jean--but he can tell the seductive Emma Frost, with whom he begins a telepathic affair. So begins Scott's descent from super hero to human being (mutant, actually, but you get the point), from boring cliché to screwed-up, vibrant, living person. It's a fall, but also a rebirth, and that rebirth is the heart of Morrison's New X-Men. The fall is what makes us human; a super hero who never falls isn't a hero at all, but an untouchable god. Beak becomes a hero after a literal fall caused by Magneto; the organ-harvesting U-Men refuse to breathe the air or touch the ground of the "fallen world." But the fallen world is the only world we, and the X-Men, have. Utopia is an unachievable dream, and Eden is the eugenic nightmare of Sublime in Morrison's final story, "Here Comes Tomorrow." At the end, Jean Grey, as the Phoenix, must choose between the perfect, cold, superheroic "love" she and Scott had, and the messy, complex love he shares with Emma. She chooses the fallen world; like Morrison, she burns away the past to make room for the future. |
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