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It's A Binary World 2.0 » Comics Review: New X-Men

At first the book continues directly from the previous one. We learn that Prof X can walk because Xorn healed his spine (although I thought it was that his legs were crushed? Perhaps that was retconned at some point). Prof X is working on a Cerebra upgrade to telepathically remote-control mutants to help them get out of dangerous situations? No possible way that could go wrong! Sometimes Xavier really does carry the idiot ball. (Although it ends up not being a plot point so far)

I really liked the meditative first issue focusing on Xorn. He’s spent nearly all his life isolated in a box. So it was pretty neat to see him going through Chinatown. And he had to experience both the good and the bad of humanity. He’s turned out to be my favorite or second-favorite character of the New X-Men run.

We then move on to the Fantomex story arc. This is his debut and it’s a bit confusing. At the end I’m a bit confused about what has taken place and what is a result of his misdirection mutant ability. Scott goes to Emma for help with his this can’t be good in Morrison’s realistic world where people aren’t all innocent, even if they’re with the good guys. Also, Jean is Phoenix again….wtf? Apparently Fantomex is an amazing theif and wow, he’s stolen some crazy historical things! (Or has he?) So Fantomex explains the Weapon program in the government. The way the dialog is written, it seems as though up until this point, Marvel had never made it clear that Wolverine was Weapon X as in Weapon 10 as in the 10th one they tried to create. The sad thing is that what he describes is rooted in history – all governments, ours included, has conducted highly illegal human research. And it looks like things got crazy at that research center because Weapon XII is crazy! Human evolution plus sentinels. Holy crap! Again, I feel that Morrison is doing a good job bringing reality to the Marvel Universe. Of course, the government wouldn’t have given up just because Wolverine escaped their control.

Because this is a Morrison book, there’s tons of imagery. I’m missing most of it, but I love the imagery with Fantomex and the Egyptian artifact. The reveal that Fantomex is Weapon XIII? Very interesting.

Then it seems that Morrison gives them a bit of a break from fighting external threats and it moves to internal threats. Beast warns Emma not to mess with Jean and Scott’s marriage. And while she is definitely acting with bad intentions, the fact that Scott has asked her to be his sex/marriage therapist is not good. He’s playing with fire. Also, it’s like a mental affair. Her dressing up in Jeans old costume for roleplay is just messed up!

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