By Paul Cornell, Leonard Kirk, Jay Leisten & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4527-1
When draconian US Federal mandate The Superhuman Registration Act led to Civil War between costumed heroes, Tony Stark was hastily appointed the American government’s Security Czar – the “top cop†in sole charge of the beleaguered nation’s defence and freedom. As Director of high-tech enforcement agency S.H.I.E.L.D. he became the final word in all matters involving metahumans and the vast costumed community…
Stark’s mismanagement of successive crises led to the arrest and assassination of Captain America and unimaginable escalation of global tension, destruction, culminating in an almost-successful Secret Invasion by shape-shifting alien Skrulls.
Discredited, ostracised and declared a wanted fugitive, he was replaced by apparently rehabilitated, recovering schizophrenic Norman Osborn – the original Green Goblin – who assumed control of America’s covert agencies and military resources. Osborn promptly disbanded S.H.I.E.L.D. and placed the nation under the aegis of his own newly-minted organisation H.A.M.M.E.R.
The erstwhile villain had first begun his climb back to respectability after taking charge of the Thunderbolts Project; a penal program which offered second chances to super-criminals who volunteered to undertake Federally-sanctioned missions…
Not content with legitimate political and personal power, Osborn also secretly conspired with a coalition of malevolent masterminds to divvy up the world between them. The Cabal was a Star Chamber of villains working towards mutually self-serving goals, but such egomaniacal personalities could never play well together for long and cracks soon began to show, both in the criminal conspiracy and eventually Osborn himself…
As another strand of his long-term plan, the Homeland Metahuman Security overlord fired Stark’s Mighty Avengers and created his own, more pliable team consisting of compliant turncoats, tractable replacements and outright impostors.
Constantly courting public opinion, Osborn launched his Avengers whilst systematically building up a personally loyal high-tech paramilitary rapid-response force. After the Utopia crisis engulfed Earth’s depleted mutant population, he pulled the same scam with the world’s most recognisable Homo Superior team…
Compiling his own team of X-Men to police “mutant problems†and be the face of law and order for the dangerous evolutionary minority, Osborn quietly continued exporting his seditious Dark Reign: a slowly destabilising madman who – through means fair and foul – officially worked to curb the unchecked power and threat of meta-humanity, with ever-decreasing success…
The repercussions of Osborn’s rise and fall were felt throughout and featured in many series and collections throughout the Marvel Universe, and this one, collecting 5-issue miniseries Dark X-Men (cover-dated January to May 2010, by writer Paul Cornell, artists Leonard Kirk & Jay Leisten with colour by Brian Reber) offers one of the first best nails in his coffin…
The drama begins with a strange plague: ordinary humans becoming dream-walking somnambulists communally declaring “I’m an X-Manâ€. The mystery provokes Osborn to convene his less-than-eager X-squad for a mission that will take them on a ‘Journey to the Center of the Goblin’…
Team leader is devious, rebellious shapeshifter Mystique; kept honest and grudgingly showing willing because of bombs implanted in her bloodstream. She’s supplemented by clinical depressive Calvin Rankin AKA Mimic, emotionally troubled, power-absorbing Michael “Omega†Pointer and alternate-Earth Henry McCoy – a conscienceless and sadistic biologist dubbed Dark Beast. He at least is happy to play: Osborn has promised him unlimited resources, plenty of guinea pigs and no ethical oversight…
Dispatched to Burton, California – site of the largest outbreak – on a glorified PR jaunt, the federal X-Men – with Mystique wearing the shape of the dead saviour Jean Grey – are interviewing a victim when Omega is suddenly overwhelmed and intoxicated by a huge influx of mutant energy and goes berserk…
Mimic heads off to stop him but is also affected by the strange force, gripped by a tantalising sense of precognition which promises to banish forever his crippling anxiety about his future…
As the team-mates crash through Burton causing untold carnage, in the hospital a ghostly force materialises from the boy they were quizzing. The nebulous shape stares at Dark Beast and says “I know you from home†before coalescing into long-dead mutant superman Nate Grey…
Grey, also known as X-Man, originally came from the same world as the Beast: an apocalyptic hell where humanity was all but eradicated. On escaping to our world Nate – son of that tragic Earth’s Jean Grey and Scott Summers – slowly evolved into an immensely powerful, shamanic, trans-dimensional messiah before ascending to a state of pure energy.
Now he’s back and might see right through the rogues pretending to be his extended family. However he disperses again before realising his “mother†is also an impostor…
Retrenching in New York after their debacle, the mutant squad confer with Osborn – who is practically salivating at the prospect of suborning X-Man’s unlimited power – and receive orders to find and capture the psionic phantom at all costs…
The energy-absorbing team members are far from keen, but deviant Dr. McCoy loves a challenge and makes use of H.A.M.M.E.R.’s nascent Psi-Division (an army of interned psychics and telepaths forced into a gestalt by unscrupulous charlatan Dr. Jarl) to summon and stabilise the psionic fugitive.
Physically present and instantly aware of all Osborn and McCoy’s past sins, the reborn X-shaman arrives on Earth all-powerful and furiously outraged…
His first move is to attack the Dark Avengers, routing all of them until only Olympian war-god Ares remains. Battling simultaneously throughout numerous time-planes Grey might even have beaten him, had not the extremely conflicted Mimic intervened and distracted him, allowing the immortal warrior to destroy X-Man…
Things take a strange turn in the aftermath as Mystique quietly confronts the gloating security supremo. Expert at swiping identities for decades, only she has realised Nate has willing discorporated in order to possess the most influential man in the world…
Determined to make Earth a paradise, Grey is wearing Osborn like a meat-glove: using him to carry out his own – benevolent – ambitions. However the mutant ghost has utterly underestimated the astonishing willpower of the madman he’s riding and the voracious fury of the savage elemental force pent at the core of Osborn’s fractured id.
To finally succeed in his evil plans, Norman Osborn had to hive off and imprison his maniacal, petty, angry other side, but with Grey now inside his head, the lethally dangerous, uncompromising Green Goblin is breaking free…
Unable to convince Nate to withdraw and terrified of what the Goblin persona might do if it ever gained control, Mystique finds herself forced to play hero for real and, galvanising her team of monsters and no-hopers, she uses the remnants of Dr. Jarl’s brain brigade to transport her Dark X-Men into Osborn’s mindscape to fix – or if necessary end – the catastrophic three-way mindwar.
Only they’re a little too late…
Rocket-paced, action-drenched, wryly imaginative and wickedly funny, this sharp sortie into weird worlds also includes sketches and designs by Leonard Kirk and a cover gallery by Simone Bianchi & Simone Peruzzi, Mike Choi, Sonia Oback, Giuseppe Camuncoli and Morry Hollowell to complete a perfect package for tried-and-true mutant mavens and Fights ‘n’ Tights aficionados everywhere.
© 2009, 2010 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.