A disclaimer. If you are some sort of spoiler junky, even if you don’t read New Xmen: leave this thread now. This is something worth not spoiling for yourself. And as an added precaution, I’m putting most of my OP in spoiler box, even though the title clearly says spoilers.
Anyway, Grant Morrison’s run has been interesting, and I’ve mostly enjoyed it. Interestingly, he has had a perchance for making characters do certain things that seem “off” to me… and then many many issues later he reveals something that actually explains it. One example, in the Cassandra Nova story line was
when “Xavier” shot Cassandra. This is way out of the plausible range of behavior for super-pacifist Xavier, especially since Cassandra was otherwise immobilized already. I thought it was just lousy “hip people kill with guns!” writing. But later onit made perfect sense.
anyway, this was definately the mother of all of that sort of tactic. Certain things had been nagging for quite some bit about
Xorn. His powers seemed to work in very ad hoc ways. He occasionally did things that seemed slightly out of character. But I never expected something like this. As big surprises, well set-up and both kept under the radar while still providing clues, go, this was pretty masterful IMHO. Normally I’m not a big fan of the return of a supposedly dead bad guy, especially one that’s been supposedly dead like four or five times already so far. And Magneto is my favorite X-Men villian only in theory: in practice, too many lousy writers have turned him into a one-note raving insane madman bad guy, instead of the much more complex villian he can be (and once was). We’ll see if Morrison can write him in an interesting way: I have to admit that Morrison’s bad guys have been his weak point: they’ve all been almost motiveless evil, wanting to kill mutants for some reason that seemed only vague at best.
But there are so many things to think back upon now.
Xorn’s secret slaughter of the UMen was the first real reveal we’ve had of a darker side (well, I guess AFTER he supposedly was going to destroy the entire world with his suicide), but his powers have been more of a giveaway, as Magneto brags. I mean, what DOES a giant star for a brain do for you? And why does it give him “healing powers.” Well, looking back at the entire run of Xorn, and reading some usenet retrospectives, its pretty cool to see how his already vague powers were “faked” with Magneto’s powers, right in front of our eyes.
Xorn moved a huge cement truck in the Riot at Xavier’s storyline, seemingly with his bare hands. But who ever mentioned him having superstrength? Obvious answer now: metal truck.
Xorn’s healing powers: while vaunted, we’ve only ever seen them do anything ONCE: and that was a case in which the “disease” was a bunch of metalic nano-robots. The only other time was with Quentin Quire, but Xorn DIDN’T heal Quentin. In fact, it appears now that he may have killed him just to shut him up.
Xorn disabled/killed/maimed G-type somehow: but despite his power supposedly coming from his huge star brain, you can see him using his hands to do it, just like Magneto.
Although Morrison obviously took too litterally Sage’s “computer brain” mutation, it now makes sense how her memories could have been messed up.
Xorn’s height, Magneto’s height, and the height of the person who attacked Sage are all the same.
Now, obviously, there’s a heck of a lot left to explain. Who is Martha really (an obvious Mags ally) and were both the U-Men and Weapon Plus entirely Magneto conspiracies?
But even if that explanation doesn’t go well, Morrison’s already pulled off a great twist, not least of all because I sort of LIKED Xorn as a character.