But... who is “Playing God” exactly?
Presumably, we’re meant to think it’s Warp Savant as he invades the Cape Citadel and uses his powers to absorb the various soldiers and X-Men he encounters along the way. Deciding who lives, who dies, who gets teleported inside his head. There isn’t much to that, though. It’s all kind of laid bare right there. “Evil mutant runs amok playing god” is so ho hum. By that same token, it’s a little dull to say it’s the X-Men, as a group or as individuals. Cyclops taking up the role of Xavier, to a degree, puts himself in the position of the moral authority on the actions of mutants. He decides what is and is not acceptable. Meanwhile, Wolverine is the sort to maim and kill as he sees fit. When he dives from an airplane, claws popped and arms extended toward Warp Savant, what do we think his intention was? Like Warp Savant, that willingness to kill, to choose who lives and who dies, is a fairly basic definition of the concept. None of them truly live up to it.
You could go ‘meta’ and say that it’s Joe Casey. As writer, he decides everything about the comicbook. He writes the script that is then executed/interpreted by several other collaborators. None of the character decide that anyone lives or dies in their world... Casey does. There is no free will in fiction, it’s all determined by the writer, even if their method is one where the characters seem to ‘write themselves.’ Superhero comicbooks in shared universes for the big publishers provide an interesting case of this as there is no singular God, but a rotating, changing cast that ‘plays’ God in a sense, filling the role for a time until they no longer do. The title could be Casey’s recognition of his place within the creative hierarchy, an acknowledgement of his eventual ousting from this work-for-hire gig, supplanted eventually by Chuck Austen just as he supplanted Chris Claremont. This definition plays around with a bit of the metagames that Casey is playing in his run where the repetition of certain broad plot concepts represents his place in the long succession of creatives who preceded him – and will follow. Might as well called it “Rearranging Deckchairs on the Titanic” if that’s the case. A suitable possibility... or part of the answer?
Let’s return to Warp Savant... Yes, I already discounted him as the eponymous deity gamer due to the blasé nature of piggybacking off the lives/dies nature of his powers. I tend to prefer a definition of “playing God” that extends beyond the binary of alive and dead. That’s flipping a light switch, people, not acting as the creator of the universe. Except, that’s not exactly what Warp Savant’s powers do, is it? He doesn’t kill people. He doesn’t kill at all. He transports matter from one world to another. The inside of his head is an alternate reality of his own creation. He does not have total conscious control over it – or any control – and that does not matter. It is his world full of people and objects that he chooses to place inside it. He creates a landscape that may or may not change depending on his whims. And what makes up his little world? The esoterica, the random matter that he encounters. There is no purpose, no rhyme, no reason. It’s all whims and chance. A collection of information with a hint of curation. He takes from the world to make his world.
Earlier this month, I compared his powers to the accumulation of knowledge that comicbook fans have. The piles of continuity that create each personal head canon. That’s all Warp Savant is doing: head canon. He takes what he wants, ignores what he doesn’t. And the resulting world is far from perfect, patched together from the randomness. To paraphrase a literal genius, “His utopia is more of a Poptopia.”
And, at the end of the issue, he goes into that Poptopia himself, no one seems to care, no one notices, everything returns back to interpersonal soap opera because X-Men comicbooks are about X-Men comicbooks. That’s all they are, you know?
