This week Luke and Devin sit down to talk about Morrison’s Here Comes Tomorrow, the wrap of the New X-men run – haven’t read it? Luke has you covered with the hit winter jam of 2018.
Oh god, it’s 2018?
part of me just still thinks it is 2016.
I…
where am I
time has no meaning.
Tom Skylark wants to have sex with Robots!
Universes and Comics Covered:
Earth-15104 – New X-men 151-154
Check out the song by itself here
Check out the image gallery and notes after the jump!
Here Comes Tomorrow
Earth-15104
New X-men 150
Writer – Grant Morrison
Pencils – Phil Jiminez
Inks – Andy Lanning, Simon Coleby
Colors – Chris Chuckry
Letters – Chris Eliopoulous
New X-men 151-154
Pencils – Marc Silvestri
Inks – Matt Banning, Joe Weems, Billy Tan, Eric Basaloua, Tim Townsend
Colors – Steve Firchow, Matt Milla, John Starr, Frank D’Armata, Beth Sotelo, Brian Buccellato
Letters – VC’s Rus Wooton, Chris Eliopoulos
It is 150 years in the future!
We open with Tom Skylark being chased by pack of 5 Crawlers – engineered clones of Nightcrawler. Luckily for Tom, his partner Rover, an original generation Sentinel is there to help and kills all of them – or so it seems – and it turns out they were in the ruins of the Xavier Mansion. He ends up meeting with E.V.A. who is the evolved form of Fantomex’s mutation which was a Spaceship. Tom and Rover, who make up the team, Rover and I, currently have the Phoenix Egg, which was found on the moon by the Proud People who may be the descendants of the Inhumans, who were all killed. Anyway they head to the Manhattan Crater which is a crater surrounded and filled with old buildings like the Taj Mahal, Big Ben and other classic achievements they wanted to preserve and even though Tom is a human they are accepting him into the X-men to help and stop the Beast.
The Beast meanwhile is over in Transatlantis, marking people with the mark of the Beast, you see – and he’s now a while more lion headed buff boy now – making armies of Crawlers – like the one that we see that has hidden inside Rover. And the Beast has had access to all mutant powers but so far has been unable to get into the Institute – the secret base where EVA just brought Tom. The Crawler escapes and begins duplicating and attacking with optic blasts which allows them to expand their teleportation range. Beak shows up,Tito, one of the grandsons of Beak and Angel – but ultimately they are able to steal the Phoenix egg which has Jean Grey inside of it.
Back at the Institute the Three-in-One the remaining members of the Stepford Cuckoos are there – Phoebe, Celeste and Mindee slash Irma because Morrison created the 5 Cuckoos and planned to have their initials spell out Spice but only named four of them and Chuck Austen was unaware and named one Mindee which Matt Fraction retconned.
Anyway, Wolverine is still around as some kind of old man Logan – even though he’s young – but basically everything went shitty over the past while. Cassandra Nova Xavier also shows up (which is weird since she’d been evil and was also sort of killed or stopped) – and points out how time and reality fundamentally broke somewhere along the way and we flash back to Scott at Jean’s grave where Emma asks him to return and teach with the X-men and he turns her down and he says he quits the X-men.
We then flashback to the end of the Proud People of Starlit City when Apollyon the Destroyer showed up, last of the U-Men and named for the Angel of the Bottomless Pit aka Abbadon which like most stuff in the book of Revelation is sort of unclear and which is sort of inessential Bible stuff as a result because you can attribute almost anything to it.
Anyway he’s there to herald the Beast, but also there is Mer-Max the Irish mutant who looks like a giant sperm whale who may be a sperm whale mutant . The Proud People including The Maker stand against him so that Tom could escape the armies of Crawlers – including Brian who had a Magic Car.
And Tom had been sharing this story because all those people died, but he thinks good will still win in the end and the Three-In-One have ordered EVA and the X-men to attack because the Beast wants to stop evolution and Jean will be able to do that if she sides with the Beast.
Meanwhile Rover is jealous because Tom is flirting with EVA but Tom doesn’t think it is sentient enough for emotions.
Cassandra Nova and Wolverine make some last minute checks and they see the Phoenix judging and destroying the world if they don’t succeed so the X-men assemble including – Tom, Rover, EVA, Wolverine, Cassandra Nova, Beak and Martha, a brain originally harnessed by John Sublime to fight psychics.
Beast meanwhile has been dissecting the Proud People and running more experiments including working on a Parasite that eats the thoughts of the hosts. Apollyon meanwhile wants to be made perfect and wants the Phoenix energy grafted on. The Beast ignores him and uses the Crawlers to hatch the Phoenix Egg and Jean’s memories are incomplete. She recalls him as Hank and Beast – but he says he is also … Sublime.
So Sublime or John Sublime was the leader of the U-Men a group of humans who wanted to be trans-species, becoming mutants by grafting on mutant parts. He got killed by Emma Frost.
Meanwhile in the future, Phoenix is visiting the remaining communities and wiping them out and absorbing them into the White Hot Room. Apollyon is now feeling uncomfortable since that used to be his job and The Beast tells him to not worry – but he brings up how if she remembers she will betray him and he should just be grafted. The Beast wants irony though so she has to attack and he sends in a Crawler with a lot of Beast DNA to attack the institute which has an infectious mind.
Jean meanwhile returns because she heard about the X-men and wishes to know more and the Beast tells her they were the enemy – they fought for diversity – and Phoenix is worried that she is not ready to be hatched but the beast has his own plans.
Meanwhile Mer-Max is under attack by Crawlers looking to harvest him and the X-men are there to help and we find out that Cassandra Nova may have also been Ernst from the Special Class because her mind was put into and is still in the body of Stuff, a blobby transforming member of the Shi’ar Imperial Guard. The X-men attack and during the battle Tom tries to confess his love to EVA but Rover watches, gets swarmed, attacked and as he dies, he calls out Tom’s name – his first word beyond Destroy. Tom is destroyed because the Sentinel raised him, but meanwhile the rest of the X-men are more concerned with the massive army of Crawlers coming near.
Back at the Institute the Parasitic mind is spreading through the crowd and they are attacking and back in the ocean, the Phoenix appears before Wolverine, the man who killed her once before.
We then get more information on Sublime – starting 3 billion years ago. Sublime is a hivemind organism unable to naturally evolve or change – that even was able to live inside humanity. But mutants were able to resist it which is why it made humans fear mutants and fight with them. While Beast explains this Apollyon is crying to be perfected but the Beast instead injects himself with the Phoenix.
Wolverine is facing down Jean and starts setting her straight on what the X-men are.
Tom meanwhile is ready to give up and Jean suddenly remembers Scott and Logan and Cassandra Nova and Martha work together to reopen her mind and memories and Jean fully reawakens and we find out what went wrong. Hank tried running the school without Cyclops around, things got bad, and he got addicted to Kick – which is actually Sublime – which allowed him to be taken over and things went to seed quickly.
Cassandra Nova gets killed off by an energy blast from the Beast after he killed Mer-Max and the infected host of the Institute break through to attack the Three-in-One.
As Beast appears, Beak attacks with a bat and is taken down, Tom tries to call Rover and Rover reappears and Eva moves to flank him but he reprograms her thoughts, changing her body to essentially become a cancer program for herself. Wolverine goes to check on Beak who thought he failed living up to his grandfather’s legacy but Wolverine says he did good before he charges Beast who blasts him. As Beast deactivates his healing factor, Wolverine says goodbye to Martha leaving only The Beast and Jean behind.
He calls her to join at his side and instead she removes Sublime from his body and Beast is returned – seconds before Apollyon beheads him and believes he has achieved perfection. Meanwhile Tom says goodbye to EVA, and Wolverine dies. Jean moves into the Phoenix space and is told her world will end unless she makes a change as she sees all of the other hosts of the Phoenix including Quintin Quire – and she has to make sure Scott doesn’t give up. So she messages Scott to live, and we cut back to Scott and Emma in the graveyard and when she asks if he wants to live, he says yes.