X-Men: The Complete Onslaught Epic

Marvel recently published a four-volume graphic novel set of the massive 1990s Onslaught Epic (Scott Lobdell & Mark Waid, various), and there's a really cool idea there, buried under everything that can go wrong with a crossover.

The basic germ of it all is the idea that Professor X's pent up frustration (caused by human bigotry and furthured by mutant stupidity that made the situation worse) actually creates a psychic entity. Onslaught, as it is called, is a powerful being who tries to take every dark thought Xavier has ever had and go conqure the world with them.

For complicated plot reasons, there are elements of Magneto in Onslaught. The idea was that Xavier used his abilities to shut down Magneto's mind after some of the villain's crazier antics, during which a dark part of Magneto's psyche was absorbed into Xavier's mind. It was this act of crossing the line and controlling his friend's thoughts that brought Onslaught into being. This is one of the ways in which a really interesting idea begins to fall apart; Xavier didn't need a part of Magneto to have his own dark side - the story is stronger if Onslaught is born purely of Prof. X's own frustrations.

Side note: it's also interesting that current X-comics have no problem showing that Xavier is no saint; practically every storyline is revealing some horrible secret he's kept from the X-Men. But back in the '90s if a writer wanted to make an evil being come out of Professor X, they had to get Magneto into his head first. Visually, Magneto's dark taint on Xavier's psyche was represented as a little demon on the psychic plane. Now that's just overkill.

The real problem is that once Onslaught arrives and begins his takeover of the Marvel Universe, the story becomes a really generic crossover. For some poorly developed reasons, Onslaught unleashes Sentinals across the Marvel world, and the middle two volumes of the epic - which doesn't include every issue of the storyline, just those that the compilers thought were important - is full of Marvel characters randomly fighting Sentinals. Spider-Man fights them. Hulk fights them. The heroic Green Goblin, who didn't even last very long, fights them as well. The Fantastic Four fight them. And then someone got the brilliant idea to turn the storyline into a launching pad for another convoluted plotline called Heroes Reborn.

What should have been a story about the X-Men and the frustration of their founder and Xavier's dream falling apart became a story about every hero ever bravely sacrificing himself in a lot of sound and fury. All so Marvel could temporarily reboot all the Avengers and Fantastic Four comics and have really popular artists draw new versions of the characters' origins.

I doubt that's what the Onslaught story was initially meant to be. The final volume in the epic has pages from the story pitch that outlined Onslaught's motivation and plan, and it bears little resemblance to the current story. Originally, the dark entity's goal was to force the entire human race into one giant telepathic hive mind, which would not only destroy free will but also original thought. I suspect some editor saw that as too convoluted. Instead Onslaught decides that humans have no right to live for the way they've treated mutants, and mutants have no right to live for failing to stand up for themselves. Onslaught becomes a bog-standard nihilist, which is simply boring. I prefer villains who have motivation, not those who are simply destrutctive because they're insane.

I would love to see an Ultimate version of this storyline that's closer to the original, with Xavier's frustration at small-mindedness and intolerance becoming a force that the X-Men have to fight. The idea that the world's most powerful psychic, no matter how benevolent he seems, must have within him the temptation to force everyone to think as he does still seems very much worth exploring.

All that said, it was great hanging out with the '90s X-Men for a bit. I miss that family dynamic. These days they're all so mired in angst all the time, and we rarely get to see them just goofing off as friends do, getting Beast stuck in the bathtub or making the pancakes go ka-blooey.

- JC