X-Men Reread #1 - E is for Extinction

Alright, so I was thinking that I'd start doing these threads, on a biweekly rotation, where we go back over the great X-stories of the past, read through them and talk about it. I was going to rotate it so that one week we're doing a reread, and the next week we have a character discussion thread. I'd keep the week's thread pinned to the top, so that everybody can get a chance to see it and post their thoughts on the arc/character.

So, to inaugurate this thread, I figured I'd start with one of the more controversial works amoungst fans, E is for Extinction. Consisting of New X-Men 114 through 116, this arc was a pretty major break from the Nineties X-Men, in all kinds of different ways. First and foremost was the new creative team. Marvel thought to shake what was still their flagship franchise out of the late-Nineties doldrums by doing what was extremely fashionable at tht time, finding a British fellow who wrote angry, and setting him loose. Grant Morrison had some years before revamped the Justice League, drastically changing it from a team of B-list heroes into the flagship book of the entire company, with the most marketable characters they owned. However, they also drastically changed their art style, abandoning the more familiar character styles that had been fairly static since the days of Dave Cockrum and especially since Jim Lee, and brought in Frank Quitely, whose round faces and prominent chins were extremely different. Still, Quitely had been familiar to American audiences from Wildstorm's popular book about heroes as self-righteous jerks, The Authority, so it wasn't like they were taking a shot completely in the dark.

So, looking at these books, a few things pop right out at you. First is the character redesign. Gone are all the pouches and spandex of the Nineties. Instead, they're wearing more casual clothes, at least somewhat inspired by the movies. Hank has had a radical redesign, adopting a more feline form, with the explanation that it's just something that happened, and that perhaps it was triggered by the same forces that caused a recent mutant 'baby boom'. We're introduced to five of the six main characters, as well as the arc's villain. It was interesting that they had Scott and Logan together, pretty much traveling throughout the first book. They banter a little, but it seems unfamiliar somehow, like something's changed. Logan seems somehow harder and more cruel than he used to be, like the big heart that he's kept under the surface has gone back into hiding. Scott is even more closed off, to the point where he can barely tolerate being in a psychic meeting with the Professor, which I suppose makes sense given that he's just returned from being possessed by Apocalypse. Still, both Logan and Hank seem to intimate that there are problems between Scott and Jean. Speaking of Jean, I thought that it was really nice that she was introduced with Hank and Charles. Seeing the Jean and Scott unit operating in a casual situation apart from each other was a nice change, and her friendly and casual discussions with Hank did a good job of conveying the warmth and friendship that these characters feel for each other. Apparently Charles carries a gun at all times these days, which is something new and different. I guess he's traumatized by his ordeal at the hands of Magneto, and wants to protect himself? But no, Charles explains that he carries the gun to use on himself in case anyone tries to hijack his amazing telepathic brain. We don't actually meet Emma until the second book, where she's teaching a class of mutant children in Genosha, seconds before they're all massacred.

We also meet our villains. It's interesting, because Logan is pretty contemptuous of Sentinels early on, and even Scott is rather dismissive. They're going to form a pretty major part of the story, and so that early contempt is a bit of a misdirect. And then there's Cassandra Nova. I've never really liked her, but it was an interesting reveal. A strange woman wearing a pith helmet that obscures her face, leading a dentist named Trask through the jungle. When she removes the helmet at the end of the first book, it's an exact lookalike of Charles Xavier. We see Magneto for one panel before a Super-Sentinel comes flying through the tower that he's sitting in, a crippled old man in a wheelchair.

Another interesting theme that this creative team was really interested in was the divide between the 'pretty' mutants like the X-Men and mutants with physically weird mutations. Scott and Logan's mission in the beginning was to rescue a mutant whose mutation seemed to be a couple of extra faces, which did nothing but make him look weird. This will keep coming up all through their run, no doubt inspired by the dichotomy between the X-Men and the Morlocks back the Claremont era. But rather than a tribe of misfits, Morrison has these 'ugly mutants' appearing more and more in all kinds of places, and they play an important role in the world that he creates.

As the story goes on, we see that things have changed even more than we though. All the X-Men are harder now than they were. Scott using his optic blasts to euthanize a critically injured mutant torched by Sentinels directed by Cassandra Nova. Hank is cracking jokes using the de-fleshed bones of some Genoshan mutant as a prop. Charles guns down the villain and outs himself as a mutant on a talk show.

I also like to include the preludes to this one when I read them. Generation X #75 sort of wraps up that series and explains why Emma is on Genosha. It didn't end in a very happy place for Emma, which is probably why all the character development (and her not-quite romance with Sean Cassidy) that she underwent during the Generation X series was thrown by the wayside to create an Emma who was in top form. Mind you, (in her eyes) failing as an educator with lethal results twice in a fairly short time period probably were pretty damaging to her mental well-being. And Uncanny X-Men 394, which was the actual introduction of the new costumes (but with the a more familiar art style) is mainly about the personal problems between Scott and Jean, establishing that the X-Men are out there on missions, but also that they're going to be running the love triangle that had been dead for most of the Nineties. Thanks for that, Bryan Singer. Yet another monstrosity I blame you for.

So, what do you think of this arc?