OF LIVING AND DYING

• Story - Grant Morrison
• Penciler - John Paul Leon
• Inker - Bill Sienkiewicz
• Colorist - Hi-Fi Design
• Lettering - Comicraft
• Ass't Editor - Mike Raicht
• Editor in Chief - Joe Quesada

Summary

  Xorn hugs a fallen police horse, wishing he could save every life. Scott and Jean try to calm a riot, but there's a seven-foot-tall, dog-eating monster on the loose. Jean puts up a TK shield as the mob throws trash. Scott tells her to close them all down.

  Back in Westchester, Xorn says his jailors called him a monster, but Xavier likes monsters who heal spines. He says humans survive by associating around ideals, and though the idea of a monster is a potent one, the X-Men try to build bridges between human and mutant thinking. Xorn agrees: his gift is to mend things.

  Xavier still needs a cane for now, and Xorn helps him into Cerebra. Xavier praises his skill in the riot; Xorn says he's just a boy from China who became a sun in an iron mask. He senses only color and energy and speaks by vibrating air particles. He asks Xavier to see if there's really a mutant wandering scared, but he's busy upgrading Cerebra to remote-control mutants in jeopardy. So Xorn must search on foot, which will help him get to know the city. Xorn admits he misses the peace and certainty of his jail (cf. X-Men I:407), and he asks what Xavier sees in his mind: orchards in China, a falling star, a radiant star of pure thought.

  In a shop in Chinatown, Xorn buys a diary from a man from his province. He's proud of Xorn, but people in the street throw trash at him.

  Xorn goes to Mutant Town, a new ghetto in Alphabet City. Cops wonder what happened to the melting pot; Xorn tells them there's no word for monster in any mutant dictionary; they figure he means the dog-eater isn't there.

  Xorn enters a dark apartment and finds Sonny, a large, monstrous mutant, in pain on a couch, his mother sponging his head. She says he just got out the one time, and the dog was yappy, anyway. Xorn says he's eaten dog, and it's not a capital offense.

  She is distraught over her twelve-year-old boy. Xorn says he's a mutant, and the world is changing. She says he's a monster, and she's overdosed them both with pills, so he won't be killed by the mob or the government. Xorn wants to help; the mutation is almost complete. She passes out, and Sonny rises, angry. Xorn says he can still help her, but Sonny knocks him through the wall.

  Sonny crashes through carrying his mother, rampages to the drug store, and, mumbling, demands medicine. Xorn says in ten days he would have become something wonderful. He yells for the police to wait, but they open fire. One uses a flame-thrower, and Sonny staggers into the street, burning. Xorn tries but fails to heal him; the cops don't care.

  Xorn helps the paramedics; Sonny's body is lifted out with a crane, while the sky weeps with rain. Xorn isn't used to the artificiality of writing, but he journals his thoughts for Xavier. Life goes on. He has a meal with the man from his province.

Summary

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