Issue #4 - The  Passion  Dilution of Grant Morrison

Before I get started with some brilliant comic book analysis, let's roll the tape from last episode (which included a remarkably prescient wish list):

"New creative teams: Milligan and Allred on X-Men" - Got that half right, as Peter Milligan will be replacing Chuck Austen in a few short months.

"Roster shifts: Nocturne would get trapped in the MU and joins the X-Men" - Look who listened, and who got booted off the Exiles? Anytime you want to pay up Bedard, let me know. And no crap on the message board about her joining the Brotherhood. She’ll be on the X-Men or in Limbo in a matter of months.

"Wolverine would be relegated to one book per month. And that book would be Avengers." -  Well look whose joining the Avengers. Looks like Bendis owes me money too.

My next prediction: The new Xorn will be revealed as none other than an amalgamated clone of Reignfire, Shatterstar, and Douglock. Let someone try to cut through that kind of origin. It could happen people!

But enough gloating; onto scathing criticism. Remember Grant Morrison? He killed 16 million mutants on Genosha, gave Xavier and evil twin, outted him and the X-Men, destroyed the Shi'ar empire, killed Magneto, brought Magneto back, killed him again, killed Emma Frost, brought her back, killed Jean Grey, and somehow had time to throw Logan into the sun. Oh yeah, thaaaaat Grant Morrison. Love him or hate him, one thing's for sure, you noticed him. If he was so noticeable, then where did he go? Last time we checked in with his X-Universe:

  • Magneto had revealed himself as Xorn's true identity, demolished NYC, and was missing a head.

  • Jean Grey died from an E-M stroke, but managed to get a message to Scott, encouraging his relationship to that home wrecking floozy Emma Frost.

  • The school was in ruins.

  • Xavier was quitting anyway.

And those are just the broad strokes. What has happened since the recent X-Men Reload? Magneto's alive, Xorn's back, and the school is running better than ever with Scott Summers and Emma Frost at the helm. How did this happen? Major retcon? That’s not exactly how I would define what has happened in the X-Universe over the past few months. It's been a dilution.

During Morrison's run, his New X-Men books were undeniably the flagship of the X-Franchise (have I ever mentioned I love be able to make words by putting a X- in front of them?). Other titles, like X-treme and Uncanny, basically played catch-up to the world Morrison was creating: a world where mutants were rapidly going from minority species to humanity's heirs, a world of X-Corporations and Cassandra Novas and U-Men and Weapon Plus projects. Since Morrison left the X-Men, nearly every plot point he's brought up has been addressed by another writer, and for the most part done BADLY. Why? Because the authors and I can only assume the X-Editorial Board (See? Did it again) are diluting Morrison’s work, watering it down so it can easily fit into less complicated 4-6 issue arcs. That way his hard work doesn’t disappear, and the fruits of his labor can be shared across the X-Universe. Here are the major offenders:

  • Excalibur: Magneto is back: I’m still waiting for this to be explained better than "Oh, that wasn’t me in NY guys!" The Xorn is Magneto reveal at the beginning of Planet X was so good that I am more upset about that being overturned than anything else. I'd almost rather he be able to survive a beheading. I mean, we all knew he'd be back sometime, but the corpse isn't even cold!

  • Weapon X: John Sublime/Weapon Plus/Wolverine’s past: Another great thing about Morrison was his ability to tell one big story without anyone catching on. When the pieces came together, readers everywhere were like: "So the U-Men, and Sublime and Xorn and Kick and Weapon Plus are all connected? Fantastic!" Once some of these characters got shuttled over to Weapon X, Sublime became another shadowy government figure, Fantomex a mysterious masked man, the U-Men badly characterized freaks, and Wolvie's big reveal a big disappointment. Plus, WX is going bye-bye, so who knows if these storylines will get picked up again. If they do, it’ll be with a different creative team, and dilute Tieri's already watery renditions of Morrison's ideas.

  •  X-Men: Xorn 2.0. What the hell? So there was no Xorn because Xorn was Magneto and it wasn't really Magneto after all and there is a Xorn and he waited until exactly now to reveal himself? Riiiiiiiiight. You know it was pitched like that somewhere too, and somewhere someone said "Sounds good, let's get Chuck Austen to sort it out." "But won't it suck?" "Not if we can get Sal to draw pretty enough pictures to distract the average reader." "Oh, OK."

The Jury’s Still Out:

  • Stepfords: We’ll have to wait and see what happens to them in New Mutants, same with Dust.

  •  Beak: Five issues into Exiles, and still nothing. Hopefully he wasn’t just thrust upon Bedard.

  • X-Men the End: I feel very uncomfortable that this seems to be the only place where many of Morrison's ideas are being run with mostly undiluted, because for all intents and purposes, the LS exists outsider of continuity. So we get to see the fruit of Grant's labor, but know that it doesn't count? Plus, the timeline still seems off. The books take place circa 15 years from now and we are just now dealing with issues from the end of New X-Men and X-treme? Have the X-Men (Rogue and Gambit specifically) been tracking Sinister for a decade and a half? Didn't Lobdell have Magneto kill Domina already?

I hope all my questions will be answered in the long run, but this is coming from the guy who is waiting for an answer to the third Summers brother question that doesn't start with an Adam- and end with an X, and the guy who wonders if they'll ever really deal with the fact that Cannonball and company were miraculously resurrected after a gruesome off screen death at the end of Old X-Force. Needless to say, I'm not holding my breath.

- The author, Dwain Smith, is currently running unopposed for the Drunken Pirate Party’s Presidential Nomination. He promises free rum to all who vote for him, and will work to pay down the national debt with plundered Spanish gold. See the rest of his platform at www.ahoy-matey.com.