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Underground > Comic Books >

X-Men #162: 'Shen Xorn' revealed

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ONLY NICE THINGS

07:20 / 24.09.04

That is, of course, because you haven't read The Man in the Iron Mask.

You are clearly schizophrenic.

Matthew Fluxington

11:41 / 24.09.04

Nah. It's Emma. Everyone in ediorial hates her because of the whole "former super-villain" thing, so obviously they decided that Emma has secretly been planning the downfall of the X-Men the entire time.

Um, no. It's pretty obvious that they loved what Grant did with the character, because it gives them a new iconic female x-character, the first since Rogue. Emma is incredibly popular among fanboys - she's a hot chick in lingerie, obvs. They make a lot of money off selling toys and posters and sculptures of her. Emma is not going anywhere.

So, yeah, you're kinda out of your mind.

Matthew Fluxington

12:02 / 24.09.04

I don't much like Chuck Austen, but you all need to understand that he's not exactly writing this stuff himself. He didn't do this Xorn thing because he wanted to, it's because he was told to do so. Chuck's job on X-Men for the past several months has been to do the editors dirty work - explain away the return of Xorn and Magneto, make Juggernaut evil again, and set everything up for Chris Claremont, Joss Whedon, and Peter Milligan so that they can all start fresh on their runs. (A luxury that no one ever gave to him, mind you. He's been editorial's bitch from the start.)

12:09 / 24.09.04

Um, no. It's pretty obvious that they loved what Grant did with the character, because it gives them a new iconic female x-character, the first since Rogue. Emma is incredibly popular among fanboys - she's a hot chick in lingerie, obvs. They make a lot of money off selling toys and posters and sculptures of her. Emma is not going anywhere.

editorial likes what Grant did with Emma. it's Claremont that doesn't like Grant's Emma, and the section of the X-fanbase that still regard him as the core X-writer.

Chuck's job on X-Men for the past several months has been to do the editors dirty work - explain away the return of Xorn and Magneto, make Juggernaut evil again, and set everything up for Chris Claremont, Joss Whedon, and Peter Milligan so that they can all start fresh on their runs.

Chuck's runs on UXM and X-Men have basically been the place where all the garbage gets dumped. his roster has basically consisted of the characters GM, Joss, and CC didn't want to play with, and now he's cleaning up the ugly bits of continuity caused by Marvel's change in direction.

that doesn't mean any of this sucks any less, though.

13:33 / 24.09.04

>> To me, a far greater tragedy is that Black Tom Cassidy is now a killer tree. He's a tree! Seriously, he's an evil tree.

This is just too bizarre for words. How did Austen make him into a tree -- and why?

13:51 / 24.09.04

This is just to bizarre for words. How did Austen make him into a tree -- and why?

i believe it's his secondary mutation.

Dan Fish - @Fish1k

14:07 / 24.09.04

A vague memory lingering in my head thinks it may have been something to do with Generation X 25, but don't quote me.

Doesn't explain why he talks funny though.

14:14 / 24.09.04

Because he's Irish. Duh.

Black Tom's original mutant ability was to fire energy blasts from his shillelagh.

No, really. I mean, he probably could've just fired 'em from his hands, but he used the cane as a focus for his power.

The whole being-turned-into-a-tree thing isprobably an outgrowth of his fixtion on a particular piece of wood.

It's vaguely Kirbyesqe, ennit?
"AND LO, THERE SHALL COME... A LIVING SHILLELAGH!!"

14:45 / 24.09.04

On the subject of wood and powerbalsts...

Iceman's original mutation is to generate forceblasts of subercold energy that freezes the moisture in the air to create ice. Not that there's ever enough ice to make slides of, mind you, but it's only energy blasts. He can shoot this energy from anywhere, and creates an ice covering when he uses his powers.

Now his secondary mutation actually occurred years ago, when he actually started transforming his anatomy into ice -first evidenced by Mikhail Rasputin, not Emma.

So it's a pretty radical shift to mutate from supercold energy to molecular recomposition. But it's ICEman, so it makes sense for the sake of kids and adventure. And it's not like he was ever creative with the "cold energy" anyway.

Same rationale: Black Tom has a genetic affinity for wood, being the conduit for his forceblasts. Likewise, he was never creative enough to think of using forests as munition fields, but when his secondary mutation was imagined up by the writer, it went straight to molecular recompositon toward his power conduit. Whether his treeform shoots Evil Blasts of Biokinetic Energy remains to be seen. But I got no problem with Black Tom being the new spokesman for Greenpeace.

Matthew Fluxington

15:21 / 24.09.04

Has Claremont ever said anything about hating what Grant did with Emma in print? He seems reasonably okay with it in print - he goes along with the new Scott/Emma status quo pretty well. Just because his characters are suspicious and disdainful of Emma doesn't really say much to me other than that Claremont has a desire to keep Emma's origins relevant to her current situation, not unlike Joss Whedon. There's no good reason why people like Storm and Iceman and Kitty should like working with Emma, y'know? Obvs, heroic Emma isn't really Grant's invention - all Grant did was finish what Scott Lobdell began in Generation X.

18:08 / 24.09.04

So who gets to answer the question:
Who was Mag/Xorneto?

CC seemed to be the one to sort it out (given that he resurrected Magneto and said the other one was a fake) but now it's up to Austen to explain it?

This.
Is.
Pants.

I don't mind the "twin" thing although it's very lazy and the Juggernaut/traitor thing is rubbish, first interesting thing the've done with Juggy for a while and they have to retcon it.
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
And didn't anyone think Shen-Xorn was referring to Juggernaut btw? He's the one who's going to destroy the team from within (again... egads there must be more storyline possibilities than that one).

19:17 / 24.09.04

No, that's all there is to it. Shen Xorn can't figure out who the traitor is because of Juggernaut's psiblocker helmet.

21:06 / 24.09.04

I'd like to hope that Juggernaut is just being a mole for the X-Men.

Anybody want to sell me some bridges?

01:07 / 25.09.04

So if the one behind Xorneto was Juggernaut, are we to assume his secondary mutation is the ability to take control of other people's bodies, change their appearance and simulate superpowers for them?

16:27 / 25.09.04

Actually, in reference to Black Tom turning into a tree, his tree mutation began in Deadpool 1st limited series (early 90's). Dont quote me on the issue number, but i distinctly remember juggernaut moaning that the only way to heal the wounds that Black Tom suffered at the end of the SpiderMan/X-Force crossover was to have some scientist fuse a wood based bio-material to his ravaged body, or some such bollocks. Can remember 12 year old me thinking, that's crap, what's Nicieza on about now.That's what's been mutating Tom these past few years. Also see X-force#30-?? i forget which, Siryn goes to Ireland with Warpath, run into mutating Black tom and Juggy.

02:27 / 27.09.04

hachiman is sadly dead-on about Black Tom; it was DEADPOOL: THE CIRCLE CHASE that started the whole "He's turning into wood" thing, and it got more and more intense as he appeared in various other Lobdell books throughout the 90s (GENERATION X #25 being one of them). I hadn't kept track of it for a long time, of course, so it was quite a shock to see how ricockulous he looks in that X-MEN preview.

And wait, will somebody please actually explain who the hell Xorneto was, then? I'm thick. He was the body of Kuan-Yin Xorn with Sublime controlling him? So how the hell did he end up with Magneto's powers and face? Did Sublime rewrite his DNA or something absurd like that?

Milligan starts with #166, right? Not. Soon. Enough. Hopefully he'll be given more editorial rein than Austen, though I don't have high hopes -- I suspect (based on the whole Diana affair) that Marvel doesn't quite know what to do with Milligan; they know he's popular and talented but they can't actually allow him to write the sort of things he'd like to write (though he doesn't seem to mind churning out semi-straightforward stuff if the money's right).

Imaginary Mongoose Solutions

03:46 / 27.09.04

Okay, I sadly know the answer to the Black Tom thing.

Okay, his original power was to channel energy blasts through wood... that's why he carried that cane thingy around. So, when he and Juggy tried to blow up the World Trade Center, we was shot repeatedly by Cable and knocked down an elevator shaft and one of the WTC towers fell on him, I think.

So later, he comes back, having been healed by this evil corp in the X-force plot I can't remember and had been given biological implants that were a flesh/wood hybrid. The idea being that now he could channel his blasts through himself. However, the wood parts went out of control and he's basicly been a tree guy since early issues of Generation X.

Imaginary Mongoose Solutions

03:49 / 27.09.04

I knew I shouldn't have waited so long to post that response.

04:17 / 27.09.04

Just saw on another board where a significant number of people are asserting that the "enemy within" is not Juggernaut (whom they believe to be infiltrating the Brotherhood on behalf of the X-Men), but...admit it to yourself, you know what I'm going to say...Ernst. Yes, the reappearance of Cassandra Nova may be closer than we think, if in fact we thought it at all...

Dan Fish - @Fish1k

07:26 / 27.09.04

They've just started reprinting Deadpool: Circle Chase in the UK Wolverine/Deadpool (formerly Wolverine/Gambit) comic if anyone's interested.

07:35 / 27.09.04

Ernst? As in Ernst saves christmas? I'm really confused now?

Matthew Fluxington

11:12 / 27.09.04

I'm rather hopeful about Milligan's run, actually. I doubt he would've signed up if he wasn't being given similar freedoms as Grant Morrison and Joss Whedon - ie, he's not playing the Austen/editorial bitch role. That Princess Diana thing was just one of those weird things - it was okay with editorial, but the publishers killed it. That's a little different.

A

16:07 / 27.09.04

So, the super villains are just hanging out in the woods, in full costume? Don't they have a super villain club house they can do this in?

16:19 / 27.09.04

the reappearance of Cassandra Nova may be closer than we think

Well, Dr. Sublime has just reappeared in Weapon X so you might not be far off the mark...

18:25 / 27.09.04

I think Flux is right, Milligan could be the next great hope for quality X-Men writers...

04:32 / 28.09.04

I found a simple way to justify the whole Xorn, noble Magneto thing. When the Phoenix was fixing the universe, she retconned reality and split Xorneto into Magneto and Xorn, wait no... that would be the Xorn twins now. Damnit Austen, you ruin everything.

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