X is for Xorn

Also, I clearly can't count days to alphabets. It's Monday, I'm on X, so Wednesday is going to be Z, where I really wanted Z to be on the last day of the year. I'll come up with something. And, yes, GPT is taking the rest of the year off.



ABCs of Mediocre Marvel Villainy

Okay, so to start a Retcon, or Retroactive Continuity, is the "the deliberate changing of previously established facts in a work of serial fiction."

Xorn is a clusterfuck of a retcon.

I'm just going to try and set him up, with as few jokes as possible just so you can see what a mess he is.

Grant Morrison is a comic book writer who is always working on a different level than everyone else - sometimes his stuff is genius, sometimes it's just stretching too hard for the genre and more of a confusing mess than epic storytelling, BUT, for the most part his run on New X-Men was pretty genius and he came up with Xorn.

Xorn is an imprisoned chinese mutant who's energy output is so great that he has to wear this mask. His power is described as "He has a star for a brain." X-Men stop him before he takes off his mask and thus destroys the world. X-Men say come hang out with us, you get a cool jacket.
Xorn also turns out to have amazing healing powers and is, like, the most optimistic mutant you've ever seen. he starts teaching the "special" classes at Xavier Institute.
And then...he takes his mask off and he's Magneto. And he proceeds to unleash Magneto Hell. Destroys the X-Mansion, takes over NYC, kills a shit ton of people, etc.
But...Magneto? What?
Okay, so Morrison says he had this planned from the begininng, and since I haven't read the entire series I have to go with a few websites that say that it's totally true, but so subtly done it's awesome. I'm skeptical (Retcon #1).

Any way, though, Xorn is Magneto, albeit the lamest version possible, okay?

Oh, and at the end of all this chaos, Wolverine lops off Magneto's head.


Hold on, don't go anywhere. There's more.

Marvel, in all their wisdom really like the Xorn character and, of course, they like Magneto too. And they're upset that Morrison "killed" them off.

Okay, so Magneto is buried in Genosha (which is the mutant continent).

But, like, a week later Professor X runs into Magneto. Not dead.

Oh yeah and then Xorn shows up (Retcon #2).

Xorn tells the X-People that he is Xorn's twin brother (new Xorn being Shen Xorn, old Xorn being Kuan-Yin Xorn) and that Old Xorn was taken over by some sort of bacteris mutant or something and was PRETENDING TO BE MAGNETO.
What?
Okay, so then because that didn't make any sense it was decided that Scarlet Witch actually made a duplicate of Magneto who then went through the whole Xorn thing. Not the real Magneto (Retcon #3). Then the new Xorn dies or something.

Okay.

So Scarlet Witch who has chaos powers (if that makes any sense to you, I hope it does - I can't explain it now, explaining something else you see) and does this thing where she gets rid of all the mutants, but not really, just all but 198 of them (198 exactly, people). And Xorn is one of them.
Okay?

NO.

Retcon #4: The entire Mutant super powers come storming out of space and hit this postal worker in Alaska and he's mega powered and he goes on this destrcutive rampage. It turns out that, some how all that super powers is being controlled by...right, XORN. Who's so powerful than when his powers are shot into space And he explains that "took the image of Magneto, because he knew mutants would follow him." When he busted up New York. What?
So disembodies Xorn power, that is still Xorn, gives Magneto back his powers (he wasn't one of the lucky 198). And then he gets killed, some how, when a minor super hero gives Magneto a stroke, or something. Aparently, some how his Xorn energy is thrown into the sun or something by the Sentry, who's frankly, always throwing people into space.*

What the fuck?

You have to admit.

That's lame.

I'm exhausted now.


*this last retcon is the work of Brian Michael Bendis who some people think is a genius. I tend to disagree.