All-New X-Men #12
There’s a time honoured tradition in the X-books of following up a vaguely regrettable crossover with a rather better single-issue character piece. Dennis Hopeless and Mark Bagley actually had the best of the “Apocalypse Wars” crossovers, even if that still fell short of completely working, but this issue gives us the traditional change of gear, as the series turns its attention back to Warren and Laura.
So this is a nice, simple, light story on which a bigger point can be hung.
While everyone else is off doing their own thing, Laura is stuck in the X-Men’s mobile HQ with the recuperating Cyclops. Being a detail-oriented obsessive himself, he’s come up with a list of solo missions she might want to have a crack at if she wants to get out of the house. (The fact that we’ve got Scott in a wheelchair as he’s starting to morph into his more familiar leadership role is cute and understated.) What follows is Laura trying to work her way through the list only to discover that someone keeps getting there before her. The pay-off is that it turns out to be Warren, who said he was off to Milan Fashion Week, but actually needs to indulge the violent impulses of the wings he got from the Black Vortex.
Yes, I thought they’d forgotten that storyline too. Nice to see they haven’t.
Anyway. The cover has Warren and Laura together in a pinkish-purple glow that looks rather lovely on screen, taking the light from his wings and using it to make more of a Valentine’s card effect. It’s a great image but it risks blowing the twist. The start of the story gets rid of him very quickly and gives him only slightly more prominence than the rest of the cast, who we never see again. The fact that he’s on the cover ought to make it abundantly obvious that he’s coming back.
But Hopeless and Bagley get away with it, thanks to some pretty decent misdirection – not so much in terms of the mystery of how someone is getting there first, but by using this as an excuse to chuck out the sort of throwaway ideas that imply a cool story we’re not getting to see (an environmentalist Hand splinter group called the Green Thumb, or the Right trying to hoover up the Terrigen Cloud in a stupid flying tanker truck with a big smiley face). One of them actually is a subplot setting up a future story.
More to the point, these scenes have some strong ideas on Laura’s character and on the fairly obvious change in the way she’s been written since the Secret Wars eight-month gap. This story makes it clear that she’s rather confused about what she’s trying to achieve by taking on the Wolverine identity – to some extent she’s trying fake acting normal in the hope that it’ll eventually come naturally to her, but mixed in with this are some garbled notions that being more like Logan is a part of acting less cold and more “normal”. In her mind, her over the top recklessness in earlier issues wasn’t some sort of ostentatious self-harming, but a clumsy attempt at extroversion, from someone whose notion of normalcy is sufficiently skewed that she thinks Logan qualifies. There’s a degree of self-justification and rationalisation in here too, but that’s a good thing; this is a well rounded take on Laura.
At any rate, the point of all this is to have Warren and Laura reunited as a couple, partly by getting them to clear the air, and partly on the more ominous basis that Warren’s need to control his new violent impulses has given them common ground.
Quite how any of this ties up with Laura’s status quo in her own series, by the way, where she’s in her own apartment and has a little sister, and so forth, I have no idea. I suppose all of this is taking place before anything that’s happened yet in All-New Wolverine? It’s a bit awkward, to put it mildly. And the opening scene with Laura and Scott, where she seems surprised to realise how much they have in common, feels like it’s forgotten the fact that the two of them were being teased as a couple for a while back in the Bendis run.
And yes, I’m a bit wary of going back to “Warren has more powerful wings but they’re evil now”, which surely ran its course back in the 80s and 90s. Still, it feels like we’re taking a subtler approach to it this time round, at least to start with – more of a nagging sense of habit and a shortened temper with a sense that it could be more. And besides, it’s the status quo that the current creative team inherited, so it has to be dealt with somehow.
All told, this is a decent issue. It’s got some genuinely worthwhile ideas about these two characters, Laura in particular – and it works them into a fun one-shot story.
an environmentalist Hand splinter group called the Green Thumb
That’s brilliant.
After i read this issue, i did wonder how it would fit in with all the warren talk here lately.
It’s kind of odd that young Warren also gets imbued with a power upgrade that that has a potentially dangerous side effect on his personality, although all in all, he seems less broken than his older version, at least in Archangel’s earlier phases. I guess writers again came to the conclusion that just being able to fly isn’t enough. (Also–they call him rich. Is this version of Warren rich? You’d think being a decade or so younger than the Warren you’re supposed to be would limit your access to any existing bank accounts.)
Scott was trying to play matchmaker, right? It seems like a big coincidence that Warren was finding the exact same leads Laura was.
“And yes, I’m a bit wary of going back to “Warren has more powerful wings but they’re evil now”, which surely ran its course back in the 80s and 90s”
I’m not sure if it ran it’s course back then. It was an idea mostly introduced by Whilce Portacio when was was working on Uncanny X-men. After he left, the sub-plot gets a addressed a few times before Scott Lobdell swept it under the rug (iirc, he has Jean basically telling Warren to get over it, which he did). It was basically an idea that was introduced and went nowhere.
Over in Guardians of the Galaxy, it’s recently been established that the extra powers from the Black Vortex are temporary, and wear off after they’ve been used so many times (but then, how did that alien lady keep her Black Vortex powers for twelve billion years or whatever it was?). Of course, this means both Kitty and Gamora are back to normal, and nu-Angel is now the ONLY character with any lasting effects from the Black Vortex. …what a hot mess that crossover was.
Person of Con:
“(Also–they call him rich. Is this version of Warren rich? You’d think being a decade or so younger than the Warren you’re supposed to be would limit your access to any existing bank accounts.)”
This is one of the reasons I’m having trouble finding a reason to care about these time-displaced X-Men. As mentioned with Angel, what kind of life can they possibly have in this world as extra versions of people that already exist? At the very least, shouldn’t nu-Jean want to get back to a time before her entire family was exterminated?
Am I way off about these kids? What am I missing?
I appreciated your analysis of the cover. I had long since given up any connection between the cover and the contents of the issue, as often times the cover is too early, too late, a random character shot, purposefully misleading, etc.
As for the echoes of young Warren ALSO getting evil wings, it speaks of a theme of inevitability for these characters. Scott ran off to be with his “father”, and wants to avoid making the mistakes of his older self, the most horrifically evil man in the history of the universe (damn you, Lemire!!), but when left with his own thoughts due to injury, he can’t help but shift toward the OCD leader type whose plans separate himself from his peers. Hank wants to avoid the time-travel shenanigans of his older self, but falls into the hard choice of allowing Apocalypse to exist to do so in Apocalypse Wars. This allows some interesting character ideas as well as provide some metanarrative about the “illusion of change” in Marvel Comics in general.
Of course, whether these are pulled off well is another matter.
As to Warren’s money, he would have been raised rich, sent to boarding school, hanging with Cameron Hodge, becoming the “Avenging Angel”, etc., before joining the X-Men. Now, however, he cannot lay any claim to the Worthington fortune as Warren is still alive (sorta), so he is dependent on whatever money got squirreled away during the eight month gap, etc. Thus, the Milan Fashion Week red herring might have been obvious had his peers not been so used to Warren being rich.
Wonder how Nu-Jean could even get a valid driver’s license, passport or credit card . All of her personal information points to a legally dead person.
Even the other Nu-O5ers should be having legal difficulties working off the same personal info as a person who already exists.
Also, I do not want a younger, less mature me running around with a credit card in my name attached to my credit standing.
The O5 need gratuitously killed off in a bus explosion.
I have no particular problem believing that the X-Men were able to provide the time travellers with forged IDs, at the very least. But yes, it doesn’t really make sense that Warren has access to his money.
(In fact, if you want to be really nitpicky, early Warren didn’t even have access to his money in the Silver Age, because his dad was still alive and controlled the purse strings.)
Is Professor X still dead?
Presumably, one of the telepaths could just go to the dmv and get fake ids made. Or have psychic paper like the Doctor.
Why has no writer addressed these O5 concerns? This drives me crazy. These are integral story points with huge potential! How would their parents and families react?
I’m sure gambit knows a guy for fake ID’s, lol. Family reactions would be more of a sticking point. Have any of them met their ‘ future families’ besides Scott?
Hank and Bobby are the only two other members who still have families, I do believe.
Would the X-Men even have legal documentation (other than birth certificates, obviously).
Aren’t the X-Men wanted by the government as mutant criminals? Isn’t the world aware of the identity of most of the X-Men members? It seems like they’d try to avoid getting government identification, outside of someone like Warren, who needs access to his family’s wealth.
Yeah, with the possible exception of Warren’s money, I don’t think this is something we really need to worry about. It’s safe to assume that with the amount of ex-criminals, supergeniuses, and telepaths they have running around, any X-Man could easily get a fake ID on demand.
And, yes, I think Iceman and Beast are the only two of the original five with family left. There’s probably no good story with the McCoy’s, but I guess you could get some mileage out of Iceman’s father’s homophobia.
That said, at some point young Cyclops is going to have to have a nice, long sit down with Rachel and Nathan….
Let’s see…
Jean’s entire family (including extended relatives like cousins & whatnot) was exterminated by the Shi’Ar. There was that one-panel joke scene where nu-Jean runs into Rachel Grey (her kind-of sort-of future daughter), for whatever that’s worth.
Angel’s parents were murdered by his uncle on two separate occasions (his dad in Ka-Zar #2 (from 1970), his mom in Hidden Years #15).
Iceman’s dad was beaten up and hospitalized by presidential candidate Graydon Creed’s men back in the ‘90s. Also, after these time-displaced X-Men arrived in the present, Iceman (empowered and driven crazy by an alternate reality Apocalypse seed) tried to kill his father at the tail end of the Astonishing X-Men series a few years ago. Oddly, this didn’t seem to come up in conversation when nu-Iceman had a chat with his older self about sexual identity (“Hey younger me, I recently tried to freeze our dad to death. Oops”). Both Iceman’s parents are still alive now, though, as far as I know.
Beast’s parents are still alive (I would assume), but haven’t been seen since X-Men Unlimited #14, from 1997.
Cyclops’ dad has already been mentioned above. Of course, even before Cyclops joined the X-Men it was assumed both his parents had died in a plane explosion. Has nu-Cyclops met his current-day brother Havok yet? Or his dad’s parents in Alaska? Or his son Cable? Or the aforementioned Rachel, his kind-of sort-of future daughter?
So yeah, you’d think nu-Jean and nu-Angel would be the ones who want to get back to their own time the most, and yet they’re the ones who want to stay. That’s… odd, right?
As for the legal status / fake IDs thing, sure, but the comics haven’t addressed it at all. I suppose it could have happened in the eight months following Secret Wars. Eh, to be fair, it’s not like they ever addressed it with Bishop, or Rachel, or any number of other characters I’m forgetting about. They kind of did in the early days with Cable, sort of. It’s not quite the same, but they did a few stories about Ben Reilly (the Spider-Clone) having to take cash-only jobs because his legal status pointed to Peter Parker in New York.
Taibak posted while I was typing and beat me to it with Rachel and Cable.
Great minds and all that! 🙂
The X-Men don’t need to worry about gaining access to money or getting jobs though. It’s always been accepted that the X-Men are fully funded by Professor X’s fortune, and then later, also by the Worthington fortune.
The absence of the families seems like a genre feature at this point; how many adult Marvel superheroes have meaningful civilian lives anymore, and how many seem to spend their lives hanging around whatever superteam they’ve joined?
Unless a character is a deliberate Peter Parker riff or has a suitably ironic cover identity, like Daredevil, everyone’s just a full-timer now, a soldier in an endless war whose home is the barracks.
I remember when the X-Men and all affiliated X-heroes had their legal identities erased from government records, etc
Then a smattering of X-Men got dosed with a magic spell that rendered them invisible to electronic sensors including VIDEO.
I miss the 80s
Havok’s been MIA since they messed him up in Uncanny Avengers and the awful Axis crossover – he’s supposed to still be inverted.
Oh my gosh I forgot about the Axua evrnt
It was an idea mostly introduced by Whilce Portacio when was was working on Uncanny X-men.
Not true. Angel’s wings being “evil” goes all the way back to their origins written by the Simonsons. X-Factor #46 is a classic, where Warren’s wings take him to some dark places, acting of their own volition. It was a theme in Inferno and in X-Tinction Agenda too, and also in the interregnum between the Judgment War and the Portacio run where Warren goes mad and his wings control him and kill his adversaries.
You’re right that it was never really resolved, but it was not new to the Portacio run. It was there all along; Portacio & Co were working with it. Lobdell just swept it under the rug.