Reviewer: Jesse Baker
Story Title: The End of History Part 2: Death and the Maiden
Written by: Chris Claremont
Penciled by: Alan Davis
Inked by: Mark Farmer
Colored by: Frank D’Armata
Lettered by: Rus Wooton
Editor: Mike Marts
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Opening Statement: You know, in retrospect it would have made a bit more sense if Marvel hadn’t shuffled the creator teams for their respective books and simply put Joss Whedon on New X-Men and given Claremont a new book entitled “XSE†to go along with his new “Mutants and Federal Marshals†direction. But that’s just me….
Synopsis
The issue starts with the resolution to last issue’s hostage crisis as Wolverine (off-panel of course) kills the mutant suicider who was blowing up the school. Unfortunately, even though Nightcrawler successfully saved the kids trapped inside the school the local redneck cops arrest the X-Men and put Kurt and Logan in cuffs before Kurt has enough and teleports out of them and starts threatening the redneck police when Storm and longtime Claremont favorite Carol “Warbird” Danvers shows up and bitches out the local cops for not recognizing the XSE’s legal authority. While the four heroes relax afterwards, Logan angsts about how he wishes he didn’t have to kill the kid whom we learn was a generic school shooter-type out for revenge against the world. Warbird gives a convoluted speech about how Logan shouldn’t be torn up about this because he’s dealt with teenage mutants before, and namechecks Kitty Pryde and Cannonball as examples. Logan rightfully corrects Warbird by stating that she’s totally wrong. He notes that Xavier specifically picked Sam and Kitty because they were good people and that Xavier specifically picked good people with help of his trusty telepathic powers. Logan then states that the world was filled with young mutants out there like the one he had to kill.
We cut back to the school as we see Sage watching various TV-news channels and websurfing anti-mutant hate sites (mainly “Purity”, the anti-mutant hate site that Claremont has used extensively in the last couple of years in X-Treme X-Men and Mechanix). We then cut to nighttime as we see Kurt and Storm flirt with each other. Storm brings out a new image inducer that creates holographic clothing, which she uses to create formal wear for the two. She then uses her wind power to take the two outside where they literally dance in the air.
We then cut back to the continent of Europe as Bishop, Rachel Formerly Summers and Now Grey, and Cannonball head out to visit Brian Braddock, AKA Captain Britain. Bishop jokes about Cannonball forming his own X-Men team with his siblings while Rachel rambles on and on about her mom Jean Grey’s musical tastes. Rachel mentions the fact that the three are heading out to visit Brian and tell him how sad they are that his sister Psylocke is dead .Of course this makes for a big ass continuity gaff as Brian and his wife Meggan are in Outworld as of the Excalibur mini-series from a couple of years back.
That being said, apparently they are back on Earth and the three X-Men are going to visit them. Even though out of all of the X-Men on Claremont’s team, why would he choose these three? Especially since none of them were really close to Psylocke. Especially Rachel, who never met Psylocke in her entire careers as an X-Man or Excalibur member.
Anyway, they don’t get an answer and decide to charge in and find a huge ass hole in the floor. They go down the hole (with Sage providing intel for them) and find the underground super-computer Mastermind and….
THE FURY
For those not in the know, The Fury was a creation of Alan “From Hell/Swamp Thing/ Watchmen” Moore back when he was working for Marvel UK and writing Captain Britain. The Fury was a cyborg created by Great Britain to destroy all super-heroes on the parallel Earth that the cyborg hailed from. The monstrous being ultimately traveled to the Marvel Universe and was ultimately destroyed by Captain Britain and his parallel earth counterpart Captain UK.
The Fury needless to say gets immediately to work as he beats the living daylights out of the three X-Men and apparently “kills” Cannonball by bashing his head onto the floor and producing a blackish red pool of blood on the floor. The issue ends with Fury grabbing Cannonball’s hi-tech sunglasses and looking seeing Sage, who freaks out at what she sees in her video monitors.
