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In which we wrap up John Francis Moore’s run on X-Force; the Demon Bear returns (kinda); four Moonstars are not in fact better than one; the Queen of Star Swords is an extremely rad villain; and X-Force takes a very contained multiversal tour.
X-PLAINED:
- Multiversal canon
- X-Force #99-100
- The Demon Bear (more) (again)
- Arcadia DeVille (more) (again)
- Mary Weather
- Fenwick
- Meridian
- The Queen of Star Swords
- The Cathedral
- Cable (but not that Cable)
- The X-Forces of several universes
- Earth-3100
- Earth-10003
- Earth-130000
- Earth-8280
- Earth-23100
- Non-mutants on the X-Men
- The provenance of the Brood X-men
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Alan Wake (video game) !
Well, shit….
That WAS a good question @ the end.
Morrison’s last arc Here Comes Tomorrow had a human as a member of the bad future X-Men.
The same run had Xavier say he was going to open his school to all gifted youngsters, mutant or not.
So some variant of the end question seemed to be on Morrison’s mind too
Up until very recently, wouldn’t Moira McTaggert have been the quintessential human partner for both Xavier personally and the X-Men as an organization?
I wonder if part of the problem forging these mutant-human partnerships is just the dearth of humans on friendly terms with mutants as a class. For every one human that Iceman or Angel take on a date, there are like 100 Purifiers.
I picked up this issue because I’d been vaguely following the Dani has bizarre new powers arc though I’m not sure I ever properly followed it, and as it ended here, I think I felt a case of “So what WAS that all about then?”
The Queen of Star Swords seems pure Kirby to me, thinking of his designs for Morgaine le Fey in the old Etrigan the Demon title, and I mean that as a compliment.
I thought I was alone in the “That HAS to be Doug in the 8280 X-Men, he’s the only “proper” New Mutant or early X-Forcer who doesn’t show up anywhere else in this anniversary issue, isn’t he?” especially since he’s neither skinny nor tall, but the LCS at the time was heavily skewed towards it being Sam, probably due to the facial hair. Nice to have support after all this time! 🙂
Call me a snob, or just plain wrong, but I’m never sure I consider Maddy to have been an actual X-Man, though she came as close as anyone. Her role was background support and comms, which is a vital role IMHO, but not one that required unique skills (She even comments that the computer systems were incredibly intuitive in design and operation), so I see her as a member of the Team, but not the X-Men, like other human allies like Moira, Stevie, Tom Corsi and Sharon Friedlander. Which even for me is splitting hairs.
I think that “Xavier preaches coexistence from behind the walls of his private mutants only school” has been referenced more than a few times by those opposing his philosophy.
We’ve seen a few “almost” cases, like Mimic, and even Cloak and Dagger (Who definitely weren’t mutants at the time), and Longshot is… well, Longshot. Technically Betsy Braddock wasn’t a mutant until she joined the X-verse, she and Brian both got their respective powers from their father being from Otherworld rather than Earth, but they retconned in her being a mutant solely to have her join the X-Men.
I’m not sure I’d want to see too many non-mutant X-Men, but non-mutant students works fine for me, possibly with a pipeline to other groups like he Avengers , until such time as the division becomes un-necessary.
I realized when reading these issues that John Francis Moore’s X-Force run (and X-Force in general) had become probably my favourite ’90s (or at least late ’90s) X-related title. It felt like he really managed to capture the “early 20s” weirdos feel of the characters, which isn’t one that seems _that_ common in superhero comics. It’s too bad Moore didn’t write that much more after this series and appears to not have any sort of web presence.
I also really enjoyed the art from both Adam Pollina and Jim Cheung across the run. Both distinct artists that brought, what I thought were interesting approaches to the characters. I might actually track down the Epic collections to have it all in one place (I’ve had all the issues and got rid of them after reading them). I’ll miss this run, but glad it at least got an ending.
Finally, a few months ago I put together a list of “non-mutant” characters who had been members of X-related teams. Probably not complete, and some of these are definitely debatable in how much they’re members of “X-teams,” but here it is:
Juggernaut, Longshot, Karima Shapandar, Warlock, Puck, Fantomex(?), Danger, Hepzibah, Corsair, Captain Britain, Kid Gladiator, Broo, Warbird, Amanda Sefton, Ink, Spiral, Lockheed, Carol Danvers, Deadpool, Deathlok, Cerise, Birdbrain, Gaia, Gosamyr, Feron, Cloak/Dagger.
Honestly, I’d kind of love a book that was about all these “not actually mutant” characters on one team.
I will say, “I will prove that we can be just as good of members of society and hope for advancement, but without actually pushing for integration and instead doing model minority stuff” REALLY has me keeping with my argument that (and I know Claremont, for better or for worse, modeled Xavier and Magneto after Ben-Gurion/Begin), while the MLK parallel for Xavier doesn’t work, Booker T Washington DOES seem to work. (Any “Booker T Washington was actually far more radical” stans, please correct me)