X-MEN #41: Dreams Die!

This is the end

Originally Published February 1995

Having had their memories restored thanks to a brief interaction with Cable, the time-stranded X-Men charge tits-first into danger.

High above Israel -- that is, the Israel of sometime-in-the-past, I'm tired of thinking about it -- schizophrenic* supermutant Legion battles it out with his intended victim, the future Magneto.

*Legion's condition, though occasionally referred to as "schizophrenia" is rather a manifestation of dissociative identity disorder. For more information please consult your local library.

The X-Men, noting that this probably isn't how history happened the first time around, resolve to go find Charles, who is a few blocks away tending to/being tended to by Gabrielle. Considering this young David Haller's claims, and the expression of his power, it seems that Charles' prediction of an increasingly mutant world has come to pass considerably sooner than he had thought.

Psylocke summons Charles, and he is fully gagged by what he sees, which, to be fair, is the correct response to 90's X-Men in general.

An Oriental with a British accent? How in the world could that happen? Outside of colonialism I mean

Back in the present, where the clock is still running, Lilandra informs Charles that a crystal wave of destruction is enveloping the galaxy and will soon be coming for them. Alas, it appears the X-Men's failure is already a fait accompli, or what Gambit might call "Done like Mardi Gras on Wednesday, chere."

Knowing this is the end, Gambit and Rogue get as close as they can...

...while Warren laments that he and Betsy were just getting started. He barely even had time to appreciate her new haircut. He has to settle for facing oblivion with his three oldest friends and not his hot ninja girlfriend.

Back in the past, the massive mutant battle in Israel has woken the neighbors -- specifically Apocalypse, who was resting in his Lazarus chamber not too-too far away in Egypt. He is also sure to shout out his associate Sinister, because we absolutely cannot forget to tie Sinister into everything.

Above Haifa, Legion concedes that while Magneto may not have committed any atrocities yet, nor obstructed Charles' still-nascent dream, he will someday, and for that he has to die.

Storm -- charging in tits-first of course -- rescues Magnus, and deputizes Iceman to stop Legion. Iceman is like "Are you sure? I'm just Iceman." And Storm is like "I believe that you are... Ice-nough for this." It's time to push past those mental barrier and unleash his powers in the way White Queen demonstrated.

Unfortunately, the victory is short lived, as Legion soon explodes out of his shell, putting the X-Men out of commission and leaving just him and a prone Magnus.

"For the last time, yes!"

Legion screams into Magnus' face that it's only a matter of time before he betrays Charles and spoils the dream, but the weary Magnus retorts that the future is not written, that perhaps Legion being here has changed everything.

Legion's like, "Yeah, flicking right."

From afar, Charles sees Legion winding up his killshot. Too frazzled to use his mental powers, he rushes into the fray to defend his friend and...

Specifically...

And, well... shit.

That means Legion was never born, and if he was never born, then he and the X-Men never went back in time, and if he never went back in time, then Charles Xavier was never killed, which means that he was able to procreate with Gabrille and create Legion, who could then go back in time and kill Charles and make it so that he was never born and--

Cut, cut, cut, cut, we're only doing this once. Legion was never born, but Charles is still dead, and the X-Men were never formed, except...

...Bishop, who was already temporally-displaced, and thus remains, even though, which no X-Men to inspire them, the X.S.E. was never formed, and thus he could never have travelled back to the past in the first place... except he did. 

Look, the universe is clearly picking and choosing which rules of causality to acknowledge and which ones to ignore in the pursuit of a very particular status quo, so let's just go with it, all right?

Charles = Dead, Bishop = Trapped in the past. Let's get on with the business.

Back in the still briefly-proceeding future, the crystal wave of destruction has reached Avalon, freezing the Acolytes in a Pompeiian tableau.

As it bears down on a lonely blue planet, lovers Rogue and Gambit do the only thing they can think to do.

And in a jaw-dropping two-page spread, highlighted by some all-time great narration captions from Nicieza, we see all our favourite X-people (and Adam the X-Treme) frozen in place as their world is destroyed.

And with that... it ends.

Further Thoughts:

Notably, this is the first X-Men comic we have covered in some time that does not name Tom DeFalco as Editor-in-Chief, having been replaced by five "line editors" -- Bob Harras overseeing the X-Books. For practical purposes it is a minor chance, but still marks the end of an era and the dawn of the next. 

I have chirped this story all through its first three parts, and I stand by it -- it was messy and lacked content, but hen the time came, they stuck the landing hard and delivered one of my favourite X-Men comics in the past several years.

The entire Legion Quest storyline is, of course, based on that old philosophical maxim of whether you would kill baby Hitler. Magnus in the past is not harmless per se, but he has not yet developed into the violent terrorist/freedom fighter that he will one day become. I don't personally -- and I don't see how anyone who reads X-Men comics possibly could -- believe in preventative justice/pre-crime, but it's all rendered moot when the wrong man, who just happens to be the time traveler's father, gets killed.

It's the story we knew we were getting all along -- in fact, I would be surprised to hear that people in 1995 were taken aback by the outcome -- but man does it hit. I always complain when the X-Men aren't foregrounded in their own comic, so getting them in the mix, particularly with a chance for Iceman to play out his big moment, was a big deal. For the material in the present, which calls for big character moments -- that's half of why we love the X-Men after all -- Nicieza hits a home run. Thought I have been less bullish on his corner of the X-verse compared to Scott Lobdell's, I never doubted or cast aspersions on his ability to write, and to capture moments and moods. Even the fact that we had Garney and Kubert -- two very different artists -- tag teaming, was not distracting or detrimental. All-around superlative effort to seal off this story, and, perhaps the entire history of the X-Men?

After all, if they never formed... what comes next?