Secret Wars on Infinite Earths: The Comic Book Fight Club

CASSANDRA NOVA versus PROFESSOR X

Silence: Psychic Rescue In Progress (Marvel)
Where: New X-Men #121 When: February 2002
Why: Grant Morrison How: Frank Quitely

The Story So Far...
The X-Men face challenges from within and without as they discover the comatose body of their newest arch-enemy, Cassandra Nova, actually contains the brilliant mind of their visionary leader - Professor Charles Xavier!

With Xavier's hijacked body already in space on sabbatical with the Shi'ar Empire -- Jean Grey and Emma Frost scramble to perform a psychic search & rescue to coax the mind of their mentor from its mental prison. In doing so, they learn the shocking secrets of Cassandra Nova and Professor X's first startling battle!

Tale of the Tape...
Strength: Professor X 2 (Average)
Intelligence: Professor X 5 (Professor)
Speed: Cassandra Nova 2 (Average)
Stamina: Cassandra Nova 6 (Generator)
Agility: Cassandra Nova 2 (Average)
Fighting: Professor X 2 (Average)
Energy: Draw 6 (Mass Destruction)
Total: Draw 21 (Champion)

Throughout formative years of the X-Men you could've said Professor X's shadow counterpart was Magneto, the hate-filled creator of Sentinels, or perhaps even evil telepath Mentallo, but at the turn of the millennium Grant Morrison had the radical idea to apply the evil twin trope to Charles Xavier with outrageous results.

Cassandra Nova is literally the secret twin-sister of Charles Xavier. A stillborn mutant who apparently manifested a penchant for evil pre-birth, becoming the very first nemesis to the once and future X-Men founder.

The exact details and implications of the sibling opposition are what we're here to explore today, but suffice it to say Cassandra Nova has endured to sew chaos and disruption for the X-Men in the years since her introduction.

As the dark shadow to Professor Xavier, she possesses telepathic and telekinetic abilities that rival her brother. She's been able to evade detection and death by masking her movements, controlling others, and literally commandeering bodies -- including Professor X's. That spells a whole lot of bad news for everyone!

Traditionally Charles Xavier isn't thought of as a combatant, forming the X-Men to effectively be his soldiers, but despite iconic wheelchair-bound status, he's actually found ways to be a very capable conventional operator in the field.

Using simulated zero gravity, he was able to effectively hold his own sparring with Quicksilver. This prepared him for a dramatic confrontation with Magneto, which he fought while wearing a Shi'ar exo-skeleton that temporarily restored his ability to walk. In the end, it was of course his mind that was his greatest weapon - used to mentally castrate Magneto. A slightly less aggressive assault was used to put an end to the Magneto-impersonating Xorn in a later issue of New X-Men.

In addition to his telepathic abilities, Charles Xavier is also possessed of a keen intellect and rational demeanor. He kept his nerve under threat from the Sub-Mariner, relying on communication to stay the mutant monarch's fury. He also wields tremendous capacity for compassion to extraordinary ends, but we visit him in his absolute earliest moments, when these skills may not be a factor!

The Tape: Draw Ranking: Professor X (#438)

What Went Down...

A traveler in the unconscious mind possessed by Charles Xavier -- Jean Grey is given witness to the terrible secret origin of the villainess who has locked him in her own mortally wounded, frail body.

Jean's mental projection swims amongst the spermatozoa at the moment of conception. She watches as ovum is fertilized - becoming zygote - and then as cells rapidly divide as weeks of embryonic development occur in an instant.

It is the formation of life, but not a single human foetus -- twins!

The tiny creatures float peacefully side by side in the womb, but then one opens their eyes -- and turns to glance to their other to the left.

These are not normal human embryos. In a future yet to occur they will be known as "homo-superior" -- mutations from the natural development of humanity.

One of these beings will work to foster brotherhood amongst the mutants, and peaceful coexistence with conventional humanity, but the other has turned to face their sibling and found nothing but contempt for what they see.

A tiny fist strikes a sleeping brother in the face and then escalates to turn the life-giving umbilical cord into an instrument of strangulation!

The tightening of the fleshy cord around its throat awakens the foetus.

It has seen its sister for the first time and in doing so stared death in the eye. If it is to ever see another face again and live to become Charles Xavier it must defend itself. So - it does.

In an act of miraculous biology -- foetal Charles manifests the mutation of telepathy and unleashes a psionic assault that will seemingly end the lifeline of his twin sister before it has truly begun.

The attack takes a terrible toll on their mother. She tumbles down a staircase -- suffering a miscarriage that will lead doctors to declare her daughter stillborn, but will deliver baby Charles into a world that will one day learn to fear & hate him.

The Hammer...

I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. New X-Men is one of my favourite comics. That's really only a secret because sometimes I'm bad at talking about my top favourites, and the series isn't necessarily best defined by its fights. (That's the thing we predominantly build our articles around here, you might have noticed).

Personal favourites aren't a short list. There's a lot of comics I love - but New X-Men was a little different. Maybe a lot different. I mean, look at the fight we just described. It's going to be tough to top this for weirdest battle of all-time.

New X-Men helped re-energize my love of comics in 2001 after a couple of quiet years pursuing other interests, and almostlosing touch with the lifelong habit. There were notorious diehards who resisted its dramatic new package, but for me it was an instant sensation arriving at a time of need for X-Men, the industry, my life, and eventually the world.

The timing of New X-Men #121 will be significant to many of us who were reading at that time. 

Although there are notable exceptions throughout this issue -- it was one of the best entries into Marvel's "'Nuff Said" month of wordless "silent" comics.

The silent stories, with tiny red, white & blue ribbon on the cover, commemorated the September 11th terrorist attacks that toppled the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. An event we were all still getting to grips with roughly four months after it happened, but undoubtedly hit uniquely close to home for the traditionally Manhattan based comics publishers.

I'm not American, and wasn't in America at that time, but will probably never forget the stunned stupor I felt as we were bombarded with then-unprecedented blanket 24/7 news coverage of the attack, and its fallout, for roughly two solid weeks. Some of this was directly sourced from live American broadcasts.

Even outside, away from television sets and computer screens, escape from the harsh reality was difficult. Newspaper headlines dotted the streets, and a general sense of compassion, and bewildered unease, permeated the air of society. We tried to go about our technically unaffected lives, but were aware that things had changed. The event had aroused regional concerns of similar hostile attacks, which manifested October 2002, but in 2001 I was just getting by, in search of release and distraction, as security procedures became common conversation.

The role of entertainment came into strange focus. I remain hyper-aware that one of the local channels has still never made good on the pre-empted second Rudy Coby special that was scheduled to air in re-runs that week. I remember the relief when one station broke the unending television coverage with an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond. I remember reading Wizard Magazine and surfing Marvel.com to get the latest information on comics like New X-Men. I remember the gradual drop-off of joy & style as the Twin Towers were edited out of movies like Spider-Man, and aesthetics & tone took a dark turn in the following years.

I was very enthusiastic for the 'Nuff Said concept.

Amazing Spider-Man (Vol.2) #36 had already jumped on directly addressing the horror of "9/11" a couple of months earlier. It most infamously showed Doctor Doom shedding a tear, as heroes and villains converged on "Ground Zero" to observe the human tragedy within the Manhattan-centric Marvel Universe, and aid in rescue & recovery. With Doom's record of bombastic villainy and terrorism it raises an eyebrow or two, but living in that moment -- it felt real.

'Nuff Said was more like a constructive catharsis. It wasn't necessarily addressing the moment directly, but leading us out of it with a big, interesting idea: A challenge for the writers & artists working on each book in the vein of Larry Hama's GI Joe #21. For fans of the medium it was a massively intriguing prospect to behold, and a powerful gesture for moving forward.

Morrison and Quitely were already doing amazing things with New X-Men.

Like so many of Grant Morrison's wonderful works: The revamp tapped into intuitive advancements of the X-Men concept, with a marriage of honoring classic material while chasing exciting new dimensions.

It was a mutation of sorts. An evolution demanded by the very premise. Another no-brainer from the man who gave us the "Big Seven" JLA, and a career of superhero instant-classics such as All-Star Superman.

It was a holistic rethink of the entire thing, but not without attention to detail and honoring what came before. The series grabbed the livewire of a burgeoning blockbuster film series, adapting their black leather outfits with Frank Quitely designs that instantly made it more palatable and stylish than anything Hollywood has ever imagined. Like everything else - the New X-Men leather look brought it in keeping with the comic book tradition. I've always thought it would be nice to catch Cyclops, or somebody else, wearing one of those jackets over their suit.

Admittedly, some ideas were more challenging than others. Secondary-mutations stretched the concept of naturally occurring "homo-superior" towards a precarious future, while today's featured fight went in the other direction, introducing the prospect of Charles Xavier and Cassandra Nova bombastically manifesting fully formed mutant cognisance in the womb.

Of course, even these ideas weren't without their precedents. The origins of Nightcrawler always told of his demonic appearance at birth, while the similarly blue-furred Beast triggered his further mutation beyond enlarged features through self-experimentation. Foetal and secondary manifestations, by any other name.

As for the delivery of the latter revelation -- we get a wonderfully surreal plunge into the mind of Charles Xavier as conceived by Morrison & Quitely. A silent mission to coax his consciousness from its prison in Cassandra Nova's discarded comatose body, while his form is hijacked by his evil twin. An amusing episode that sees Jean Grey take centre stage, while Emma Frost plays frustrated assist.

This is a great episode in a fantastic, imaginative run, and I broadly consider this one of the last great periods of the X-Men. I recently spent some time reading another revolutionary period that reminded me of this run, and rekindled my enthusiasm for recent X-Men comics. Perhaps we'll be able to talk about it soon.

If you'd like to keep the X-Men X-File expanding, and find out what caught my attention, I would invite you to consider becoming a supporter on Patreon. Even at the absolute lowest tier, your patronage will go a long way to making it possible to produce more updates, and support this and related projects.

Secret Wars on Infinite Earths has featured well over 700 fights and ranked more than 1,000 characters! You can find them all for free by diving into the Secret Archive for a complete index of battles in order of publisher, series, and issue -- or by hitting links to your favourite topics found throughout each entry.

Get daily links to fights inspired by the topics of the day by subscribing to Twitter! Don't forget to smash that like, fave, and share -- and keep your eyes peeled for the week's top trending battles every Sunday on Twitter & Discord! The lively Discord chat is one of the bonuses of becoming a Patreon subscriber.

Winner: Foetal Charles Xavier
#141 (+297) Professor X
#1030 (new) Cassandra Nova