Welcome back to Mutantversity, a class offered at the Krakoan Akademos Habitat. This isn’t a place to find big reviews of X-books, (that’s what our Review section is for!) but it’s a great way to keep up with one of the most complicated superhero series around. We’re going to dive into the deep end as we try to parse all the secrets of this new era of “X-Men” comics. As your designated X-Pert, I will do my best to help you work through everything Marvel’s Merry Mutants have to offer!
This month we usher in the dawning of the age of the Destiny of X. We’ll check in with a couple of big headlines sending ripples across Marvel mutantdom.
Shhhhhh… Secret Team!
The first title to drop in this brand new era is none other than “Secret X-Men.” It already feels like the title that exemplifies the era. It’s a hodgepodge team, including Armor, Banshee, Strong Guy, Tempo, Boom Boom, Marrow, Cannonball, and Sunspot. A bunch of these guys were losers in the X-Men election. Some of them are just fun characters. On the surface though, you’d have no idea what the throughline is here. Why is this a team?
That ends up being the center of the book. In an all-too-familiar moment of meta-awareness, Sunspot walks the readers through the strategy of building a new superhero team. This doubtlessly mirrors conversations that took place in planning the book, and those planning sessions just take up pages of this comic. Fortunately, the character work is delightful, including the moment when Sunspot forgets a critical superpower that everyone knows needs to be represented on every X-team.
Ultimately, it’s hard to see where “Secret X-Men” fits into the larger story. It picks up on a couple of the running stories happening over in the Shi’ar empire, but it can’t help like a self indulgent side story with some favorite characters. The closest comparison might be “Defenders,” a casual gathering of superheroes that’s never intentional, but often saves the universe from way weirder threats than the Avengers would ever consider. The “Secret X-Men” will never get the credit of the headliners, but their galaxy hopping quest might be quietly more important.
No Girl No More
No one has done a better job at deliberately exploring the weird corners of Krakoan culture thanVita Ayala. Since resurrection was introduced, there have been so many avenues to explore, but the X-line parcels out those big twists on the formula carefully. In “New Mutants” #24, we continue to explore the potential for mutants who want a different body.
There have been a couple of consciousness swapping resurrections, like Betsy Braddock and Kwannon, who are now both back in something like their own bodies. Karma was haunted by the ghost of her twin brother, she died in the crucible to split them back into two. In “New Mutants,” we’ve seen Cosmar grapple with this same sort of question. When Cosmar’s powers manifested, she turned herself into a cartoonish nightmare version of herself. She’s been trying to figure out if this is her authentic self, and it’s been a messy process.
But Martha Johanson never asked for this! When she was first introduced in Grant Morrison’s “New X-Men” #118 (in 2001), her body had already been harvested by the villainous U-Men. She survived because of her psychic mutant powers as a brain in a jar. Krakoa gave her the opportunity to respawn as it were, into something like a human body, though one that has a window to her brain as continuity with how she’s looked in the last 20 years of comics. Now she’s going by Cerebella!
This is a huge development for a weirdly prevalent supporting character, and one that opens up her potential in huge ways. I’d love to see other stories exploring identity-affirming resurrections, and to see more conversations between mutants who went through major physical transformations.
Cerebro in a Black Hole
“X Lives/X Deaths” sure is a thing huh? An evil Russian cabal is sending Omega Red’s consciousness through time, trying to assassinate Professor X and other significant mutants, before they can do their thing. And Jean is sending Logan’s consciousness through time, which is something I didn’t know she could do outside of the Days of Future Past movie. (Oh wait, that was Kitty Pryde, it made even less sense). Meanwhile, Moira MacTaggert is on the run.
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None of that is strictly speaking, what’s interesting here. Sure the intrigue is kind of fun and forgettable, but what was that about sticking a Cerebro backup in a black hole? That’s right! The X-Men have been through every kind of comic book threat imaginable, they’ve been wiped out a bunch of times. They need to be prepared. And so their security division is working overtime to backup the resurrection protocols outside space and time.
This is genius. In a superhero universe, literally anything is possible. Mutants have been wiped out by artificial viruses, evil machines, and magic spells. Time travel is a regular feature in their adventures. Of course one of their villains would try to assassinate Professor X before he can found the mutant nation. But if they can back up mutants outside the timeline, it doesn’t matter what you do. The immortal X-men would truly be unkillable.
MODOK Menacing Mutants
Everyone’s favorite angry head with baby legs has not spent a lot of time fighting the X-Men. MODOK likes to stick to Avengers. Captain America is a favorite foe of his. He likes to outsmart the Hulk. He and Hawkeye have gone at it a few times. He even put together a fantastic heist to steal treasures from the Mandarin. But he doesn’t have a particular bone to pick with the mutants.
Meanwhile, the X-Men are constantly battling machines designed only for killing. One of them (Sunspot) even purchased AIM, the organization that birthed MODOK. It was only a matter of time before the evil humans who build sentinels would track down one of the most prolific killing robots in the biz.
MODOK isn’t really a closer. Once the heroes know where he is and what he’s up to, he’s not going to win. The scariest thing he gets up to are schemes like in these issues of “X-Men” where he performs twisted experiments on innocent victims. But this guy is more than a little bit unstable. An alliance between MODOK and ORCHIS is a dark day for the X-Men.
X-Books read:
“Secret X-Men” #1 – A lot of stuff just sorta happened in this issue, but the character work was top notch and it was filled with fan-favorite characters.
“New Mutants” #24 – I’m so glad that we are getting scene of characters reconciling with their pasts and I am so glad the person writing those scenes is Vita Ayala.
“X-Men” #8 – If having the X-Men just fighting a dumb villain like MODOK is this fun, I want to seem them fight every baddy in the world.
“X-Men” #9 – Maybe this one had one too many storylines, but hey, MODOK is teaming up with sentinels, so I’m still in.
“X Deaths of Wolverine” #2 – A taut, lean issue that plays to Percy’s strengths and deepens the mysteries of Wolverine and Moira.
“X Lives of Wolverine” #3 – There’s a messiness to how the story is presented, but it’s a good idea and already feels monumental to Wolverine and his supporting cast.
“X Deaths of Wolverine” #3 – Exciting HOXPOX connections can’t make up for the fact that most of the original ideas introduced in this issue fail to sparkle. Big reveals could hold promise, but fall flat.
