Generation Next
Much of the media has been saying that the terrorist attacks of September 11th have changed everything. The way that we Americans understand the world has changed. Our context has changed; there is something new in the atmosphere — there a new, bitter flavor on our palate. This new context is even affecting popular culture. Certainly, film and television producers will be altering storylines in the coming months, sometimes to avoid sensitive issues and images that might unduly upset audiences, other times to try to find something that will resonate with the national mood. Popular culture is always and inevitably about what's going on today, whether we realize it or not, so these changes are not surprising. But our nation's new context has also changed how we react to popular culture produced before the events of September 11. Try watching a favorite movie, or reading a favorite comic again: it will feel altered from before.
That brings us to this review of the New X-Men series, Marvel's latest revamp of their successful superhero series. When contemplating this review around Labor Day, I was fully expecting to write about Grant Morrison's interesting character development and Frank Quitely's oddly appropriate art. But I can't write that review now. Now, New X-Men seems to be saying something very different.
The basic plot of the first story arc ("E Is For Extinction," published in #114-116) involves the plan of Cassandra Nova, a next-generation mutant, more advanced than Professor X and his heroic charges. She feels some sort of "instinctive" need to destroy mutantkind, in the same way, she argues, modern *homo sapiens* felt the need to eliminate the genetically inferior Neanderthals. To initiate this genocidal plan, she manages to reactivate the feared Sentinels, giant robots that have been programmed to seek and destroy mutants. When Wolverine and Cyclops investigate her operation, they defeat her relatively quickly, but they can't stop what she has already set into motion: a full-scale attack on Genosha, the entirely mutant island nation populated by over 16 million strong.
When I read this scene the first time, I didn't give the attack a second thought. In superhero comics, huge battles and devastating assaults against entire cities are not unknown. Looking back at it in preparation for this review, the sequence was disturbing and almost eerily prophetic. The attack begins with a huge Sentinel that had clearly assimilated the wings and other technology from a large passenger plane ramming into a landmark skyscraper in the middle of the heavily urbanized island. Morrison and Quitely show us the explosion — one that now looks much too familiar — and inhabitants running from the collapsing buildings. The scene quickly shifts to Professor Xavier, watching the destruction, tears running down his face. "No one saw it coming," he whispers. "They were drinking tea . . . making love . . ."
The third part of the story offers some resolution, but it is still filled with striking parallels to our current situation. As the X-Men try to figure out why Cassandra Nova would engineer such a heinous act, they're also debating what they should do as a response. Emma Frost, a telepathic sometime-ally and the only survivor of Genosha, argues that Nova should die and that the humans who originally built the Sentinels share responsibility for the attack. Now is not the time "to wave the flag for X-liberalism," she explains. Jean Grey, Professor X's most trusted student, believes there has to be a less bellicose solution to the situation. In the end, though, violent retribution becomes the group's response. When Nova escapes, Frost incapacitates her and Professor X adds the finishing touches, killing her. "There are some things you just shouldn't be allowed to get away with," says Frost.
Certainly many Americans now would agree with her in regards to the terrorist attacks. Although the X-Men supported the use of violence to stop Nova, they realize that a different approach is needed to solve the larger problem: she is not the only one of the new generation of mutants bent on destroying their predecessors. The final pages of the story offer a measure of hope as Professor X announces a coalition between humans and mutants to counteract this new threat. As I put the comic down, I left the story feeling hopeful, similar to how I have sometimes felt in regard to the new international situation. The coalition that Xavier has established might actually work; it might bring a new sense of cooperation to the world, just as Bush's international coalition against terrorism might make things better. The coming together of Americans might be able to give some positive spin to the tremendous destruction and loss of life.
That sense of hope is dashed in the most recent issue, though. We soon discover that Nova was somehow able to transfer her consciousness into Xavier before her death, and that her superior mental abilities have taken control of him. To make matters worse, Xavier has contacted the Shi'ar, an alien empire that have aided the X-Men in the past. He tells his team that he's going with them to recuperate, but the final lines of the story suggest his agenda is very different. The destructive power of an interstellar empire — "Imagine that in the wrong hands," he mumbles with a sinister smile on his face.
Reading this today, with the nation's immediate future up in the air in so many ways, the initial four issues of the revamped New X-Men cannot help but mean something very different to us now than it would have six weeks ago. A battle against any lone individual will not solve the problem, this story seems to be saying. The real danger, Grant Morrison seems to be warning us, is that the side fighting for freedom could become possessed by hatred, by the very evil, that it was trying to fight — and in the process become a more dangerous threat to our deepest, most fundamental values than the original attack could have ever been. These are fears that many of us Americans, myself included, have been feeling in recent weeks, and this story squarely strikes that nerve.
Of course, Morrison couldn't have intended for his New X-Men story to say this. But we find this message here because, within our minds, we're seeing explosions, rubble, and jet airplanes silhouetted against skyscrapers everywhere: at concerts, in movies, and in our favorite comics. And we'll continue to see these images conjured up in our cultural texts for months to come. The attacks and our memory of them have transformed our popular culture into something that goes beyond "mere entertainment," to speak to our new hopes and fears.
