The Matt Signal Advent Calendar 2015 Day 23: Wolverine & the X-Men "Greetings from Genosha"

Wolverine and the X-Men 
Season 1, Episode 10, "Greetings from Genosha," 2009

Matt Says:

Bet you thought I'd go for another Cyclops-centric episode, huh? Nope, for Wolverine and the X-Men I went with an episode about my second favorite X-Man, Nightcrawler. Nightcrawler is as criminally miswritten as Cyclops in so many modern stories, but this animated series got him pitch perfect: swashbuckling, fun, but still with a sort of inner sadness from being treated as an outsider because of his looks.

But this episode, where he arrives on Magneto's mutant haven of Genosha, sees Kurt in a place where he doesn't have to hide or get sidelong glances from everyone he passes. He gets a tour guide in Scarlet Witch, and gets to go to a concert with her. But when things look to good to be true, they probably are, and Kurt finds the underbelly of Magneto's order, and what's great about Kurt is he doesn't think twice: he does what's right immediately, even though it means he has to give up his burgeoning romance with Wanda and the place where he finally fits in. That nobility is one of the many reasons Nightcrawler is such a great character.

One of the best things about Wolverine and the X-Men was the vast well of characters that the series drew from. X-Men stuck to '90s characters mostly, and X-Men: Evolution didn't stray too far from its core cast. This episode, set on Genosha, allows the animators and team to go wild with mutants. Dazzler appears in her original '70s costume.'90s Acolytes Senyaka, Scanner, and Mellancamp appear. Sauron is shown in Magneto's prison. And '00s characters Mercury, Pixie, Squid Boy, and Dust (a phenomenal character animated beautifully here) all have speaking parts. And sharp-eyed viewers even get to see Wolfsbane run across screen. It's an X-Men Easter egg hunt of epic proportions.

Fit to Be Tied In: A History of Marvel Crossovers and Events- Part 5: Onslaught to Second Coming: Even More X-overs

So you guys remember when Charles Xavier turned Magneto into a vegetable in X-Men #25 during “Fatal Attractions?” Well, apparently a small part of Magneto had burrowed into Xavier’s head as a result and was corrupting him from the inside, causing him to do things like rocket-punch the Juggernaut into Hoboken and create Post. These events led to the big companywide crossover of summer 1996, Onslaught, named for the hot mess that was supposed to be the combined personalities of Xavier and Magneto. Onslaught encompassed all the X-books, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and the Incredible Hulk, and featured cameos by Dr. Doom, Apocalypse and the Watcher. In defeating Onslaught, the Avengers, FF and Doom end up getting sucked into a pocket dimension created by Franklin Richards that led to a yearlong series of books under the banner Heroes Reborn, featuring the return to Marvel of Image ex-pats Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld. In their absence, Xavier was arrested for being Onslaught, a new character named Bastion fed the flames of anti-mutant hysteria, fellow mutant-hater (and mutant supervillain progeny) Graydon Creed ran for president and a new team of superheroes showed up called the Thunderbolts. The events of Onslaught would later inspire Rick Remender’s work on Uncanny Avengers and a recent, equally messy crossover called Axis.

Bastion is the focus of the next year’s crossover, Operation: Zero Tolerance. The Master Mold-Nimrod hybrid uses an army of human-sentinel hybrids called Prime Sentinels to capture key members of the X-Men under the aegis of the U.S. government. He is apprehended by SHIELD in a scene in which he gets a stern talking-to by, of all people, Iceman, who is in revenge mode after his father was beaten to death by Graydon Creed’s lackeys before Creed was assassinated. OZT marks the addition of two new X-Men: the Morlock-Gene Nation member Marrow, whose body produces weapons made of bone, and Dr. Cecilia Reyes, a reluctant member who has force-field powers.

Next came the “Hunt for Xavier,” a tight crossover of the two main X-books in which the X-Men fight a Cerebro that has gained sentience – apparently all the X-Men’s tech has to Pinocchio at some point (see also the Danger Room) – and the professor is found to be working with the Brotherhood of (Evil?) Mutants.

The next two X-overs center on heavy-hitter villains. “Magneto War” restores the master of magnetism from bearded vegetable to top-dog baddie and gets rid of Joseph, the young Magneto clone who had ingratiated himself among the X-Men for the past few years. The story ends with the United Nations ceding to Magneto the island of Genosha, which hadn't been messed with in a while, so it was ripe for the picking.

The dawn of the new millennium brought the long-promised reveal of “The Twelve,” a group of mutants who were predicted to … do something. It turns out that something is power a machine that would help Apocalypse take over the body of Nate Grey, the refugee from the Age of Apocalypse. Sadly, nearly 15 years of build-up (The Twelve were first mentioned in an early issue of X-Factor) didn’t quite deliver the story some were hoping for. Nevertheless, the Twelve were revealed to be Magneto, Polaris, Storm, Sunfire, Iceman, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Cable, Bishop, Professor X, Mikhail Rasputin (?) and the Living Monolith (???). Apocalypse fails to possess Nate Grey but ends up possessing Cyclops instead. After a series of reality-warping stories called Ages of Apocalypse, Chris Claremont returns to the X-books and jumps them forward six months for some ill-explained power swaps, couple swaps and guys-named-Thunderbird swaps.

Then for a while, nothing happened … well, not really, but the early 00s saw a series of writers rotate through the X-books. Chris Claremont came and went, followed by Scott Lobdell, then Grant Morrison and Joe Casey, then Chuck Austen, then Joss Whedon and Claremont yet again, et al. Brian Michael Bendis wrote an X-Men/Avengers crossover called House of M, which we’ll touch on in the next post.

At this point, all but 198 of Earth’s mutants have been depowered, and the X-Men are super bummed about it. Then, for the first time in a long time, Cerebra (the sequel to Cerebro, which met its demise in the “Hunt for Xavier”), picks up a blip in Alaska, a state crawling with Summers family blood.

Which brings us to 2007-08’s “Messiah Complex,” the first of three crossovers that will center on Hope, the first baby born after M-Day. Complex finds the X-Men in a race against Mr. Sinister’s Marauders and the Rev. William Stryker’s Purifiers to find Hope. Among its significant events, Xavier is rendered comatose, Mystique kills Sinister, Cyclops sanctions Wolverine to form a new X-Force that will serve as the X-Men’s secret kill squad, Bishop loses his crap and suddenly remembers Hope is the Antichrist of his timeline, and Cable takes Hope into the future to raise her, because if the future was good enough for Cable, then goshdarnit, it’s good enough for his adopted daughter.

Cable and Hope return from the future in 2010’s “Second Coming,” which is largely a battle of military wits between Cyclops – who by now has turned the remaining mutants into a paramilitary strike team all living on the same island off San Francisco – and Bastion – who has resurrected all your favorite mutant-haters, from Cameron Hodge to Graydon Creed. The good guys win, but at a pretty hefty price: Both Cable and Nightcrawler are killed (obviously they've both since gotten better). The story ends with Cerebra registering five new blips, launching a series called Generation Hope that would last 17 issues.

Internecine strife (lowercase, with an i) among the X-Men reaches a boiling point in 2011’s Schism miniseries by Jason Aaron, which saw Cyclops and Wolverine break the X-Men into two different camps, one of which stayed on the island off San Fran and the other of which rebuilt the Xavier Institute and renamed it the Jean Grey School, in a split that remains to this day.

For more good guys fighting good guys, stop by later this week for a look at the Bendis age of Avengers crossovers, from Disassembled to A vs. X.

Dan Grote’s new novel, Magic Pier, is available however you get your books online. He has been writing for The Matt Signal since 2014. He and Matt have been friends since the days when making it to issue 25 guaranteed you a foil cover.

Fit to Be Tied In: A History of Marvel Crossovers and Events- Part 4: X-Cutioner’s Song to Age of Apocalypse: More X-overs

For more than a year from the debut of X-Men #1 in fall 1991, the X-books remained crossover-free. The interim saw some creative upheaval, with Chris Claremont, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld and John Byrne all leaving, and Scott Lobdell and Fabian Nicieza becoming the main architects of the X-verse, with new names like Andy Kubert and Greg Capullo coming up on art.

The new crew got their first big story in 1992’s “X-Cutioner’s Song,” a 12-part event that spanned Uncanny X-Men, X-Men, X-Force, and X-Factor. The main antagonist of the Song was Stryfe, the pointy, silver-suited supervillain who had shown up about the same time as Cable, the paramilitary leader who turned the New Mutants into X-Force. Stryfe is out for revenge on a number of important X-characters, including Professor X, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Cable and Apocalypse. Late in the story, he appears to reveal himself as the baby Cyclops sent to the future in X-Factor #68, all grown up. This is later debunked, with Cable proven to be the child and Stryfe the clone. Stryfe is defeated, but in a last act of villainy tricks Mister Sinister into releasing the Legacy Virus, a disease that will go on to kill a number of mutants. He also unleashes Stryfe’s Strike File upon the world, so that’s two posthumous F-Yous.

In 1993, after 30 years of existing, Magneto gets to be the main bad guy of a crossover. “Fatal Attractions” sees Big M build a new orbiting space base, regain control of the Acolytes from Fabian Cortez and invite along any X-Men who would like to completely isolate themselves from civilization. Colossus bites, getting up in the middle of his sister’s funeral (she died of the Legacy Virus) to join the X-Men’s sworn enemy. Professor X launches an attack on Magneto’s new digs, which results in Magneto ripping the adamantium from Wolverine’s body, which remains one of the most badass things I’ve seen in a comic. Xavier responds by turning Magneto into a vegetable. Wolverine – whose claws are revealed to have been part of his skeleton all along – leaves the team to go find himself.

Magneto’s goons weren’t done playing with the X-Men, though. “Fatal Attractions” was quickly followed by “Bloodties,” an X-Men/Avengers story in which Fabian Cortez, the former leader of the Acolytes, kidnaps Luna, Magneto’s granddaughter by Quicksilver and the Inhuman Crystal, and foments civil unrest in Genosha, which can’t get its act together in a post "X-tinction Agenda" world. Things go from bad to worse when Exodus, Magneto’s current capo di mutie, shows up and drops and big-ol’ psionic dome over the Genoshan capital. The good guys win, but the Avengers lose their U.N. charter for interfering in Genoshan political stuff.

As the crossovers continue through the years, the number of X-books expands, and writers and editors struggle to spread the events to all the books in the line, as opposed to three or four books. “The Phalanx Covenant,” for example, is spread out over Uncanny X-Men, X-Men, X-Factor, X-Force, Excalibur, Cable, and Wolverine (By today’s standards, that’s a downright reasonable number of X-books. Scary). The Phalanx are a techno-organic alien race that crept on the scene immediately after Fatal Attractions (and who would many years later team up with Ultron to menace the Kree Emprie in Annihilation: Conquest), assimilating thought-dead characters such as Stephen Lang, Cameron Hodge, Doug Ramsey and Candy Southern. At the opening of the covenant, the Phalanx have taken the X-Men, and it’s up to a B-team made up of Banshee, Emma Frost, Jubilee and Sabretooth to gather more mutants, specifically the team that would become Generation X. Elsewhere, Cyclops and Jean Grey, fresh from their honeymoon in the future raising Baby Cable, team up with long-rogue Wolverine and Adult Cable to shoot, snikt, teke-blast, and eyeball-laser their way to the rest of the X-Men. The ancillary teams, meanwhile (Factor, Force and Calibur), are charged with figuring out a way to stop the Phalanx on Earth from contacting reinforcements from their home planet.

Just a few short months later, Xavier’s son, Legion, goes back in time and accidentally kills his father (he was gunning for Magneto), forking the timestream and creating everyone’s favorite Age, “The Age of Apocalypse.” For 30 years, Bishop is trapped in a world where Apocalypse rules all of North America, Magneto leads the X-Men, Cyclops has one eye, Wolverine has one hand, Colossus has one red do-rag and so-on. All the X-books, right down to the just-started Generation X, were put on hold for four months to create an alternate reality that Marvel’s revisited a couple times since and is making part of the Secret Wars’ Battleworld. Uncanny and adjectiveless X-Men became Astonishing and Amazing X-Men and were about Magento’s core team. X-Force became Gambit & the Xternals, in which the thief is hired to swipe the Shi’ar M’Kraan Crystal. X-Factor became Factor X, about the Summers Brothers working for Mr. Sinister. Excalibur became X-Calibre, about Nightcrawler’s adventures in the Savage Land. Generation X became Generation Next, about a team of young mutants overseen by Colossus and Kitty Pryde. Wolverine became Weapon X, about Wolverine and Jean Grey running covert ops. And Cable became X-Man, about the genetically engineered child of Scott Summers and Jean Grey. In the end, Magneto (quite awesomely) kills Apocalypse, and four characters – Nate Grey, Holocaust, the Sugar Man and the AoA version of the Beast – escape to the restored 616 reality. As a result, the X-Man series became an ongoing. For those of you keeping score at home, that means we’re up to nine ongoing X-titles, plus the quarterly X-Men Unlimited.

In our next installment, we’ll traipse through yet more X-overs, from Onslaught as far as my self-imposed word counts will allow. Expect Bastion to show up a lot.

Better Know a Henchman: Mutant Henchmen Through the Ages

In my recent Apocalypse for beginners column, I pulled myself back from a tangent on the henchmen of the major X-villains. Not being one to let things go, I ventured further down the rabbit hole, a deep pit full of Marauders, Dark Riders and Aco’d Lytes, and came up with this listicle of quality cronies.

Acolytes

First appearance: X-Men (Vol. 2) #1, 1991

Created by: Jim Lee/Chris Claremont

Boss: Magneto

Original roster: Fabian Cortez, Annmarie Cortez, Delgado, Chrome and a SHIELD agent named Nance Winters. Only Fabian Cortez survives the team’s first outing, and he returns not long after with a new team consisting of Frenzy, Javitz, Katu, the Kleinstock brothers, Seamus Mellencamp, Milan, Neophyte, Scanner, Senyaka, Spoor, Carmela Unuscione and Amelia Voght.

Is there a strong guy? Frenzy, who previously served Apocalypse as a member of the Alliance of Evil.

Is there a psi? Scanner is able to psychically detect mutants as well as project an astral form of herself.

Most original powers: Spoor secretes pheromones that amplify violent urges in others. Warren Ellis uses this power to great effect in Excalibur during an arc in which Spoor is a prisoner of the team on Muir Island.

Most ’90s powers: Senyaka dresses like a ninja and uses energy coils as weapons. Magneto turned Senyaka’s own coils against him during the Fatal Attractions storyline as a demonstration of his power/crazy.

MVP: Fabian Cortez, because that turncoat ratfink came back again and again as a thorn in the side both of the X-Men and his supposed idol Magneto.

Brotherhood of Evil Mutants

First appearance: X-Men (Vol. 1) #4, 1964

Created by: Stan Lee/Jack Kirby

Boss: Magneto

Original roster: Toad, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Mastermind

First to refer to themselves in the third person: “Hah! You are spunky, my little witch! I like that in a female! Someday, I may even decide that you would be a worthy mate for Mastermind!” – Mastermind, to Scarlet Witch, X-Men #4

Is there a psi? Mastermind can cast illusions that fool the mind. Close enough.

Most original powers: Toad can leap high and spit acid, though originally he was just a leaper, but without Batroc’s mastery of Savate.

Most racist powers: The Scarlet Witch has “hex powers” and was raised by gypsies.

MVP: Tie between Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, who went on to become prominent Avengers with the occasional heel turn in which one of them would wipe out all the mutants or become a Terrigen Mist drug pusher.

Dark Riders

First appearance: X-Factor (Vol. 1) #65, 1991

Created by: Chris Claremont/Jim Lee/Whilce Portacio

Boss: Apocalypse

Original roster: Gauntlet, Barrage, Tusk, Foxbat, Psynapse, Harddrive (Note: The original Dark Riders were Inhumans, not mutants)

First to refer to themselves in the third person: “Sneaky little psi-witch … precious good your insights’ll do you tee hee … once Harddrive shuts you down … as permanently as I do your traitor ship!” – Harddrive, to Jean Grey, X-Factor #66

Is there a psi: Psynapse, whose attack on Jean Grey manages to jumpstart her dormant telepathy.

Most original powers: Tusk was a hulking brute of a monster capable of creating tiny, totes-adorbs versions of himself for maximum mayhem.

Most ’90s powers: Barrage has guns for hands. Nuff said.

MVP: See also Tusk, the only Dark Rider badass enough to be named after a Fleetwood Mac song.

Freedom Force

First appearance: Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 1) #199, 1985

Created by: Chris Claremont/John Romita Jr.

Boss: Mystique, answering in turn to Dr. Valerie Cooper

Original roster: Pyro, Avalanche, Blob, Destiny

First to refer to themselves in the third person: “Don’t need the new gal for that, boss. Let Pyro do it! His magnetic powers are of no use against my living flame!” Pyro, to Mystique, about Magneto, Uncanny X-Men #199

Is there a strong guy? No, but there’s an immovable morbidly obese person. That’s a kind of strength.

Most original powers: Destiny’s powers of precognition have helped drive plots forward for 30 years. And an entire X-series (Chris Claremont’s X-Treme X-Men) was conceived on the idea of having a bunch of mutants chase down her journals.

MVP: Tie between Pyro and Blob, if only for their inclusion in the 1992 X-Men arcade game, which made use of their infamous catchphrases that they always said: “Pyro will turn you into toast” and “Nothing moves the Blob.” The game also gave the Blob a mace for some reason.

Hellfire Club

First appearance: X-Men (Vol. 1) #129, 1980

Created by: Chris Claremont/John Byrne

Boss: Sebastian Shaw

Original roster: Emma Frost, Donald Pierce, Harry Leland, Jason Wyngarde (aka Mastermind), Black
Queen (aka Jean Grey)

First to refer to themselves in the third person: “Worry not, Jason. Had the Black Queen struck to kill, there would be nothing left of the lad but ashes.” Black Queen, to Wyngarde, X-Men #132

Is there a strong guy? Not so much an unstoppable force as an immovable object. Specifically Leland, who was able to alter the mass of an object or person, one of those fellas who can’t be moved if he doesn’t want to be moved, a la the Blob.

MVP: Emma Frost, who would spend only one decade as a villainess before getting her own junior X-team and later becoming a leader of the X-Men.

Horsemen of Apocalypse

First appearance: X-Factor (Vol. 1) #15, 1987

Created by: Louise and Walt Simonson

Boss: Apocalypse

Original roster: War (Abraham Kieros), Famine (Autumn Rolfson), Pestilence (the Morlock Plague), Death (Archangel)

First to refer to themselves in the third person: “Here, sonny, let ole granny stroke your cheek! Pestilence’s touch’ll quiet ya down – forever!” Pestilence, to Beast, X-Factor #19

Most original powers: The new-and-improved Archangel had metal wings that could fire blades capable of stabbing, poisoning and brain-frying their targets.

Marauders

First appearance: Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 1) #210, 1986

Created by: Chris Claremont/John Romita Jr.

Boss: Mr. Sinister

Original roster: Arclight, Blockbuster, Harpoon, Malice, Prism, Riptide, Sabretooth, Scalphunter, Scrambler, Vertigo

First to refer to themselves in the third person: “You are fast, Beastman, but not fast enough to best Harpoon!” – Harpoon, to Beast, X-Factor #10

Is there a psi? Kindasorta. Malice is a being of psychic energy who gets her jollies by possessing other mutants, such as Dazzler and Polaris.

Most original powers: Riptide spins like a tornado and hurls shurikens made up of a resin secreted by his own body. Pretty gross/badass.

Most racist powers: Harpoon is an Inuit mutant who chucks energy-charged “slayspears” at his victims.

MVP: Sabretooth, who made his debut as an X-villain alongside the Marauders after originally fighting Iron Fist.

Mutant Liberation Front

First appearance: New Mutants (Vol. 1) #87

Created by: Rob Liefeld/Louise Simonson

Boss: Stryfe

Original roster: Rusty Collins, Dragoness, Forearm, Kamikaze, Reaper, Skids, Strobe, Sumo, Tempo, Thumbelina, Wildside, Zero

Most original powers: Tempo is able to control the flow of time around her.

Most ’90s powers: Forearm is a bare-chested, four-armed brawler, much like Goro from Mortal Kombat.

MVP: After Marvel took over Malibu comics, Reaper appeared in a hybrid Marvel/Malibu team book called Exiles, a name later given to a book starring a team of reality-hopping mutants.

Matt here, saying to come back for a second installment where we get to know some even more obscure mutant villain groups. You thought they didn't get more obscure than the Mutant Liberation Front? Oh, just wait until you meet.. The Nasty Boys. What? Yes, that's a real thing. You'll just have to come back to find out.