X months ago, a new team of X-Men led by Cyclops established their headquarters at The Factory: a former Sentinel factory in Merle, Alaska. After the mutant island-nation Krakoa disbanded, the X-Men — Beast, Psylocke, Kid Omega, Temper, Magik, Juggernaut, and the recently-resurrected Magneto — have been busy with the group known as 3K, which is making new mutants by force-activating X-Genes in adult humans. X-Men #5 identified Cassandra Nova — the telepathic twin of the currently incarcerated Charles Xavier — as the Zealot furthering the “Great Work” she started with an attempted mutant extinction event in Grant Morrison’s New X-Men.
Beast confirmed that the artificial adult-onset mutations are turning homo sapiens sapiens into homo sapiens superior — mutants. Xorn suggested calling the “new mutants” homo sapiens superior Nova, but Magneto embraced the reality-warper Ben Liu and the fish-like Jennifer Starkey as mutants, welcoming them to the Factory. Magneto made it clear the X-Men would not make a distinction between “mutants born and mutants made.”
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Beast has also been working on a cure for the condition that left Magneto in a wheelchair, which was revealed as R-LDS: Resurrection Linked Degenerative Sickness, a side effect of the mutant resurrection protocols performed by the Five on Krakoa. X-Men #7, by Jed MacKay and Netho Diaz, details the events of The Iron Night, revealing how Cyclops came to lead the new X-Men with Magneto.
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After the end of the Krakoan Age and Professor X’s arrest for crimes against humanity, Magneto approached Cyclops at the Summers’ family lodge outside of Merle, Alaska. “I had thought that Cyclops always had a plan,” the mutant master of magnetism told his former enemy. “Everything I’ve worked for over the last couple of years? That I bled for? Died for? It’s gone,” Cyclops said. With Jean Grey out in space in the pages of Phoenix, Cyclops retreated to his cabin to guzzle beers (which Magneto noted is “Logan behavior”).
“Our people are in crisis. And they look to Cyclops,” Magneto reminded Xavier’s protégé and founding member of the X-Men. “You were chosen as a boy. Anointed for leadership.” Unlike Wolverine, who is effectively immortal, Scott Summers does not have the luxury of time to wallow in his feelings. “That is your strength. You have always moved forward, because you have a mission and an all-too-finite lifespan within which to accomplish it.”
When Cyclops countered that he didn’t ask to be made into a “teenage warlord,” Magneto replied, “Of course you didn’t. I never asked to be sent to the camps, Scott. I never asked to be hunted for what I am, be it Jew or mutant. But the world doesn’t wait for us to ask before it inflicts horrors upon us. All we can do is spite it by surviving, or die. What will it be, Cyclops?”
With Xavier and Krakoa gone, Magneto said: “We need X-Men now more than ever.” The Summers family cabin is situated across from the Sentinel factory that manufactured the mutant-hunting killing machines until it was decommissioned by the Avengers. When a “zombie” Wild Sentinel suddenly activated and attacked the town of Merle, Cyclops and Magneto teamed up to take down the robot.
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“You came here looking for an X-Man, Magneto? You just found one.” Magneto, wielding his power over metal, plunged a stake through the Sentinel’s A.I. core, then tore it apart with an agonizing scream. Magneto gave Cyclops an opening to kill the Sentinel with one optic blast, turning the towering monument to hatred into a now-frozen over reminder of what the X-Men did for Merle.
But when Magneto lost control of his mutant ability to control magnetic fields, Cyclops was forced to knock him unconscious with an optic blast. In the months that followed, Beast determined Magneto’s ailment is R-LDS — a sickness that weakens the body and causes resurrected mutants to lose control of their powers. Mutants like Cyclops and Quentin Quire, an Omega-level telepath who was once killed by Sabretooth (in Wolverine: Sabretooth War).
“As it turned out,” Magneto said, “there was a price to be paid for cheating death.”
X-Men #7 is on sale now from Marvel Comics. Issue #8, out in December, is the first part in the four-issue Raid on Graymalkin crossover pitting Cyclops’ X-Men team vs. Rogue’s Uncanny X-Men team.
