NEW X-MEN #115: E for Extinction (Part Two of Three)

Cassandra Nova launches her big attack

Originally Published August 2001

We begin in Ecuador, where Cyclops and Wolverine arrive with Ugly John in tow just in time to see a host of Sentinels lift off for destinations unknown.

When more Sentinels attack the X-Wing (hey, isn't that trademarked by someone else?), Cyclops reassures everyone on board that he has a lot of experience with plummeting aircraft.

To protect the jet from becoming raw material for the next gen of mutant hunting robot drones, Cyclops initiates self-destruct and the passengers eject to safety. While pondering the strange junkyard aesthetic of these new Sentinels, our heroes are left open to an attack.

In the battle, Scott's visor is broken, causing him to fire wildly.

Back at the School, Jean is treating Charles in the infirmary, inquiring about the gun he apparently keeps on his person at all times. Charles explains it, helpfully, as you know, just one of those things.

Hank, who has been composing a letter to Trish Tilby congratulating her on her recent success and also possibly seeing if she's down to clown, notices that the X-Wing has gone silent. Reporting this to Charles, the Professor surmises it has something to do with his recent mental intrusion.

In Ecuador, Donald Trask ruminates on the mysterious action he has just helped Cassandra Nova achieve. He wonders if it was an evil thing to do. Nova comforts him: "Don't worry. It was, but don't worry."

One day, Christopher Nolan will make a movie about this

Unfortunately for Don, he has officially outlived his usefulness: Cassandra has successfully recreated his DNA, so that she can control the Sentinels without him.

I don't know what this is, but I wouldn't want it to happen to me.

With that taken care of, Cass turns her attention to her captives, first targeting poor Ugly John.

Before she can turn her weapons on the more name brand mutants, Wolverine breaks free and takes her captive. Cyclops has the grim duty of performing a mercy killing on Ugly John.

Nova, however, can only smirk in amusement. Whatever she's done, it's too late to stop it.

Our attention shifts to the Island Nation of Genosha, which appears to be recovering nicely from that whole Eve of Destruction flap. Emma Frost has even gotten a job teaching there.

A gothy student going by the catchy handle of Negasonic Teenage Warhead reports that she had a nightmare fifty times last night about Genosha being obliterated.

But that's absurd, right? It's an island full of mutants, surely there must be some defenses.

In a flash, the Sentinels are everywhere, unleashing more carnage than has perhaps ever been seen on the comics page.

We even see a recuperating Magneto, high in the Citadel overlooking Hammer Bay, as certain death descends upon him.

And Charles Xavier, who has been plugged into Cerebra all this time, can only watch...

...as, by the thousands, the lights go out.

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Further Thoughts:

When you first held this comic in your hands, just on the brink of Summer 2001, you did not know what the future had in store, or how true-to-life it would end up reading. The devastation, people running for their lives in what appears to be a Genoshan version of Times Square, even the very nature of the aerial attack targeting tall buildings. It's actually kind of harrowing how exact it is. A few months later, this comic simply would not have been published. (a year or two later, when every action movie seemed to be replaying 9/11 footage, it would have been fine.)

The September 11th attacks represented a very strange moment in the media, because there was a widespread erasure of anything that could remotely have conjured up the images of the World Trade Center and its fate. And weirdly, that was a lot. We all probably recall the Spider-Man teaser trailer that had to be pulled, but it extended to re-cutting the pilot of the forthcoming series 24 (which featured an exploding airplane) and the end of Disney's Lilo and Stitch, to say nothing of the plethora of songs and other pop cultural artifacts from that summer that seemed to presage the attacks. 

Media became hyper-sensitive and struggle to figure out how to cope with what had happened in the world. Soon after the event, Marvel would publish its infamous Spider-Man issue showing a version of that event in the fictional New York... which comes off as extremely cringeworthy to modern readers, particularly for its depiction of supervillains like Dr. Doom becoming teary-eyed up at the kind of mayhem they themselves often wrought. But the truth is, that was the kind of thing people were buying into at the time.

It's partially due to its proximity to the real-world tragedy it uncannily resembles that this one sticks out, but also this one is positioned from the start as the real deal. Comic books have always had a casual relationship with property damage and potential mass death. It wasn't that long ago the X-Men themselves were destroying that very Citadel. With all these super battles, you need to demonstrate the risk, the danger, the scale on which things are happening somehow. Buildings get toppled all the time (they even did a funny mini-series about it) but it's usually implied that everyone makes it out safe, somehow (including that time Magneto set off a volcanic eruption in Russia.)

In case you hadn't quite caught on in the previous issue as to the level these creators were working on, they pull out all the stops to show the extent of the death and destruction. This is a big deal and it is treated as such, from the desperate panic in the streets, to Charles' helpless reaction as he watches from afar, and the mutant counter ticks down by ever-larger increments. 

It has all the dressing of a real world tragedy, the likes of which this audience had never yet lived through. This inciting event will be the point on which the rest of these comics will pivot, and they do not want you to risk forgetting it. Even before it became a mirror of real life, this was going to be a comic that stayed with you.

Here's something lighthearted just to get our minds off that.

It almost doesn't make sense to talk about anything else in this issue before the final pages. but they were on track to have a perfectly good X-Men comic anyway. Morrison and Quitely may not be about conventional superhero action right now, but they absolutely can do the "X-Men's plane crashes and they have to fight their way out of captivity," with appropriate Morrisonian twists like Cyclops having ruby quartz contacts, Nova injecting herself with the essence of Trask, and wry banter aplenty. This was a comic that was already set to deliver before it showed what it was really hiding up its sleeve.