It is interesting to see how Hickman isn't just setting up the X-Men to be against the other heroes because of the usual reasons, like their not fully supporting them or their national and financial interests. No, now this has become a war between two separate potential evolutionary paths.
It will certainly give greater weight to the long overdue reckoning between the X-Men and the rest of the Marvel universe (a reckoning that really has only one proper outcome) than simply Wanda, Pietro and Doom still drawing breath.
I question how willing either the Hero office or the individual writers will be to play along with it though, for somewhat obvious reasons
Steve Rogers has not spent his whole life fighting so humanity could evolve into a species that is blue, wears white, but has no red anywhere on their color scheme. It's horrible.
I don't blind date I make the direct market vibrate
While the non-X writers have had a frankly craven habit of groveling to the X-Books before (see how quickly Bendis and Soule threw their guys under a bus) and Billion dollar movies aren’t really a consideration courtesy of Ike and Feige’s beef; it probably depends on how bad a World War X gets. If it’s a reckoning where the non-Mutants are finally taken to task for enabling the suffering of mutantkind, especially now that some of their descendants will profit from it, they might to an extent. If it’s a full scale ‘X-Men kill the Marvel Universe’ clear out of every non-mutant/non-spider hero ala Onslaught and crapping on their graves afterwards, there’s enough fans in the writing pool that it would probably get ugly
As a practical matter, Considering the emphasis placed on the 3 X’s/Science Guild/Enclave in Marvel Comics 1000; I’d wager Korvac and the Enclave’s plans for a new mankind are the true progenitors of the progenitors of Novissima
Such a good article https://www.polygon.com/2019/10/11/2...nathan-hickman
RS: What’s thematically happening here is really interesting in two ways. First of all, PoX is picking up something that was inherent to the original X-Men but quickly dropped. Mutants were, originally, written as the Children of the Atom, as a species that in part resulted from humanity’s dominance over nature, over its ability to control even the basic building blocks of our universe. Here it’s just the post-humans who get to claim that role.
Second of all, it’s building on the thematic concerns of Morrison’s New X-Men. Morrison was primarily interested in using the Mutant Metaphor as a means to explore not oppression but evolution, and not just biological but societal, cultural, and even cosmic evolution. This grand design unites both of those concerns. Humanity’s triumph over evolution allows them to oppress mutants, and the evolution of machine intelligences into gods grants them power over the entire universe.
CE: A great deal of this series seems to be dealing with machine intelligence, and the story deceiving us a bit into making them seem like a real threat. I like this reveal that machines are, as always, a tool that humans use — in this case to oppress. Also, quite importantly, the vignettes we see are Project: Rebirth (the creation of Captain America) as well as a showcase of the Omega Sentinel. The definition of engineered post-humans includes the rest of the Marvel Universe, which seems to put mutants at odds with other superheroes. But, please, God, no more Avengers vs. X-Men.
RS: Also, if Project: Rebirth is part of trans-human history, then so should be the following Weapon Plus program, which means that a number of mutants guest star in that story.
Interesting point about the setup in Marvel 1000 possibly being the true origin or precursor to homo novissima. As for the bolded, I would prefer the former --- nonmutants finally waking up to the harm they've enabled to befall mutants by virtue of their silence and trying to make amends, however late --- to the latter. However, I can admit it would be satisfying for a lot of fans here to see the Avengers finally taken down a few pegs for their highhanded sanctimony and arrogance regarding the mutant situation.
And of course, humans and machines eventually integrate into a transhumanist symbiosis that enables both to evolve beyond mutants' natural abilities, however awesome those abilities may be.
The spider is always on the hunt.
Which of course raises the issue that of the forebears of Proto-Novissima are already in the works, then all the other variations on the super-solider serum or Horton’s work (which constitute a fair number of enhanced, non-magical heroes) are suddenly ... surplus to requirements. And the heroes were always next on the Sentinel hitlist after mutants are dealt with.
Thing is, what good is the nonmutants ‘waking up and making amends’ if, after the post-event status quo shifts, the X-Office either doesn’t let, say, Punisher go through a pack of Purifiers or U-Men; or doesn’t give the non-X books a heads-up before having some atrocity that the nonmutants should have been able to stop committed (let’s be real, between the pecking order ranking of the Avengers at the time and Morrison being Morrison; what are the odds the first the nonmutant writers had of Genosha was after the issue came out?).As for the bolded, I would prefer the former --- nonmutants finally waking up to the harm they've enabled to befall mutants by virtue of their silence and trying to make amends, however late --- to the latter. However, I can admit it would be satisfying for a lot of fans here to see the Avengers finally taken down a few pegs for their highhanded sanctimony and arrogance regarding the mutant situation.
And that’s not getting into how the ‘waking up’ or ‘taking down’ is done. Because if the plans basically involve tainting the characters the same way AD/HoM or the Pym Slap did, the writers are either going to pile **** on the X-side or appeal to the Mouse.
But it’s fairly academic at this point. Hickman’s sales are good enough that the only event I see him being roped into in the near future is probably whatever/whenever the Eternals are revived (if only because their more infamous cousin will probably be revived with them, and Death probably has a job for him)
With scenarios like 'Spider-Island' or the event where Diablo turned an entire town into Hulks (or the New Avengers fought a group of SHIELD agents who had been 'gamma-enhanced' to be able to turn into mini-Hulks for a short time), humanity kind of already is there, tapping into gamma rays or the spider-serum, to empower entire populations of people all at once.
Terrigenesis is yet another example, turning large populations of humans into post-humans en masse. Ditto Pym particles getting out there in various Ant-Men, Yellowjackets, Wasps and Giant-Men.
I'm surprised there hasn't been a mass cosmic-ray empowerment event yet, perhaps orchestrated by one of the comic-ray-empowered villains like the Red Ghost or Vector.