New X-Men #119 Annotations
NEW X-MEN #119
Germ Free Generation 2 of 3
Marvel Comics, December 2001, Color, 32pgs, $2.25
Written by GRANT MORRISON ; Art by IGOR KORDEY; Cover by FRANK QUITELY
The wild conclusion to "Germ Free Generation."
A new force has entered the human/mutant arena: the Black Kross Elite -- fanatics who have changed themselves into wondrous forms, using the genetic material of their victims! And now they want the new Angel's wings.
Commentary
Like last month's soliciatation with Moira McTaggert and the 'Extinction Dossier', the Black Kross Elite don't appear in this, or any, issue of New X-Men. As mentioned here they sound like an early iteration of the U-Men. As they appear in the published story, they haven't quite managed the 'wondorous forms' yet and are still working on harvesting organs from unsuspecting mutants.
Igor Kordey comes aboard this issue as the third artist on the title in four months. His art is... a little rough in places, though he's evidently very fast (at one point he was drawing four books a month!). His storytelling is actually pretty good but the finishing, especially given that he inks his own work, can sometimes look amateurish and, in this issue certainly, the quality of the art noticeably deteriorates as the issue progresses. As with Ethan Van Sciver, when I looked it up I was really surprised that Kordey only drew seven issues out of Morrison's forty issue run. Clearly my memories of New X-Men are dominated by the first half of the run...
Annotations
Cover - Quitely's cover differs slightly from the individual portraits that have featured on the covers so far, with Angel backed up by her fellow students at the Xavier Institute, a new generation of X-Men. His Angel is drawn as a lot smaller and younger looking than Van Sciver's from last issue.
Hitting the stands not long after the September 11th attacks, this issue, like all of Marvel's book released this month, carries the Twin Towers memorial symbol.
Page 1 - "Meet Martha Johansson. Martha's a metal fan" More equating disaffected youth with mutants.
Page 2-3 - "Man plus..." - Sublime's Third Species, Homo Perfectus, a combination of man and superman, ordinary human and mutant.
Emma has managed to turn to her diamond form between the end of last issue and the beginning of this one.
Page 4 - "...control her supply" - The syringes are probably filled with Kick, the mutant-ability enhancing drug engineered by Sublime that plays a big role in the 'Riot At Xavier's' arc.
Page 5 - "kinky human chandelier" - Emma Frost has always had a healthy kink factor. Claremont's original Hellfire Club stories were inspired by the notorious Avengers episode 'A Touch of Brimstone', where Emma Peel sported a proto-fetish outfit and spiked collar. The fetish aesthetic carried through to Emma Frost's original 'costume', which in turn inspired Quitely's redesign.
Wonky as Kordey's rushed art is here, I'm a sucker for big panels split to show the passage of time
Sublime is right, Liquid Diamond Lipstick is an excellent name for a band. Probably not for this band though
Page 6 - Though in 2001 Marvel very publicly withdrew from the Comics Code Authority in favour of their own rating system, it was still a big no-no to depict a penis in a comic, even if said penis was on a classical statue.
Page 7 - Kordey clearly 'gets' the idea of the cinematic, widescreen panels from Quitely's early issues of the run (inspired in turn by Bryan Hitch and his own work on the Authority and by Morrisn's own early efforts with Howard Porter in JLA), something Van Sciver didn't really engage with.
Page 8 - Has Wolverine killed the U-Men here? More X-brutality and echoes of the classic Uncanny X-Men #133, an extended meditation on Wolverine kicking and slashing seven bells out of the Hellfire Club's henchmen.
Page 9 - "Name's Wolverine" - Codenames on mission, real names the rest of the time. As most of the conflict early in Morrison's New X-Men run is villains attacking them at the mansion, we don't get much codename time at all.
Page 10 - Even if Wolverine didn't kill the U-Men on page 8, he certainly does here when he blows up the ambulance.
Page 11 - "I do stuff like that every day." After thirty odd years of the barest minimum character development, Wolverine is still largely a two-dimensional killing machine, perhaps partly explaining his large fan following (cf. The Punisher, Lobo).
The scenes between Wolverine and Angel in the ambulance and in Bear's Diner recall Wolverine and Rogue's relationship in the first X-Men movie.
Page 12 - Surprise, surprise - mutant intolerance in the backwoods. 'Real-life' mutant horror stories set in opposition to Sublime's comic-book dream. There's echoes here of Hicksville horror movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre or even Deliverance.
Page 13 - Angel can fly faster than a bullet. According to this what-the-internet-was-made-for website, the proportional speed of a common housefly at human size would be approximately 1,300 kilometers per hour or 810 miles per hour, so it would indeed fly faster than a bullet (I think... bullet speeds tend to be measured in feet per second and very quite widely, but its certainly in the right ballpark)
Kordey's art really begins to deteriorate in quality at this point.
Page 14-15 - "Eyes open" Wolverine knows the original Angel, the 'expert' he's talking about.
Angel's desires are the ideological opposite to Sublime's - she wants surgery to make her human again and to take away her mutant 'curse'
Page 16 - U-Man Marz - "...all totally psyched" - again, judging by their dialogue the U-Men are young idealists, not battle hardened veterans.
Page 17 - Another peek at Hank's roses, bringing us back to Cassandra and recalling the first arc. Some more foreshadowing of the upcoming nano-Sentinel flu through the dialogue and the briefest flash of Cassandra.
Page 18-19 - The penny drops...
Why is Beak in the flotation tank? Mental trauma? Self-inflicted wounds?
Page 21 - The police reject Jean's plea for help. Recalling Stan Lee's original race-relations X-Men allegory - one Morrispn has largely discarded in favour of a youth and youth culture (the X-Men and the new students) against commercialism and corporate exploitation (Sublime) spin on the concept - the X-Men, like Malcolm X or the Black Panthers, prepare to defend themselves against anti-mutant hostility by any means necessary.
Page 22-23 - The U-Men's order - "Out on the lawn. In alphabetical order." - has the dehumanizing overtones of Nazism.
