Speaking of which... When Askani was introduced around that time, Whilce Portacio drew her very Asian-looking, with a psi-blade... and since there was this Psylocke-Cyclops thing going on in the X-titles at the time, I wondered if Askani wasn’t supposed to be a possible daighter of the two.

I think she was later revealed to actually be another version of Rachel or something, but I’ve no idea if that was the plan from the beginning.

I guess I did need to ask...I was thinking Leifeld, but now I look again I can see it was Lee (before he became a decent artist.)

New X-Men #121 “Silence: Psychic Rescue in Progress” (February 2002)



The Story: This issue doesn’t really lend itself to a story summary, so I won’t try. Instead, here are some summary images:





My Two Cents: As you can see, it’s a formal experiment in wordless narrative like the famous “Snake Eyes rescues Scarlett” issue of G.I. Joe (“Silent Interlude, #21 by Larry Hama). The upshot is that Jean Grey-Summers and Emma Frost enter the brain of Cassandra Nova’s body to scan and reactivate the mind of Charles Xavier which is imprisoned within. Such scenarios lend themselves well to surreal and imaginative depiction, though Frank Quitely (called “Quietly” in the credits as a pun) doesn’t go to the trippy lengths that Bill Sienkiewicz did in the New Mutants “Legion” storyline. Still we get some fun moments like Jean and Emma communicating in emoticons. We also get the first image I’ve ever seen of Xavier’s parents. Emma gets waylaid by traps in Nova’s mind, leaving Jean to forge on alone to see a re-enactment of Xavier’s conception and twinning, followed by fetal Xavier choking the life out of fetal Cassandra. If Xavier and Cassandra are identical twins as shown (a single fertilized egg fissioning into two morulae), then Cassandra is genetically male. It's great to have these moments shown, not told in dialogue:



We also see Jean and Emma trying to work together, but there’s a lot of old bad blood between the two, plus the possibility that Scott committed adultery with Emma in Hong Kong. During the mission, Emma is frustrated that she’s getting bogged down by hazards along the way, while Jean insinuates that Emma isn’t pulling her weight – or perhaps takes satisfaction in being able to rescue Xavier ultimately with little assistance from Emma. Either way, Morrison is making a case for a competent Jean Grey apart from any Phoenix-related material. See how in one of the images above, Jean’s hair forms the phoenix raptor? I missed that the first half-dozen times I read this issue. Quitely gives us lots of rewarding little details like that. Why does Xavier's vision of himself have polio braces and crutches? Why is he bald in his childhood self-portrait, seen on the left? Was he always bald, like Charlie Brown?



All in all, an excellent issue whose experiment works.

Oh, were silent issues a thing that month? I didn't realize that.

New X-Men #122 “Imperial” (March 2002)



The Story: Somewhere in deep space, Cassandra Nova in the body of Charles Xavier is attacking the spaceship of Lilandra, Empress Majestrix of the Shi’ar Empire. Just before the spaceship explodes, Lilandra dispatches Smasher, a faithful Imperial Superguardian, on a mission to tell the X-Men on earth about these events. He crashes to earth and, before falling unconscious, dutifully warns the cows grazing nearby. I love how Lilandra's ship is a faux ancient temple, complete with Arabic-dressed guards, pillars, and metal walls painted like an arched stone corridor. 



Jean Grey-Summers and Scott Summers argue about the best face which mutants should present to the human world. Jean thinks mutants should boldly show their powers to demonstrate that they have nothing to hide and mean no harm. Scott finds this will come across as intimidation, especially once humans learn that the extinction gene has been triggered, and the end of homo sapiens is less than fifty years off. Scott is also unnerved by Jean’s recent Phoenix power manifestation, and not soothed by her assurance that she can handle it this time. Everybody’s still suffering from a flu-like illness as well, which doesn’t help either battle efficiency or morale.



Beast catches everyone up to speed on the twin origin of Cassandra and Charles. Because of her experience in utero, Cassandra thinks of the whole universe as a place that has room only for either herself or Charles. We don’t know (and never find out, if memory serves) why she didn’t end this intolerable state of affairs much earlier in the history of the X-Men. At any rate, Cassandra’s body is about to give out, taking Xavier’s mind with it. In all fairness, Xavier did fill it full of bullets a few issues back.

Scott remembers Xorn, the Chinese mutant from the 2001 annual, who has a star inside his head and whose powers include healing. He travels to the Tibetan monastery where Xorn has been living, and sure enough, Xorn is bringing a bird back to life. Despite his scary skull-helmeted appearance, he turns out to be an amiable, even innocent sort of guy, especially considering that he spent several decades chained in solitary confinement in a Chinese prison.



My Two Cents: Jean has her hair in scrunchied pigtails in this issue, which is of no plot consequence but does remind me how rarely comic books (drawn mostly by men) rarely depict things that real women really do, like wear their hair differently on different days or in different circumstances. Looking back through the first issues of X-Men, I notice that everybody, especially Jean, wears different civilian clothing in different scenes, whereas in this X-men run Jean is wearing the same black turtleneck (the one Scott complained about to Emma last issue) in every scene. I appreciate that Quitely portrays Scott as "slim" indeed, fit like a runner but not over-muscled.

Morrison gives Jean and Scott some reasonable issues on which to disagree, widening the rift between them that opened through Cyclops’ brusque behavior following his mind-control. "What should we do in situation X?" is the stuff of daily life for real-life couples; marriage is not just about struggling with sexual temptation.

In 1977 when Dave Cockrum paid tribute to his own updated version of the Legion of Super-Heroes by having the X-Men fight “the Shi’ar Imperial Guard,” he couldn’t have imagined that 35 years later, these characters would still be an active concern in Marvel Comics. Smasher is the Shi'ar analogue of Ultra Boy of the Legion of Super-Heroes, who can only use one super-power at a time. Smasher's "Penta-Vision" spoofs Ultra Boys' "Penetra-Vision." His giant Tick-like chin makes him seem like a moron even before he tries to talk to cows.



Quitely is good with spatial relationships, as in the scenes in Xavier's study which give us a consistent and clear picture of the room's layout, including the secret bookcase connecting it to the Cerebra room. I also appreciate this establishing shot of the mansion's grounds, not too far off some main road in Westchester. I guess strip malls grew up around it since the 1970s, since it's normally pictured as way out in the country on a large property including a lake and a steep cliff, not nestled between the arms of a mountain as seen here. Nice X-shaped mansion, anyway. The tall rectangular building behind it must be the dormitory.

Well, it worked well for New X-Men at least, given the concept behind this issue. Morrison fudged slightly by (1) having Jean spell out a message to Emma as seen in the image above, and (2) having a single bubble of dialogue ending with "We need to talk" on the last page.