Here Comes Tomorrow

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Here Comes Tomorrow is the climactic eighth story arc in Grant Morrison's run on the Marvel Comics series New X-Men, which ran from issues #151-154. The storyline featured many controversial elements, such as Cyclops moving forward with his relationship with Emma Frost (prompted by his dead wife, no less), the Stepford Cuckoos being revealed as a development in the Weapon Plus Program, John Sublime being a sentient bacteria bent on bringing evolution to a halt and confirming the subtle hints that the Xavier Institute student Ernst and Cassandra Nova are the same person.

The Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe: Alternate Universes has given the numerical designation of Earth-15104 to the Here Comes Tomorrow timeline.

[edit] Plot

In the far future, human X-Man Tom Skylark evades a pack of Crawlers (foot soldiers genetically engineered from Kurt Wagner's DNA, along with the powers of three other X-Men) amongst the ruins of the X-Mansion. His Sentinel partner, Rover, dispatches the Crawlers. Tom is met by E.V.A., a representative of the Xavier Institute, now an interspecies organization. Together, they transport the Phoenix Egg, found on the moon, to the X-Men's secure headquarters in the Manhattan Crater. But a Crawler has hitched a ride inside the compound, replicating itself with Multiple Man DNA and attacking with the force of an army with Cyclops DNA. E.V.A. and Tom are rescued by the efforts of a bird-man named Tito (descended from Beak's children), but the Phoenix Egg is teleported back to the Crawlers' master and creator: The Beast, a white-haired Henry McCoy.

The "Three-in-One" Stepford Cuckoos relate the downfall of human civilization throughout history to Wolverine, which Cassandra Nova adds recent bad omens to. She says that something in the past went wrong to give the Earth such a dystopic future, but no one knows what exactly. 150 years in the past, at the gravesite of Jean Grey, Cyclops gives up on superheroics and changing humanity, turning down Emma Frost's offer to re-open the Xavier Institute.

Back in the future, Tom Skylark relates how the Proud People of the Starlight City, the last free outpost in Europe, fell to Apollyon the Destroyer, herald of the Beast. Their sacrifice allowed him to escape with the Phoenix Egg, but Tom laments his losing it. E.V.A asks him to join the X-Men for one last direct assault against the Beast. The Cuckoos speak before Wolverine and Cassandra Nova of the consequences of defeat: genetic enslavement by the Beast, loss of all natural evolution and species propagation. When asked to look hard and unblinking at the future, the Cuckoos see judgment by the Phoenix. As Beast hatches Jean Grey from the Phoenix Egg, she recognizes him as Henry, but he says he is much older than that, that now his name is Sublime.

The Phoenix annihilates the terminds, an insect species, in Panafrika, but an encounter with X-Men liaison Bumbleeboy spurs old memories in Jean's mind, calling Beast's plans of destruction into question. At the edges of Beast's Transatlantis territory, the X-Men engage the Crawler army, but despite a minor victory, Wolverine sees Jean Grey amidst the reinforcements, clad in a revealing black variant of her Dark Phoenix outfit. Logan shows Jean the truth of Beast's history: John Sublime was a host for the Sublime bacteria, a sentient lifeform billions of years old that infected countless species and sowed aggression and conflict to ensure its genetic dominance, so that no one one species would ever be hardy enough to outlast it. U-men, super-sentinels, nano-viruses, etc. all created by an underlying disease. When Scott Summers left the Institute, Hank McCoy tried to manage things, but things fell apart, and when he tried Kick to cope with the stress, he was infected by Sublime (the true nature of the drug).

As the X-Men fight out their battles, Jean Grey removes Sublime from Beast's body, briefly returning him to normal. But seconds later, he is decapitated by Apollyon, who promptly unmasks, revealing himself to be Fantomex. In an extra-dimensional plane within the ancient M'Kraan Crystal called the White Hot Room, numerous other hosts of the Phoenix (including Quentin Quire) instruct Jean, now dressed in a white and gold version of her Phoenix costume, thus establishing her as the White Phoenix of the Crown, to repair the broken timeline. Reaching back in time, Jean pushes Scott "to live." Cyclops agrees to re-open the Institute, and stand side by side with Emma Frost for the future.

[edit] Major consequences and revelations

• Cyclops accepts to become the new Headmaster of the Xavier Institute.
• It is revealed that Sublime is a sentient bacteria and that the drug Kick, consumed by Kid Omega and Xorn, was Sublime's means to infect mutants.
• It is revealed that Ernst and Cassandra Nova are one and the same, and that Martha Johansson is No-Girl.
• The Stepford Cuckoos are revealed as Weapon XIV
• The so-called Judgement of the Phoenix, to burn away what does not work, was to destroy Sublime for being an evolutionary dead end.
• Sometime after repairing the damaged timeline, Jean Grey was prematurely ressurected by the Phoenix Force, but later returned to the White Hot Room to restore it and herself. However a fragment of the Force remained with the Stepford Cuckoos.

[edit] Modern characters referenced

Many characters from the modern X-Men/Marvel timeline were shown to be alive or have someone carrying on their legacy in this possible future timeline, whether as direct references, red herrings, or plot twists:

• Hank McCoy and John Sublime as The Beast
• Ernst as Cassandra Nova Xavier, still paired with Martha Johansson, also known as No-Girl.
• Juston Seyfert and his Sentinel as Tom Skylark and Rover.
• Nightcrawler as the Beast's teleporting "Crawler" henchmen, additionally equipped with the powers of Archangel, Cyclops, and Multiple Man.
• Fantomex as Apollyon the Destroyer, the last and greatest of the U-Men, and his autonomous nervous system, E.V.A. as an A.I. humanoid.
• Beak's grandson Tito serves in the X-Men.