Identity Crisis

• Writer - Joe Casey
• Writer - Sean Phillips
• Lettering - Richard Starkings
• Lettering - Comicraft
• Lettering - Saida Temofonte
• Colorist - Hi-Fi Design
• Ass't Editor - Mike Raicht
• Editor - Mike Marts
• Editor in Chief - Joe Quesada

Summary

  At a meeting at Worthington Industries, stockholders bombard Warren with questions about recent mutant events, and he just stands there, stymied. Kurt pops in to distract them, announcing himself as the public face of mutant culture. Afterwards, Warren calls him out of control, but he says it's just showmanship and suggests Warren run for president.

  Jon and Bobby have a drink at the Gene Pool bar, enjoying their fringe cult popularity. A boy asks them where they got their fix of Designer Genes.

  Warren listens to the news of missing Sara Fey, intern to Congressman Koldwit, who fired her when she was outed as a mutant. Stacy enters to let him know she's leaving to turn a trick; Warren lectures her on decadence, which he knows something of. Kurt then calls him; he's in the basement of St. Paul's on 9th, where kids have overdosed on Designer Genes.

  Stacy has a beer at Logan's place, saying Warren has no right to lecture her, since he was a decadent teenager. Logan tosses her his old uniform (yellow and blue), which he wore as Weapon X and continued to use for years, not trusting the X-Men to see his real self. He played the role of black sheep, but now they're his family, and he's accepted as is. "If you don't want to be treated like a whore... then don't act like one."

  Warren and Kurt assemble the team to deal with the drugs; they know Vanisher must be behind it (see 2001 Ann.).

  Stacy goes to a darkened luxury apartment, where Treemont lies in a sick bed. He runs a canned noodle company, and he doesn't want sex but freedom from pain. He's a mutant, a classmate of the Blob, and is prematurely aged and immune to all medication. She fondly remembers his Noodle-O's from her childhood and agrees to help. Hours later, Logan, Bobby, and Jon find her at his bedside; she's put him in an ecstatic coma, which will last till his cancer kills him. She starts to justify herself, but the X-Men congratulate her.

  Warren calls his boar for a midnight meeting; he wants to buy out Vanisher's drug ring. Vanisher meets with criminals, saying they're now working for him.

  Notes: constitutionally, the President must be at least 35, which is why Kurt tells Warren to fake his birth certificate. Sara Fey's story resembles Shandra Levy's.