danger rooms

• Writer - Grant Morrison
• Penciler - Ethan Van Sciver
• Inker - Prentis Rollins
• Lettering - Comicraft
• Lettering - Richard Starkings
• Lettering - Saida Temofonte
• Colorist - Hi-Fi Design
• Ass't Editor - Pete Franco
• Editor - Mark Powers
• Editor in Chief - Joe Quesada

Summary

  Hank chases a mutant through the woods, yelling at him to fly. He flaps his wings and nearly takes off, but Hank tackles him. It's a Danger Room simulation, and Hank tells him he's not expected to graduate overnight. He chooses his codename: the Beak.

  The school has 152 new mutant students and is besieged by protesters. Hank is worried the Beak feels like an outsider even there, and Xavier promises to scan his head. Hank readies for a date with Trish Tilby, but she left a voice message breaking up with him. (He's changed; he sometimes looks at her like prey; the tabloids are talking bestiality; she has her career to think about.)

  Logan has been meditating in the woods with a deer for four days; Jean finds him there. They see Lilandra's ship coming for Xavier: he's going on vacation till the mob settles down. Jean says Scott is different since Apocalypse, and she's lonely. Logan kisses her but then says they both know it wouldn't work.

  Hank asks Xavier if it was wise to go public and continues his tests on Nova. He found she has the same DNA as Xavier and asks why. Nova reveals herself, saying she's taken over Xavier's mind: they are genetic twins (of different genders?), with a psychic bond since conception. She attacks Hank telepathically and says he's a failed experiment, devolving from human to animal (currently feline, he's been using a giant litter box). She forces him to clean himself with his diploma.

  The Beak enters, wanting to give Hank a prize baseball bat. Hank attacks Nova but doesn't want to harm Xavier; she makes the Beak give him the bat, beating him bloody, and then goes to meet Lilandra, evidently planning to conquer the universe. Jean is in charge of the school. The Beak tears out his own feathers in grief.

  Note: Morrison, in the Britain's Sunday Times, 2001-10-28: "I've already started writing X-Men as a pacifist comic. They don't believe in violence. They want to change the world in other ways. I don't think there will be as much fisticuffs anymore. I always thought that was rubbish anyway. I'm more into the philosophical basis of comics, the ideas they explore."

Summary

  Cover name was changed to "New X-Men" for Issues 114 - 156.