{"id":2626,"date":"2015-03-11T22:17:40","date_gmt":"2015-03-11T22:17:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2626"},"modified":"2015-03-11T22:17:40","modified_gmt":"2015-03-11T22:17:40","slug":"uncanny-x-men-vol-5-the-omega-mutant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2626","title":{"rendered":"Uncanny X-Men vol 5 – “The Omega Mutant”"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been a long, long while since we checked in\u00a0with\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em>, but that’s because this is a long, long story. \u00a0The title above may say volume 5, which\u00a0collects issues #26-31, but the Matthew Molloy arc started back in issue #23, with\u00a0the “Last Will and Testament of Charles Xavier” issues. \u00a0And then it overran at the end (which is why issue #31 has a cover\u00a0for a completely unrelated story).<\/p>\n

We should, I suppose, note at the outset the other oddity of this storyline – that\u00a0the first three issues are billed as\u00a0an\u00a0Original Sin<\/em> tie-in, despite\u00a0the minor technicality of having absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with\u00a0Original Sin<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Those\u00a0three issues, you may recall, were billed as\u00a0Original Sin<\/em> tie-ins, something which manages the unusual double whammy of being both egregiously mendacious and essentially harmless. \u00a0“Last Will” is not an\u00a0Original Sin<\/em> tie-in by any possible stretch of the imagination. \u00a0But it\u00a0does at least feature a hidden secret coming to light, and since most actual\u00a0Original Sin<\/em> tie-ins\u00a0just used\u00a0the crossover as a springboard to do basically the same thing, I suppose there’s no harm done.<\/p>\n

This is not actually a first for\u00a0Uncanny X-Men<\/em> –\u00a0back in the 80s, we had an\u00a0“Acts of Vengance” tie-in that didn’t tie in to “Acts of Vengeance”. \u00a0It did have the Mandarin in it, and he was in “Acts of Vengeance” at the same time,\u00a0but he wasn’t actually doing anything in\u00a0Uncanny<\/em> that was remotely connected to the plot of “Acts of Vengeance”. \u00a0But nobody really cared, because the actual hook of “Acts of Vengeance” was heroes fighting villains\u00a0they didn’t normally fight, and the story at least delivered on that.<\/p>\n

Similarly,\u00a0Original Sin<\/em>‘s actual hook was “hidden secrets come to light”, and if you bought most of the tie-ins, chances are you got a story\u00a0about some hidden secret, with the only actual connection to\u00a0Original Sin<\/em> being the plot mechanics of how the secret comes to light. \u00a0“Last Will” does feature a secret,\u00a0and dispenses altogether with any pretence of linking it to the plot of\u00a0Original Sin<\/em>. \u00a0It would have been the same basic story even if Bendis had shoehorned the crossover in, so what the heck. \u00a0False advertising,\u00a0of course,\u00a0but\u00a0it’s hardly\u00a0Prelude to Schism<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So, the story. \u00a0Reflecting the lightning pace which we’ve come\u00a0to expect from a Brian Bendis comic, the X-Men finally gather for the reading of Professor X’s will, a mere 25 issues after he died. \u00a0The reading of the will is one of those lovely story tropes that\u00a0somehow keeps hanging in there even though\u00a0it never happens in the real world, and it’s the sort of thing that you’d think a lot of the public would know from their own experience. \u00a0But\u00a0hey,\u00a0I guess people just assume that\u00a0somebody out there must be doing it. \u00a0In\u00a0Uncanny<\/em>‘s case, it also provides an opportunity to bring both\u00a0X-Men teams back together in tense circumstances (which, to be fair, is a reason for postponing it this far down the line – creatively, if not in plot terms).<\/p>\n

It’s not exactly a legal masterclass in other ways either. \u00a0Apparently the entire school was the personal property of Charles Xavier, who leaves it to Scott, whom failing Ororo. \u00a0You’d have thought he’d set up a\u00a0board of trustees or a company of some sort. \u00a0And\u00a0the story would have it that there’s nothing to stop Scott inheriting from a man he killed, should he choose to accept the legacy. \u00a0Unless Scott can make out an insanity defence (which, at the very least, has not been tested in court), there very much is, because there’s a centuries-old rule against allowing murderers to inherit, for exactly the reasons you’d expect. \u00a0But there’s not much point worrying about legal accuracy in these stories; these details are hardly the\u00a0focus.<\/p>\n

The big reveal is that\u00a0Professor X had\u00a0discovered an uber-powerful mutant called Matthew Malloy, and had been\u00a0psychically keeping Malloy’s powers (and his knowledge of them) subdued for everyone’s good. \u00a0This required him to check in every year or so to renew the\u00a0psychic blocks, which is obviously a bit of a problem now he’s dead, so his last wish is for the X-Men to\u00a0drop by and take over. \u00a0Unfortunately, Malloy’s mental blocks are unravelling anyway (which would have made more sense if there had been a stronger plot reason for the delay in getting to the will, but for some reason Bendis\u00a0doesn’t go down that line and instead gives us an arbitrary, unrelated flashback to\u00a0Secret Invasion<\/em>). \u00a0The X-Men and SHIELD try to subdue the guy. \u00a0Cyclops breaks ranks to\u00a0try and\u00a0recruit him for the mutant revolution,\u00a0which leads to SHIELD killing everyone in sight. \u00a0Eva\u00a0then goes back in time to hit the all-important cosmic reset button by enlisting Professor X to help go back\u00a0even further and avert Malloy’s conception. \u00a0Then she returns to the present,\u00a0tells Scott what she averted, and basically tells him that his entire revolution is a delusion and a dead end. \u00a0Scott disclaims the inheritance and shuts down his own school,\u00a0handing over his students to the mainstream X-Men.<\/p>\n

There’s your eight issues, which is more than the story really needs. \u00a0We’ll gloss over obvious continuity questions such as “this didn’t seem to bother Xavier when he buggered off to the Shi’ar Empire with Lilandra” and “nobody was this worried about Siena Blaze” – there’s no really good answer to these points, but they’re far enough outside the story’s frame of reference that I’m not particularly bothered by them. \u00a0The use of Exodus as a throwaway ally of SHIELD is very strange indeed, and rather suggests that Bendis was hunting through the\u00a0Handbook<\/em> for telepaths on a\u00a0deadline so tight that he didn’t have time to read the whole entry, but it’s\u00a0a minor part of the story.<\/p>\n

A bigger issue is that\u00a0Malloy is\u00a0basically a blank character. \u00a0The story just isn’t very interested in him as a person. \u00a0It’s interested in him as a plot point\u00a0in terms of him being too powerful for the heroes to control. \u00a0It’s interested in him as a moral quandary of sorts. \u00a0And it’s interested in him vaguely as a parallel to Scott losing control when he was Phoenix. \u00a0But it’s not interested in him as a person, and it\u00a0goes out of its way pretty emphatically to tell us that he’s not acting rationally and there’s no real point trying to talk to him. \u00a0That leaves a lengthy story with a non-character at its centre, who basically does the same “confused and surprised” schtick as the girl with the plot-advancing portal power from the last\u00a0All-New X-Men<\/em> arc. \u00a0Malloy throws in a bit of random anger, but it’s essentially the same thing. He’s a concept without a human dimension to anchor him.<\/p>\n

The moral argument is curious. \u00a0Scott seems offended by Xavier’s treatment of Matthew, on the logic that it’s denying his identity. \u00a0But Xavier at least implies that he was only able to do this in the first place by winning Matthew’s trust, and says outright that Matthew explicitly consented at a later date. \u00a0And none of Scott’s allies support his view, even Magneto or Emma. \u00a0Magik tags along with him but hardly seems zealous on the point of principle.<\/p>\n

So it seems that we’re not meant to take the moral argument particularly seriously in its own right, but instead to see it as a symptom of the story’s real concern, which is to bring him that Scott has had a nervous breakdown and his “mutant revolution” is really a sign that he’s gone off the rails. \u00a0I suppose Bendis could be going for the idea that Scott is looking to recapture clear, black and white moral principles, and that this inevitably leads him in the direction of zealotry. \u00a0Except\u2026 Scott\u00a0didn’t<\/em> start in this direction after Xavier died. \u00a0We had years of stories about him running Utopia as a mutant nation before that happened.<\/p>\n

The idea that the “mutant revolution” is basically a rather sad joke is something I could go with, but it feels like Bendis has ramped up the stakes far too quickly. \u00a0I think he’s going for the idea that Scott pursues this agenda\u00a0and gets further and further out of his depth until Eva has to step in, recognise him\u00a0as a broken mentor, and set things right to give him a second chance. \u00a0But there’s been no real escalation prior to this point because Scott’s “mutant revolution” doesn’t bloody do anything, other than recruit kids and hide out in a base, which is pretty standard X-Men stuff.<\/p>\n

The reset button doesn’t actually bother me, because it does\u00a0still lead to a change in Scott’s character, and because it’s played up very much as\u00a0Eva\u00a0building up worse problems for down the line. \u00a0So it doesn’t feel like a cop out so much as a case of swapping one problem for another. \u00a0That’s particularly so because the story came out alongside the Annuals, which establish the stakes for Eva in meddling with the timeline. \u00a0And this is a good story for Eva, who becomes the first of Scott’s proteges to break ranks and reject him with some real moral authority. \u00a0Okay, the plotting doesn’t make a lick of sense – if Eva’s solution is to go further back in time and undo Matthew’s existence, why does she bring Xavier\u00a0to the present day first? \u00a0But her character moments land, and they’re the strongest thing in this arc.<\/p>\n

There are some good bits here. \u00a0There’s a lovely reunion of Kurt and Kitty (and in fact Kurt’s very well written in the few lines he gets). \u00a0Bachalo gets to enjoy himself doing large scale chaos. \u00a0There is a genuine sense of Malloy as the insoluble problem that Bendis wants him to be. \u00a0And, as I say,\u00a0the story does make the transition to a reset-button ending without it feeling like a cop-out, which is not easy. \u00a0But there’s a lot of sprawl, and the story as a whole is trying to pay off a broader character arc for Scott which never really took place, because his mutant revolution never actually did anything contentious beyond the rhetoric. \u00a0The basic idea of a\u00a0dark\u00a0X-Men team who claim to be taking the tough decisions but actually turn out to be just a bit messed up was done far, far more effectively\u00a0in the last\u00a0X-Force<\/em> run.<\/p>\n

Still, the end is in sight. \u00a0Then the greatest hits season commences…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been a long, long while since we checked in\u00a0with\u00a0Uncanny X-Men, but that’s because this is a long, long story. \u00a0The title above may say volume 5, which\u00a0collects issues #26-31, but the Matthew Molloy arc started back in issue #23, with\u00a0the “Last Will and Testament of Charles Xavier” issues. \u00a0And then it overran at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2626"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2961,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2626\/revisions\/2961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}