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Tuesday, June 25, 2019

X-amining X-Men 2099 #25 - Patreon First!


"Final Curtain"
October 1995

In a Nutshell
The X-Men reunite and take down the Theater of Pain.

Writer: John Francis Moore
Artist: Ron Lim
Inker: Harry Candelario
Letterer: Ken Lopez
Colorist: Tom Smith
Editor: Joey Cavalieri
Chief: Bobbie Chase
Computer Color: Malibu

Plot
As President Doom & Morphine Somers discuss their plans for the X-Men, Brimstone Love & Xi'an kick off their show, using the comatose Zhao & the Mindfire machine to heighten & manipulate the pain of the Slaughterhouse denizens & broadcast it to their audience. Elsewhere, in the garbage dump, Fitz encounters Junkpile, tossed their after his battle with Brimstone Love, and together, they escape. In the Keewazi Nation, Glitterspike incapacitates Metalhead, closing in on the in-labor Rosa, but Rosa's unborn baby uses its powers to defend her. In the Slaughterhouse, Meanstreak, Krystalin & Bloodhawk help Sham & Quiver, then are attacked by Zhao's X-Men, brainwashed by the Theater. As the show continues, Brimstone Love confronts Luna, placing her back in a Theater slave collar. He sets her against  Fitz & Junkpile, but Fitz manages to remove her collar. As the battle with Zhao's X-Men spills out into the auditorium, Meanstreak uses the broadcast to target the Theater's clientele, while Cerebra shuts down the Mindfire machine as the rest of the X-Men attack Brimstone Love. Xi'an then turns on the weakened Brimstone Love, causing him to abandon the Theater & teleport away. Xi'an then attacks the X-Men, but Luna feeds on his inner anguish to augment her strength, overpowering him. Just then, SHIELD agents led by Morphine Somers burst into the theater, and a holographic Doom declares that he's relocating all the people who turned themselves over to the Theater to a new city he's created, and that he intends for the X-Men to be the city's guardian angels, a mission they reluctantly accept. Meanwhile, Rosa successfully gives birth to a healthy mutant boy.

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8 comments:

  1. I'm not a Patreon member, but I just would like to comment that X-Men 2099 had their own "Non-Team Era" and I loved it.

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    1. Less an era than "most of the book's run", it lasts from roughly issue #4-#25. It has its moments, but I don't think the amount of time the team is broken up does it many favors, especially since the team was really only together for issue #3 (and part of #4).

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    2. I'm aware that most of the readers dislike it a lot, but I couldn't buy the X-Men 2099 issues published here in Brasil in the 90's and just a couple of years ago I read them all, so I loved them as the teenager who finally had the chance to know the whole story. The regular X-Men "Non-Team Era" isn't a fan favorite too, but the idea of a dismembered team had at the time and have still now a strong appeal to me.

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    3. I have weird relationship with the respective Non-Team eras. As a kid, I *hated* the UNCANNY one, but as an adult, I rather like the way it tries some new and different things with the characters and the very concept of the book (I remain irritated by the inconsistent art throughout it, though).

      Meanwhile, as a kid, I really liked the non-team stuff in X-MEN 2099, since it seemed so different from what the main present day X-books were doing. But re-reading it now, it felt tired around issue #12, in part because it felt like a reaction (break up the team) to something that never really happened in the first place (the team "broke up" almost immediately after it formed). That in and of itself may have worked, if it hadn't been left to drag on for a whole nother year before Moore finally pulled all the threads back together.

      So ultimately, I think the UNCANNY non-team stuff worked because Claremont had earned the chance to try something different, whereas the X-MEN 2099 attempt felt empty without an establishing history to play against. But there's definitely some charm to be found in it.

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  2. I have a very different opinion. The “non-team era” was a disaster for the present-day X-Men, even though he had more than 250 issues of last history to which readers could look back. The 2099 X-Men has barely began and their leader became a crazy idiot almost from the start and the team barely worked as a team. No wonder the comic was cancelled soon after.

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  3. I don't think the length of the non-team era of X-MEN 2099 did it any favors, but I also don't think it's really responsible for the cancellation of the series. By all accounts most of the 2099 books continued to sell pretty well deep into their runs, but when Marvel fired Cavalieri as part of their "try to avoid bankruptcy" staff culling, most of the line's creators (most of whom, like Moore, had been on the series since they started) left in solidarity. That is when sales started to slip, as many readers followed the creators out the door (and, of course, by then, the entire comics industry was in a major slump with sales on everything down).

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    1. As per Wikipedia, Moore was the writer for the entire series run. Did they decide to cancel it due to his leaving?

      I never really followed this title beyond the first couple of issues, so have no idea there was no formal team for much of the books run. An interesting idea, and very unconventional, too, especially to have it start so early in the books run.

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    2. I think what happened is that Cavalieri was fired, and the creators left shortly thereafter, leaving Marvel, in the case of this book, at least, to just publish whatever issues they had finished (but unpublished) before leaving.

      Rather than continue all the series with new creators (especially at a time they were desperate to cut costs), Marvel tried a soft reboot of the whole line with "2099: World of Tomorrow", a single book into which all the other titles were folded. But readers had moved on by then (or didn't like the absence of the previous creators), and the series ended after eight issues.

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