X-MEN #100: End of Days

The X-Men meet the Neo!

Originally Published May 2000

We begin with something that never fails to excite comic book readers: earnest declarations of faith!

But while Nightcrawler -- who has retired once again from the X-Men sometime between issues -- is deep in devotion, he is being targeted. Literally, in the form of a laser sight on the back of his head.

Although we can see a crossbow bolt go through him, we are told that Kurt teleported away in the nick of time, thus escaping certain death.

His assailants? The group calling themselves The Neo, led by Domina (front) who have a bone to pick with Flatscans everywhere after that little oopsie by the High Evolutionary. They also don't like what they call Spikes, which is what the X-Men seem to be, although we are given no indication what that means. 

She sends her man Jaeger (the Hunter) after Kurt, making him promise to return for the coming battles.

 

High above, Kitty Pryde, in full Samus cosplay, works to finish renovating the High Evolutionary's old space station, to press it into use for Peter Corbeau's Project Starcore.

Six months have passed since that little adventure, and a few things have changed. Kitty is joined in her task by her fellow active-duty X-Men -- Colossus, Rogue, a now-telekinetic Psylocke, and some newb called Thunderbird.

Despite the objections of the Free Mutant State of Genosha, who fear it will be used for eeeeevil, the station is now habitable, and you know what that means -- Zero-G Dance Party!

Betsy is particularly interested in grinding up on the new Thunderbird in town, Indian-born Neal Sharra, who really seems to frisk her biscuit.

Gone away is her blue bird, here to stay is a new bird

One person who is not feelin' it is Rogue, who is still down about her latest latest split with Gambit, this time over his decision to become the leader of the Thieves Guild. Truly this new obstacle is the really insurmountable one.

Colossus is sympathetic, but hears this mostly as, "So... you're single?"

Yes, in a development that hasn't really been broached before, Colossus in his armored form is impervious to Rogue's life-stealing touch, which means that if she wants to get down, he is one of the leading candidates. 

Any you know, my first instinct is to go "Yuck, where did that come from?" but these two have known each other for years, and there was a smattering of chemistry when they were both the powerhouses of the team back in the late 80's, so... maybe? I could be convinced? I'm trying to keep an open mind here. It's a Revolution, after all.

Back on Earth, Nightcrawler has teleported to Dr. Cecilia Reyes' clinic, which has moved to Vinegar Hill in Brooklyn. She treats his wound before catching an attack herself.

Aboard the Space Station, Kitty and her new Riot Grrl attitude are not up for partying, or so she tells Peter and his new sideburns and ponytail.

Yes, she's going through her rebellious Miley phase... she might even kiss a girl. Someday. For now, it's a boy she's into, a cutie named Seth who makes Stephen Baldwin look like Stephen Dorff. Or maybe it's the other way around, I can't remember my 90s hunks. Anyway, he's not just hot but also smart, debating physics on their first date and giving Kitty's intellect "no quarter."

Seth also happens to be aboard the spaceship but on the very same page he's introduced, whoops, he's already betrayed her.

Back at the clinic, Jaeger is about to put the killing blow on Kurt, but Cecilia steps up, using her force field in an offensive way that definitely violates her oath to do no harm.

Up above the world so high, Kitty finds herself wrapped in a bondage getup, but she's prepared for it, using her earring from earlier as a lockpick or something.

Seth, naturally, is one of the Neo, and he wants Kitty to join up. Domina, skyping in via hologram, isn't so sure, but just as she learns that Jaeger is dead, Seth has his own pressing matters to attend to in the form of a Kitty who is very much alive and kicking.

You see what I did there?

Seth sets off bombs all over the station, which is puzzlingly noted as a good thing by Rogue, in a comment that seems to have lost something between the art and writing. The crew of the station realizes that these X-Men are mutants -- as if the wild costumes and obvious powers they were using earlier weren't giveaways -- but also their only hope to escape the doomed space station alive.

As they improvise an evac, Seth returns to menace the team, taunting Rogue that he is too far above her on the evolutionary Org. Chart to have his powers and psyche stolen by her touch (maybe they could date?)

He escapes into the vacuum of space, his suit advanced enough to guide him to the ground. The heroes combine powers to get the astronauts to safety, with Kitty doing some bravura-level phasing to save the ship from the debris of the collapsing station...

... and Thunderbird's plasma powers standing in for thrusters on the otherwise non-operational shuttle.

Kitty, left on the station, uses a spare suit -- brought by Seth in case she accepted his offer to join up -- to fall back to Earth.

As Nightcrawler and Cecilia limp away from their battle, the remaining Neo howl in mourning for Jaeger like Klingons in that one episode of Star Trek.

The battle is over... but the war is just beginning.

The Claremometer:

1 "No Quarter"

1 bondage

1 bunkie

Further Thoughts:

You say you want a revolution...?

At a time when Marvel desperately needed eyeballs on the X-Men -- with a big Hollywood blockbuster looming and years in the doldrums -- the biggest possible move was to bring back the man who had veritably defined the series in the first place, the man in whose shadow ever writer since had worked, someone with unfinished business following his abrupt departure in 1991, someone who would pique fan curiosity, and perhaps most of all, someone who could write.

Never mind that by the time Claremont's initial run had ended, it really felt to many like it was long in the tooth. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and it was entirely possible that a decade away would give him some fresh ideas about the characters and their world. The move had a high probability of success, in spite of the fact that the author is now 50 years old and perhaps a bit past his ability to capture a characters as young as Kitty is here.

Kicking the timeline six months down the road allows for a few developments that we can speculate on. There's a new Thunderbird, Psylocke's powers have changed (again), Nightcrawler is in a ten-minute retirement, various characters are in various states pf emptional turmoil, and Claremont has upended the soap opera aspect by shuffling the deck of the X-Men's famous couples -- Psylocke and Thunderbird III? Colossus and Rogue? That's going to meet some serious side-eye from the readership. The big double-sized issue hedges its bets, however, just a bit, to blunt the shock of any big swings: the story is still based on the previous few issues, stemming from the fallout of the High Evolutionary's de-mutantifying plot, as the Neo were even set up there. This is evolution, not revolution, as we are simply rejoining the X-Men a little further down the path they were already on.

The "big idea," then, would seem to be, just to pit the X-Men up against a new foe, a team of powerful mutants with a chip on their shoulder. As far as we know, the Neo have lived in seclusion, so how they had the resources to embed Seth with Project Starcore (and do a honey trap with Kitty) but not enough to know how to take down Kurt is one of those eye-rolling inconsistencies that you've just got to shrug off as part of the price of admission.

Is that enough? There's the rub. Marvel led readers to expect the world of Claremont, hyping his return to the Blue Area of the Moon and back. But he was never a home run hitter, not without years in which to develop his stories -- this is a base hit, pure and simple. It's a normal-ass superhero comic, it's a basic model for what comics should and could be any day of the week without being, in and of itself, exceptional in any real way. And yet, that being said, if I'm an average X-Men reader picking up his monthly pull in 2000, after the last few years of product, I'm quite happy with this.

Compared to the slapdash Alan Davis run or the split-personality tenure of Seagle and Kelly, this thing is terrific. There is time for things to unfold, there is a due amount of action and character, and while we may quibble with what is there (again -- Rogue and Colossus?!?) I can't deny there is substance under the surface. The art of Leinil F. Yu emphasizes this as, at best, the comic has a real gravity and presence to it that may not be the artistic revelation of the century, but reminds me of the steady and fan-favourite work of Paul Smith, the way he can make the X-Men feel like real people in a situation, instead of like paper cutouts delivering expositional dialogue. 

For craft, the comic is slightly unbalanced -- it takes place of 40 pages, but five of those are given over to a spacewalk mission where we don't even know for sure what characters we're looking at, and nine of them depict a chaotic evacuation from the space station. A little more room to breathe, aboard Starcore, or to build the doomed Kitty-Seth flirtation, might have helped this comic feel even more advanced. But the previous three years of issues were not even good enough to warrant that kind of nitpicking, which is a roundabout compliment to this one.

What's interesting -- and maybe a bit alarming -- is what's in and what's not. It's clear Hollywood Synergy was not on anyone's mind just yet, as the big screen version of the X-Men were already known to be comprised of Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm, Wolverine, Rogue, and Charles. A few months ahead of that, at a point where you want to be able to direct new and returning readers, and only one of those characters is in the story, and then just barely. One is dead, two are not currently affiliated with the team the last we checked, and two are absent inexplicably. The story instead focusses on comfortable old favourites like Kitty, Colossus and Nightcrawler, as well as the refreshed Psylocke, the new Thunderbird, and Dr. Reyes.

It doesn't surprise me at all that Chris Claremont might be interested in working with Cecilia. A tough but vulnerable professional woman who is a loose associate with the X-Men? It's like he created her himself. We'll see if he can strike the right balance of reluctant hero and active participant that has eluded previous writers, leading me to greatly dislike the character. So far, I'm not mad about her usage here.

The new Thunderbird, however, gets the Poochie treatment, as other characters fawn over him and extol his virtues and while he does play a role in saving the day, it's all so rushed that we srill have no idea who this guy is, reyling on other characters to tell us how we should feel about him. (He's great.) I'm in favor of the X-Men admitting members from underrepresented parts of the globe, but getting time to develop on their own terms, and also being given their own codenames without baggage would be ideal.

Ultimately, this first installment of Claremont's Return Engagement succeeds in feeling like an update of the glory days, and yet getting exactly what we should have expected can't help but feel like it fails to meet the moment and live up to the hype. Part of the magic of the original Claremont Run was that it developed over a very long period of time, spurred first by hungry young creators with a million ideas to burn through, and then through the lens of a seasoned pro who had been developing this saga for years. The return isn't, and wasn't going to be, an instant panacea for the X-Men's sales and creative woes. But there's also no appetite for waiting another five years to see if lightning can be captured in a bottle again.