• Tom Skylark
• Rover
• EVA
• Beast/Sublime
• The Crawlers
• Wolverine
• Three-In-One
• Cassandra Nova
• Beak
• Apollyon the Destroyer
• Jean Grey/Phoenix

New X-Men #142-154

Script: Grant Morrison
Pencils: Chris Bachalo, Phil Jimenez, Marc Silvestri
Inks: Tim Townsend, Andy Lanning, Batt, Joe Weems, Billy Tan, Eric Basaloua

ASSAULT ON WEAPON PLUS: NXM #142-145

New X-Men #142: "Brimstone & Whiskey"
22 pages + cover • August 2003

While at Sebastian Shaw's Hellfire Club, Cyclops is drowning his sorrows over Jean Grey in a bottle of "sparkling wine." The attention of some of the Hellfire Club's entertainment does little to lift his spirits. Sabretooth stops by Cyke's table to ridicule him for being a wimp who drinks sparkling wine. Shaw approaches Sabretooth and tells him to back off, then tells Cyclops not to feel too bad, he's been pushed over by Emma Frost, too.

Wolverine has the table next to him and invites him to do a drinking game. After a quick trip to the bathroom, in which Sabretooth tries- and fails- to engage him in a metaphorical pissing match, Wolverine returns to Cyclops' table and continues to hear his old buddy wallowing in self-pity. Then, Wolverine gives him the details of the drinking game. If Cyke wins, Wolverine leaves, no demands made. If Wolverine wins, Cyclops helps him backup Fantomex as they go all-out on the Weapons Plus program, which holds the keys to his origin. Cyclops declares himself the winner, then promptly falls on the floor, passed out drunk. Wolverine tells Fantomex they have themsleves a new partner.

New X-Men #143: "The World"
22 pages + cover • August 2003

A pair of pro-mutant activists penetrate The World, a giant complex hidden in the wilderness of Britain run by secretive biogeneticists. As they record the inside of the plant with camera equipment, it is overrun by agents of AIM, who are on a mission to seal off the World and take a live subject into captivity. Unfortunately for them, one of the live subjects finds them and begins to kill them.

Fantomex leads Wolverine and Cyclops into the World complex, but when they get there, it's main infrastructure is torn apart in violent fashion. They find the AIM agents' bodies lying strewn around the ground. Then, they come upon one of the activists who is running for his life. They review his camera footage, and listen to his account, and Fantomex realizes that after penetrating the World complex, the AIM agents loosed something that killed them. Suddenly, they come under fire by some remaining AIM agents who are holed up in a corner. Fantomex shoots all of them dead but one, and at gunpoint, he explains that they were trying to reclaim AIM technology that the World scientists had co-opted for themselves, when they were set upon by a creature who killed his fellow agents just by looking at them.

Fantomex explains to Wolverine that Weapon XV has been set loose and is somewhere inside the World complex. Inside the complex, time is a synthetically engineered proposition that the created subjects of the program are forced to live under. The controllers can stop time, or speed it up as fast as they wish, in order to create an environment suitable for testing genetic experiments on controlled population sets. Such as it is, inside the World, time is at a flat stop, and as Fantomex further tempts Wolverine with clues to his past, their next step is to go into the World and find Weapon XV.

New X-Men #144: "The Flesh"
23 pages + cover • September 2003

The trio of Wolverine, Cyclops and Fantomex penetrate the World Dome, where time has come to a complete stop. All around are dead AIM agents, rubble, and machinery that has stopped in its tracks. Fantomex explains to Cyclops that the World was created to develop a breed of "super-soldiers"- their human DNA spliced with nano-Sentinel technology- that would destroy mutants to protect humanity from being extinguished. Wolverine was part of that program as Weapon Ten, Fantomex was created as Weapon Thirteen. He was raised inside the Dome until he was released, thinking there was no world beyond the Dome except that which the mutants had destroyed, and thus, he was to destroy them in kind.

Suddenly, time comes alive and things start moving again. The AIM agent they had left behind has turned the controls on. A security vehicle fires on them as intruders and Fantomex shoots it down. They quickly realize that now Weapon XV is free. Wolverine tells Cyclops he didn't meant to get him into this mess, and he should leave. Before he could even make a move, however, Weapon XV has come upon them. The mutant creation floats in the air, asking them a series of odd questions, then shocks Fantomex to the ground. Wolverine leaps up at him, claws extended, and goes to town swiping at him with all his strength, but to no avail. Weapon XV holds his hand out and shocks Wolverine into submission.

Fantomex struggles to get up and then calls on E.V.A. to materialize inside the control room. His personal assistant appears behind the AIM agent, killing him and trying to stop time once again, but the controls are frozen. Cyclops realizes he has to step in, but his optic blast power isn't working. He grabs a lead pipe and starts swinging it at Weapon XV, which is no use. Weapon XV muses on his place in the world, and thinks perhaps there might be something to do outside the boundaries of the Dome. He rockets up to the sky and pierces the roof of the Dome. As Fantomex watches him fly into the night sky, EVA informs him that she's tracking a default homing signal drawing Weapon XV to his home base, which is in outer space.

New X-Men #145: "The Devil"
23 pages + cover • October 2003

Weapon XV floats in outer space towards a giant satellite, wondering to himself if this is indeed the full scope of "the world" and what he should do about it. He enters the satellite and is greeted by Doctor Sublime, who explains to the disoriented Weapon XV that mutants destroyed his previous home and it is up to him to exact revenge. Meanwhile, the humans prepare to evacuate the ship.

Fantomex pilots EVA towards the satellite, with Cyclops and Wolverine still in tow. They gain entry and dispatch a skeleton crew of agents onboard. Fantomex places charges to destroy the complex, then gives Wolverine ten minutes to review the information in the Weapon Plus files for clues about his past before detonating the charges. He gazes awestruck at a video screen that plays back information about the Weapon Plus program from its origins, when it created "Weapon I" through use of the super-soldier serum- Captain America.

Meanwhile, Cyclops and Fantomex fight their way through other agents that have come their way. But Doctor Sublime patches through a communications link to the satellite and taunts him that he has the power to destroy his former Weapon Thirteen. Fantomex crumples in pain, then transfers his backup nervous system from EVA. They both tour through the satellite some more, picking up more clues about the Weapon Plus' program to spread bio-Sentinel agents throughout Earth to destroy mutants. Then Sublime patches back in and lets Fantomex know that he's reached EVA, and is about to destroy her. As he offers his regrets that Fantomex never became the Weapon Thirteen they had envisioned, EVA explodes before his very eyes. Sublime further taunts him that they are about to unleash Super-Sentinels on Earth's populace, and that they have a mole in Xavier's school helping them set up sleeper cells across the world that will awaken in two weeks time to kill all mutants.

Cyclops picks up Fantomex and races towards the exits. Wolverine is interrupted by Weapon XV in the communications room. He asks Wolverine what his purpose in life is if it's not to be Dr. Sublime's mutant killer. Wolverine answers by pressing the keypad that detonates the charges set in the satellite.

PLANET X: NXM #146-150

New X-Men #146: "X-Men Emergency!"
22 pages + cover • November 2003

As Cyclops departs in a shuttle with Fantomex, explosions rip through the satellite. In quick order, Cyclops warns Professor X of an informant in the school and Logan's need for rescue as his ship crashes down towards the Earth. Beast and Emma Frost respond to Professor X's emergency declaration and swing into action, flying a jet to Scott's crash location in the South Pacific. Jean heads off to save Logan.

Meanwhile, Xorn is teaching his class, and something he says seems to upset Sooraya (aka Dust). She races off to see Professor X, who is about to work inside CEREBRA. Xavier senses she is upset about something, and when Xorn comes into the room, she goes haywire with her powers, spitting sand all over the room and in CEREBRA's delicate machinery. Xavier and Xorn chase her down into the hallway, and after she cries out for help to Xavier, she is collected inside a jar by Xorn.

Emma and Beast's rescue mission is aborted when an explosion rips through their jetcraft, ironically as they were talking about the possible traitor in their midst. Jean pilots the space craft up to the satellite rubble near an orbiting asteroid. She lands on the surface of the rock and heads inside a piece of satellite rubbish, where she finds Logan standing over the body of Weapon XV, claws extended. He tells her to get out, to run, because this is all a trap. She realizes they are on Asteroid M.

Back at the school, Xavier upbraids Xorn for making Dust afraid and for his recent odd teaching practices. Xorn talks back, telling Xavier his methods were doomed to fail. He reaches his hand up and snaps Xavier's spine in two, crippling him once again. His students stand around him as he takes off his mask. It is not Xorn- it was never Xorn. It is Magneto! Up in space, Jean and Logan realize they were set up, and her spacecraft explodes, stranding them on the asteroid.

New X-Men #147: "Magneto Superior"
22 pages + cover • November 2003

Magneto stands over New York City, wreaking terror over the streets with rampant displays of his powers of magnetism. While he muses about rebuilding his empire here, and after renaming it "New Genosha", he receives an upbraiding from Esme, his partner in crime. She is jealous of the attentions he is giving his new Brotherhood, including Angel, Beak, Basilisk, Ernst and Toad, as well as the attention from him she craves but is denied. As the teenagers backing him squabble amongst themselves, Magneto turns his attention back to the city, shouting down to them about how he's going to take over the whole world. Toad reminds him that they can't hear him from way up there. Magneto is dissatisfied with how the people are responding to him, and he seems disoriented. Esme hands him some more Kick, so he can enhance his powers. He returns and lowers himself down to the street level and throws a temper tantrum, lifting cars up into the sky and shattering the bridges that connect New York City with itself. Next, he tears up Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.

Later, he continues his Kick habit, sucking the drug down into his lungs as he pontificates to Charles Xavier, kept captive in a stasis tube.

New X-Men #148: "Survivor Type"
22 pages + cover • December 2003

Wolverine gets Jean up to date on his recent events: he tore up Weapon Plus, took out Weapon XV and then wound up stuck on Asteroid M, which was timed to wait until Jean arrived before it broke out of orbit and started heading straight for the moon. Unable to get off the asteroid, Jean and Logan try to alter the course of it before they hurtle into the sun. Logan determines they have 24 hours of breathable oxygen and proximity from the sun.

Ernst incessantly asks Magneto where Xorn is, as she very much preferred him as a nice man. Before he rounds up his Brotherhood to continue his plan, Magneto visits Charles again in his containment tube. He babbles on about dominating the human race and how useless Xavier and his pacifism was, all the while continuing his Kick consumption. Later, he assembles his Brotherhood and tells Beak his job will be to exterminate the rest of the humans they gather the following day.

Back on Asteroid M, Jean and Logan continue to try and find a way to save themselves, but Jean's Phoenix Force powers aren't enough to help in this circumstance. Jean keeps drifting in and out of rational thought and delirium the closer they get to the sun. Wolverine's healing powers keep him on the level. He draws close to her and calms her down as she starts to lose her mind. She is slowly dying, and in a final act of power, as they are about to reach the sun, he extends his claws into her, killing her instantly. He lifts her body up into his arms and steps out onto the spacecraft's front hatch. And they drift slowly into the sun, bodies burning up to cinders. The last thing Wolverine sees is the Phoenix Force, lighting up the reflection of his eyes.

New X-Men #149: "Phoenix In Darkness"
22 pages + cover • January 2004

Magneto pushes Beak to slay the gathered "homo inferiors", but Beak refuses. Magneto lashes out at him, knocking him down. Basilisk makes a crude joke, and Magneto lashes out again to instill discipline in his troops, but he accidentally kills Basilisk. Magneto's mood swings to one of shock to resignation. Beak ita shoved into a car and Magneto lifts him up into the sky towards his death. But Beak hops and flaps his wings, which doesn't do him too much good as he plummets to the street, where his incredibly strong bone structure saves him. He gets beat on by a group of toughs loyal to Magneto, but Fantomex' EVA ship rescues him.

Beak is taken to a discreet hinding place, joinging an assembly with Esme's sisters, Dust, and a whole lot of young mutants from Xavier's school, gathered together by Cyclops and Fantomex. Beak gives them all the information he has about Magneto's recent moves, including how he planned to kill all the X-Men and how he plans to turn the world upside down by exchanging the polarity of Earth's magnetic field.

At Magneto's HQ, he continues to take Kick as Esme browbeats him into showing her favor. He blows up at her, telling her he only used her through the whole process, and she will never be anything like his "queen." She runs away, and suddenly, Magneto senses his Xorn helmet talking to him. He senses Charles is up to it, even though his sensors tell him that his mind is still jammed. As he continues to babble to Xavier's non-responsive form, Ernst walks in with Martha, telling Magneto he's "fallen out of favor" with them.

Suddenly, after much trying, Xavier establishes a mental rapport with Jean, who is still alive.

New X-Men #150: "Phoenix Invictus"
33 pages + cover • February 2004

Logan's healing factor is rapidly reconstructing the damage done to his body by his close proximity to the sun, while Jean constructs a space ship with her Phoenix Force powers. Logan had helped unleash the force when he killed Jean moments earlier. They head to Earth, first rescuing Emma and the Beast, who have been floating in the Pacific Ocean for three days on the carcass of their crashed jet.

In Washington, the President is being forced to determine if he should drop a specially designed neutron warhead on American soil to eradicate "all known mutations." Magnet, still under the sway of his Kick inhalations, is set upon by his angry and now mutinous Brotherhood. The only ally he seems to have left is Esme, but she won't cooperate with him until he acknowledges her help in the way she demands. Fantomex rises on the back of EVA to the level of the building Magneto occupies and begins firing. Magneto eventually repels his attack, but Cyclops blasts the floor out from underneath him. Cyke flies into a rage and aims his optic blast at close range to Magneto's face, blasting his protective helmet to shreds and ripping his face apart. Magneto retaliates by animating his Xorn helmet and hurling it at Cyclops, knocking him out. At this point, Xavier is now able to push forward his psychic powers, but it is Esme that now stands over Magneto's body, and in a pouty fit, declares him an over-the-hill loser. As she attempts to kill him with her telepathy powers, Magneto fights back and powers her metallic earrings to slay her where she stands. He puts his Xorn helmet back on and heads out to finish the job of destroying humankind.

After Emma and Scott are reunited, they rush down to street level to join the fight against Magneto. The Beast leaps on his back and pummels him, then injects syringes with an agent designed to bring him down off his Kick high. Wolverine and Jean engage in some psychological warfare, emasculating Magneto and his plans for world domination. They challenge him to rise to the occasion in this moment, to prove that he really is the Magneto he claims he is. He takes his helmet off to show his face off, but it's been ravaged by Cyclops optic blast, and nobody believes he is who he says he is. The gathered mutant crowd he was supposed to lead reject him, and Xavier emerges from the shadows and puts him down with a mental blast.

Jean steps over his body to check on him, and Magneto reaches up, grabbing her wrist and channeling a lethal electromagnetic pulse through her. She begins to have a psychic embolism and falls to the ground, bleeding from her head. Wolverine goes into a rage and sticks his claws deep into Magneto. Meanwhile, Jean slowly dies in Cyclops arms.

Fast forward 150 years later, and in the Blue Area of the moon, a team of mutants in a flying car find something they call "The Phoenix Egg."

HERE COMES TOMORROW: NXM #151-154

New X-Men #151: "untitled"
23 pages + cover • March 2004

A young man named Tom Skylark rummages through the debris of the old Xavier Institute for Higher Learning when he is assaulted by a cadre of five "'crawlers", creatures which resemble the old X-Men Nightcrawler. He is saved by his friend, a giant Sentinel robot named Rover, who leans down and incinerates the crawlers. They are met by EVA, who floats down to Tom's level and transforms herself into an attractive female form, welcoming him to what is called "Megamerica". They introduce themselves to each other. EVA tells Tom about Fantomex, who she was bonded to before he met an unfortunate fate. Tom reveals that he's a human- one of the last on Earth- who is really good with machines, which is why he has Rover for a companion. Rover l is carrying the Phoenix Egg strapped to its back, which is what he has brought to he X-Men of Megamerica, and what their enemy the Beast is sending crawlers after. The Proud Family had found it in the Blue Area of the moon, and they were slaughtered by one of the Beast's minions, Apollyon, in his attempt to get it from them. They head to Manhattan Crater, where what is left of civilization rests.

At his Transatlantis base, the Beast looms over his breeding tubes which spawn his army of crawlers, crafted together by the genetic codes of various mutant gene codes.

Back at the Institute in Manhattan, EVA realizes a crawler has stowed away inside Tom's Sentinel. It has been spliced together with Cyclops' optic blasts and Jamie Madrox' Multiple Man powers, so quickly it has turned into dozens of different selves, all blasting optic rays across the courtyard. Beak flies across the mob to help beat them back, but they are overwhelmed, and the crawlers snatch the egg from the Sentinel's back. They deliver the Phoenix Egg to the Beast.

Logan pays a visit to the "Three-In-One", the remaining group of Emma Frost's girls. They portend a new Dark Age coming. Logan is not surprised, but is persuaded to try and help put things right again by the Headmistress of the Institute, Cassandra Nova Xavier.

150 years earlier, after Jean's death at the hands of Magneto, Scott visits her graveside. Emma Frost joins him and tries to get him to help her restart the school. Scott has no interest in continuing with life as he knows it. As he tells her when he leaves, "I quit."

New X-Men #152: "untitled"
24 pages + cover • March 2004

Tom shares with EVA the story of how the Proud People died: Apollyon the Destroyer stood off the shore of Starlit City, demanding they turn over the Phoenix Egg. They refuse, and instead make a stand to defend it. They give Tom the egg and tell him to flee with it, as Apollyon and his army of crawlers eventually overcome the whole race. Tom is used the idea of extinction, however, since he is one of the last humans to remain on Earth. He and EVA continue their conversation while Rover looks on, seemingly jealous of Tom's affection for EVA, and then they move to join their X-Men partners- Wolverine, Cassie and the Three-In-One. The time is now to go after the Beast in a head on attack, as they cannot afford to wait now that he has the Phoenix Egg.

At Transatlantis, Apollyon begins to grate on the nerves of the Beast, begging him for recognition as the last of his U-Men, and for mutant grafts he has long been denied. Beast ignores him while synthesizing the Phoenix Egg through one of the surviving members of the Proud People, a redhead telepath named Corona. After the incubation through her body is complete, Jean rises from the flaming pit. She is disoriented after having been gone for so long, but she recognizes the Beast as her old friend Henry. He takes her in his arms and tells her he has a new name, and that is Sublime.

New X-Men #153: "untitled"
23 pages + cover • April 2004

Jean travels to Panafrika, to the home of a race called the Termids. There, she genocidally eliminates all who live there, save for the spirit form of an X-Man mutation named Bumbleboy, who she takes time out to study. Sublime (aka "The Beast), meanwhile, is being besieged by the pitiful pleadings of Apollyon, who begs him to graft Phoenix' mind to his before her memory returns and betrays his cause. Sublime rejects him, saying he's put into play all his forces for a reason, and the Phoenix eliminating what is left of Xavier's mutant race is, for him, the ultimate irony. His new cross-breed of crawler is in the furry blue form of Hank McCoy's first mutation into the Beast.

The beast-crawler teleports into the midst of the New Insititute, where it's fought off by the X-Men mutants there. Back at Transatlantis, Phoenix returns from her destruction of the Termids with Bumbleboy. She tells Sublime that Bumbleboy told her all about a group called "X-Men", and she wants to know more. Sublime takes Bumbleboy's skull into his first and crushes it, saying they are nothing but enemies, reproducing fast and in need of total destruction.

Mer-Max, a giant mutant telepath whale, is under attack by Crawlers who fire harpoons from aboard a battleship. The X-Men come to the rescue, led by Tom and his Sentinel, Rover. Beak tosses Wolverine on board via a "fastball special", and they start to clear the decks of Crawlers. Rover sees Tom embrace EVA in thanks for saving his life on the deck of the ship, and his circuits bind up due to the feelings of rejection that come over him. This allows Crawlers to gain an edge on him, sending harpoons into his head and causing him to fall over board. Rover drops like a heavy stone to the bottom of the ocean as Tom looks on, crying.

Beak and the rest of the X-Men look out at the horizon, seeing the oncoming horde of Crawlers, manning dozens of battleships and blacking out the sky. The final assault from Sublime's army is nigh. At the Institute, the remaining mutants prepare for the assault. They release the telepaths from their bunker storage, but something has gone wrong. They are compromised by Sublime's feeder breeds and they attack the mutants inside the compound. The Three-In-One sense the coming of the Phoenix and call out an X-Men Emergency. And on the deck of the ship, Wolverine faces up to Jean Grey, in full flower as the Phoenix.

New X-Men #154: "untitled"
23 pages + cover • May 2004

Sublime explains to Apollyon that he never intended to allow him access to the Phoenix blood, that his full intention was to use it himself. As his former slave cowers in the shadows, he hooks himself up to his machinery and injects its synthesized serum into his body.

On the ship in the Atlantic, Wolverine tries to reach Jean through her Sublime-infected mind fog. She realizes he is nothing like the corrupted genetic material that Sublime had sicced her onto, and she becomes confused. Cassie Nova takes the opportunity now that her defenses are down to penetrate the base of Jean's skull with weaponry that brings her back to her consciousness as Jean Grey. In Wolverine's arms, he calmly explains what she's missed in the last 150 years: after her death, Scott Summers abandoned the mutant cause and disappeared. Hank tried to start the school back up, but over time, lost it after trying out the drug Kick, which was actually Sublime's method of transferring disease to mutantkind's DNA. The X-Men quickly lost ground in fighting for their genepool, and the rest is history. Meanwhile, Sublime has reached the X-Men on the deck of the ship and destroys Cassie Nova.

The Institute is overrun with infected telepaths, who charge CEREBRA like zombies. The Three-In-One triplets make their last stand.

Sublime kills Beak and reveals his awesome new figure to the rest of the X-Men. His transformation with Phoenix blood has made him a giant with powers of flight. Tom sends out an urgent call to Rover, who responds by bursting up from the deep ocean, breaching the water surface and plowing up through the ship's hull. This knocks Sublime down and allows EVA to try and attack him. He starts stripping her of pieces of her life and Wolverine attacks, claws bare. Lashing into Sublime's chest, Wolverine has his healing factor stripped of him by a wave of the giant beast's hand.

He approaches Jean, gesturing to her to join him so they can remake the world, but Jean informs him the others were just buying time while she consolidated her Phoenix Force powers. She strips his body of the essence of John Sublime, leaving his corporeal body inhabited once again by a dying Hank McCoy. Elsewhere, Tom tries to help put EVA back together, while Logan calmly accepts his slow death.

The Phoenix finds herself transported to a world where she's surrounded by other avatars of the Phoenix Force. They explain to her that she has the power to restore the universe that lies in her hands, badly wounded. She realizes the fate of the world hinged on factors within her control now as Phoenix: Scott's abandonment of the school, leading to Hank's lack of will to continue on with its mission. She breathes new life into those moments of the past, telling her lover Scott to "live.".

Flashing back 150 years, Scott is once again standing over Jean's grave. Emma steps up to him, encouraging him to join her in forging a new future at the school, and for accepting their love for each other. He turns to her, takes her into his arms and kisses her, accepting her invitation.