X-Men: E is for Extinction
One of the best and most important X-Men stories deserves a deep dive
If you read mainstream superhero comics long enough, you start to become familiar with the cycles and trends with the storytelling. Different creative teams will rotate in and out of a title to keep things fresh and welcoming for new readers as they put their own unique stamp on the characters. It’s a very common occurrence. What is less common is when an entire line of comics receives a radical relaunch. I’m talking about a massive change to the status quo of beloved characters. It happens, but it isn’t frequent. Spider-Man, for example, has remained largely the same for most of his publication history. The infamous “Clone Saga” switched things up for a bit, and J. Michael Straczynski really shook things up with his run, but Spider-Man stories have essentially followed the same formula since 1962.
The X-Men are a different beast. Marvel’s merry band of mutants have seen massive paradigm shifts throughout their publication history. The only real constant has been that they serve as a metaphor for oppressed minority groups. They started off as a handful of upper-middle class teenagers under the tutelage of Professor Charles Xavier in X-Men #1 (1963) by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. They were then relaunched as a diverse group of men and women from a variety of different nations working together in Giant-Size X-Men #1 (1975) by Len Wein and David Cockrum. The most recent seismic shift came when House of X and Powers of X by Jonathan Hickman, Pepe Larraz, and R.B. Silva launched in 2019 and saw the mutants enter global politics as part of a pan-mutant nation-state.
One of the very first major relaunches I was able to witness in real time was when Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely took over with New X-Men #114 in 2001. The series had simply been titled X-Men for the first 113 issues of its existence, so the addition of that adjective to the title was an important signifier that things were about to change. That wasn’t the only significant change on the cover. The logo itself was radically different. Gone was the traditional font that had been used for decades. In its place was a logo that could be read exactly the same if it was rotated 180 degrees. The X-Men themselves had also gone through a significant visual overhaul. The brightly colored spandex had been replaced with matching black-and-yellow leather tactical gear (except for Emma Frost who is simply too fashion conscious). So we know how much the aesthetics have changed, but what about the storytelling? To evaluate that, you need only look at the debut story from Morrison and Quitely: “E is for Extinction.”
I’m not going to bury the lede here. I think “E is for Extinction” is one of the five best X-Men stories of all time. I had stopped reading X-Men comics regularly shortly after the ongoing saga with Onslaught concluded. It felt to me like X-Men comics had become a little too invested in massive line wide (and sometimes companywide) events. With “Operation: Zero Tolerance” kicking off in 1997 with barely enough time to catch my breath, I decided to mostly cut bait with the X-Men and only pop in for an issue here or there. “E is for Extinction” brought me back full time. It’s only three issues long, but an incredible amount of story is contained in those three issues.
The first issue immediately lays out who our protagonists will be for this new creative team: Cyclops, Jean Grey, Emma Frost, Beast, Wolverine, and Professor X. It’s a much smaller roster than readers had become accustomed to throughout the ‘90s. We also get introduced to the primary villain for this run (or at least one of the two or three primary villains). Her name is Cassandra Nova, and she is an absolute nightmare.
She seems pretty unassuming at first. She’s a little bald woman appearing to be in her sixties, and she’s leading an equally unassuming man through the rainforest in Ecuador. The man happens to be a member of the Trask family. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Bolivar Trask is the man who invented the Sentinels. Cassandra Nova has taken him out to this remote area because there is a long forgotten Master Mold Sentinel here. For those unaware, Master Molds are gigantic Sentinels that build other Sentinels. If a Master Mold is online, it can start pumping out an army of the mutant hunting robots. These things are bad news, and this one is even more bad news than usual. It has the ability to take anything in its environment and create Wild Sentinels that can evolve and adapt to eliminate threats. To make matters worse, Xavier ends up making a mental link to Cassandra while using his Cerebra helmet and is nearly overwhelmed by her psychic abilities. He gets so spooked by her power that he threatens to shoot himself just to force her to leave his mind. Anyone powerful enough to overwhelm Xavier with their psychic powers is truly terrifying. We know virtually nothing about her, but we know just how big of a threat she is.
The second issue opens with Cyclops and Wolverine flying into Ecuador to investigate after rescuing a mutant named Ugly John (poor guy) from some traditional Sentinels in the previous issue. They are attacked by Wild Sentinels almost immediately after entering the airspace over the Master Mold and are forced to make an emergency landing. They are apprehended almost immediately and taken before Cassandra Nova and Donald Trask. That soon becomes Cassandra Nova by herself after she murders Trask in one of the most visually upsetting ways possible.
She was only keeping him around so she could copy his entire genetic code so she could control the Sentinels there that were programmed to obey the Trask family. With the Wild Sentinels under her control, she quickly kills Ugly John and begins to finish off Wolverine and Cyclops as she launches a couple of kaiju-sized Wild Sentinels towards another target. Wolverine and Cyclops manage to get loose and capture Cassandra, but the two Sentinels reach their destination. The comic ends with the Sentinels arriving on the mutant island nation-state of Genosha, and they proceed to exterminate over 16 million mutants.
If you hadn’t been reading X-Men comics for a while, you might have missed that Genosha had gone from an apartheid state that enslaved mutants to one where mutants now thrived. Magneto was the ruler of this new mutant nation-state, and it appeared that he had been killed along with every other mutant on the island. By only their second issue, Morrison and Quitely had dealt the worst blow to mutantkind in their history. That’s one way to make a splash.
The third and final issue of “E is for Extinction” starts off with the X-Men wearing respirators and sifting through the ashes of Genosha searching for survivors. It’s grim stuff. This issue came out about a month before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I have to imagine editorial at Marvel would have made some changes had this issue come out a month later since the imagery is so similar.
The only survivor they manage to locate is Emma Frost. She had undergone a secondary mutation (something Morrison introduced in this run) that allowed her skin to change to diamond and survive the attack. This is what allows for Emma to become the final member of this team of X-Men (though not without some pushback from Emma initially).
Meanwhile, Beast reveals through tests he has performed on the captive Cassandra Nova that she is a new species distinct from both humans and mutants. Whatever this new species is, it views mutants as competition that needs to be wiped out. It would be revealed later in Morrison’s run that she is actually Xavier’s twin that he attempted to murder while they were both inside the womb, but that is a story for another day. It also quickly becomes apparent that Cassandra allowed herself to be captured in order to gain access to Cerebra. The remainder of the issue is a ferocious battle as Cassandra Nova unleashes her terrifying powers on the X-Men as she works her way through the Xavier Institute. It’s incredibly badass.
She cripples Jean’s psychic defenses, locks Cyclops in a mental torture room with sentient bug monsters, and incinerates the flesh off of Wolverine’s arm. In short, the X-Men are getting their asses kicked. Fortunately, Emma makes her grand entrance and snaps Cassandra’s next before she can use Cerebra. Xavier then deals the final blow in a way that only the world’s most powerful telepath can: by shooting her repeatedly with a gun. The story finally concludes with Xavier going on national television and outing himself as a mutant.
What a comic! These three issues were unlike any X-Men story I had ever read at that time. It leaned into the “widescreen comics” trend that was becoming increasingly popular in the 2000s, and it tapped into both mutants as a metaphor for persecuted minorities as well as mutants as the next step in human evolution. The sociopolitical and science fiction aspects of the X-Men were granted equal importance. These themes would be further explored and developed throughout Morrison’s time on the book.
This story also turned the X-Men “event formula” on its head. The ‘90s saw a number of huge events centered around the X-Men that would frequently stretch across numerous titles and a dozen or more issues. “X-Cutioner’s Song” was told across four titles and fourteen issues in 1992. “Fatal Attractions” was told across six titles in 1993. “Age of Apocalypse” saw the cancellation and reboot of eight titles plus two one-shots in 1995. The story of Onslaught taking over the Marvel Universe was told across literally every title published by Marvel in 1996. Meanwhile, “E is for Extinction” was told over the course of just three issues of New X-Men and managed to have just as big of an impact as those other events. It’s magnificent storytelling and the reason it is still held in such high esteem to this day.
I'm in the UK, so my gateway into X-Men was through 1) the black and white Essential reprints, starting with Giant Size, and 2) the Essential X-Men anthology book that Panini put out monthly (not confusing titling at all, Marvel UK). It would collect 3 issues in a really affordable package, so I was reading X-Men at a year-or-two remove, always behind the events going on in the USA.
I got started around the Davies / Kelly era, post-Zero Tolerance, so it was this massive, homogeneous thing with so many moving X-Parts, and at the point the reprints were doing The Twelve (Wolverine is a Skrull! Wolverine is Death! Apocalypse wants Nate Summers! Cyclops is Apocalypse!) I began to transition to the USA titles-- which was New X-Men. And my God, what an experience that was. I barely survived it.
New X-Men was X-Men-As-Vertigo. It was horrid and big and fun and horrid and just so good. Morrison is a favourite, they knew exactly how to key into their target audience, and I absolutely adore their proposal-as-mission-statement that was reprinted in the E4E TPB. I managed to find one of the HC omnibus fairly recently-- signed by Frank!-- and it's a prized possession.
And you know what? I was reading Chuck Austen's Uncanny alongside this... and at the time, I had no complaints.
You're absolutely correct. I've been an X-Men reader since the late 70s & agree with you. What Morrison did in very few issues was like the Sex Pistols--a complete shift in the landscape with a minimum of content.