NEW X-MEN #117: Danger Rooms

Beast teaches his new pupils, and the Professor has a shocking secret

Originally Published October 2001

We begin in the midst of a Chicken Run...

Here we see Dr. Hank McCoy tutoring his new prized student Barnell Bohusk, who has appropriated the name "Beak." The young man would seem to have limited upside on a superhero team, but every mutant deserves a chance to develop their talents.

As we see, in the wake of the mutant baby boom, the student body at Xavier's has grown more numerous and quite diverse. With all the hustle and bustle, this thing actually looks like a school now!

I remember there was always one naked blobby guy with a visible skeleton in high school

Outside the gates, hate groups moved by Charles' recent public revelation of his own mutanthood, protest.

Elsewhere, Hank prepares for his romantic balloon ride date with Trish. I don't know that you should be putting cats in a hot air balloon, but that's neither here nor there. Anyway, Hank probably should have checked his messages before he got all dressed up in his nice tuxedo.

And after he spent all afternoon grooming himself...

Elsewhere, Jean goes to visit a meditating Wolverine, who is trying to find some inner peace to, at the very least, assist his healing factor after being burned and flayed.

The two note the presence of Lilandra's flagship, inbound in the night sky. The Prof has chosen right now to take a vacay in the stars with his on-again-off-again space GF.

More importantly, Jean is feeling pretty woeful about the state of her and Scott's relationship since he returned from that whole possessed-by-Apocalypse thing.

Wolverine offers Jean a little big kiss, IRL this time, before sullenly declaring it would never work between the two of them.

Below the surface of the school, the now-jilted Beast has elected to spend the rest of his night autopsying the "Cassandra Nova entity." He pulls the Prof aside for a chat. After questioning the wisdom of outing himself just as the school's activities have ramped up, Beast asks a piercing question about his findings...

"Charles" responds, quite simply, that she is the Professor's twin sister, and that she used their connection to slide into his brain. She then proceeds to throw up on Hank's soul, telepathically speaking.

Nova continues her psychic attack, all while taunting Beast about his "de-evolution." (are he not men?)

When Nova is briefly distracted from torturing Hank by the arriving Beak, who wants to give Hank his prized titanium baseball bat (and indeed it would be a prize as they've been banned for years and weren't produced in high quantities.) This gives Hank an opportunity to make his rebuttal to Nova...

But unfortunately, his foe is able to induce Bohusk to... well... give him the bat.

With Hank out of commission, Charssandra proceeds to the arrival site of the Shi'ar ship, bidding farewell to his staff...

Before climbing aboard the starship and heading for the sky...

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Further Thoughts:

Morrison's New X-Men continues to explore some dark places. Cassandra Nova in particular is the product of some very twisted impulses. She is a being of cruelty and malice without peer in any previous comic, spewing unfiltered hatred and venom when her mask as Charles slips.

The creators manage to imbue the debuting Beak with enough pathos and humanity that it already feels shocking and sad when he's forced to assault Beast.

And of course, using Charles for access to the Shi'ar's weaponry is beyond ominous.

The opening of the new version of the Xavier school, which will have a robust student body for the first time in the comic's existence (somewhat taking a cue from the films) allows for an infusion of an imaginative and varied vision of mutantdom. Previously, we were aware that mutants came in all shapes and sizes (and colors and numbers of limbs and...)  but mostly saw these "freakier" mutants in groups like the Morlocks, where they were largely anonymous fodder. Here too, the 150-odd students will still be anonymous (and potentially fodder) but we're already getting to know some. It's a vision of the X-Men franchise that embraces the idea of the mutant more wholeheartedly than it ever has before, spotlighting characters who are valid and real, without needing them to be sexy, combat-ready action stars. The closest the franchise has gotten to this was when it dabbled in incorporating some really freaky-deaky mutants like Skin in Generation X; it's long-overdue.

As with Uncanny, we are now into the world of rotating artists. I wouldn't denigrate Ethan Van Sciver's ability to put pencil to paper -- he sure does a fine job drawing mutants and the menacing Cassandra Nova in Xavier form -- but given his extracurriculars (and how they do or do not align with the principles that generally surround X-Men fandom and this blog) there's something unsettling about offering him any specific praise or even discussion beyond that. In general, his style is suitably in alignment with Frank Quitely's, and as a result he gets to draw a bunch more issues, and if you'd been reading this in 2001 it would be fine. You may hereafter use your eyes and heart to form opinions and observations about his work.