X-MEN #99: Oh, the Humanity!

The X-Men face their new powerlessness

Originally Published April 2000

When we last left off, that wacky magenta geneticist The High Evolutionary pushed a button that stripped all of the mutants of their powers, thus unilaterally solving the questions that have driven this series for nearly 40 years, such as, "do mutants have rights?" You're welcome.

However, instead of wallowing in his own crapulence as he should, he is somehow plagued by doubt about whether he had the right to make this kind of decision for the entire planet. His buddy Nathaniel Essex -- hey, where have I heard that name before? It sounds kind of familiar, and yet I can't quite... well never mind -- thinks the Evolutionary is A-OK.

When did Peter Boyle grow a mustache?

Alas, ending all mutant powers somehow has not resulted in the world becoming utopian, or even whatever the hell our non-mutant having world is, as violence continues, for example, in Genosha, where sides war over who gets the best place on this now-meaningless island.

Maggie's Got a Gun. His dog day's just begun. Now everybody is on the run.

Drawn into the fray are, of course, stranded X-Men Bobby Drake and Hank McCoy, now doing laser battling alongside their onetime foe.

Speaking, however, of crazy unilateral decision-makers, we check in on Alda Huxley, whose crazy scheme to cede Genosha to Magneto as a test case for mutant sovereignty has been somewhat complicated by this development. However, she believes it will all shake out one way or another.

She also discusses the possibility of prosecuting Magneto with Gabrielle Haller, who is strangely game to see that happen considering she defended him last time.

Privately, Gaby wonders where Charles Xavier might be. Answer: in space hanging with Skrulls.

But at the school that bears his name, a less-demonic-looking Kurt Wagner works out in the danger room, futilely trying to keep up with an artificial version of his old self, one still blessed with mutant agility.

Kurt, however, is having a hard time learning to walk without a prehensile tail to use as a center of gravity, let alone do his old acrobat shit.

The other Ex-X-People are also doing their best to move on, with Colossus cooking, Kitty attending college (where she has complaints about the relative lack of Brood invasion experience among her classmates), and Warren and Betsy visiting every tropical getaway they can, and just generally being out there being sexy.

Speaking of Storm and Marrow -- which I am pretending you did -- they both got jobs as counselors at a Camp Upstate, because when I think who is best to look after a bunch of kids, I think of the semi-reformed terrorist who grew up in a kill-or-be-killed hellscape. She really knows how to weave a friendship bracelet.

Like most of us, all of Marrow's personality defects could be cured by getting hotter.

Sarah, who has grown out a fetching lob, has also struck up a relationship with a young man named Brad (leading me to wonder just how long its been since the last issue??) Storm, reasonably, is not taking this "lack of connection to the fundamental forces of the Earth's biosphere" thing well. Now she has to walk around, not knowing what the weather is doing, like a fucking idiot.

Again.

Rogue, who seemingly found time to get her law degree, visits her mother Mystique in jail. Mysty is not convinced she can get a fair trial for her years of terrorism and espionage.

And in a mysterious place so mysterious that seriously I can't even begin to tell you where it is, two mysterious individuals called Hunter and Domina, who collectively refer to themselves as The Neo, plot their revenge for those they have lost when the depowering ray struck -- it seems at the time their daughter was submerged in water using her powers, and the High Evolutionary picked a really inconvenient moment to un-mermaid her.

You're probably also wondering in all this, how's Wolverine doing? And the answer is, not great. Because you see, without his mutant healing factor to sustain him, his newly-regained adamantium-laced bones are killing him. Well, that sounds like a shit deal!

But, he's got a solo series to play that out.

Speaking of tie-ins, we also hear from Dani Moonstar and Cannonball. But more importantly, back in Genosha, we see Magneto granting Beast and Iceman the last seats on the ship off of Genosha to get back to the X-Men and find out what exactly is going on, while he stays here to face the issue of the Genoshan mutates further de-evolving due to this depowering thing.

Now back to the most important question: how does the High Evolutionary feel about all of this? Well, let's ask him...

Oops, you can't. You know why? Because he's been trapped in his stupid pink costume* by his supposed friend Essex, who reveals himself as...

*Not that being pink makes the High Evolutionary's costume stupid, only that it is stupid, and it is also pink

Misteeeeeeerrrrrrr Sinisterrrrrrrrrr!!!!

That's right, suckers! It turns out there is something to do with the X-Men in all this! Sinister has hijacked this whole project for his own nefarious ends. And thank goodness, I was getting bored.

I have genuinely never been so happy to see Sinister

Further Thoughts:

Yes, let's not bury the lede, Chris Claremont is (openly) returning to write the X-Men very, very soon! Don't go away just yet! We'll have more talk about that in the future.

It's not that every comic I read needs to be wall-to-wall action. Really. I actually could appreciate a really nuanced story where we examine a certain phenomenon through the eyes of multiple characters. There are plenty of issues that were quieter, slower, more observational, which I enjoyed.

However, when I read a superhero comic book, I often like it when the protagonists... protagonize. For whatever reason, despite being grievously wronged, the X-Men make no effort whatsoever to fight the High Evolutionary, resist him, find out what he's done and undo it. Half of them have already moved on with their lives. They should at least try to get on a rocket ship and go bust the Evolutionary's nuggets.

Yeah, why do a fight scene here, in this comic?

This is a bunch of vignettes about what might happen if all the mutants lost their power, but in the end there's no story really. Not for Wolverine or Nightcrawler or Kitty. There's kinda-sorta one for Hank and Bobby and Magneto, but it's not easy to get invested in without the remaining touchpoints of mutants/mutates versus flatscan Genoshans, and the comic has never shown much adeptness at depicting that messy conflict.

"Mutants brought down to normal" just isn't a compelling story, at least not here. You know who else doesn't have mutant powers? All of us here reading it. We know what that world's like because we live in it. We know Wolverine isn't in any danger of dying of his Adamantium poisoning, so it feels pointless to ruminate on. How about more of the X-Men showing they don't need powers to make them heroes?

One of my biggest grievances about this story from the outset was, of course, that the High Evolutionary has nothing to do with the X-Men. His appearance is the definition of abrupt. Luckily, Sinister is here to eat up the rest of the story and give us some link to the material. That at least makes sense and provides some investment in the rest of the proceedings. But as I have said before, it's a no-win scenario. The premise is too big to do justice to with a quick story, and not interesting enough to justify a big long epic.

One last thing. Maybe I've said this before but it bears repeating. When I go all-out critiquing some old comic for its follies, foibles and failures, I'm not dense enough to think that I can shout back through time and get it fixed, scold its creators, affect the stories going forward or prevent people from having bought it. It's long since happened. I call these things out so that people will know what to look for in the media and stories they consume, so they can build their own frame of reference for what is good in stories, whether they subscribe to my believes or disagree with them. So that you, modern-day reader, are conscientious of what you are taking in, and so that any future creators reading this can avoid making the same errors. Am I the ultimate arbiter of quality and taste? Maybe not. Maybe I'm just some guy with a blog. But we're here, aren't we?