NEW WORLDS

• Writer - Grant Morrison
• Artist - Igor Kordey
• Colorist - Dave McCaig
• Lettering - Richard Starkings
• Lettering - Saida Temofonte
• Editor - Mike Raicht
• Editor in Chief - Joe Quesada

Summary

  Xavier announces himself a mutant (for the first time as himself, cf. iss. 116), and opens the doors to the international X-Corporation, as a haven for mutants. Just thinking "X" will alert Cerebra.

  Outside, the streets of Paris are aflame with anti-mutant riots. Cannonball, Darkstar, M, and Siryn rush to the aid of the mutants, and Jean later congratulates them on a successful mission. They've rebuilt Sean's team (with similarity to Avalon and Magneto's Acolytes).

  Jean next sends them to the Chunnel: there's been a train wreck, and 30 mutant asylum seekers are stuck there. The team decides to ditch their codenames.

  Jean and Xavier chat in their office; Xavier scans the city below and notes a man in Montparnasse who thinks the X-Men are cool. He considers this success and says Nova was right to bring them out into public. Jean, meanwhile, uses her TK to pour them both some water with lemon. "No more human rules," and Nova has freed them from self-imposed exile.

  Jean wants Xavier to check the power growing inside her head, since everybody's worried she's going to become evil again (see the Dark Phoenix saga, of course).

  Soldiers hunt along the alleys of Paris; a masked figure drops down and starts shooting. He can't kill them all, so he runs, but he is hit with a bullet.

  Jean tells Xavier her senses are expanding and merging. She asks if he thinks she's nuts; he doesn't. He says it was impossible for her to split and reconstitute his mind, but she did it (iss. 126). He gives her a case of silverware and has her levitate each piece, showing how far her mind extends outside her body. He touches a fork, and she feels it; she didn't know she could. The Phoenix effect starts around her, and she says it's "like colors on fire, burning in every direction." Xavier sees her mind as an ocean of psychic light which he dares not enter. He asks to talk to the Phoenix, and another voice says, "Jean is only the house where I live, Charles."

  The Phoenix says it is born in blood and always returns; it shows him a ruined city and says that is how it feels to be the last hope, and to know you'll win against all odds. The vision vanishes; Xavier is dazed and sees Jean looking oddly, as well, but she's looking over his shoulder at the helicopter outside the window.

  The masked man emerges from the shadows, saying it's him they want. He has ceramic armor that shields his mind from them, and he's come to put them in a compromising position: he is Fantomex, a wanted mutant criminal, and he wants sanctuary.

  The X-Corp team arrives at the Chunnel and makes crude jokes about throwing up and Multiple Man having sex with himself.

  Jean sees the building is surrounded. Fantomex says he stole something bad, and something called Weapon XII got loose in the train wreck.

  In the tunnel, the X-Corp team is attacked by the people they were trying to save and has to fall back. Multiple Man says not to touch them, and he is knocked out.

  In Westchester, Scott wants to talk about Jean; they've been trying to hold onto teenage unconditional love, but it's phony. He loves her, but they aren't who they were, and he's worried she'll hate him now. For some reason he thinks talking to Emma will help.

Summary

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