John Sublime makes his move
Originally Published December 2001
We begin with a meeting of the minds.
Specifically, John Sublime introduces us to Martha Johannson, a mutant brain he keeps in a jar that does his bidding. Right now, she is responsible for keeping heroes Cyclops and Emma Frost immobilized while Sublime examines-slash-humiliates them.
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| Finally, an X-Men writer who gets it. |
Unfortunately, he didn't read the manual when it comes to Cyclops' visor, and nearly pays the price.
Speaking of folks who didn't do the reading, here's the U-Men going up against Wolverine out in Wyoming:
After making short work of these Hench-U-Men, Logan extends a clawed hand to assist young Angel Salvador, the winged mutant they've captured. Then he realizes that particular hand may not be the best foot to put forward -- mixaphorically speaking.
Startled, she unleashes some of her acidic throwup on him, but he's unbothered and simply looks for some alkali to pour on it. When one of the U-Men stirs, Wolverine hasn't got much time for him...
...dropping his narratively-convenient (and otherwise banned) cigar into the leaking pure oxygen tank.
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| How does Angel survive this? Never mind |
Soon, Logan and Angel S. are at a greasy spoon. Angel is not excited spending the rest of her life being hated and feared by the world, and is certainly not sure she wants to sign up to protect said world.
Before Wolverine can make a recruitment pitch, they are clocked as muties by the diner's proprietor, who politely asks them to move along, lest he give them the same treatment he gave his own mutant baby, relating the tale in one of the darker moments I've ever heard of in an X-Men comic (and we just witnessed a genocide, so consider that.)
So anyway, he starts blastin'.
And Angel is still not very good at flying.
Logan finds her and offers a pro-tip.
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| Nobody ever warns you how much wind gets in your face, you know? |
As she sobs that she still has hopes of de-mutantizing surgery, Wolverine welcomes her to her life; there's no turning back.
Back in New York, Sublime has loaded Scott and Emma into a U-Men truck and is preparing to besiege the school. With two of the X-Men's heavy hitters on ice, he's not expecting much in the way of resistance.
Inside, Jean discusses her strange feeling that something is afoot, with all their assorted misfortunes -- including a mystery cold that's going around. She then politely probes Beak's mind to find out what exactly caused him to attack his beloved Professor Hank.
She doesn't have time to learn much more -- not that Beak probably has a lot else to say -- when the Intruder Alert is sounded. Hank staggers to his feet to provide whatever assistance he can.
Jean phones the police, but of course they're not going to come help a bunch of muties, so Jean and the kids are pretty much on their own.
The U-Men demand that the students all come out in alphabetical order (as if anyone has time to figure out roll call right now.) Jean, however, is ready for action.
And there we leave you.
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Further Thoughts:
In 2000, Marvel debuted Ultimate Spider-Man, which was cannily structured to take advantage of the market for trade paperback collections, in which which they had been outpaced by DC (particularly Vertigo and Wildstorm). They wanted readers to be able to get fairly standard-sized editions containing, essentially, a cohesive, singular story, at not only their local comic shop, but at bookstores and Wal-Mart. To wit, the story of Spidey's origin takes place over six installments, giving readers time and space to sit with it, rather than quickly kicking into gear.
It only follows then that the stories told in comics would start to morph so that a certain number of issues would represent one (hopefully quite fulsome) story, rather than a smattering of two-parters, running sagas, or random one-offs. Increasingly, Marvel Comics would need to be able to be bundled as discrete units. It was far from standardized by 2001 -- in fact it never quite has been, but you know it when you see it -- but this Germ-Free Generation three-parter very much embodies this trend.
Simultaneously, comics are always searching for the most economical form of themselves. That may be in the form of larger panels that ensure not too many plot points can happen in an issue, or focusing in on more minute moments to fill larger segments of space in the comics. This is something we've seen here and elsewhere, increasingly as we dip into the new millennium of comics.
All of which is to say, this is the first issue I've read from Grant Morrison that does not feel like I would have gotten my $3 worth from it.
The story ekes forward every so slightly. Scott and Emma begin it being held captive, and remain so. Jean tries to learn more about what's going on at the mansion, and whatever she learns isn't enough to take action. Beast wakes up. Wolverine forges a tentative bond with new recruit Angel Salvador. This doesn't feel like a full chapter of a story, it feels like a fragment. Part of a part.
Twenty-something pages have art and dialogue on them, but to what end and what effect? It remains great to see Grant Morrison's writing simply being, but whereas previous issues, even if they were not momentous, usually contained some interesting idea, moment or scene, this one feels like a liminal space between them, lacking meaningful content. Remember, this is approximately the same number of pages Chris Claremont and Brent Anderson used to create Uncanny X-Men #160. More could always be done.
Well, nobody bats 1.000 (insert Beak joke here.)
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