New X-Men #115 Annotations
NEW X-MEN #115
E is for Extinction 2 of 3
Marvel Comics, August 2001, Color, 32pgs, $2.25
Written by GRANT MORRISON; Art by FRANK QUITELY; Cover by FRANK QUITELY; Variant Cover by BARRY WINDSOR SMITH
"E is for Extinction" rocks on — with Sentinels in the skies! With racial paranoia at an all-time high, the villain known only as Cassandra unleashes a legion of transfigured Sentinels on the world's mutant population! Their first target? The island nation of Genosha!
Caught in the maelstrom are Cyclops and Wolverine — and one of them will have to make a terrible choice!
Annotations
Page 1 - Clear parallells between Trask/Genosha and the Nazis, "I'm only a dentist" - "I was only following orders". Trask is unknowingly stumbling into genocide.
Cassandra is a mutant? The Anti-Xavier
Page 2-3 - Widescreen ratio panels.
Character intos use real names, a device used throughout Morrison's run.
Ugly John provides some handy exposition of the previous issue's events
Page 4 - "Looks like a Master Mold..." The X-Men have encountered this foe before.
More exposition. The wasp Sentinels were mentioned but not seen in #114
Page 5 - Again highlighting Xavier's seemingly limitless resources.
Cyclops survived the jet crash that spawned Len Wein's original New X-Men, landing on Krakatoa, the Living Island.
The scale of the Master Mold is clearly immense.
Page 6-7 - The antagonism between Wolverine and Cyclops was long-established in Chris Claremont's run.
The team's code-names are to be used on mission and not in everyday life, unlike most superhero comic books.
Self destruct sequences, ejecting from air craft and parachuting down a water fall? Morrison is clearly setting out an action-packed stall.
Page 8 - Ugly John has, of course, passed out, as any normal person would. Cyclops and Wolverine, on the other hand, are completely unphased by it all.
Quietly's Wild Sentinels are very grounded in real technology - A CCTV camera for an eye, a conventional handgun for a weapon.
Page 9 - Wolverine's mutant blood in panel four is almost glowing
Page 10 - Scott, in his current mental state, clearly cannot handle this. The dialogue reads almost as if he's trying to convince himself - "I can handle this.." as opposed to say "I'll handle it..."
Cyclops ruby quartz visor is shattered in the Sentinel explosion, without it he has no control over his eye blasts.
Page 11 - "I'll try talking 'em down" Wolverine and Cyclops have reversed their traditional roles, though characteristically Wolverine is joking and barges in, claws flying.
As seen in the last issue, the traditional Sentinels are completely ineffective against these seasoned soldiers. Conversely, the Wild Sentinels take them down in minutes.
Page 12 - 'Trish' is Trish Trilby, Beast's long-suffering girlfriend introduced during his stint in Steve Englehart's Avengers
.
Again, Morison makes a point of the seemingly token change in Beast's appearance. What could have been an on-coming writer's whim turns into an important aspect of Beast's characterisation.
More on Hank's manic depressive tendencies, a genius trapped in the body of a brute.
"Hang on. Stop. Save." Of course, the X-Men have voice controlled computers.
Page 13 - Jean can carry on a conversation while her psychic subconcious washes and wrings out a cloth. A sign of her growing power.
Xavier acknowledges the apparently out of character gun in the wheelchair from the conclusion of last issue.
Page 14 - More on the banality of evil, the ease of which any of us normal folk could become mass murderers.
What is that skeleton in panel one?
Page 15 - "I don't hate you" Trask is nothing to Cassandra, merely a means to an end, a plot device.
What exactly does Casandra do to him here?
"All life winds up as manure" a trueism, but a pretty bleak outlook on life. See also The Filth
Page 16 - "Cape Town, South Africa" Genosha is long established as being situated off the coast of South Africa
Page 17 - What is she injecting? Kick?
Ugly John plays the part of sacrificial lamb. Cassandra means business.
Page 18 - Wolverine plays badass, as usual. "I know there's something more..." both a comment on Cyclops religion and a backhanded commentary on comic-book death. His wife, Jean Grey, has died and come back many times.
A mercy killing, very out of character for Cyclops. Clearly Cassandra is not the only character who acts as well as talks tough.
Page 19 - More out of character threats from Cyclops. Morrison acknowledged in interviews about his X-Men run that Cyclops was his favourite character and the one he most empathised with. Perhaps what seems out of character is actually an attempt to define a notoriously under developed personality for the poor guy.
Page 20 - "Radioactive..." At this point in X-Men continuity, Genosha is a mutant island paradise presided over by Magneto. When first introduced by Chris Claremont and Marc Silvestri in Uncanny X-Men #236 it was as a Apartheid South Africa analogue with mutants substituted for black people.
Page 21 - Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were still a couple when this issue was published.
First appearance of Dust, a Sunni Muslim mutant whose role in Morrison's run was seriously undermined by 9/11 and the cultural conservatism that followed.
The Hellions were Emma Frost's students at the Hellfire Club, kind of an anti-New Mutants.
Emma's first appearance proper in Morrison's run.
Page 22 - Bizarrely prescient of 9/11 which took place just a few short months after this issue hit the stands. Morrison is tapping into Warren Ellis' vein of widescreen destruction on a massive scale.
Magneto, formerly the Anti-Xavier, is now just like him, working for the good of mutantkind, physically disbaled but a mental powerhouse.
He is supposed dead after this issue until his return at the beginning of the Planet X storyline. Even at the time, it seemed unlikely he would stay dead as his Sentinel killer is obviously made of metal.
Mute Eight GM liquor - Mutant culture and products meet the real world.
A neon sign for Scottish soft drink Irn Bru lightens it up a little for us Brits.
Page 23 - Trask's estimate on page 1 is about 1.5 million off.
Clear parallells to Hiroshima. Is that a quote?
