X-Men Schism

Marvel's X-Men Schism story line is winding down with perhaps the biggest casualty being the closing down of one of Marvel's longest running comic books: Uncanny X-Men.

Of course they're just rebooting the comic book and so expect Uncanny X-Men # 1 to hit the shelves soon.

Written by Jason Aaron and sketched by a plethora of artists including Adam Kubert, Carlos Pacheco, Frank Cho, Daniel Acuna and Alan Davis, X-Men Schism chronicles a split in Cyclops' Grand Army of Mutants sparked by - oddly of all people - Wolverine - who wants to see the fulfillment of Xavier's dream of peaceful co-existence, versus Cyclops' new militant-mutant survival of the species philosophy that has isolated the X-Men on the island nation of Utopia.

Towards the end of the series, Wolverine and Cyclops come to blows and quite frankly I'm disappointed that Wolverine was so lame when the two went toe-to-toe. It was almost as if Wolverine, despite losing his entire face to Cyclops' Optic Blasts, was still holding back.



The quarrel between the two - who have never actually seen eye-to-eye EVER - began with an attack on the X-Men by the Hellfire club that was ended when instead of waiting for Wolverine to come to the rescue of his teammates, Cyclops instead supported letting the 14 year old Oya (Idie Okonkwo, one of the 5 lights of Generation Hope - Wolverine has had a long standing soft spot for young girls i.e. Shadowcat, Jubilee, etc...) kill the X-Men's Hellfire Club captors.Idie shows no remorse whatsoever to the murder and chocks it up to part of being an X-Man - which totally shocks Wolverine.

When a final Hellfire Club weapon = a giant Sentinel - moves to threaten Utopia (Whose main X-Teams were all out on other missions or incapacitated by the initial Hellfire attack), Cyclops rallies the island's children to come defend the island. The children come willingly with youthful idealism till Wolverine shows up and threatens to blow up the entire island with a dead-man-switch telling the kids to evacuate the island.

Frustrated, Cyclops lands a low blow on Wolverine telling her that "She never loved you, you know. You always frightened her" (Yeah right, keep telling yourself that Scottie) - in reference to Jean Grey, Cyclops' dead wife and Wolverine's flame. To which Wolverine, smoldering, retorts "And if she was here right now... who do you think she'd be more frightened of?"

So if you were to ask me, Cyclops started it.

There are a lot of people who are surprised with Wolverine's sudden moral change of heart. I wouldn't be surprised if it was Storm, but no, it's Wolverine. I mean this is the X-Men's stone cold killer, leader of X-Force. But I'm not so surprised. I feel that he's been killing too long - far longer than Cyclops has been leader of anything - that he's reached that point that he realizes that all the killing he's been doing is useless if the "better world" is not being taken cared of - especially since he's practically immortal and will probably end up alone in that world.

Cyclops on the other hand is acting out of desperation and fear in my opinion. He's taken this "Endangered Species" thing so seriously that he's backed all the remaining mutants into a nice collective target. He's actually become Magneto without even Magneto trying.

Cyclops' Team

Cyclops' Team consists of the following:

• Cyclops
• White Queen (Still being taken for granted by Cyclops as nothing more than a valuable telepath, back-up muscle and kinky sex partner. Namor is right. Cyclops doesn't love her as much as he loved Jean Grey - else he would have married her. A teacher at heart, Cyclops actually had to convince her to stay as well. I'm looking forward to her leaving Cyclops for Namor.) 
• Storm (Initially Ororo was going to pack up and join Wolverine. I was also surprised that she was not the leader of the schism. Marvel has severely downplayed the role of this former leader of the X-Men. Cyclops convinced her that now that he's allied himself with the likes of Magneto, Dr. Nemesis, Colossus & Magick, that he needs her more than Wolverine does. In my opinion, dumb choice for Storm. Major BOOOOOOO)
• Magneto: Sadly, the Magneto/Rogue love-team has come to an end. I can't help but wonder if this is all some master plan of Magneto's. Cyclops is succeeding in doing what he has failed to do. In terms of power, Magneto's presence gives Cyclops' team an edge having fought all the X-Men to a standstill. 
• Namor - Eh. His home is under Utopia
• Pixie - Cyclops' little slave
• Danger - Another who has fought the X-Men to a stand-still. Doesn't want to go back to her original place of captivity. 
• Psylocke - Staying because she's a warrior at heart and wants to go down swinging
• Dr. Nemesis - Psycho Doctor
• Domino - drat, no more Wolverine and Domino sex-scenes
• Magick - will she finally be let out of jail on her road to redemption?
• Colossus - Ah the new Juggernaut who stayed because he's now a danger to children.
• Dazzler - being tapped to run a new "Street team" should be interesting. 
• Generation Hope and her.... 4 lights- boring
• New Mutants - Marvel has not seen fit to break up this team. Though I was thinking someone like Karma would have left with Wolverine. 
• The more militant of the kids, left by the overcompensating Prodigy and the White Queen's Cuckoos.
• Jubilee - another surprise considering she's supposed to be subsisting on Wolverine's blood - and he left her behind.... again
• The surprising additions to Utopia in the future will include Sebastian Shaw - I'm sure the White Queen will be so thrilled by that. 

Wolverine's Team

First off, let me say that I think it was really cool for Logan to take one last strike at Cyclops by not re-opening Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, but opening a brand new school called "Jean Grey School for Higher Learning" Eat that One-Eye! Though personally I wonder how Charles Xavier plans to deals with the new squatters on his land. Logan's team consists of:

• Wolverine
• Iceman - a complete surprise to me that Bobby was the first person he approached. Why this loser? Unless all he wanted to do was break up the original five even more. 
• Beast - coming in from the Secret Avengers is re-joining the X-Men as Wolverine's second in command of the school. 
• Shadowcat - no question there. 
• The mentally destabilized Cannonball - hope he recovers soon as I think he and Moonstar should get it on past kissing.
• Oya - the girl who broke the X-men - though Wolverine says that she's the girl who brought the X-Men home.
• Skin - Paige Guthrie who's currently having power problems shedding everywhere. 
• Rachel Summers - Baby Phoenix no longer has Daddy issues and has joined Logan
• Rogue - After Cyclops grounded her? Not surprised. 
• Gambit - see Rogue. 
• Frenzy - I see great things for her playing on the side of angels.
• Toad - the new school janitor
• Quentin Quire - Rehabilitate or die. 
• The less militant kids including Loa, Blindfold, Rockslide, AND the un-named Brood mutant from Astonishing X-Men
• The addition I'm looking forward to is the inclusion of the Age of Apocalypse Nightcrawler. 

It's actually interesting how Marvel broke up all the budding love teams: Magneto and Rogue, Colossus/Juggernaut and Shadowcat, Moonstar and Cannonball. 

Personally I'm of the belief that Wolverine is correct. The X-Men should be fighting for a better world, not preparing to make a last stand. Cyclops has been moving further and further away from the dream of Xavier. I get why he had to create Utopia, Osborn was after them and they needed to get away. But after the crisis, he could have moved back to San Francisco. Steve Rogers even tried to re-integrate the mutants into society by painting the X-Men as heroes and having Cyclops receive a Presidential Medal of Honor - which he threw into the sea afterwards. At that point I knew that Cyclops had totally rejected Xavier's dream. 

However Cyclops is right, by leaving, Logan weakens the X-Men as a whole and opens them to further attack. Although it can be argued: That's what X-Force and the New Mutants are for. 

There was another solution to the problem that Cyclops did throw that Logan ignored: Why does Cyclops need to run things? There are several qualified leaders of the X-Men present - some of whom have led the X-Men, topmost of which is Storm. Hell even Magneto is qualified to run things. Had elections been held, I personally do not think that Cyclops would end up leading the X-Men. Or Logan could have challenged Cyclops for leadership outright in the same way that a powerless Storm did ages ago. 

So I do believe that ego had a lot to play with the schism and Logan's choice to rename the school after Jean Grey is a flag flying in the face of Cyclops.

So the question now is... Where is Xavier?