Chapters 20-22, Epilogue
Written by Ann Nocenti
Summary:
Word leaks that there's a rat in the prison, which soon leads to a
riot. Longshot lies and declares himself the rat in order to stop the
violence. Wolverine faces Spiral and frees Phoenix. Bone is reunited
with Miles. Longshot's allies unleash a computer virus that frees the
prisoners, as Rita hacks into MAXROCK TV and exposes UltraMax’s abuses.
The inmates unite against the guards, and Longshot, the despised rat.
Phoenix frees Longshot from the execution chamber, while Major Domo is
revealed as the warden and beaten down by the inmates. The Quinjet’s
blasts send UltraMax out of orbit. Mojo escapes in his pod, not
realizing that Phoenix has already placed the "Mojomaniacs" (killers
created by his brain tampering) inside. As the team tries to keep
UltraMax in orbit, Longshot reveals that Gambit gave Spiral false
information earlier. Eventually, Beast manages to enter UltraMax’s controls and
right the station. The liberated mutants are taken to the mansion's
hospital wing. Public opinion, following Rita's broadcast, turns on
UltraMax and it is shut down. Major Domo rebuilds himself and prepares
to rescue Mojo.
“Huh?” Moment:
Miles is referred to as a boy repeatedly, even from Phoenix’s
viewpoint, but the numbers don’t add up. His father spent fifteen years
in prison, which didn’t happen until after Miles and his schoolmates
were told to inform on their parents if they were involved with drugs.
That would make Miles, at the very youngest, twenty.
Review:
There’s a lot packed into the final chapters of the novel, including a slightly gratuitous
gladiator match between Longshot and Gambit, so the ending is somewhat
chaotic. Nocenti obviously wants to tackle numerous issues, but
there’s not nearly enough room to explore every wild thought she throws
out there. The major conflicts of the novel are resolved (Bone confirms
he never wanted revenge on Miles, Miles asks for his father’s
forgiveness, Mojo is defeated, Gambit and Longshot make peace, UltraMax
is shut down), but several of the plot threads barely feel connected to
the central story. Is this is a story about the drug war, the prison
system, teen suicide, human experimentation, War on Crime paranoia, junk
culture, or the origins of insanity? Of course a story can cover more
than one issue, but trying to touch on everything
that might be on the author’s mind is dangerous. Mojo has three
distinct plots going on during the novel -- he’s overtaken a prison and
used it as the basis of a new television network, he’s released a series
of bootleg videogames that will recruit highly intelligent players
(apparently teens he wants to interact with, simply because he’s
lonely...and he wants the rest to commit suicide, for some reason), and he’s using his mind-altering technology to breed a new race
of remorseless killers. All of these ideas have potential, but why are
they running simultaneously; aren’t we reading the plots to three
different Mojo stories? What do mutants secretly placed in a space
prison by the government have to do with bored teens that happen to be
really good at video games?
It’s
easy to forgive the overloaded plot, though, because so many of
Nocenti’s pithy digressions and character moments are genuinely
intriguing. (She’s also the first person to pit Longshot and Gambit
against each other in a fight, which is something I would’ve expected to
see years earlier.) Chapter Twenty-One even opens with an unsettling
detour to the suburbs to examine Susan Carlton, a nice enough lady who’s
been sucked into watching the live execution. The entire passage is
reminiscent of Orwell, a very brief example of just how good Nocenti can
be. Playing off the prison theme, Nocenti explores the larger idea of
imprisonment, that everyone is in a cage of his or her own making. Mojo
has doomed himself to a life surrounded by sycophants, while Storm is
caged by the demands of the responsibilities she’s accepted as leader of
the X-Men. Miles is consumed by the guilt he feels for indirectly
sending his father to prison. Phoenix is confined by the ethics taught
to her by Xavier, which prevent her from “playing God” even as she
touches the minds of the sick and deluded every day. And Rogue’s body
is, of course, its own prison.
Even
the virtual reality game, which could easily be a quickie plot device
of no real importance, opens the door for a thoughtful exploration of
the X-Men’s personalities. The game tests the player to go past their
normal boundaries in order to win, with the justification that nothing
you do to your opponent is “real” so it’s okay to cut loose. Phoenix
mind-fries her opponents while Wolverine embraces his bloodlust. When
they regain consciousness, they have to readjust to reality and question
the decisions they’ve made while in the transitional fog. The game’s
hook is that it shames you for beating it. There’s also a recurring
theme of lying as a virtue, the idea that a lie can be noble if it’s
used to help someone overcome grief or self-doubt. The last example is
in the epilogue, as Wolverine pretends that he didn’t carry Bone on his
back during the final level of the game. “Wasn’t me. You musta made it
on your own. You’re no coward, Bone.” Nocenti loves the concept of
deception, including self-deception, but doesn’t seem to have the room
to truly explore it here. I wish Nocenti would’ve focused more on these
esoteric concepts, as opposed to the political activism that
occasionally drags the novel down. Less politics, fewer plot threads, and the novel would've been a much tighter read. It remains a solid X-Men story, however, with some truly fantastic moments.
No comments:
Post a Comment