The Omega Mutant
“The Omega Mutant”
Uncanny X-Men Vol. 3 #26-31 (2013)
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Chris Bachalo (25, 27, 29, 30, 31) and Kris Anka (23, 24, 26, 28)
“The X-Men are a family” is a trope I’ve never been all that invested in, as I tend to prefer stories in which the X-Men are more of a movement. Some writers can pull off the “found family” aspect better than others – Chris Claremont established it in the ‘80s, and Scott Lobdell was particularly good at sentimental beats in the ‘90s – but I find that a lot of writers use this as a lazy shorthand for character connections, mostly just leaning on nostalgia for those Claremont or Lobdell back issues than what is written into their own stories. The one writer who really took this idea and pushed it to a logical extreme was Brian Michael Bendis, who over the course of his parallel runs on Uncanny X-Men and All-New X-Men essentially wrote one big story about what happens to the X-Men after their paterfamilias Charles Xavier is killed by his surrogate son Cyclops in a Phoenix-fueled rage. This story thread comes to a head in “The Omega Mutant,” an arc that is framed by rival X-Men factions having to come together for the reading of Xavier’s will.
Bendis’ X-Men is a family divided. Cyclops, who was radicalized in the prior runs by Kieron Gillen and Matt Fraction, was already at odds with the X-Men based at the school and was now a full-on pariah. At the start of Bendis’ run, Beast – long Cyclops’ closest friend, basically more of a brother to him than his actual biological brother, Havok – was so furious and deep in mourning that he ripped apart the space-time continuum to bring their teenage selves to the present just to spite him. Wolverine had reclaimed the old school, and passive-aggressively renamed it the Jean Grey School. Storm is frustrated by Cyclops’ tactics (though they aren’t very different from how Claremont wrote her in the ‘80s…), and Iceman outright loathes him for his role in Xavier’s death. This is the X-Men as a grieving dysfunctional family, and it rings more true than the idealized sentimental version of the idea. Ideologies clash, long-simmering resentments flare up, and love/hate relationships abound.
Bendis’ Cyclops is a glorious mess of self-destructive impulses and monomania. He’s obsessed with redeeming himself while proving that he’s always been right, but so wracked with guilt that he’s constantly sabotaging himself because he wants to be punished. His only allies are ethically dubious figures – his ex-girlfriend Emma Frost, his longtime enemy Magneto, the generally amoral Illyana Rasputin – and he’s being watched over by Kitty Pryde, a character prone to harshly judgmental moralizing. He’s absolutely miserable, and every decision he makes just makes everything spiral further into chaos.
When the X-Men are summoned for the reading of Xavier’s will, the school-based characters are all convinced that their worst fear is about to be realized and Cyclops would be granted full control over the school and the X-Men. But before getting to that part, they’re informed that Charles is married to Mystique – wait, whuuuut? – and that he needs them to look after a mutant named Matthew Malloy so absurdly powerful that he’d spent decades suppressing his godlike reality-warping abilities. Cyclops is furious to discover Xavier’s hypocrisy, and when he’s sent with the X-Men to confront him, he attempts to recruit him to his cause. It’s an act of hubris that, or course, backfires horribly.
Matthew Malloy is grieving too. Without the psychic blocks Xavier put in place, he’s aware that he killed his parents, and is understandably overwhelmed and confused by his extreme level of power. Malloy is not a villain, and he’s barely an antagonist. He’s just a traumatized guy with a shaky handle on reality who happens to be able to do pretty much anything he can imagine. He’s just a guy who was living a normal life unaware that he was a mutant, and suddenly has Cyclops and Magneto vying to influence him, and S.H.I.E.L.D. looking to eliminate him. He’s pushed over the edge, and it goes very badly. Cyclops dies. A lot of people die.
There is a deus ex machina in this story in the form of Eva Bell, a time-hopping mutant Bendis and Stuart Immonen introduced who has been mostly a student of Cyclops’ through the run. Over the course of 20 issues or so, Eva has transitioned from being starstruck by Cyclops to becoming a harsh critic of his methods and unstable mental state. She takes it upon herself to fix the Malloy problem by going back in time to a point where she can convince Xavier to do something far worse than simply block a mutant’s powers and erase their identity – she has him make it so his parents never meet. Matthew is wiped out of reality, and the story resets. But Bell goes out of her way to make sure Cyclops knows what really happened, partly to scare him straight and partly out of spite. It’s puzzling why this character has barely appeared since the end of the Bendis run. She’s fascinating and sets up a lot of story possibilities, particularly in her rather bitter relationship with the X-Men at the end of his long-term story.
The art in this arc is handled by two different but complementary artists – primary series artist Chris Bachalo, and Kris Anka, a rising star at the time. Bachalo, a veteran of several X-series, is so distinctive and stylized that it can be quite difficult to pair him with other artists. Anka, who is also quite distinctive, doesn’t alter his style to ape Bachalo’s but does match his aesthetics and tone. Both artists go for big panels and an emphasis on wide open space in pages focused on Malloy, and allow a lot of room to let the colorists carry emotional tone with a lot of pastels and ultra-saturated primaries. Anka is particularly good at drawing facial expressions and body language and thrives in the family feud scenes, while Bachalo really sells the psychedelic terror of Malloy’s power. They both make a lot of dialogue-heavy scenes look fresh and dynamic.
“The Omega Mutant” is effectively the climax of Bendis’ Uncanny run. The remaining issues mostly tie up loose ends, often in abrupt ways that suggest that he did indeed leave the X-Men a bit earlier than he had originally planned. It’s a very Bendis sort of climax, focused mainly on several of his core characters – Cyclops, Beast, Iceman, Eva Bell, Magneto – acting out on the emotions that have been driving them through dozens of issues. The Malloy plot is interesting, but is mostly just a backdrop for a story about Cyclops’ reckoning and the X-Men’s various ways of processing grief. The emotions are vivid and the interpersonal dynamics are nuanced. It’s a very bold take on the X-Men in general – more of a philosophical family soap opera than a straight superhero thing.