X-amining X-Men 2099 #3

"Viva Las Vegas"
December 1993

In a Nutshell
One of the X-Men dies as the rest rescue Xi'an from Junkpile & Lytton Synge.
Writer: John Francis Moore
Penciler: Ron Lim
Inkers: Adam Kubert , Chris Ivy, Jim Sanders III, Cam SMith & Gary Martin
Letterers: Ken Lopez & Jon Babcock
Colorist: Tom Smith
Editor: Joey Cavalieri
Chief: Tom DeFalco

Plot
Bloodhawk attacks the Vegas strip outside Synge's casino, creating a distraction which allows Cerebra, Tim a& Tina to sneak inside. and free the captive Meanstreak & Metalhead. Meanwhile, Krystalin learns Lytton Synge killed his father & framed Xi'an. She tries to kill Lytton, but is stopped by Junkpile. Elsewhere, the reunited X-Men are confronted by the Rat Pack, but Cerebra is able to activate Tim's power to blast them aside. As they close in on Xi'an's location, they are confronted by Junkpile, who kills Tina and shatters one of Bloodhawk's wings before he's stopped by a newly-revived Xi'an. He easily dispatches Junkpile, but refuses to kill him, then reveals that the cocoon he was in both healed his injury and activated a new power, giving him the ability to heal others with one of his hands. He is able to repair Bloodhawk's wing, but is unable to bring Tina back from the dead. Just then, Desdemona appears. She tells the X-Men they are free to go, as she knows her brother killed their father. The X-Men return to the desert where they bury Tina, while elsewhere, Brimstone Love has a woman named Luna dispatched to investigate the new mutant phenomenon in that area.

Firsts and Other Notables
As teased by the cover, one of the X-Men 2099 die in this issue, and it's (Serpen)Tina, the stretchy-limbed woman who briefly took Tim under her wing in the first two issues. She will return, in zombie form, later in the series, but this is pretty much her last hurrah, and it seems pretty clear she was created with the intention of killing her off from the outset.

Xi'an emerges from his coma/red cocoon (which is describes as his body’s odd way of healing itself) in this issue, and reveals in the wake of his injury he has a developed a golden healing hand to balance his existing hand capable of breaking things down on a molecular level. In addition to the new power, future issues will make it clear this experience has affected his overall demeanor as well.

In the wake of Tina’s death, Tim decides to stick around, marking this as essentially the issue where he joins Xi’an’s X-Men.

This leads to a full page splash that serves as something of a team shot for the group, featuring the characters who will form the core cast moving forward.

The final page of the issue teases the Theater of Pain, Brimstone & La Lunatik, all of whom will make their first full appearances next issue.

A Work in Progress
It’s said that Cerebra can only scramble a few minds at a time.

This issue reveals that Lytton Synge killed his father (after he threatened to cut Lytton out of his will) and framed Xi’an for it, something hinted at in previous issues.

Tim’s power is said to operate on a basic animal response to stress & danger, so Cerebra can manipulate it.

Xi’an says he revived the name of the X-Men due to the way they shared adversity amongst themselves.

Austin's Analysis
Obviously, the big happening of this issue is the death of Tina. Given the fact that someone dying in the issue is loudly touted on the cover, combined with the general state of Xi'an heading into this issue, readers were clearly meant to expect Xi'an to be the casualty (ie he dies, and then the rest of the group can carry on in his name, as X(i'an's)-Men). Instead, Moore swerves, and kills off the mostly unremarkable Tina. There are shades of the death of Thunderbird here, with her death coming as it does early in the run of the series as a way to raise the stakes. Unfortunately, it doesn't work quite as well as Thunderbird's death did. While both characters were understandably one-dimensional (Thunderbird a jerk, Tina is nice) since they were killed off before they had a chance to be developed, Thunderbird's death had an impact because, even though the All New X-Men were, well, new, they were still working within the confines of the established X-Men mythos. Therefore, even though it was hard to mourn the specific death of Thunderbird, it was easy to understand what the death of an X-Man would mean to the rest of the team (and, especially, the well-established Cyclops & Professor X).

Here, Moore & Lim still haven't done much to establish what these futuristic X-Men are all about. Their devotion to Xi'an, and to each other, is well-established, but their goals & motivations are still largely unknown, beyond whatever assumptions readers may make based on the title's connection to the present-day X-Men (are they fighting to protect a world that fears and hates them? For the peaceful coexistence of man & mutant? For raw survival? Not clear yet). And since Moore & Lim are also playing with entirely new characters, few of them are much more developed than Tina herself. As a result, it's not entirely unclear what Tina is dying for, or why we should care that the rest of the characters are sad about it. So the end result is worth little more than shock value (which, of course, is dulled when the cover is screaming about how someone is going to die), and the series' first story concludes with the question of the larger goals of the team (and the themes of the series itself) still largely unanswered.

Next Issue
The X-Men run afoul of the Theater of Pain in X-Men 2099 #4!

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