Anyone else been keeping up with this title? It was known simply as
X-Men, but got the new title about a year and a half ago.
The latest storyline centers on a new group of Xavier's students, who've banded together as "The Omega Gang" under the leadereship of Quentin Quire, aka Kid Omega, an "Omega-level" Telepath (which I'm guessing means he rivals Xavier in power, though certainly not in experience). This lil' punk seems to have taken up Magneto's banner of Mutant superiority, driven over the brink by (a) the murder of mutant fashion designer Jumbo Carnation and (b) Kick, a new drug that enhances a user's mutant powers five-fold but has the nasty side effect of inducing megalomania and rotting the user's X-gene, killing them. Kid Omega's crew -- Glob Herman (big guy with transparent skin & organs and a "jelly grip"), Radian (projects light blasts), Redneck (a good ol' boy with radiant hands), and Tattoo (a woman with chameleonic skin) -- have already killed the gang of human punks who murdered Carnation, but don't intend to stop there.
The Omega Gang's "colors" consist of sturdy black boots, blue jeans, a long-sleeved button-up white shirt with a red-and-black striped sweater-vest over it, and a quasi-mohawk hairdo.
The X-Men -- consisting of Professor X, Best, Emma Frost (with her new diamond skin power), Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Xorn (a Chinese mutant with healing powers and a star in his head) -- are dealing with both the Omega Gang and the PR problems of being "outed" Mutants. Oh, and Cyclops is having an affair with Emma, though thus far they've kept it solely 'in their minds.' Anyway, in an attempt to ease human/mutant relations, Xavier plans to open his school to humans during an even called Open Day.
Oh, there's also a "remedial class" of Mutants at Xavier's, consisting of Angel (a bitchy black moth-girl), Basilisk (big lug with one eye that can fire paralyzing rays), Beak (a scrawny bird boy lacking in self-confidence), Dummy (a girl with a body of gas kept in a modified SCUBA suit), Ernst (a young girl with super-strength, who looks like a lil' old lady), and Martha Johansson (a mutant brain-in-a-jar that has some anti-grav generators hooked to it allowing her to fly). They're currently out in the woods with Xorn on a camping trip, but are found by the U-Men.
The U-Men, one of the few interesting things in the last few issues, are a group or Mutant organ hunters (i.e. they hunt & collect the organs of Mutants for the purpose of implanting them into themselves and gaining Mutant powers, thus making themselves 'purer' than either
Homo sapiens or
Homo sapiens superior). They also all wear SCUBA-like gear and breathe only purified air, believing the soil & air of the world to be too "tainted" for them.
Anyway, on to the point of this ramblin' re-cap -- it seems the Omega Gang is planning a riot at Xavier's school, to be held during Open Day, where they plan to kill all the humans. Not only were they able to hide this from Xavier, but they were also able to take out Xavier right before the riot started... BY WAITING FOR HIM BEHIND A DOOR AND HITTING HIM IN THE HEAD WITH A BASEBALL BAT!!! (They then plopped a helmet on his head, based on Magneto's telepathy-proof technology he'd incorporated into his own helm, preventing Xavier from "thinking out of" the helmet.)
Thoughts? Comments? More rants?
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Be Ex/20 to one another!