What’s Covered?
New X-Men # 142 - 150
Roster Watch
Synopsis
UXM # 142 - 145: Assault on Weapon Plus
Writer - Grant Morrison
Pencils - Chris Bachalo
New X-Men vol. 1 #142 2003 Grant Morrison Chris Bachalo
Cyclops getting drunk at the Hellfire Club
He quit the X-Men
Sabretooth gives him a hard time
W joins him
“ You know something, you always get the best girls, slim. I watch the smart, interesting, beautiful woman, going nuts, trying to crack through the shell of the summers cool. And all you do is whine.”
W and Cyke are going with Fantomex to bring Weapon Plus down
This bar scene between Wolverine and Cyclops was one of the greatest X-Men conversations I can remember! You can almost see a glimmer of Philosopher Logan here.
New X-Men vol. 1 #143 2003 Grant Morrison Chris Bachalo
The 3 find that AIM attacked Weapon +
Cyclops can’t fire his optic blasts due to stress
Everyone has trouble getting it up from time to time.
“The World” was a Weapons Plus installation where time worked differently and they created Weapon 15
Their goal was to create genetically enhanced, super soldiers to fight in the war versus mutantkind
New X-Men vol. 1 #144 9/10/2003 Grant Morrison Chris Bachalo
Cyclops tries to talk Fantomex out of using Wolverine as his hired muscle
Time starts up again, and the three are attacked by a car cop
3 vs Weapon 15
Wolverine escapes to a space installation
We'll later learn that the installation is Asteroid M.
New X-Men vol. 1 #145 9/24/2003 Grant Morrison Chris Bachalo
W finally seeing his history
Basically, Wolverine reads the Origin Limited Series.
Weapon plus wanted to make a comic book team of heroes to fight/kill mutants
Weapon 15 asks about the meaning of life
W blows up the whole space installation while still being on it
UXM # 146 - 150: Planet X
Writer - Grant Morrison
Pencils - Phil Jimenez
New X-Men vol. 1 #146 10/1/2003 Grant Morrison Phil Jimenez
Jean’s Phoenix powers help her locate Logan, she’s heading off to get him
The Phoenix powers are heating up!
Scott and Fantomex crash (something blew up their ship)
Beast crashes during rescue attempt
Something or someone is sabotaging the X-Men.
Xavier freaking out about their being a traitor in their midst
Sooraya (Dust) goes crazy and destroys Cerebra
Xorn was trying to get her to renounce her faith in favor of mutants
The Weapon X facility was Asteroid M
What the fuck, Xorn was Magneto
It was all a ruse
Magneto was holding Xavier’s spine together, but now he’s crippled again
He has an upside down map
I'm reserving most of my responses for the "My Connections" section below.
New X-Men vol. 1 #147 10/8/2003 Grant Morrison Phil Jimenez
Mags turns NY into New Genosha
New Brotherhood
Esme, Beak, Angel, Toad, Ernst, Basilisk, Angel babies
This happened so fast and my head was just spinning. Xorn was Magneto and within one issue he attacks all of New York.
Esme is right hand
This seemed a little out of left field.
Mags been pretending and planning all along
Mags destroys the school
Mags addicted to Kick
Xavier naked in a tube
New X-Men vol. 1 #148 10/15/2003 Grant Morrison Phil Jimenez
Mags rhetoric is not working with the New Yorkers
I'll comment on this more below, but this just wasn't sitting right with me. It just felt wrong to see him so ineffective.
Jean and W hurtling towards the sun
As W and Jean head towards the sun, W stabs Jean and walks out into the sun so they can be obliterated
I get this is supposed to be romantic and iconic, but it just didn't land for me. I like that even at the end they didn't kiss or anything. Even though Logan loves Jean, Morrison never had him trying to go for her.
New X-Men vol. 1 #149 11/19/2003 Grant Morrison Phil Jimenez
Beak and Angel refuse to exterminate humans. They accuse Magneto of being a Nazi.
Finally, something felt right. Even though Angel was portrayed as a "bad girl," I didn't think either of them were right for the bad team.
Basilisk makes a joke and Mags kills him
Beak sent out with the humans
Beak stumbles across the resistance
EVA, Cyclops, Fantomex, 3 Cuckos, Dust, others
Once again, this just felt wrong. I can't explain why. Maybe just too fast.
Magneto tells Esme she’s nothing to him Now this was interesting. Kind of like a Thanos accusation, saying that he is his own worst enemy. While you can make an argument that Magneto's past might line up with this, it's actually opposite to the point Morrison is trying to make. Morrison is trying to say that Magneto is just a psychopath and there's not much more to him.
She was in love and thought she would be by his side
She accuses him of waiting to reverse the poles until someone can stop him
An internal voice says this is always his weakness
New X-Men vol. 1 #150 12/17/2003 Grant Morrison Phil Jimenez
Jean dies (in space) and comes back as the Phoenix
Creates a spaceship, saves W, then picks up Emma and Beast
Fantomex comes to save Xavier
Shoots Toad in his kneecaps
Esme and the others refuse to fight for Mags
What goes around, comes around
Cyclops shoots his optic blast into Magnetos eyes
This was just weird. How would this not kill him?
Esme tries to stop Magneto but he kills her
The ppl aren’t impressed with Mags anymore
Scott tells Jean that he decided who he wants to be with, but we aren't told who it is. I'm pretty sure it was Emma.
Mags gives Jean a shock and kills her.
W cuts off Magnetos head
We get a quick glimpse into 150 years in the future, which sets up the next arc.
Both of these deaths seem final, but I just can't take them seriously. No one's spent more time supposedly dead than these two.
My Connections and Creators
Let's get straight to the Magneto of it all. I get what Morrison was trying to do. He's trying to demonstrate that both Charles and Magneto are relics of the past and their philosophies work best when in the hands of the next generation. I get that. But I just can't get past the fact that this was not my Magneto. I put Magneto as my #1 favorite character because of the nuance that comes with him. He's not a straight up psychopathic killer, he has layers. He can be sympathetic. I might not agree with him, but I understand him. This version of Magneto is taking over Manhattan and killing hundreds. This version of Magneto is ready to wipe out every human being (and possibly many mutants) by reversing the poles. And worst of all, this version of Magneto is not respected. I just can't get into it.
I got done reading this arc last night and something just didn't feel right. I spent a good amount of time simply reflecting and trying to understand what felt off to me. Something about it felt familiar too. Finally, it hit me...The new Star Wars trilogy! Magneto is like Emperor Palpatine, the OG villain who turns out to be behind everything all along. The Morrison era was great so this just seemed out of nowhere. I'm not going to say that this ruined Morrison for me (there's still one arc left), but I would certainly say he stumbled here.
Another complaint is that everything happened too fast. There didn't start being obvious hints about the Xorn reveal until this arc. Another example of this moving too fast is with the actual takeover of New York. This is a HUGE deal, yet it happened in a single panel. There was a resistance, but it all seemed so rushed. Jean becomes the Phoenix incredibly fast. I know this has had some build up, but this also just seems like a big deal that did not seem natural. Ultimately, I did not think her death felt earned either.
*Edit. Before I published this, I started going deep into the interwebs to see if there were other Xorn hints and according to this great CBR article, it was really there all along!
One of Xorn's first lines that he delivered in his prison (New X-Men Annual 2001) was “I could have built Heaven on Earth, if only they’d let me”
I'm such a dumbass. I didn't really understand the quote at the time, but it's a clear reference to Eve of Destruction.
Xorn "healed" the X-Men of Nova's nanosentinel's in their bloodstream, but really it was just Magneto killing the sentinels with magnetism
I didn't understand why Quentin Quire was laughing after Xorn (Riot at Xavier's) showed him something, but duh!
The one hint I kind of caught was when Xorn said the following during the Draco story: "A mutant with a disregard for human life (Lorna) needs modification while a human with disregard for mutant life assists you (Annie).”
I definitely didn't connect this to Magneto, but it strike me as being completely out of character for the pacifist.
Characters
Jean
Well, Jean went full Phoenix again and once again was killed. So much of this just seems wrong. The Phoenix stuff never fully made sense. If the Phoenix force was this otherworldy power, then why did it come back? How was Jean controlling it? If it was fully back, how could Magneto have so easily killed her? Didn't Wolverine stab her earlier and she lived through it? I also don't like how we barely got much of a reaction from Jean after learning that Scott was cheating on her.
Cyclops
Jean is dead and Cyclops must be fully dead inside, because he seems to have no problem moving on to Emma. I thought Morrison would be the prophesized one who made me like Cyclops. He got close, but nah.
Emma
Emma is still great but I lost some respect for her.
Beast
He doesn't get much to do.
Wolverine
After all this time, he finally gets to kill Magneto. He's been wanting to do this for quite some time.
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