The X-Men franchise has a long and storied history of having characters with mysterious pasts thrust into the forefront. I mean, look at Wolverine and how long it took to reveal his origin as James Howlett, or how Bishop was from a future where Hope killed countless people, or how Nightcrawler was the son of a devilish mutant. Alright, we can forget that last one.
A few of the more enigmatic X-Men over the years have come from a place called the Mojoverse, where these battle hardened warriors turned superheroes were little more than reality TV fodder for Mojo and his people. Longshot we’ve long known to be a genetically engineered being, created to be a slave for the sake of their sick entertainment. Shatterstar featured dimension hopping and time jumps, and even an uncanny resemblance to a mutant named Ben Russell, with more than a few hints over the years that there was a grander connection between him and Longshot.
Peter David, as he has been one to do for years now, picked up the long sitting plots and decided to resolve them.
Rictor is trapped in the Mojoverse after his attempt at attacking Mephisto, a slave used for gladitorial games as he waits for the resistance to pop up so he can have a direction to go in. Well, his last fight winds up being against Shatterstar, and then Longshot saves him. Longshot doesn’t know him, yet at least, though a man named Arize, a Creator, decides to give Ric story time. About how he created everyone around them, save for Shatterstar who fell from the skies years ago. That he created a clone of Shatterstar that has been active for a few days.
Rictor calls the clone “Longshot”, and that’s the first time he’s heard the name. Shatterstar is Longshot’s genetic ‘father’, not a total clone, more of an adjusted test tube baby without the benefits of a mother. This also means that they are in the past, and with Shatterstar back to normal, they need to get closer to the present.
They time jump, coming out in the same spot years later and finding a VERY pregnant Dazzler. The two have to help her give birth to a baby that has never really been mentioned before, as one appearance in the 90’s she was pregnant with Longshot’s baby, and the next it was like it never happened. Shatterstar knew that they would be there for this moment, because what comes next is critical.
After all, it’s not every day you help your own mother give birth to you.
After the baby is born Shatterstar explains how they have to fill the time loop, Alison and Longshot can’t remember that there was supposed to be a baby, the baby has to go to the future to be raised the same way it happened before, and everything has to play out the same way it has.
Because Shatterstar needs to be raised in the future so he can be sent back in time, so that he can be cloned to create Longshot, who can fall in love with Dazzler and leave her with a child that will grow up to become Shatterstar.
Ric said it best.
