New X-Men #114-121

New X-Men #114-121

Originally released in 2001

Written by Grant Morrison

Art by Frank Quitely (#114-116, 121), Ethan Van Sciver (#117-118), Igor Kordey (#119-120)

It was fully revealed in a trailer yesterday that the villain of the upcoming "Deadpool & Wolverine" movie will be Cassandra Nova, a bald woman with psychic powers.  Seeing as I know nothing about the character, I thought I'd look into her debut.  Thankfully, her first appearance is also the start of Grant Morrison's run on X-Men, so I'm not starting in the middle of a run.

Cassandra Nova's very first issue has her tricking a relative of Bolivar Trask (the creator of the Sentinels) to go to the location of a Master Mold, which requires Trask DNA to activate. (the relative in question is a bit of an idiot, believing the whole time that he's being brought in for top secret black ops dental work on the President of the US)

Once Cassandra gets control of Sentinels, she immediately sends them off to destroy the nation of Genosha, killing millions of mutants in the process.  Millions of mutants are killed, with Magneto believed to be among the deceased.  The timing for this is unfortunate, though there was no way for the creative team to know that at the time - these issues were released between June and August of 2001, and a month later, the 9/11 terrorist attacks happened.

This, combined with Xavier admitting on TV that he's a mutant in the wake of these attacks, causes a surge in applicants to the school.  More than any other run of X-Men, this run actually felt like a school to me, with hundreds of mutants whose powers aren't particularly useful roaming the halls. (focus is given to Beak, a mutant that looks like an almost flightless bird)

Unlike the Claremont run, which had so many X-Men by the end that they had to be split into two teams, this run only focuses on six members so far - Cyclops, Jean Grey, Emma Frost, Wolverine, Beast, and Professor X.  With the inclusion of the first four members of that line-up, there's plenty of relationship drama to go around, even if Wolverine admits that he and Jean would never work as a couple.

In addition to Cassandra Nova, the team also faces off against a businessman named John Sublime who admires mutants, and wants powers like theirs by any means necessary.  This includes creating a cult called the U-Men, ordinary humans who dismember mutants and graft mutant body parts onto their own bodies.

Issue 120 has the team discover that, during a conflict in issue 116, Cassandra Nova used her psychic powers to switch bodies with Professor Xavier, using Xavier's body to force Beak into beating Beast into a coma before heading off on a vacation in the Shi'ar Empire. (Cassandra getting ahold of Shi'ar technology is clearly not a good thing, given what she already accomplished with human technology)

The issue after that is mostly silent as Emma Frost and Jean Grey try to free Xavier's consciousness within Cassandra's body.  We get a brief glimpse into Cassandra's backstory, which I hope gets included in the Deadpool & Wolverine movie:

I realize the idea of someone trying to commit murder before they're even born is a dark one, and it's unclear who's attacking who (it seems to me like Cassandra's attacking Xavier, though it could easily be the other way around), but the idea of two babies having a fist fight could be played for comedy. (throw in some slow motion, dramatic music, etc.)  The issue ends with its first and only bit of spoken dialogue:

That seems like as good of a place as any to stop.  I'm liking the shift in focus to the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters feeling like a school, rather than the school feeling like a cover for the X-Men's activities.  Cassandra's motives are unclear beyond a hatred of Xavier and wanting to tear down everything that he's built, but the results of her actions are horrifying.  It's impressive how, despite this and Claremont's run both being X-Men, they almost feel like completely different franchises, which speaks to the strength of the X-Men as a concept.