New X-Men #117 Annotations
NEW X-MEN #117
Danger Rooms
Marvel Comics, October 2001, Color, 32pgs, $2.25
Written by GRANT MORRISON ; Art by ETHAN VAN SCIVER; Cover by FRANK QUITELY
As protesters lay siege to the Xavier Institute, The Beast makes an astonishing discovery - one that will have immediate and terrible repercussions for him... and for billions of others!
Meanwhile, at a time when the team most needs to stay together, Cyclops and Phoenix continue to drift apart!
"Insightful character interactions, clever dialogue, and the power of new ideas... Hyperbole cannot do this one justice. Grade: A+" -Comics Buyer's Guide
Commentary
Frank Quitely proves the blindingly obvious assertion that his intricate draftsmanship just can't be done on a monthly grind as the first of many fill-in artists, Ethan Van Sciver, jumps aboard. Van Sciver, who went on to fame and fortune alongside Geoff Johns illustrating the Green Lantern relaunch in 2005, draws a good, George Perez-influenced game, with the Shi'ar flagship spread a definite highlight. At this point in his career though, he's not as competent a natural storyteller as Quitely, and sometimes its hard to follow his pages, or the character's attitudes and emotions - the transistion from page nine to ten for example. By any gauge Van Sciver's good, but he's no Quitely.
Morrison continues to ramp up the soap opera whilst re-introducing classic elements from the X-Men's rich history - a sort of Chris Claremont on PCP - while building the characterisation of the central cast with deft dialogue and a steady increase in the central threat. There's a lot of top quality comics to come before Morrison loses his mojo on the title.
Annotations
Page 1 - Beak and Beast, like a chick and its mother, symbolising the developing parent/child relationship between the X-Men and their new students at the Xavier Institute - a relationship that's usually emphasised between Xavier and the X-Men themselves, dating back to Stan and Jack's days on the title. That 'parental' role is, of course, far from straightforward, what with the X-Men being a paramilitary international rescue organisation.
This is the first appearance of Barnell Bohusk, also known as Beak, one of Morrison's new generation of students of the Xavier Institute. Befitting his Dutch heritage, Bohusk is a fan of industrial music. His Revolting Cocks t-shirt references the American/Belgian industrial 'super-group', whose most famous member was Ministry's Al Jourgensen.
Though he narrowly missed appearing in the X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie - Dominic Monaghan's character was changed to Bolt at the last minute - Beak, along with most of Morrison's additions to the X-Men mythos, was relegated to occasional cameo appearances upon New X-Men's conclusion. He popped up as a supporting character in second tier books like Exiles and New Warriors and is currently part of the Teen Brigade in Joe Casey's Vengeance mini-series. He lost his 'powers' and unique appearance during the House of M crossover.
No clue as to the origin of his unusual name. Even baby name sites link to Beak's Wikipedia article as the only 'famous' Barnell. 'Bohusk' seems to have similarly been cut from whole cloth, with no etymology I can find. Any ideas anyone?
Page 3 - "Nobody expects to graduate," Indeed, few ever have, given the amount of students that have passed through the school gates - the New Mutants, Generation X, etc.
Beak and Beast have been bonding in the titular Danger Room, the X-Men's combat simulator - originally a glorified obstacle course; here a virtual reality, super high-tech facility equipped with 'hard-light holograms' and whatnot. Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, it first appeared in the original X-Men #1 from 1963. Joss Whedon, creator of TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, would later gift the Danger Room with sentience and make 'her' into a villain in his and John Cassady's pseudo-sequel to Morrison's New X-Men, Astonishing X-Men.
The doors in these sub-basements of Xavier's mansion are straight out of Bryan Singer's X-Men movie.
Unlike past intakes of the Xavier Institute - traditionally small groups of super-powerful and beautiful teens ala the original New Mutants - this year's class are 'normal' kids - emo 'gen-x'ers, white, black, Asian. There's no outwardly attractive, musclebound hero-types here; these kids are different, some almost disabled. Its a much more 'realistic' cross section of disaffected teens, in keeping with Morrison's stated intention of reconnecting the X-Men with their 'outsider youth' roots.
Page 4 - Re-iterating that this is now a regular school - super-powered kids from all colours, all creeds, every walk of life. Mutantkind as regular youth subculture.
First appearance of Glob, an amorphous mass of bio-paraffin over a human skeleton. He will go on to join Kid Omega's breakaway rebellion in the 'Riot at Xavier's' arc.
As part of Morrison's aim to depict mutantkind as a Sekhmet-esque youth culture he paid particularly close attention to fashion, demonstrated here by the kid with the arms and his X-Men roll-call t-shirt.
There's a definite religious bent to the anti-mutant protesting, recalling American anti-abortion demonstrations; the cross in the foreground, 'God Hates Mutants'. The grafitti describing mutation as a 'plague' might be a bit of foreshadowing for Sublime's ultimate plan, not revealed until the final issue of Morrison's run.
Page 5 - The struggle of the high-school outsider, externalised. The cool kids have cool powers, for the geeks it's more like they're cursed.
'Deleting painful memories' - a throwaway line suggesting the Professor has changed, ever so subtly.
Page 6 - Beast, probably the most well-balanced of all the X-Men, is a manic depressive; the most human and totally inhuman in appearance. Unfortunately sidelined as the run progresses, Hank McCoy begins the run as the most compelling and well-crafted character of the bunch. Always the most comfortable with his mutanthood, here we se that the stigma of simply being a mutant can derail even the best of them as long-time girlfriend Trish breaks it off.
Page 7 - Morrison makes it pretty explicit that Wolverine belongs more in the animal kingdom than in human company, his Za Zen buddhist pose suggesting a mental withdrawal from polite society, to accompany his physical withdrawal.
Page 8 - Alpha waves are the type of brain wave seen in studies of patients in meditative states, commonly associated with periods of wakeful relaxation with open eyes.
In referencing his encounters with the Sentinels and Cassandra Nova (in the previous 'E is for Extinction' storyline running in issues #114-116), Wolverine implies that the last three issues happened over the space of one day and that this story occurs four days later. Seems an awfully short time to register and enrol all those new students...
The middle star of Orion's Belt is Alnilam, 1,340 light years from Earth and 375,000 times more luminous than the sun. The Shi'ar galaxy hasn't, as far as I can tell, ever been given a definitive location in the night sky, and, what the hell, this one seems as good as any.
The Shi'ar Empire, and their Majestrix Lilandra, are a high fantasy sci-fi race of human-bird hybrids who first appeared in 1976's X-Men #97. They were created by Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum and have played an important part in X-Men mythology through the years. Its been long established that Lilandra is head over heels for Charles Xavier, and he left Earth to be her consort during the seminal Secret Wars II, remaining in space until the eve of Claremont's departure from the X-titles in the early nineties.
Page 9 - "Scott. Me. Same old." At this point, the torrid romance of Scott Summers and Jean Gray had been dragging on for the best part of 40 years, during which she became one of the most powerful entities in the universe and then died, he'd married and had a son with her doppleganger Madelyne Pryor - who turned out to be a clone of Jean - and she'd been discovered floating in a tube in Hudson Bay, alive and well again in a ludicrous plot twist suggested in a fan letter by Kurt Busiek. They eventually conquered all the heartbreak and married in 1994's X-Men #30, only to discover in a long run of weak comics written by Fabian Nicieza and Scott Lobdell that there was literally nothing left for them to do together that could possibly top the emotional wringer that Chris Claremont had put them through way back in 1980. Morrison did the only sensible thing and split them up, hooking Scott up with a hot S&M blonde and sensibly drawing a line under a comic-book romance that had peaked in spectacular fashion before most of the readership were even born.
"Heads hollow..." echoes the earlier comment about Cassandra. A subtle acknowledgment that Jean, like Cassandra, is becoming less human.
Page 10 - The art doesn't really do the page transition justice here - though the dialogue telegraphs it, visually the kiss comes out of the blue.
Following our trip down Scott and Jean memory lane, a succinct summation of Jean and Logan's simmering relationship - probably best articulated in Bryan Singer's X-Men movie - In a nutshell, he loves her, she fancies him as he's a bit of rough, and she's married to a dork. Fortunately for us, Morrison is on board and fully commited to resolving all this decades old sexual angst.
Page 11 - Some handy exposition from Beast.
The virtual autopsy is a great Morrison conceit. The floating DNA helix, with its non-specific 'genetic stuff' connotations, has become a favourite motif in X-Men comics and movies.
Page 12 - Xavier turns. The first indications that there's a lot more to Cassandra than what we learnt in the previous arc.
Page 13 - This being the X-Men, rather than Cassandra simply being a twisted, maniacal mass murderer, she is species-hatred personified.
Henry has indeed passed backwards and forwards from human to ape, and now feline, many times
Page 14 - "..throw up on your soul" A pretty ugly image.
Recurrence of the 'Evolution' theme that runs through the whole run, especially foregrounded in these early issues.
Henry posits the only defense against psychic attack - Self-assertion. the power of positive thinking!
Page 16-17 - Boy, Cassandra sure is evil. In debasing Beast and making Beak attack his hero and identity figure, she's proof of Hank's essential humanity in contrast to her inhuman malevolence.
Page 18 - "Charles tried" - in the womb of course.
Page 19 - "...mutants were among the first to make contact with extraterrestrial cultures..." Really? In the Marvel Universe?! Has Beak torn his own feathers out here?
Page 20 - "Too much death..." Jean as acting headmistress of the school is a nice variation on the usual Claremontian to and fro between Xavier and Magneto
The firmament is the notion of the sky as a solid object, as per the Biblical Genesis, separating the oceans form the 'waters above'.
Page 21-22 - "...Imagine that in the wrong hands." The wrong hands like Charles/Cassandra's.
In silhouette, the Shi'ar Imperial Guard. Much more from them soon...
