X-Men & Moon Girl #1
X-MEN & MOON GIRL #1
Writer: Mohale Mashigo
Pencillers: David Cutler & Marika Cresta
Inkers: José Marzan Jr & Marika Cresta
Colour artist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Lauren Bisom
From the “technically an X-book but only barely” file comes this one-shot which, as so often, isn’t a one-shot. It’s the final issue of a three-part miniseries, the other parts being Miles Morales & Moon Girl #1 and Avengers & Moon Girl #1. Once again, Amazon has quite sensibly listed the whole thing as a miniseries called Moon Girl Team-Up, but officially, that’s not the name. Officially, this is three one-shots and they’re all #1.
So that’s irritating me before I’ve even started reading it.
Anyway. The High Evolutionary has stolen Devil Dinosaur and plans to clone it. He’s also obtained a sample of Wolverine’s blood so that he can use its healing factor to stabilise the clones. I don’t remember this ever being an issue for the High Evolutionary in his many years of vigorous cloning, but sure, let’s go with that. In this issue, Moon Girl, Havok and Wolverine head to Counter-Earth to fight the bad guy. Yes, just those two. And again, sure, okay. It’s Moon Girl’s book and you don’t want her being vastly outnumbered. Besides, using Havok avoids just retreading the usual schtick of “wide-eyed pre-teen hero teams with grumpy old Wolverine.”
The comedy angle is that since Counter-Earth is populated entirely with the High Evolutionary’s New Men, our heroes need to disguise themselves – which means big animal heads. I like that – it’s the right sort of silly. It’s not just random cutesiness, it’s the inherent silliness of the New Men squared. The art sells it pretty well, and I think it’s actually more effective for being underplayed. We don’t get the obvious bit of Wolverine refusing to wear his porcupine head, because within the logic of Counter-Earth it’s a perfectly sensible plan. Counter-Earth is not exactly consistently written, but for present purposes it’s a bucolic village of nice animal people. Well, outside the Evolutionary’s base it is, anyway.
Still, this is basically a Moon Girl story with the X-Men acting as sounding boards. Naturally, she gets face to face with the High Evolutionary – who is a one-dimensional nut in this story – and the guest stars don’t have much to do with that. In theory the Evolutionary is a good choice of villain for this team because he resonates with (1) dinosaurs, (2) crazy genius and (3) mutants – in practice the main angle is the Evolutionary chiding her that she’s too busy trying to get respect as a hero to fulfil her potential as a scientist. Which is true, but it’s not much of a dilemma.
Nice art, though, and a perfectly decent family-friendly team-up story if that’s what you’re after.
Ah, they’re finally cashing in on that demographic of children who loved the 80s miniseries Meltdown.
Wasn’t Counter-Earth destroyed in the Champions/Avengers team up a couple of years ago? I can’t remember.
Wasn’t Counter-Earth eaten by Galactus a few decades ago? Did they put in a new one at some point?
No. Galactus was going to devour it. The Impossible Man saved the day by giving up his homeworld as a sacrifice to Galactus in order to save Counter-Earth. Impossible Man decided he was annoying enough, the remainder of his race didn’t deserve to live. Eating it made Galactus sick though, so it may have been a clever plan by the Impossible Man to poison Galactus.
The Beyonders did steal Counter-Earth shortly after the FF story you were thinking about. I don’t remember how Counter-Earth ended up being recovered from the Beyonders though.
Didn’t the Heroes Reborn Earth come to 616 and become the new Counter-Earth at some point? I think there was something like that in the Thunderbolts.
I believe we can blame the existence of this new Counter-Earth on Franklin Richards, my favorite go to for unexplained continuity glitches.
All of these things are true and happened to different Counter-Earths. There have been so many of the damn things (including New Universe Earth and Heroes Reborn Earth) that Marvel should probably put a moratorium on blowing it up just so they can straighten out its continuity for a bit.
Galactus was going to devour it. The Impossible Man saved the day by giving up his homeworld as a sacrifice to Galactus in order to save Counter-Earth. Impossible Man decided he was annoying enough, the remainder of his race didn’t deserve to live. Eating it made Galactus sick though, so it may have been a clever plan by the Impossible Man to poison Galactus.
The Beyonders did steal Counter-Earth shortly after the FF story you were thinking about. I don’t remember how Counter-Earth ended up being recovered from the Beyonders though.
This is the kind of glorious inanity which makes comic books simultaneously magnificent and unreadable.
Thinking of all these Counter-Earths existing at the same time sends my mind straight to the orbital mechanics.
Now I have a headache.
It wasn’t at the same time, not always. The original Counter-Earth, created by the High Evolutionary, was physically taken away by the Beyonders. The place was vacant (IIRC) by the time Franklin Richards’ worst creation was placed there.
Thanks for the heads-up about the three one-shot miniseries.
I’ll be avoiding them for stupid numbering practices.