the cruellest month 05

The X-Men #1 introduces both the X-Men and Magneto, spending more time on the latter than the former, understandably. As the eponymous stars of the book, more space is devoted to those characters and the concept of mutants than the obligatory villain that they must fight. Magneto is a fairly one-note ‘evil mutant’ whose scheme involving the Cape Citadel military base is barely a plan at all, foiled with relative ease by a group of teenagers who have received minimal practice under the guidance of a man in a wheelchair with limited fighting abilities or knowledge. It’s the prototypical X-Men story: good mutants against bad mutants. A very black and white arrangement that, over the decades, became shades of grey. Magneto slowly went from one-dimensional villain of the week to nuanced villain-with-a-point to reluctant ally to anti-hero/occasional villain. By this point, he was a bit of a tarnished legend living in Genosha, a mutant nation. Perhaps still philosophically opposed to the X-Men, but largely in sync. The change in Magneto’s role represents the larger shift in X-Men stories where it’s not about good or evil; it’s about methodology. ‘Good’ is about harmonious integration for mutants with humanity, of slowly winning them over, while ‘bad’ is about violent supremacy with no patience or tolerance for a slow path while mutants continue to suffer. Actually, that was the same conflict in The X-Men #1 only the tone changed. It’s very both sides.

Uncanny X-Men #394 has no patience for both sides. Part of its role as the introduction to the Grant Morrison/Joe Casey era is to firmly establish that the X-Men are good guy superheroes once again. The first scene with Cyclops and Jean has Scott watching another news report tackling the ‘controversy’ of mutants, stoking fear while trying to play at objectivity. For this issue, this reset, that level of nuance is shunted to the side. A mutant walks into Cape Citadel, proclaims themself an ‘evil mutant’ and begins fucking shit up, and the X-Men need to stop him. It’s so clear cut that it’s boring. The structure of the conflict largely follows that of The X-Men #1: evil mutant attacks military base, X-Men intervene, evil mutant temporarily delays/stops them, X-Men recover and overcome evil mutant, evil mutant uses powers to escape detention.

Casey’s alterations to the formula give the story a small amount of freshness. The position/ages of the two conflicting parties are reversed. The X-Men are no longer the teenage novices, while the villain is not a confident adult entrenched in a position. In a world with Genosha as a mutant-ruled nation and decades of X-Men stories where they have saved the world, despite any talking head controversy about mutants, there’s a sense that the status quo is one where mutants and humans live together, and much of the conflict surrounding mutants is less mutant/human as mutant/mutant about humans. The X-Men operate out of a school, a tool of the status quo, and Casey offers up a rebellious teenager who would look at a generation of mutant adults upholding a status quo and want to smash it. Morrison would take it even further by having it become a student rebellion later in New X-Men. The mentality and position of the X-Men is summed up nicely by Wolverine’s reaction to hearing about the trouble in Florida: “ANOTHER NEW KID ON THE BLOCK. WE’LL TAKE HIM TO SCHOOL.” Their role is instruction through violence, of enforcing the Xavier dream as status quo.

The choices of characters to represent the X-Men here are, as I’ve said before, a mixture of the ongoing rosters of Uncanny X-Men and New X-Men moving forward, yet it’s still a purposeful distillation of the options available. Missing from New X-Men are Professor Xavier and Beast; missing from Uncanny X-Men are Nightcrawler and Iceman. (Both groups would have additional core members added during their initial stories in Emma Frost and Chamber.) Interestingly, from this pool of characters, Casey could have made the recreation of The X-Men #1 more literal by featuring the original five members of the team and Xavier. That he didn’t makes the choices more meaningful. The lack of Xavier stresses the idea that the former students have grown into the new teachers, the new enforcers of this learned ideology and status quo. Scott, Jean, and Warren are products of the Xavier indoctrination. Logan is (aside from being the most popular and marketable X-Man, appearing as a cast member in both titles) the convert. An adult swayed over to this position, a seeming independent thinking rebel himself, one who shuns group think, yet is the one who voices taking Warp Savant “to school” (and enters the confrontation with Warp Savant by jumping from a plane, claws popped and extended towards the young mutant). Warren also fulfills an additional role given his past transformation from Angel to Archangel and acting as a Horseman of Apocalypse, a rival mutant ideology to rival Xavier’s. Despite that rejection of Xavier and his way, Warren has returned to the fold, all shades of grey erased (for the time being). The goal here is to restrain and retrain.

The presentation of the conflict here echoes and reinforces the core message of The X-Men #1: the X-Men are superheroes and Xavier is Right. This is the starting position of the Morrison/Casey era and it feels somewhat retrograde, overly simplistic and basic... because it is. After so much time of running around in circles and endless debates about humans and mutants, the only way forward is to break it all down into its core components. Uncanny X-Men #394 is less a literal reset back to the beginning as a thematic one that demonstrates how much has changed while emphasising how nothing has.

“SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE.”