X-MEN #106: Search and Rescue

The X-Men must liberate Cecilia and Charlotte from the clutches of the Neo!

Originally Published November 2000

We begin with who else but Domina.

Yes, after an absence of many months, the leader of the Neo is here to catch us up on things. She reflects on how the Neo once lived peacefully in their secret enclave, hoping for the day mankind finally did itself in so that they could claim their birthright, dominion over the world. What they didn't realize was that they were still part of the world, and things could happen to them.

Things like getting their mutant powers abruptly switched off in a massive overstep by the High Evolutionary, thus killing numerous Neo, including Domina's daughter. But you already knew that, right?

We see Domina in battle against the X-Men, and she quite frankly has their number, killing each of them one by one by one.

Fatal Presumption is my favourite Finnish Metal Band.

I don't think I will be shocking you too hard if I reveal that Domina has not actually killed Wolverine on page 9 of this comic. These are only simulacra -- fake X-Men designed for Domina to train against (not unlike that time Mystique did the very same thing in Uncanny X-Men #177. Remember that? Good times.)

Domina is being watched by her brother, Ransom Sole and his "factotum" Big Casino, who as it turns out are members of the isolationist Neo who also have a sideline in human trafficking, which you may think kind of screws up the group's "we just wanted to be left alone" claim, but on the other hand...

...

Also present is Rax, the guy who wants to usurp Domina, and who is also the son of her late lover Jaeger. But the boss' attention is called away. It seems some masked person has been attacking the Neo throughout the building. 

This -- in case the highly off-model art didn't tell you -- is the currently drug-fueled Cecilia Reyes, who is fighting for her life in the barricaded church that is functioning as the Neo's Brooklyn base.

Meanwhile Rax slips away to talk insurrection with the dastardly drug dealer Delgado, who has been morphed into some kind of freaky-deaky chimera with Det. Charlotte Jones.

Meanwhile, the X-Men plot how to infiltrate the base, with Wolverine and Nightcrawler teleporting in, despite the uncertainty of breaching Barbican's barrier. ("Barbican's Barrier" is my favourite song by Fatal Presumption.)

While they are inside, however, Rax attacks Rogue and gets the better of her.

However, it turns out Rax has no beef with the X-Man. Instead, he wants to make a deal: help him take down Domina, and her friends go free.

All things considered the offer is... pretty reasonable! So Rogue accepts. Rax takes it as his cue to be pervy.

Thinking better of it, he has his teleporter Jaunt bamf him away (hey, that's trademarked!) 

Rogue shakes it off while Thunderbird observes that the leader just took an ass-whipping and came back with quips. He wonders if this is what separates X-Men from pretenders like himself, but Psylocke assures him that he's already proven his worth.

Neal also takes a moment to reflect on his desire for Psylocke, but tries to get himself under control, since she's taken (this week.)

To Thund3rbird's objections, Rogue notes that of course Rax's deal is a trap, but they've got Wolverine and Nightcrawler inside, and that gives them an edge... somehow.

Unfortunately, they've got their hands full with the Char-gado. 

Don't, um... don't ask how they go to the bathroom.

The power of this mash-up monster seems at first to be too much for our heroes, but luckily, Cecilia Reyes is here to run interference, zonked out on wowie pills that make her force-field that much more powerful and keeps her fighting 'til the break of dawn.

She fends the thingy off, and the heroes bamf™ away to regroup.

Elsewhere in 'Murica, Senator Kelly is on the campaign trail. Val Cooper (who is having an unfortunate hair day) and a sexbot identifying itself as Sharon Carter are here to warn him that that may make him a target of mutant assassins (again.)

He responds with some gallows humor, which he explains is sort of a coping mechanism.

He closes out by reaffirming his dedication to the cause of persecuting mutants because by gar it's good for numbers.

Back in Brooklyn, Cecilia is tending to Nightcrawler's wounds when she has a flare-up of her powers. She desperately takes a swing of Rave and finds herself in a hallucinatory world where she has a neverending supply of the stuff.

Realizing she is becoming the drug's slave, she rejects it, only for the vision to become more aggressive in ensnaring her. 

This turns out to be the work of Elysia, the little girl Neo. Her ability is to give people what they most desire. Wolverine is immune to her ability, because what he desires is nobody's business but his own.

She asks why they didn't kill her when they had a chance earlier, and Logan explains that that's not what X-Men do. She calls him a liar, insinuating that he and the X-Men are to blame for the Neo-massacring de-powering event, but Nightcrawler explains, at some length, that no, that was some other weirdo, and in fact the X-Men stopped him, and would have helped the Neo if they knew they existed.

But Domina, she explains, has really gotten into this whole revenge-killing thing, and by God she's going to ride that train to the last stop.

Meanwhile at a secret facility near Pittsburgh, Mystique trains her latest incarnation of the Brotherhood, which is mostly the same old incarnation of the Brotherhood, only now Toad's powers have changed to be a bit like his big screen counterpart. Synergy!

Also Toad can now do mind-control, because of course he can, and Mystique is immune to it, because of course she is.

 

In Brooklyn, Rogue and the other X-Men bust into the church. They engage in fisticuffs with various Neos. For a moment it looks like Colossus is at the mercy of Antaeus, but the big Neo didn't expect the Russian legsweep.

It's actually not a russian legsweep at all, but he's Russian so... it's a wrestling joke.

Colossus is able to overcome Antaeus, but falls to Domina because who wouldn't. He's so knocked out he turns back to flesh and blood, which gives Rogue a chance to borrow his powers and become Rogue-lossus. (Which also has the side-effect of reminding her that she recently had a serious flirt with him, but is now back to feeling Remy.)

Rax watches, observing the X-Men's success but secretly planning to take out both factions. Unfortunately, he didn't expect that his pet monster would prove to be a wild card who wants everyone out, so he can go back to being a drug-dealing interracial intersexed combo person monster.

The Claremometer is going wild for this!

They battle DelGarlotte a while as Wolverine explains for our benefit that this is the result of Elysia and her brother Tartarus getting them all mixed up with their desires and fears, and also a little dose of Rave for good measure. Sure, whatever.

In the chaos, Domina takes her shot, running Wolverine through with her blade.

RIP Wolverine 1??? - 2000

Elysia protests that maybe things have gotten out of hand, but Domina reiterates that this is war, and that if the little girl doesn't stand aside she'll get the same.

Nightcrawler delivers a pretty speech explaining that no, this is all a misunderstanding and Domina's extremist views are causing her to turn her violence against her own kind, and a child at that.

In the end, Domina sees the light, and gives the X-Men safe passage home. They no longer have any quarrel, and the Neo are free to return to obscurity solitude.

Also, Charlotte reverted back to her human form, sort of, mostly.

The end!

Further Thoughts:

Before you ask, no, I don't know where Ransom Sole and Big Casino were during the final battle, but at least now there's been a connection drawn between these characters and the Neo. A confusing one, that only further muddies the waters around what the Neo actually are and their relationship to the outside world, but a connection nonetheless. (Hey, what happened to Kitty's friend Seth, anyway? And Kitty?)

On the surface, this is just an average story about the X-Men fighting their enemies. The Neo hit the scene a little while back, there were skirmishes, and we found some room for a freaky transformation or two before the ultimate resolution. I can't think of any possible reason why this comic wasn't published as X-Men #103 several months ago, when it could have followed the previous three parts of the clash between the heroes and this little sect; instead, we got embroiled in the whole fiasco with the Goth, the Crimson Pirates, Tullamore Voge, and the other Goth, leaving Cecilia and Charlotte high and dry, with the former literally running solely on the power of illicit drugs, for an untold number of days. It's weird -- maybe the makeready for this issue fell behind a desk and they had to whip something else up until they could retrieve it -- but now it's done and we can move on.

Oh good. Maximum Security is next.

That's fine. It's a comic, it's a B-, it's whatever. I don't know why we now have a random double-sized issue in the middle of the production year, but if it gets us past the Neo sooner, so much the better.

One thing I'm actually kind of interested in would be Cecilia's struggled with addiction. Chris Claremont has mined "superpowers as addiction" before, obliquely and metaphorically, but it's interesting to see it literalized. It's a bit clumsy, but it's interesting to see both the ups and downs of dabbling in drugs. I don't think, in the long term, this will be given the sensitivity and consideration it's probably due, but it's certainly been an interesting point to ponder.

 

As far as enemies of the X-Men go, the Neo are not really inspired. You can slap ten million different powers on anyone you want to -- as we've learned in recent issues where that literally seems to have happened -- but it doesn't make compelling antagonists or characters of any stripe. Domina can do just about anything, and she's surrounded by a horde of other similarly overcranked hotheads, but since I know the X-Men are going to win in the end -- their name is on the cover (in one of the butt-ugliest new logos I've ever seen, a bad attempt to tie in with the movies, which I know I've been advocating for but I would like it done well please.)

The question is why are the Neo fighting the X-Men. The origin of the clash with the Neo traces back to two really unfortunate things. One, the ignominious, better-left-forgotten story with the High Evolutionary just preceding Chris Claremont's return. And two, the nonsensical in-universe blaming of the X-Men for said story.

It's silly enough that we're stuck with "Our daughter was a mermaid mutant and she died underwater when her powers failed" as a starting point for this conflict. It's bonkers that that led the Neo to want to attack the X-Men, as if they would have been responsible for any of it, and not, in fact, the heroes of that story. As a matter of fact, Domina already took her revenge on the man truly responsible, Sinister, by killing him several times over. (It's not real, but she seems satisfied by what she's accomplished.)

The Neo's journey from point A (aggrieved sub-minority) to B (guerilla warmakers intent on killing the X-Men) is missing some connective tissue that would make it make sense. Perhaps the Neo should have attacked someone who was actually responsible, or at least responsibility-adjacent, like Sinister, the Evolutionary, or human lawmakers. At that point, the X-Men could have stepped in and given them their usual high-handed lecture about this not being the way, thus earning the ire of their cousins the Neo. Instead we have a story that boils down to "You wronged us," "No we didn't," "Yeah, well, we have to put all this anger somewhere."

And yet, as it is, there is still something of a story, if you allow that sometimes the human heart has plot holes. It's plausible for the Neo to be so blinded by rage that they'll lash out at anyone, and for whatever reason, they've selected the X-Men as targets. If we only knew what that reason was, we'd have a full story. Not a great story, maybe, but a full one.

So I have all these complaints and letdowns and nitpicks, but I want to tell you what the virtue of this story is. Ultimately, this is a story about anger gone mad, hatred being allowed to take control. About the cycle of violence. The Neo subscribe to a policy of "One of ours, all of yours," which was a Nazi SS slogan used to justify horrendous things done during the Holocaust, and has recently been taken up by the Neo-Nazis running the United States Executive Branch. It's "Never Again means Never Again To Us," which is being used to excuse atrocities being committed in Palestine. It's the exact same thing, and to hear it from villains in the comic book world only underscores how shocking it is to hear it from the villains of the real world. The anger that animates the Neo is very much the same as the anger that animates hatred around the world, even if it comes from a silly place ("My daughter was a mermaid mutant and a man in a stupid pink costume killed her.") Nobody is saying the anger isn't real, but what you do with it is never justified.

Even when they are not at their best, the X-Men comics remain stories about ideas and ideals: not just super punch-em-ups, but stories where conscience and consciousness are what wins the day, as happens in this story. Which is right, if not totally visually compelling and also a little pat for such thorny issues. The Neo story might not be the greatest thing I've ever read, but it's animated by something very true to the spirit of the X-Men.

With a bit of revision, the Neo story could have been a perfectly solid take on the internecine violence that has always defined the X-Men, the violent struggle between incompatible worldviews, and the hate that hate makes. Alas, as is, it's just a bunch of stuff that happened.