Welcome to one of the greatest runs of all time. Joss Whedon’s first work for Marvel featured beautiful, clear art by John Cassaday that almost exclusive employed the “widescreen” format of page layouts. It introduced both fascinating new individual mutants and also the interstellar parallel to SHIELD, called SWORD.
In this very first arc, the team brings Colossus back from the dead—certainly, something fans were looking forward to.
It starts with the reopening of Xavier’s Institute, and Kitty Pryde signing on as a senior staff member. In these early issues, the team does a great job at establishing the premise for this book: A core team returns the X-Men to its root concept, which was to promote positive views of mutants by having a public team of mutant heroes—just like The Avengers.
The book also fixes the story in continuity by addressing some of the troubling ramifications of recent runs on X-books.
Wolverine attacks Cyclops for jilting Jean Grey and taking up with Emma Frost.
They have a big brawl to work out their feelings, but maybe beer would have been better? Beer is a recurring theme in this series.
It would have been so easy to “write out” Grant Morrison’s radical change of direction for Cyclops by simply saying Emma had used her mind control over him. Instead, he embraces it fully and uses it to create tension between his characters.
Well done.
In parallel to the X-Men becoming superheroes again, a new character: A geneticist in India, Dr. Kavita Rao, declares that the mutant gene is a curable disease. An alien named Ord, from a planet called Breakworld, has given her the technology to cure mutants.
Ord’s involvement is shepherded by another new character, Abigail Brand, who is basically another Nick Fury, but for an organization called S.W.O.R.D. (GET THE ABBREVIATION).
To be fair to Brand and the SWORD organization, Ord arrived at Earth with a declaration of war (and superior weaponry), and they negotiated him down to curing the mutant gene and thus eliminating the perceived threat to Breakworld.
As the story unfolds, we learn that Rao’s cure was based on research done on a mutant named Tildie Soames.
She has the ability to make her nightmares real, and her innocent misuse of her own powers ended up killing her own parents and a cop.
Rao also experiments on a mysterious mutant, believed dead, who is being held captive at Benetech–her company’s headquarters.
Of course Ord is a bad guy. His real goal is to kill all mutants because he believes—based on a prophecy—that mutants will destroy Breakworld.
Dr. Rao’s announcement of a cure leads mobs of mutants to both apply for, and protest, the cure, while Beast sneaks into Benetech to get a sample of the serum. Beast is one of the characters that Joss Whedon writes extremely well. Beast and Rao debate ethics, etc., but at the end of the day Beast wants to be cured of his own mutant genetics.
The X-Men strategize to take on this existential threat. They contact Nick Fury, only to find that he is out of the loop on this one.
It’s cool to get a story where there is someone who knows more than Nick. And it’s Abigail Brand. She allied with Ord because Breakworld give Earth weaponry and technology. SHIELD knew some of what was going on–they got the weapons–but Fury did not know about the mutant being experimented on by Dr. Rao, a mysterious mutant being held at Benetech. The X-Men believe it is Jean Grey, at first. They’re wrong.
It’s Colossus. Ord stole his “dead” body years ago, used Breakworld tech to cure his Legacy Virus and therefore his “death,” and then experimented on him for many years.
While the strike team find his body, Ord attacks the Institute and meets a few new students: Blindfold, Wing and Armor. Blindfold is kind of like an updated version of Destiny. Born with no eye sockets, she has telepathic and other psionic abilities.
Wing can fly, and when his powers manifested he broke his legs trying to land. It’s little touches like that which help make this series so rich and worthy of reads and re-reads. He, along with Blindfold and Armor, are assigned to Kitty Pryde as her “Paladins Squad.” As for Armor…
Armor is pretty cool.
Ord defeats the three students and injects Wing with the cure. From there, he returns to Benetech and fights the X-Men strike team—and Colossus.
Colossus’ rage enables him to overpower Ord, but before Peter can kill the alien, Nick Fury arrives to stop him. What follows is more diplomacy: Fury interrogates Brand, who admits that she knew Ord had been experimenting on Colossus.
Meanwhile, the mobs crash the gates and chaos ensues. Ord tries to escape but is stopped by a fastball special.
He’s taken into custody by SWORD, and Colossus returns with the team to the Institute, where there is a sweet conversation between him and Kitty.
There is also an ominous reference by Emma, speaking to the Stepford Cuckoos, about her having a master plan…We’ll see what unfolds there.