HAPPY EASTER! IT'S WEAPON X-MEN #1!
Let's have ourselves an Easter egg hunt!
I know, I know… the official Easter holiday is still about two months away. But that shouldn’t stop us from taking a good look at WEAPON X-MEN #1 -- in stores now -- and sharing all of the Easter eggs found within, right? You betcha!
PAGE 2, PANEL 1: For the larger story we’re telling, I needed a character that possessed the indestructible metal known as adamantium. But I soon discovered that the opening arc of the newly-relaunched Wolverine series involved many of the more “famous” Marvel characters that also utilized adamantium as part of their makeup. Luckily, I was able to find one that wasn’t being used: Khyber was a one-off villain created by Erik Larsen, Leinil Francis Yu and Eric Stephenson and appeared way back in Wolverine #141.
PAGE 11, PANELS 1-3: This bit demonstrates one of the great revelations I had about writing Deadpool… that he could speak in much more “meta” terms, even within a story that was being played completely straight. In this way, I could directly comment on the thoughts I knew a smart reader would be thinking as they read this…
And so I gave Deadpool some the… well, let’s call them “insights” that I’ve had about this entire endeavor… mainly its highly commercial, big franchise potential (which one could argue is the foundational motivation of any team book made up of preexisting characters, at least from a publishing POV). And he also names the team. This leads directly to a gag on the following page…
PAGE 12, PANELS 1-2: Okay, so Deadpool’s dialogue in Panel 2 -- “… not Claremont… not Liefeld… not Morrison… not that Hickman guy…” -- is pretty much verbatim what I said on the phone to editor Tom Brevoort when I first learned that the title I’d thought of -- “Weapon X-Men” -- had been lifted without my knowledge and slapped on an unrelated project that was due to be released a full year before my book. And I’m pretty sure that Chamber’s response, “Will you bugger off?!” is also me talking to myself.
PAGE 14, PANELS 1-2: So the reveal of Thunderbird occurs in the forests of Latveria, legendary home country of Doctor Doom. It’s the first whiff of this series’ conceptual intention: to mix these iconic mutant characters into the “classic” Marvel Universe. The Stan/Jack/Steve/Roy/Don/John Marvel Universe. Naturally, Thunderbird is fighting Doctor Doom’s patented Servo-Guards. They were originally designed by the late, great Jack Kirby… although my personal favorite version has always been John Byrne’s artistic take on them (this visual presented here is by neither of those artists).
Also, Panel 2 is pretty much the only time I even indirectly reference the “Krakoa era” of the X-books.
PAGE 20, PANELS 2-3: This is a pretty deep cut. Deadpool embeds a bullet (built with an adamantium casing) into Wolverine’s skull (via his eyeball). At that point, he activates its “Encephalo-Ray Core”, which instantly places poor Wolverine in a comatose state. Well… the concept of the “Encephalo-Ray” (also known as an “Encephalo Beam”) was first introduced to me as a six-year-old scrub in the classic Avengers #161 by Jim Shooter and George Pérez.
It was Ultron’s main weapon of choice in that issue, used against several Avengers during an ambush on their famous mansion headquarters in that issue, leading to a final page reveal -- executed perfectly by Pérez -- that did as much to hook me into desperately loving comicbooks as any page ever would…
I mean, come on… it just doesn’t get any better than that, does it…?
PAGE 23, PANEL 1: Not really an Easter egg, per se… but I have to say, writing the classic, one-word expression -- “Oath!” -- in Cable’s dialogue really hit home that I was writing this character again. I’d probably used/written this same word numerous times during my Cable run back in the late 1990’s.
PAGE 24, PANEL 1: Another deep cut. This flying vehicle is lifted directly out of Jim Steranko’s Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. stories from the 1960’s Strange Tales title. It’s literally called a “Hover-Limousine”.
What else can be said… aside from the fact that this is a clear signal that we’re entering yet another specific milieu of the classic Marvel Universe? That being…
PAGE 25: … the patented final page villain reveal: Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker, back on Hydra Island. Another pull from Jim Steranko’s run on Strange Tales. Plus, just like the “big three” of the Weapon X-Men roster, Strucker’s also a movie star in his own right, having been featured in the opening action scene of 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron.
WEAPON X-MEN #1 is on sale now. Issue #2 is coming next month. Spread the word.
Joe Casey
USA
Hello Mr. Casey, hope you're having a great day. I have a lot to say, so apologies for the very long post.
Anyways, I got the chance to read Weapon X-Men #1 so I wanted to share some of my thoughts on the issue as a whole. To begin with, I like that the issue is aware of what's going on in the other X-Books, like using the plot of the current Wolverine ongoing in order to get him involved into this comic, but also being aware that Cyclops' X-Men have the last working Cerebro unit. I'm not sure how much of it is Brevoort's doing, but I personally really like that sort of connectivity while also being able to stand on its own.
Even though majority of the issue is mostly spent on getting everyone together, you use that to your benefit by having Deadpool betray the team already and giving Wolverine to Strucker. And it works, mostly due to the whole "we're being marketed together" and the fact that there is a Deadpool/Wolverine ongoing happening as well, so it's not a thought that comes across to you when reading the issue.
Regarding the whole controversy with the whole OWUD tie-in thing: I think I understand why it was labled as such. It seems that every title that mentioned or featured Doom heavily was going to have label slapped on to them no matter what, and this became extremely obvious as I read Storm #5 that also released on the same week (side-note: who the hell decided that they should release 9 X-Books in one week?). That issue also had a OWUD tie-in label, despite the fact that the issue was a part of a 5-part storyline that explicitly took place BEFORE OWUD began.
I was also surprised at the lack of an afterword by you (since I think every From The Ashes title had one, miniseries included), but maybe this series doesn't have a letters page? I'm not sure.
Now that I'm also here, I also wanted to leave notes regarding RecolleXtions 007. I am surprised that you didn't read or even heard of Decimation, given how well-known that story is (or at least the phrase "no more mutants") and how the aftermath of it are still felt in X-Books to this day. And you also skipped over a very weird era of the character in that post, namely that she, Beak, Angel, Jubilee and yes, even Chamber(!) along with 3 other mutants that were created by Grant Morrison (but whom I can't remember what their names were) were all apart of the New Warriors series post-Civil War that consisted of depowered mutants (yes, really. Look it up.). This also makes her reappearance in Vengeance more funnier, since she actually died in the New Warriors series, which means you managed to bring her back from the death without anyone batting an eye (however, another story would later establish that she was still depowered and used makeup all along to cope with the loss of her real snake skin). And regarding her appearance(s?) in Krakoa, I don't remember her being written as religious, only thing I remembered was that she was operating a brothel (then again, it's been a while since I read that one issue she appeared in, and her appearance was mostly there because the writer was intentionally using characters that appeared in Chuck Austen's run on X-Men).
Now I'm not sure if that will be your last RecolleXtions entry or if you're going to be switching gears and talking about your time on Cable and the Children of the Atom miniseries, but I always wanted to know: Chris Claremont was writing X-Treme X-Men the same time you were on Uncanny and Morrison was on New X-Men. Did you ever interact with him at all during that time, or was he just mostly in his own corner of the room playing with his deck of cards?
PS. It's a little funny that you mention that the one panel will be the only time you will ever reference Krakoa era, because you are technically continuing with one aspect of it by just simply having Cable and Thunderbird on the same team. They both worked previously with eachother in X-Men Red.
This is fabulous Joe. I bought digitally on Amazon and loved it so much I ordered an old school paper copy that came in the post today. Beautifully drawn and tremendous writing. You nailed it and I love it. When a comic makes me pour over it again and again it’s definitely a good one. You got all the characters spot on and nailed the Deadpool humour. Nazis are the best villains. Make Mine Marvel. This is the best thing I have read for years. Love the Easter Egg reveals.