MUTANT MASSACRE: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MORLOCKS

MUTANT MASSACRE: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MORLOCKS Spoiler warning for Mutant Massacre and its aftermath through the Muir Island Saga. That's where I'm at in my X-Men reading, so I'm stopping there. The Mutant Massacre was something that I wasn't expecting. I wasn't expecting them to go through the Morlock community like that. The Marauders came into the tunnels and wiped out a huge portion of the people living there. And when you think about what the Morlocks actually were, that makes the whole thing worse. This was a sprawling underground community. There were people down there who couldn't just walk around on the surface and blend in. Some had useful powers, some had dangerous powers, and some mainly had mutations that made other people afraid of them. They had built a life together because the world above them didn't want them. We mostly followed a handful of named characters, but the tunnels always felt much bigger than that. Most of that community was slaughtered, and the people who survived were scattered. The Marauders went down there to kill people. That was the job. Scalphunter, Harpoon, Riptide, Arclight, Scrambler, Sabretooth and the others weren't interested in taking over the tunnels or negotiating with Callisto. They're hunting people through their own home, and by the time the X-Men get involved, there's already more damage than they can fix. Tommy is one of the first victims we see as this starts coming together. Annalee is killed too, which is especially awful considering her history with losing her children and then caring for Leech. Piper dies. There are faces and names attached to some of it, but most of the people dying never got a big character arc. They were still part of that community. Then the X-Men come in, and they get absolutely torn up trying to help. Nightcrawler is badly injured. Kitty takes an attack meant for Rogue, and afterward she can't turn solid again. Colossus gets hurt badly enough that he's taken out of action too. These are characters I've been reading with the team for a long time, and suddenly they're all dealing with injuries that don't disappear when the fight ends. Colossus killing Riptide is one of the moments that stands out. He's watching people being slaughtered, taking damage himself, and he finally gets his hands on the guy and breaks his neck. You understand why he does it. But it's still Colossus doing that, and that matters. This is someone who cares deeply about people, being pushed into a situation where he's had enough. Storm also has to keep deciding what matters most in that moment. There's every reason to want revenge, but there are still people alive who need to get out. She's led the Morlocks as well as the X-Men. These are people she has a responsibility to, and she can't save all of them. Over in X-Factor, Angel gets one of the worst parts of it. Warren goes in to help Artie and ends up with his wings crushed by Blockbuster and pinned to the wall by Harpoon. Thor helps get him out, but getting him out alive doesn't undo what they did to him. Knowing where Warren's story has gone by the point I'm reading now, that damage follows him a long way beyond these tunnels. And some people survive the massacre only to die after reaching the surface. Scaleface, Blow-Hard and Berzerker are examples of how ugly the aftermath gets. Blow-Hard is shot by a gang. Scaleface is shot by the police. Berzerker dies during the confrontation with X-Factor. They got out of the tunnels, but they didn't suddenly find somewhere safe to live. That's also why I don't want to say the Morlocks disappeared completely. Even now, where I'm at, they still have a presence. Callisto survived. Masque survived, and the way he's dealing with people afterward is a whole other problem. Caliban survived, although his direction changes drastically. Leech survives too, and his friendship with Artie keeps that connection to the Morlocks in the books outside the tunnels. Sunder is another one worth separating out. He survived the Mutant Massacre, but he isn't still alive at my current reading point. He was killed later by Pretty Boy during the Reavers' attack on Muir Island, after helping protect the children there. Different attack, different group, and another person who got through one horrible situation only to be killed in another. When I researched this around the time I read it, I remembered coming across discussion about the creators feeling there were too many Morlocks. There is support for that. Louise Simonson described Claremont wanting to reduce the number of mutants around the book, and her suggestion that this story was big enough to involve the other mutant titles. My own take is that it also made the Morlocks feel different afterward. Before this, you had a huge community with a few familiar people representing it. Afterward, I was following more specific survivors, smaller groups and what had happened to them. I wouldn't say every unnamed Morlock was killed or that every survivor was already an established character. But it certainly felt like a major restructuring of that whole part of the X-Men's world. It restructured the X-Men too. Kitty and Nightcrawler's recovery takes them away from the regular team, and by the point I'm at, they're part of Excalibur. Other characters move into the X-Men as those familiar faces are absent. Warren's life changes. The survivors have to figure out what happens next without the community they had before. That's what I wanted to get into with this one. I wasn't expecting the scale of it, and I wasn't expecting how much of what came afterward would grow out of it. Even after getting through the Muir Island Saga, I'm still reading characters whose lives were changed by what happened down there.