New Avengers #20: Review

Comments: I wouldn’t dare to explain who Xorn is, since even legions of devoted X-Men fans and Marvel itself don’t seem to be sure; Wikipedia summarizes the known details. Michael Pointer goes on to harness his powers and join Omega Flight.

Magneto lost his mutant power along with most others on Decimation Day or M-Day at the end of House of M. He was included in the list in #18, and a magnetic power was among those displayed by Michael there (although that power could equally have been derived from Polaris). We don't know what caused the helicopter to explode, now how Magneto escaped. But he will reappear powerless during Divided We Stand, and then during Manifest Destiny the High Evolutionary will 1st give him artificial powers and then restore his mutant power. It says that Daisy Johnson previously created a similar mini-quake in someone's body to give Wolverine a heart attack. This was in Secret War #5, to stop him from trying to kill Nick Fury. Daisy wants to be called Quake from now on. We'll see her next under that name during Secret Invasion. Maria Hill let Iron Man hear her refusing to nuke Genosha while the Avengers were there, resulting in a thawing of their relationship. Michael Pointer is never actually referred to as The Collective, just *a* collective. Next time we see him in Civil War: the Initiative he'll be taking the name Guardian to honour the fallen Alpha Flight, and joining Omega Flight for their short series. Later he'll change name again to Weapon Omega as part of Norman Osborn's Dark Avengers.

I'll try to do the impossible (see Peter's comment below) and explain Xorn! Kuan-Yin Xorn was a masked mutant in (New) X-Men who revealed himself to be Magneto, supposedly killed in the destruction of Genosha in (N)XM#115. He led a genocidal attack on humans in New York and was killed by the X-Men in (N)XM#150. But the real Magneto turned up alive on Genosha in the 2004 Excalibur series, and Kuan-Yin's identically-masked brother Shen Xorn in XM#158-164 said that Kuan-Yin only *pretended* to be Magneto. This is echoed here where the voice (Xorn) of the Collective says that they tried to use Magneto's image to lead mutants, but they really needed the real thing. Shen Xorn appeared to die a hero's death in XM#164. But he was listed as 1 of the depowered mutants last issue. So the Xorn in the Collective should really have been him. But it has been suggested that Kuan-Yin's psychic power was so strong he survived death and was able to take over the Collective. A 3rd Xorn will appear years later during the Battle of the Atom event, but that will turn out to be an alternate future version of Jean Grey. After Sentry throws Xorn into the Sun he sees a face raging at him. This is presumably Xorn, but continuity and the shock on Sentry's face allows the possibility that it was the Void. Sentry also throws his worse half the Void into the Sun at the end of his mini-series. That series hadn't even started when this issue came out, but the Official Index places it beforehand. If it wasn't for the mention of the Void in #17 I would surmise that this is where he gets back into the Sentry.