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

PRIME SENTINELS versus X-MEN

First Blood - Operation: Zero Tolerance Prologue (Marvel)
Where: X-Men #65 When: June 1997
Why: Scott Lobdell How: Carlos Pacheco

The Story So Far...
En route from a mission to wrest the cure for the Legacy Virus from the clutches of both Sebastian Shaw and The Kingpin -- the X-Men find themselves under assault from yet another lurking threat!

Operation: Zero Tolerance has stoked the fires of anti-mutant sentiment in the wake of the devastating attack by Onslaught that seemingly cost the lives of Earth's Mightiest Heroes - The Avengers and Fantastic Four!

The X-Men are primed to become public enemies once again as they find their plane under attack from Operation: Zero Tolerance -- with TV cameras capturing the battle -- and Henry Peter Gyrich on hand to brand it an act of terrorists.

Tale of the Tape...
Strength: Wolverine 3 (Athlete)
Intelligence: Cyclops 4 (Tactician)
Speed: Cannonball 5 (Super-Human)
Stamina: Wolverine 6 (Generator)
Agility: Storm 3 (Acrobat)
Fighting: Wolverine 6 (Warrior)
Energy: Cyclops 5 (Lasers)
Total: Wolverine 26 (Metahuman)

The Prime Sentinels are a unique breed of cybernetic soldiers created by Bastion for Operation: Zero Tolerance.

Unlike traditional Sentinel robots; Prime models are actually human sleeper agents outfitted with nanotech implants, which can be activated remotely to turn them into heavily armed, armored attack agents.

They possess greatly enhanced strength & durability, concussive force blasts, flight, and some ability to impede mutant powers, with the added benefits of being able to blend in with humans when not activated.

The X-Men are: Cyclops, Storm, Phoenix, Wolverine, and Cannonball.

All of these X-Men are well versed in battling mutant-hunting Sentinels. We saw Cyclops and Phoenix do some damage during a Christmas attack, with Storm making a vital save when things got a little out of hand.

Cannonball, who is a still recent call-up from X-Force, fought the Sentinels as a member of the New Mutants. His invincible blast-shield generated while in flight makes him a good hand against the classic robots, and he's still riding the high of a proving-moment against Gladiator shortly before this issue.

We don't have any of those moments recorded at time of writing, but we have seen Cannonball join X-Force against the armored Iron Man during the second Contest of Champions. Results were mixed.

Sentinels have a bit of a mixed history when it comes to combat: The Tri-Sentinel super-charged by Loki was no match for a cosmically powered Spider-Man, but when a malfunctioning model sprung out of a scrapyard -- Falcon was caught by surprise!

In an alternate future, we saw scrapped Sentinels become instruments of death for Magneto, and yet another possible future produced the deadly Nimrod: a time-travelling Sentinel that forced the X-Men and Juggernaut to team-up, and later resurfaced to overwhelm both the X-Men and Hellfire Club!

How will the X-Men fare in their first encounter with the Prime Sentinels? Let's find out!

The Tape: X-Men Ranking: Wolverine (#5)

What Went Down...

Over a previously undisturbed wooded Colorado valley -- a sophisticated Operation: Zero Tolerance aircraft is more than a match for the loaner jet it unleashes its hi-tech weaponry upon!

A direct impact blasts open the cabin, and snaps one of the passengers -- Jean Grey, aka; Phoenix -- out of an unexpected psychic episode that briefly communed her with the believed-dead, sub-dimensionally lost hero: Iron Man!

It seems Operation: Zero Tolerance's weapons have had an unexpected effect on Phoenix's telepathic abilities, making it even more difficult for her to assist the X-Men as Storm battles rapid decompression with her command of the winds.

Things are going from bad to worse as Cyclops discovers the controls of the plane almost completely unresponsive. It's up to Phoenix & Storm to keep them aloft!

In desperate need of a clean landing and facing further assault from two fast-moving aircraft -- Cannonball leaps from the cabin to take them on!

His kinetic forcefield keeps him safe as he rips through the outer hull of the attacking vessels, but from within springs two human-shaped bogeys!

Cannonball finds himself joined in the air by three strange, man-sized Sentinels!

The young X-Man is so startled by their unusual appearance -- he doesn't even realise they're steering him towards an attack from one of the airships! 

Fortunately, he has Wolverine and Cyclops watching his back! Cyclops unleashes an optic blast -- nailing the aircraft before it can attack!

Unfortunately, there's nobody to save Cyclops when the jet is hit from another aircraft and he's thrown from the opening in the cabin!

The irony of ironies is that Cyclops' life is saved by the Prime Sentinels that catch him unconscious in mid-air, to be flown to future internment.

Wolverine can see the X-Men are being picked off, one by one.

This time Storm takes the initiative, leaping from the plane to take the fight to the Sentinels, but she was expecting more energy blasts -- and completely failed to anticipate the deployment of a rapidly expanding polymer!

The substance slowly twists its way along Storm's body until she's completely encased in the translucent substance -- helpless in a grip of claustrophobia and the inescapable encasement!

With the situation growing increasingly desperate -- Wolverine steers the shaking jet towards the trees and mountains below, urging the Operation: Zero Tolerance aircraft to follow as he takes Phoenix by the hand and plays for a hasty exit.

A holographic display shows the spectacular explosion of the crashing plane to Bastion, who relishes "... the X-Men's final flight from justice..."

While the Prime Sentinels carry a polymer-encased Storm back to their craft, more of their agents discover Cannonball unconscious in the nearby river, while others clasp a hi-tech cradle over Cyclops' head & eyes, and descend to retrieve Wolverine and Phoenix from rubble near the crash site.

The Hammer...

A shocking defeat for the X-Men as Operation: Zero Tolerance kicks off the full scale threat of Bastion and his Prime Sentinels!

As you might have noticed at the top of this entry -- we're back in 1997. A year I generally look back upon very fondly, and has come into vogue again thanks to the just-concluded first season of Disney's X-Men 97 animated series -- a revival of the classic X-Men cartoon.

I was still buying occasional X-Men issues from the newsstands around this time, and probably rewatching Season 1 videotapes of the cartoon as well, but the presumed grind of constant X-over events meant I was a little less focused on what was going on around this time. The end of the cartoon likely contributed.

It was probably another year or so before I really started to feel like X-Men's time had passed, and questioned their enduring place at the top of the monthly sales charts, but after the blockbuster of Onslaught, my focus was already transferred to the Heroes Reborn titles, most enduringly Fantastic Four - a perennial fave.

In 1997, the return to a meandering Sentinel-based danger, and purple-clad arch-villain, felt a little bit passe and "samey", but in hindsight, I think I'd be much more complimentary now. It was easy to be flippantly disinterested back then -- there were exciting things going on across pop culture, competing for time & dollars. There was a disposable exchange and we didn't always get it right.

Looking back on Operation: Zero Tolerance now -- it strikes me that it's a vibrant return to classic X-Men. A welcome centering after a couple of years of disruption, most notably with 1995's Age of Apocalypse, that moved things forward well after the drawn out mystery of Onslaught, and consequences of Heroes Reborn.

Artists like Carlos Pacheco and Salvador Larroca were giving tremendous energy to pencils amid the exit of Joe Madureira, and I'm also inclined to compliment the computer-assisted colours of Chris Lichtner, Aron Lusen, and Liquid!, however those duties might be divided. This work really pushes the nineties style to its apex, and is still very appealing.

The nano-tech twist on the classic Sentinels formula is also a fresh and topical of-the-time detail I overlooked. It would come back into focus brilliantly when Grant Morrison breathed new life into the whole thing with his 2001 New X-Men -- a welcome evolution of the X-Men that, at least as far as Nano-Sentinels are concerned, also further validates what was done here. A similar idea also consumed DC in 2006 with Project OMAC. If only I'd paid more attention in '97!

Then, and now, I have mixed feelings about the technology and concepts bridging the gap to Nimrod. At the time, the vague techno-connection was played up as a bit of a bigger deal than it really wound up being. A symptom of another push for a mystery identity ala Onslaught, with the trickiness of moving us closer to a future that was always presented as a bit more distant.

Here in 2024, that time crunch has been concluded, with Nimrod playing a big role in the recent Fall of X that has once again given us a re-centering moment, after a few years of the very niche Krakoa era. A moment that seems to have been rapidly overtaken by a slightly nostalgic revival, led by X-Men 97, and the influx of related merchandise into a market starved by Marvel Entertainment execs.

I have some slight misgivings about nostalgia, these days. It's been a steady few decades of inescapable, often vacuous, retreads of eighties and nineties pop culture icons in multiple mediums. We're starved for genuinely enjoyable, exciting, enduring things, but some of that comes from the tedium of post-millennial movements away from vibrant, colourful, enduring icons. In comics, this type of centered reset has felt overdue amidst the many deaths and distractions.

Whatever may come next -- I'm having a great time digging out those old X-Men back issues that have notoriously been neglected here on Secret Wars on Infinite Earths. The To Do List is always longer than the road, but I do feel like I especially left my X-Men fandom out in the cold for far too long.

If you'd like to help make it possible to dedicate more time to classic X-Men battles and curiosities - consider becoming a supporter on Patreon. I always appreciate seeing you hitting up our extensive back catalogue of articles, and it would help me tremendously to have your support for all that work.

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

Get free 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.

Winners: Prime Sentinels
#368 (new) Prime Sentinels
#162 (-2) Jean Grey
#5 (--) Wolverine
#36 (--) Storm
#92 (--) Cyclops
#160 (-1) Cannonball

SKRULLS versus WOLVERINE

Eve of Destruction (Marvel)
Where: X-Men #90 When: July 1999
Why: Alan Davis & Terry Kavanagh How: Alan Davis

The Story So Far...
When a trans-dimensional being called Ejulp recruits the X-Men to defend his domain from the unstoppable Juggernaut -- he inadvertently flings them through time & space to a long time ago on a distant planet!

Confusion abounds as the X-Men encounter fallen comrades, erstwhile allies, and even versions of themselves -- but this is no ordinary product of time travel. They are in the domain of the shape-shifting Skrulls -- and the lost world of Tarnax IV!

They are inadvertently deposited on a training moon orbiting the Skrull Throneworld as the great Devourer of Worlds Galactus approaches! Now the X-Men race to change history to save the lives of untold Skrulls -- and themselves! They just have to convince the Skrulls to stop trying to kill them!

Tale of the Tape...
Strength: Abomination 6 (Invincible)
Intelligence: Green Goblin 5 (Professor)
Speed: Captain Britain 4 (Olympian)
Stamina: Wolverine 6 (Generator)
Agility: Wolverine 3 (Acrobat)
Fighting: Wolverine 6 (Warrior)
Energy: Havok 5 (Lasers)
Total: Captain Britain 29 (Super)

Skrulls specialize in covert infiltration and subterfuge, but what good is a disguise when your opponent can sniff a fake out from a mile away?

Wolverine already knows he's knee-deep in shape-shifters, so he's on alert to suspect even the most convincing doppelganger, but these particular Skrulls aren't just copying the appearance of other powerful figures!

Skrull science is capable of bestowing copied super-powers, technology, and specialist training upon their agents. There are several well-known super-powered Skrulls, chief among them: Kl'rt the Super-Skrull and Paibok the Power Skrull.

Wolverine's up against engineered spies in training, so he at least won't have to worry about seasoned, multi-powered super-heavyweights like Super-Skrull. He does, however, have some powerful imitators to contend with.

The Skrull spies are patterned after: Captain Britain, Havok, Green Goblin, Medusa, and Abomination.

This is the Captain Britain who stands toe-to-toe with Juggernaut, and we all know Abomination as the arch-nemesis of Hulk. Wolverine is no stranger to tangling with those adversaries as well, but usually he only has to contend with one of them. This pairing of powerhouses alone poses a significant challenge!

Add the abilities/arsenal of Havok and Green Goblin for some extra ranged fire power, while Medusa's Inhuman prehensile hair locks down the mutant's mobility, and he's running out of options real fast!

Wolverine's best bet may be immediate surrender to a berzerker barrage to mercilessly wield his adamantium claws against the alien menace.

Animalistic ruthlessness has been the equalizer in his outnumbered battles against The Hellfire Club, Lady Deathstrike and her cyborg Reavers, The Hand, and even The Fantastic Four! Will it make the difference again? Let's find out...

The Tape: Skrulls Ranking: Wolverine (#5)

What Went Down...

Familiar faces surround, but he isn't amongst friends. Wolverine, claws out, fights for his life in an arena designated "Stage-Earth". Only it has nothing to do with Earth. It's just another lie. A testing ground for Skrull spies to hone the skills they've stolen from Earth's heroes and villains.

He throws himself through the crowd -- leading claws on his left hand slashing at a face imitating the mask of the Green Goblin, while his right hand trails behind, having already raked against an imitation Captain Britain.

They might not be the genuine articles, but each of these doppelgangers shares the might of the people they imitate. They're still training, but they're dangerous.

His mutant healing factor is already working to stitch pierced flesh back together when a thick shock of hair wraps around Wolverine's torso!

His instincts are almost as sharp as his claws. A single slash is all that's needed to separate the attacking Skrull from her living, prehensile Medusa hair!

One threat quelled gives way to another. A Skrull with the rampaging strength of The Abomination puts an end to Wolverine's stand -- driving him into the ground!

The crushing slam of Abomination's fist leaves the X-Man dazed & confused!

He can hardly process what he's seeing as another hand grabs Abomination by the wrist and hoists him over head.

A head with another familiar face. One that hits a little too close to home.

John Proudstar -- a comrade at arms who perished by Wolverine's side. A short-lived X-Man, accompanied by Shadowcat. Reinforcements!

Blasts of energy stream towards the phony Havok, Green Goblin, and Captain Britain, as Skrulls with the faces of other deceased heroes -- Adam Warlock and Captain Marvel -- come charging to the rescue!

Mar-Vell kicks Green Goblin in the face while blasting Havok with cosmic power, as Adam Warlock directs a full mental energy bolt to subdue Captain Britain!

They're Skrulls. Each and every one of them. Empowered with super-normal abilities taken from well-known counterparts, but there's not much use for infiltrating society with a dead man's face. Spies who can't hide in plain sight.

The genuine Shadowcat helps untangle Wolverine from Medusa's hair. Thunderbird makes sure the Abomination Skrull has been slammed unconscious, while Warlock drops Captain Britain next to the other bodies.

The Hammer...

It looked like Wolverine was on the ropes, but we'll never know if he could've turned it around on his own. Kitty Pryde showed up with Thunderbird, Adam Warlock, and Captain Marvel Skrulls to make the big save!

There's a whole lot more Skrull on Mutant action in this issue, with the rest of the X-Men battling elsewhere, and our unlikely quintet sticking together to fight towards an exit.

I kinda like the idea of deep-cover Skrulls whose imitation is engineered to be so complete and convincing that it's permanent.

Taking away the common ability to shape-shift is a pretty heavy-duty fate for a Skrull, and the predicament it leaves agents in, whose double has very publicly met their demise, is kinda interesting. Not that it stopped later iterations once Marvel Comics truly fulfilled a revolving door of death.

I suppose these permanently altered Skrulls become a mutant caste in a vaguely analogous fashion to our X-Men. Thematic consideration that bridges the gap between these two groups -- even if Wolverine remains guarded as he receives help from his apparent saviors, who are further ostracized by their correct belief that the X-Men are trying to warn the Skrulls of impending doom.

Wolvie's canny enough to know you can never let your guard down when dealing with Skrulls, and indeed, the next time we see him -- on a hijacked Skrull ship as the X-Men are emerging from "cryo-stasis" on the way back to present-day Earth -- he has been replaced by a Skrull doppelganger. Shades of an Alien 3 fast-one.

As I've mentioned in the past: 1999 was the first real down period for my comics reading, but the significance of this story extends in both directions, continuing into the mildly interesting reveal that the real Wolverine has become Apocalypse's Horseman of Death, and backwards to 1983's Fantastic Four #257, when Nova led Galactus to feast upon Tarnax IV - the Skrull Throneworld.

If you really wanted to do some mental gymnastics, you could further weave this episode into the contemporary significance of Secret Invasion, which continued to reckon with the destruction of Tarnax IV, and led to multi-powered Skrulls created after its own retro-active fiction - an encounter with The Illuminati.

We might reason the Secret Invasion super Skrulls are all part of the same program that created the permanently altered spies seen today, destined for obsolescence. It can be debated if a second Mar-Vell Skrull appearing during that event supports this theory, or challenges it. It might've been nice if it were the same Skrull, but this one appears to die later this issue, and they went with a more recognized blonde version of Mar-Vell for the 2007 "return".

Thinking this much about Skrulls in relation to the X-Men is kind of an odd fit, and I wonder how it all came about. Even taking previous space adventures into account - returning to a then-sixteen year old issue of FF is quite a leap.

Maybe it speaks to the slight chaos of Marvel at the turn of the millennium. A time that sometimes felt like creative freefall as the content of comics negotiated a transition from familiar styles and subject matter, to slightly new approaches.

X-Men #90 feels more consistent with the slightly old-fashioned vein that ran through Marvel into 2001 and the space-centric Maximum Security event. It butts up against a grounding of the X-Men, with deeper investment in their natural habitat of frictious co-existence between mutants & humans, and the coming of Grant Morrison's New X-Men. Both fuelled by the X-Men movie in 2000.

Amusing that the next most prominent X/ET encounter that comes to mind is the Shi'ar Imperial conflict in New X-Men, 2002. Something about that Great British diet of sci-fi keeping the space classics in the minds of Morrison, and Alan Davis?

The presence of Captain Britain feels like a quirk of Davis' dual role as plotter & penciler. I wonder if he may also be the key to the entire Skrull affair. I certainly enjoyed his brief time on the first three issues of Fantastic Four (Vol.3), introducing the Kirby-inspired Iconoclast, and revisiting the classic Super-Apes & Red Ghost. Perhaps Galactus and Skrulls were unfinished business.

Davis has a pretty safe & soft style, and it's pleasant here in the colourful world of classically-tinged X-Men. I don't particularly love this issue or time period, but it's fairly inoffensive, and I hope to explore more in the future.

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Secret Wars on Infinite Earths has recorded over 700 battles and ranked well over 1,000 characters! Find them all by following links throughout each and every post, or by diving into the Secret Archive for a complete index of featured fights in order of publisher, series, and issue number.

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Winners: Thunderbird, Warlock, and Mar-Vell Skrulls (w/ Wolverine & Shadowcat)
#364 (new) Thunderbird (Skrull)
#365 (new) Adam Warlock (Skrull)
#366 (new) Captain Marvel (Skrull)
#5 (--) Wolverine [+1 assist]
#126 (--) Shadowcat [+1 assist]
#1014 (new) Captain Britain (Skrull)
#1015 (new) Havok (Skrull)
#1016 (new) Green Goblin (Skrull)
#1017 (new) Abomination (Skrull)
#1018 (new) Medusa (Skrull)

SHI'AR IMPERIAL GUARD versus
THE X-MEN
Superdestroyer (Marvel comics)
Where: New X-Men #124 When: May 2002
Why: Grant Morrison How: Igor Kordey

The story so far...
Cassandra Nova, a malicious Shi'ar mummudrai, had her first encounter when drawn to arch-nemesis Charles Xavier in the woom. There, Nova duplicated Xavier's DNA to sustain a physical form, but with his mutant fetal brain developing in fantastic ways, Xavier became aware of the creature's viciousness and attacked, resulting in the Xavier twin being stillborn.

Decades later Nova would set into motion plans to annihilate all that her "twin" held dear. It would be Nova that would set off events that decimated the mutant nation of Genosha, before facing Xavier and his X-Men herself, taking possession of her nemesis' body before her own was crippled, thus leaving Xavier in the incapacitated body.

Under the guise of Xavier, Nova continued her scheme to destroy Xavier, linking up with Lilandra of the Shi'ar to convince her the mutants had become infected and would need to be destroyed for the good of the universe. Thus, Lilandra reluctantly sends her army to Earth, where they descend upon the X-Mansion.

Previous Form:
Wolverine (#4): Victories over the Invaders, Silver Samurai and others.
Beast (#17): Aided in defeats over the Lizard and Xorn.
Phoenix (#97): Was crucial in the detaining victory over Executioner.
X-Men [#1]: Defeated only once, by the rampage of a disapproving Sub-Mariner.
Shi'ar Imperial Guard: None of the Imperial Guard have been featured previously.

Tale of the tape...
Strength: Gladiator 6 (Invincible)
Intelligence: Beast 6 (Genius)
Speed: Gladiator 5 (Super Speed)
Stamina: Gladiator 6 (Generator)
Agility: Beast 5 (Cat-like)
Fighting Ability: Wolverine 6 (Warrior)
Energy Powers: Gladiator 5 (Lasers)


Having just spent the time to identify each and every relevant member of the Shi'ar Imperial Guard, I'm not particularly inclined to break this fight down on a person-by-person basis. Honestly, given the numbers involved here, it's probably safe to say the math favours the Shi'ar. Gladiator alone is arguably a match for the small clan of X-Men defending the mansion at this particular interval, so he can represent the Shi'ar in the tape, alone.

With most of the X-Men already captured or galavanting in other disjointed X-titles, we're left with a conveniently small bunch of X-Men to look at, in no particular order: Wolverine, the Stepford Cuckoos, Emma Frost, Angel, Jean Grey and Beast. And since Emma Frost spends the entirety of this issue with a golden bucket over her head, she's cut from the team.

So, what chance does a split team of those particular X-Men have of overcoming the might of the Shi'ar super Imerial Guard?

The tape paints a pretty grim picture for the X-Men, but there are a few factors yet to be considered. Telepaths still remain grossly underrated by the tape's factors, so while Jean Grey is rated on par in the energy projection stakes, her mental capabilities make her a much more versatile and interesting opponent than is otherwise expressed.

Likewise, the true measure of Beast and Wolverine's potentials are perhaps slightly under estimated by the tape. On their home turf, Wolverine's stealth and tracking abilities could give him a strong advantage in picking off their opponents, while the brilliant Beast could man the technological defense systems built into the mansion grounds, while also providing a worthy last line of defense should it come to hand-to-hand combat.

Jean Grey, particularly in Phoenix mode, also represents a cosmic force of nature, the likes of which has been halted by the Shi'ar before, but not without considerable cost. Grey potentially represents a force even more encompassing than Gladiator, who stands as the invincible totem of the Shi'ar Imperial Guard.

The Math: Shi'ar Imperial Guard (Total)
The Pick: The X-Men

What went down...
A team of Guardsmen sweep the Mansion from above, ascertaining the presence of powers and peoples. The injection team engages in small talk, before falling victim to the unseen Wolverine who leaps at Neosaurus and slices his brilliant brain from one of his many bodies.

Gladiator descends in the company of Schism and Blimp, joining his team as a sicking howl echoes across the grounds. An already detained Emma Frost reveals, from within a helmet of psychic shielding, that they're hearing "the noise Wolverine makes when he's chopping people like you into quivering lumps."

Also detained in the yard are junior X-students, Angel Salvadore and the Stepford Cuckoos. Reunited after one of their number had fallen for the disguised Stuff, the Cuckoos set about taking advantage of the Guard's poor estimation of their infant telepathic abilities. Together, the five-as-one overpower the telepathic watch of Oracle, and defeat her swiftly.

Angel lashes out at Stuff, also charged with guarding the students, before the Cuckoos exact their revenge, making of him a "perfect boyfriend", while they manipulate the metamorphic creature's "pathetically simple" mind.

Inside the mansion, Beast and Jean Grey are forced to take matters into their own hands, aware of the incursion outside. With human-mutant relations at a delicate crossroads, rather than risk the lives of the large group touring the school; Jean Grey violates her code of ethics to mentally persuade them all to herd into the lower vaults where they will be safer.

Ailed by the sub-molecular threat of nano sentinels swimming in his blood stream, Beast remains a potent force to be reckoned with. With the visitors safely contained, Beast enters willingly into the field, charging violently at the first of the Shi'ar intruders, Monstra.

He quickly overpowers the four-armed lady-beast, slashing with his bestial claws at goggles, leaving the alien blinded. Beast's agility provides the necessary mobility to avoid a laser beam, fired by a foe unseen. Fader, the Guardsman hiding within the frequency of ultraviolet light, quickly learns that Beast's resemblance to an animal extends further than his good looks.

Using his heightened senses, Beast smells and hears his way to Fader, knocking him out with a nearby statue of the thinker.

Manta swoops in next, narrowly avoiding Beast's wild slashing as he lets out a Wolverine-esque gutteral growl, and heads for Phoenix. Immune to mental attack, Manta assumes Jean Grey vulnerable, but quickly learns Jean Grey has developed more than her mind during her years as an X-Man.

Grey follows her kick with a jagged elbow and palm striking combo, putting the alien Manta down hard to the shock of student on-lookers.

While Beast does battle with the suited gestalt entity, Squorm, he compels Jean Grey to seal the inner vault doors. Reluctantly, Grey does so, while Beast suffers the electric charge of Arc, who mocks the mutant's sense of bravado.

At that moment Wolverine smashes his way through a window, slashing Blimp and Schism on entry by way of a stolen imperial flight patch.

Blimp begins to vent the bio-helium that makes up his internal functionality, leaving him to swirl around the room like a deflating balloon.

Wolverine encourages Beast to resume the fight, while throwing down with the black and white diverged halves of Schism.

Arc contacts Gladiator, before being dragged into the smackdown. While Wolverine deals with Monstra, Beast uses Blimp's limp body as insulation to wrap the electric Arc up, and smack him with a healthy dose of super strength.

To Beast's dismay, the wall begins to melt away, signifying the heat-vision led entrance of Gladiator; zealous praetor of the Shi'ar Imperial Guard.

Wolverine does his best to emplore the better sense of the Shi'ar's greatest soldier, but the desperate and lethal retaliation of the X-mutants registers as proof to the Gladiator, that these are not Charles Xavier's mutants.

Acting under order based upon Cassandra Nova's lies, Gladiator stands confident in his charge to exterminate the infected mutants, all of whom have nano-sentinels undermining their defense.

Though Beast and Wolverine retaliate, the incredible alien strength of Gladiator quickly overwhelms them.

Cosmo and Gladiator effortlessly bypass the high-tech security of the lower depths of the X-Mansion, pulling apart the metal blastdoors as though they were breaking bread.

Inside, Jean Grey makes an appeal of her own to Gladiator, but her inclination to test Gladiator's mind-shielding only serves to further provoke his suspicions.
Ready to exterminate the mutant threat, Gladiator is halted only by the intervention of one of his own. Plutonia enters, carrying in her arms the broken body of Smasher, one of the elite who had stood against Cassandra Nova's lies, and suffered for it.

Having crash landed on Earth, Smasher brings word of the truth to his superior, his dying wish that the Imperial Guard remain pure. Recognising the toxic influence of Cassandra Nova, Gladiator stays his hand, only to see the X-Men suffer the effects of the nano-sentinels infecting their bodies.

The hammer...
I was all ready to declare this with certainty, but I think it's safe to say that as much as Gladiator turned the tables in the final hour, the X-Men controlled much of the battle. Thus, I declare this result on the basis of scoring and conclusion, a draw!

Now remains the task of inputting the results for every damned member of the Shi'ar. For reasons of streamlining, the battle in space between a captive Cyclops and Xorn was not included in this encompassing look at the Shi'ar's assault on X-Men mansion.

This entry, of course, was part of the on-going Marvel: Ultimate Alliance Mondays initiative. The chances of this having been an entry otherwise, are fairly slim.
I generally prefer my X-Men, if anything, to be dealing with Earthbound matters, and struggles more specific to human/mutant concerns. That said, this was actually a surprisingly easy issue to get excited about reviewing.

Maybe it's some of the spacey fun that's cropped up in conjunction with the Annihilation series [Nova #2], or maybe it's Grant Morrison's unique handling of the X-Men that made me a regular X-reader for the first time in my comics reading history.

For all the press about Morrison's pseudo-intellectual-rockstar-man-witch pretentions, there's a delicious indulgence in his approach to books like X-Men. Morrison seemingly succeeds where a Warren Ellis might falter, willfully enjoying himself as he writes unashamed four-colour fanboy moments, like Wolverine's explosive flight-patch entrance to the mansion, or Jean Grey's stiff-kick.

It's the marriage of fun moments like these, and a progressive story that made Morrison's run on the series one of the most memorable. In fact, it's perhaps not since Claremont that a writer has had a run so significant that wasn't cringe-worthy, as so much of the X-lore tends to be.

In many ways I think it's the logic of Morrison's work that makes it so strong. Four decades later, you'd like to think humanity might have gotten a bit beyond the fear and loathing, and what we see here is the forward development of social and racial change serving as a backdrop to sci-fi heavy superhero action. All this, balanced with the familiar soap opera of Marvel comics, makes New X-Men scientifically difficult to debate.

By extension the apparent editorial shift toward undoing much of the good done in these pages, is scientifically stupid. In fact, if you look up stupid in a dictionary, you'll likely find a toothy characature of Joe Quesada playing guitar in front of a burning wedding dress. See the crowd for sub-sections on Bendis, Austen, and even Claremont, the kings horses and kings men who succeeded in not only undoing some of the best X-Men work of the past twenty years, but also making it a regrettable affair. [See; New X-Men #150, for more on Xorn.]

It's amusing to note this issue [#124] features the return of the letters page, complete with a lengthy love note from Bruce Timm who largely laments on similar points already discussed here. The only glaring divergence of opinions between monsieur Timm and myself is the opinion on Igor Kordey's work, which I personally rate particularly low, with characters often appearing hideously disfigured, or attrociously under defined.

I'd pass the blame to the inker, who slathers the pencils with distgustingly ill defined blocks of black, and completely under does some lines, but it would appear these unflattering inks were done by Kordey himself, so... Ouch!

We've had three years of X-Men since the end of this run.
Right now Ed Brubaker is putting his stamp on the Uncanny team, while also revisiting the Shi'ar for the first time since this story, I believe. I'd love to have something nice to say, but I don't.

The best the X-Men have had to offer has been Joss Whedon's work on Astonishing X-Men, which has avoided a return to the boggy, garbled self-referencial stylings, opting instead for the thoroughly expendable and derivative.

The Fight: 6 The Issue: 6
[The best X-Men you'll see in a long time! Smart, slick and fun, let down only by sloppy artwork. A thoroughly enjoyable romp, featuring a to-the-point invasion, that makes even the uncomfortable Shi'ar sci-fi, fun!]

NEXT WEEK: Spotlight on the Shi'ar Praetor, Gladiator!