New X-Men: Academy X #10-11 (2005)

Prodigy gets a spotlight issue.  His power is that he can “absorb” knowledge from people nearby, but that knowledge fades fairly rapidly. This leaves him feeling like a temporary hero.  Emma Frost tells him she can remove a psychological block that causes that knowledge to fade, but suggests that it may have unintended consequences.

From there, we see Prodigy become President and kill all the X-Men.  Obviously, that doesn’t really happen—it was all a psychological trick to teach him a lesson about seeking too much power too soon.

I liked these issues.  That doesn’t mean I agree with Emma and Dani that manipulating David with traumatic psychic imagery was the best strategy to solve this issue and teach this lesson.  I recognize that education isn’t Emma Frost’s strength and Dani is young, so the instruction and methods of the teachers at Academy X should realistically be evolving and not always as good as they need to be.

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