'X' Hits the Spot

Comics:

New X-Men: 'E' is for Extinction; Imperial; New Worlds; Riot at Xavier's; Assault on Weapon Plus; Planet X; Here Comes Tomorrow: Written by Grant Morrison, Illustrated by Frank Quitely, Phil Jiminez, Chris Bachalo, Igor Kordey, Ethan Van Sciver, Marc Silvestri and others (2001-2004): Grant Morrison's early 21st-century run on New X-Men turned out to be one long, almost self-contained story, so I'm reviewing all 1,000 pages or so of it at once for my second time through it.

Morrison has often been portrayed as the mad, metatextual genius of the superhero comic book, but for all that, his runs on X-Men, Batman and JLA have been big sales successes with at least one eye on the past history of those books. His X-Men, premiering after the successful first X-Men movie, nods at least passingly to new readers more familiar with the movie than the comics, putting the X-men into leather outfits rather than their traditional superheroic garb. That done, Morrison takes off at a gallop through both classic characters and situations from the X-men's heyday of the late 1970's and early 1980's and newly introduced twists, turns and extrapolations of the all the familar tropes of the X-universe and of superhero comics.

And so the Phoenix returns, Magneto apparently dies, Cyclops has relationship issues, a lot of humans hate and fear mutants and vice versa, a former villain (in this case The White Queen) goes straight and joins the X-Men, Wolverine finds out stuff about his mysterious past, a group calling itself the U-Men kill mutants and harvest their organs so as to improve themselves, the weapons program that helped 'create' Wolverine is examined, the Shi'ar Empire shows up, Professor Xavier turns out to have an evil twin (sort of), the Beast's physical appearance changes again, new mutants enter the fold, old mutants die, the mutant nation of Genosha is destroyed in a massive act of anti-mutant terrorism, and a glimpse of the future finally reveals who the real master villain is, and how mutants and humans alike will become extinct if someone doesn't do something about It.

It's all a wild ride through X-history, and unlike many modern comics creators, Morrison manages to tell an epic tale that nonetheless leaves everything pretty much back at status quo when he leaves the book. Admittedly, that status quo would almost be where the X-books were when John Byrne left as artist back in the early 1980's, but as the Chris Claremont/John Byrne X-run was the greatest in the book's history, that's not so bad. All in all, this is probably the greatest long-form X-story ever told.