What If #77 - Legion Killed Magneto

[lordultimus]

The issue opens up with Legion, having already killed Bishop, kills a young Magneto just as he's escaping the concentration camp, only to be erased from existence because Magneto is not present to save his mother before Legion is born.





Forge has arranged for a staged fight between the X-men and the Hellfire Club, the only other big mutant organization, as entertainment to run alongside a speech Xavier will give at the White House. They'll also get a chance to make nice with each other to ensure good PR after an "episode" a few years back.







Candra and Gideon reveal themselves as followers of Apocalypse, who's never appeared before, and with the Vanisher teleporting in new attackers, manage to kill off the whole Hellfire Club.

Meanwhile, Professor X goes to Anchorage to visit Scott and Jean Summers, and their children Nate and Rachel.



Jean angrily refuses, revealing that on her last mission was the canon Dark Phoenix Saga, only she just managed to control herself after mincing part of Mastermind's plan. Scott sides with her, saying that they've been hiding their powers from the neighbors to avoid that sort of stardom again, and that to be an X-Man is to be dead or a freakshow. He wishes Charles luck on his mission, but leaves it at that.

Sometime later at DC, just before Charles can deliver his speech, Apocalypse's army attacks. The X-men are caught off-guard and can't organize, forcing Professor X to send a telepathic command to "STOP"



Jean and Scott see this on TV, and use the Phoenix Force to teleport them to DC, saving the Professor. Charles realizes that this is the tempering that the X-Men never had, and that in tempering there is always sacrifice. He joins together with Jean to telepathically attack Apocalypse and kill him, but Charles dies in the process.



"...May God forgive me."

Jean unleashes the full power of the Phoenix, destroying Apocalypse's legions, along with the rest of DC, in one fell swoop.

Comments

[beyondthefringe]

Oh god the art on this.
And the words may be by Warren Ellis, but the plot feels like such illogical rubbish and so much bad character development. Bobby interested in money and following Emma Frost to the Hellfire Club? Forge being a total dick? And how did we even get to Asian Psylocke in this timeline anyway? Why is Wolverine on Apocalypse's side?

Gah.

[scorntx]

-Why is Wolverine on Apocalypse's side?-

I can answer that one.
Early pre-characterisation was a total asshole who violently lashed out at his fellow X-Men for minor "offenses" (like, say, Piotr pushing him out of the way of a steel beam, thinking it would've done him a nasty injury).

Wouldn't be a surprise that if he didn't join the X-Men, and didn't regain his humanity (and creepy lust for redheads), he'd be easily brought in by someone with a useless for a perpetually violent man with metal claws.

[icon_uk]

Bobby interested in money

It should be noted that Bobby is about the only "graduate" of the Xavier school to ever leave to actually go and live a normal life (for a while at any rate). And in that life he became an accountant. So Bobby Drake CPA being interested in money makes sense.

[scorntx]

Emma Frost as Bobby's trophy wife?
Pfft. Dream on, Bobby boy.

Couldn't Jean have chosen a way to stop Apocalypse's goons without thrashing the rest of D.C..?

(Also, no surprise that Iron Man's reaction is to clamp down on peoples' liberty.
At least he's consistent.)

[angelophile]

I read the line about Bobby as Xavier being an unreliable narrator. Because if anything, Emma would be the one wearing the business suit and Bobby her trophy husband in a thong.

[burkeonthesly]

This, absolutely. She gives him the single purpose in life of chilling her drinks and looking appropriate while doing so.

[icon_uk]

I can easily imagine her being the one in charge using Bobby as a proxy.

He can be on the magazine covers and do the interviews so she doesn't have to, whilst she is busy controlling the company.

[lamashtar]

*shrug* The revised backstory on Emma as a stripper using her powers to get on in the world does her business intellect no favors. She may very well have needed Bobby's..brain. And he is an accountant.

[jlbarnett]

it could also be that Shaw, for example, offering Bobby a place there with the money that entailed wouldn't have been enough to swing Bobby over to the Hellfire Club

[jmacq1]

Actually, I thought Xavier is saying that Emma was Warren's trophy wife, not Bobby's. Or at least that was how I read it at first glance.

[jlbarnett]

nope, she's with Bobby

[icon_uk]

Couldn't Jean have chosen a way to stop Apocalypse's goons without thrashing the rest of D.C..?

I thought the implication was that she'd never had to control the Phoenix Force to this extent before, so had never learned to fine tune her powers in a situaiton like this.

[laughing_tree]

I still remember back in the days of the original livejournal scans_daily when Warren Ellis showed up in the comments section to tell us that the editor of this series was a dick, that he did a script for him as a favor, only for the guy to massively re-write it without consulting him.

I kind of always assumed he was talking about this issue, though I don't really know.

[beyondthefringe]

This is a very strong candidate. Because even early Warren Ellis isn't remotely this bad or off-character.

[lamashtar]

Makes sense. Another horror story about the backstage of comic books..

[super_fly]

But if Legion going back and killing Magneto wipes Legion from existence, wouldn't that mean he never would never go back to kill Magneto so he wouldn't have erased himself from existence and oh god I've gone cross-eyed.

[scorntx]

Rule of Marvel time-travel is that when someone goes back and alters the timeline, they create a new universe, and their original universe keeps going on.
Usually.
... don't think about it too hard.

[coldfury]

Unless Doom is involved. With his 'Doomlock' time travel. (That apparently Kang uses, which makes sense, I guess.)

[lamashtar]

I'm disappointed my initial guess for the plot wasn't true. I figured Legion killed Magneto, and accidentally absorbed his psyche, like happened before. So we get weird "I am your son!" with Maggie's face stuff.

[coldfury]

I'm confused about that last panel.. is Xavier alive and part of Apocalypse's mission now??

[jmacq1]

Sure looks like him. I guess you could argue it might be an anti-villain kind of thing where he's there to make sure the X-men continue to get properly "tempered." Doesn't look like there's any explanation, though.

This is a strange one, that's for sure. Apparently without Magneto Forge becomes a controlling dick for some reason. And really, none of it makes sense: Why wouldn't the X-Men simply be another superhero team without any particular prejudice against mutants in the world working against them? This "court jester/parlor trick" business really doesn't make sense in the context of the larger Marvel Universe. It's not like they couldn't have "tempered" themselves fighting some of the multitude of other villains in the Marvel Universe.

[jlbarnett]

The Gamesmaster was bald, t might be him. The X-men probably got stuck doing the whole PR thing because they're trying to represent whole people. Which might have left groups like the Avengers responding quicker to threats

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Too many identical bald white men with angry demeanors...

[icon_uk]

Didn't Gamesmaster always wear his psi-damping headphones so he looked sort of like Lobot from The Empire Strikes Back?

[jlbarnett]

yeah, but this is an AU

[jmacq1]

Actually, as I think on it...that could be The Vanisher.

[icon_uk]

It would have been helpful if they had left him in his scaly outfit just so we could idenitfy him.

[icon_uk]

Warren sweetie, you've usually been shown to be a handsome guy and clothes horse, just one with big fluffy wings... but that godawful head-cowl-thing with a business suit is just... well, let's just say I'd have easily believed that the bomb was planted by the Fashion Police.