Comic News And Reviews

Writers: Ed Brubaker, Peter David, Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost, and Mike Carey

Pencilers: Mark Silvestri, Billy Tan, Scot Eaton, Humberto Ramos, and Chris Bachalo

There probably will be spoilers in this about the entire Messiah Trilogy. Thou hath been warned!

Last week I wrote about Endangered Species and how it set the tone for Messiah Trilogy and everything that follows. Now it’s time to get into the real meat of the Messiah Trilogy with the crossover event Messiah Complex.  Rereading this for probably the 100th time, I can say this right off the bat—it still gets better with every read. Complex is simply one of the best stories to have come out in comics in years. Out of all the major events in the past ten years, I honestly hold Messiah Complex as the best. Does it have its faults? Of course. Every story no matter how well told will always have a few glitches, no matter how minor. But just looking at the entire Messiah saga, Complex has the strongest writing and the strongest art (Well, Messiah War has fantastic art, but it’s not exactly the same. Next week…next week). So before we get into the story and how it works in this trilogy as a whole—and the implications of some of the scenes/motifs—let’s look at this awesome creative team.

First off, did you see that list of writers? If that’s not a perfect group of writers, then I don’t know what is. Just going by these names, anyone who picks up this graphic novel should know that they’re in for a great read. Each writer is great—and more importantly, they’re consistent. Of course it’s important for a writer to stand out on their own, but in a crossover—especially one as big as Messiah Complex and the later Second Coming, consistency in style and tone is extremely important. It may be five writers, but the story should read one. The reader should not notice a change in writers, and the fact that Brubaker and company were able to do this not only proves how talented they are, but also show their ability to work with other great writers—knowing when to pick up traits or possibly give suggestions—and create a great story as one. In one of the two sequels to Messiah Complex, we’ll definitely see instances of one writer not wanting to play with the others because the abrupt shifts in characterization and tone scream at the reader (I’ll keep you guessing for now, but I’m sure most of you know which story I’m talking about).  I am all for individuality, and if you read all these writers’ respective books, you can get that. But seeing so many talented people working together is one of the biggest treats of the book.

A similar rule applies to the art, but not to the same degree. For the most part, I don’t think that new readers will see much a difference between Tan, Silvestri, Eaton, and Bachalo—but Ramos certainly sticks out. For new readers, this can be distracting until they’ve read it enough or have read enough comics to pick up the more subtle differences between the other artists. Once that distinction is made, the pairing of artist to series makes a lot of sense. Each series—New X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor, and X-Men—had different functions. Uncanny set the groundwork for each act, and Billy Tan’s artwork is certainly the most defined. X-Factor developed the act and generally took it into darker territories, Eaton’s art and the inker carried that through. The New X-Men chapters always served as the penultimate to each act where something pretty crazy would build up, and Ramos’s style fits perfectly to that. And finally, in the X-Men chapter, we have the closure of each act, but left with a little uncertainty, Bachalo brings that feeling.

But let’s get into the actual story and how it works for the Messiah Trilogy. Obviously, Messiah Complex is the most important chapter as it gives the most important character—the mutant messiah baby, who as of right now, doesn’t even have a name (she gets her name in the Cable series). From Endangered Species, we know just how impossible a new mutant would be, so when Cerebra freaks out because of a mutant birth, then it’s a very big deal. And everyone is trying to get this baby. The Mauraders (Sinister’s folk) and Purifiers have an all out war trying to get the baby first, and the X-Men arrive at the scene barely 30 minutes late, after an entire town has been destroyed. But neither the Mauraders or the Purifiers have the child—Cable got to the baby first. He just needs to regroup with the X-Men and all will be well, right? Not so much. Before Messiah Complex, it turned out that half of his team were traitors. Oh, and then Bishop, one of his allies on the X-Men, begins to hunt him down to kill the baby. And then there’s that small matter of Cyclops—Cable’s own father—putting together a task force to reclaim the baby and kill his son. So, Cable’s trust in the X-Men is a little short. But everything is made clear to both Cable and Cyclops, and Cyclops decides to trust in his son, sending him and the newborn baby into the future. Oh, there’s also a giant metallic dinosaur thing hunting them the entire time too, not to mention Jamie Madrox and Layla Miller being sent to the future to investigate what the Messiah Child meant for mutant kind, and Xavier is shot in the head by Bishop.

So, Predator X—this seems like the most random element of the story, and it could easily be mistaken for something thrown in just to make the story more “cool.” It actually serves a very important purpose. No matter how much Cyclops prepares—and most people will remember this story as the story where Cyclops grew a pair—there will always be something he just can’t anticipate. Like a 2 ton metal dinosaur that eats mutants trying to snack on the newborn messiah baby. Every player in Messiah Complex has an endgame. Bishop wants to make sure his future doesn’t happen. Cable knows that the Messiah child will ultimately save everyone, and wants to bring her away from the madness. Sinister and Mauraders…well, it’s not entirely clear, but it’s obvious that this baby is going to be extremely powerful—why wouldn’t they want it? Mystique wants the baby because in a prophecy by Destiny, she learns that the baby will save Rogue, her dying daughter—and Mystique nearly kills the baby to do this. The Purifiers want to kill the baby so that they can squash the mutant species. And the X-Men want their savior. What does Predator X want? A snack. Predator X is chaos on four legs with some fierce teeth. There is no way to prepare for that except to fight it head on. Literally—Wolverine jumped into this thing’s mouth to gut it from the inside out.

About the future—this is actually an important theme to the Messiah Trilogy. In Endangered Species, Beast went to Forge who built a device to monitor the future, showing that in all futures, there are no more mutants. In Messiah Complex, two possible futures spring up. This is what gives Cyclops the hope he needs to make the impossible decisions (like sending Wolverine to kill his son). So why not take a man who can be in three places at one and send two of his dupes into the possible futures? Granted, they didn’t expect the ten year old (or however old she was at this point) Layla Miller to stowaway with one of the dupes. We only see one of the two possible futures, in which mutants are put in camps. It’s Bishop’s future, and after a horrifying experience, Madrox returns—without Layla—to the present to warn them. Of course he’s too late, but at least Cyclops knows it wasn’t his son who caused the sentinels guarding the mansion to turn on them (oh yeah, that happened too—seriously, a lot happens in this story). Going into the future will actually be an important factor in each part of the trilogy. Messiah War, takes place entirely in the future, and in Second Coming, X-Force must go to the future to save the present.  And of course, Messiah Complex ends with Cable and the baby going into the future. This is where a plot device works very well as a metaphor. What is the Messiah Trilogy truly about? The future. It’s about a hopeless cause finally having the chance to survive and actually have a future. In Endangered Species, where there was no hope, there were no futures. But now that there is hope, one can dream of the future. And in the comic world, why just dream of the future? Why not go there?

Finally, there’s the apparent death of Professor X at the hands of Bishop. Of course, he doesn’t die—but his body disappearing in the last frame is kind of weird. Cyclops actually declares at that point that there are no X-men anymore. But why? Why end this story of hope with the temporary disbanding of the heroes? Why end it with the father of the X-Men dead on the ground? Wasn’t this supposed to be a story about hope being rekindled? Yet here we have the heroes giving up, and the next page is Cable and the baby alone in the future with Cable telling her it’s only going to get harder. What happened to the hope? Yes, a mutant baby has arrived, and there is hope, but not much. Hope must be saved for later. The X-Men are only at the beginning of a very dark time. The ending of each story is very important to how we will feel when the trilogy does end. If Endangered Species, Messiah Complex, and Messiah War all ended with hope, then how could Second Coming actually end? The entire trilogy and lead-in was crafted in a very effective way to tease hope to us. That’s why Endangered Species ended with Beast literally burying his species and why Messiah Complex ends with the X-Men giving up on the dream that Xavier carried for so long. And Cyclops especially had to give up this dream if he was ever going to find a way to truly lead his people. As he eventually says to Xavier: “you had a dream, I have a plan.” Cyclops had to stop dreaming of the future and start planning for it. Next week, I’ll discuss the ending of Messiah War.

There are two more things that deserve mentioning, both having to deal with death. In the course of the events, Caliban, a mutant tracker who can locate any mutant, dies protecting Warpath. Again, the X-writers chose the best character for this. Sure, Caliban wasn’t the most important of X-men, but take a look at his power—he finds mutants. His death symbolizes that they are never going to find new mutants or a cure for M-Day, as Beast tried so hard to do. Instead, mutants will arrive unexpectedly as the baby did.

And lastly—and big spoiler warning if you haven’t read Second Coming—the first face that they focus on in the crossover is none other than Nightcrawler, who perishes in the third part of the trilogy. What’s amazing about this is it shows that the story was indeed writing itself. At this point, the writers weren’t planning on killing Nightcrawler—and we’ll talk more about his death in a couple weeks—but for some reason, Silvestri and Brubaker decided that the first face we needed to focus on was Kurt’s—who represents faith in the X-verse. It’s a bit of dramatic irony that it starts with Kurt. This also proves that the trilogy is worth rereading. There are a dozen little connections like this that maybe the writers planned and maybe they didn’t. But when you read the entire trilogy and open it up again to see the face of a beloved character that died? It ties it all together in a beautiful way.

Next week we’ll get into the heavily criticized Messiah War—the “Two Towers” installment of the trilogy. Until then, I’m going to ice my hands. I think this may have been one of the longest reviews I’ve written. Thanks for reading my crazy ideas.

-Roman Colombo Filed under: Marvel Comics, The Graphic Novel Reader Tagged: | X-Men, Humberto Ramos, Chris Bachalo, Ed Brubaker, Mike Carey, Craig Kyle, X-Force, Peter David, Christopher Yost, Cable, Billy Tan, X-Men: Second Coming, Roman Colombo, X-Men Messiah Complex, X-Men Messiah War, Mark Silvestri

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