Sandbox / Weapon X-Men

Weapon X-Men is a 2024 comic book series from Marvel Comics. It's written by Christos Gage with art by Yildiray Çinar and color art by Nolan Woodard.

A middle-aged Jean Grey, in a symbiotic connection with the powers of The Phoenix, recruits variations of Wolverine from across the multiverse in order to track down the malevolent psychic entity named Onslaught, who has escaped to the spacetime continuum at large.

Weapon X-Men includes examples of the following tropes:

• Alternate Universe:
  • The one-handed Age of Apocalypse Wolverine is recruited from Earth-295.
  • According to captions, the zombified Wolverine is from Earth-2149.
  • According to captions, the overweight Earth X Wolverine is from Earth-9997.
  • Old Man Logan is from Earth-807128.
  • Jane Howlett is from Earth-1281, and from over a century in the past (1909).
• Alliance of Alternates: The team is entirely composed of different versions of Wolverine.
• Amicable Exes: In issue #2, Jean Grey visits the home of her exe, Cyclops. He's married to Madelyne, and Logan to Mariko Yashida. At the start, everyone is on speaking terms.
• Badass Normal: Nathan Summers' fiancé Amiko furiously shanks Earth-X Wolverine with a carving knife after he injures Nathan. After all, she is Logan and Mariko's (adopted) daughter.
• Big Bad: A Phoenix-infused variant of Onslaught, created from the psyches of Jean Grey (instead of Charles Xavier) and Magneto, is the main threat the team of Wolverines is chasing after.
• Big Good: A middle-aged Jean Grey with Phoenix powers from Earth-80777 is guiding the Wolverine team across realities to hunt down Onslaught.
• The Bus Came Back: The Wolverine of the Earth X setting returns for the first time since 2002's Paradise X.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: The conclusion has Onslaught gaining the cosmic power of the Phoenix from 80777 Jean Grey. Except doing so causes Onslaught to have a spiritual awakening, and so the entity and Jean end their conflict peacefully. And each of the Wolverines (except the Zombie) have come out of the entire journey more at peace with themselves and with their lives.
• Gender Flip: Mirroring the Wolverine: Origin mini-series from 2001, Jane Howlett is a female version of James Howlett (not Logan, the distinction is important), and the moment of awakening her mutant powers reflects James'.
• Happily Ever After: The final reality the Wolverine team travel to is one where Onslaught says everyone got a happy ending. On-panel, an elderly Scott and Jean walk their dog, Wolverine gifts Mariko a flower, an elderly Gambit and Rogue play with their grandchildren, and Rictor and Shatterstar are drinking coffee in an outdoor cafe.
• Heroic BSoD: Old Man Logan completely shuts down after he's forced to kill an alternate Jubilee who's been assimilated into Onslaught's Hive Mind, as it's painfully similar to the way he was tricked into killing his own world's Jubilee.
• Hive Mind: Onslaught assimilates unwilling humans and mutants into a hive-mind, and it's declared that there's no way to save them and recover their individual identities once that happens.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • In issue #2, the team goes to Phoenix's home reality in their chase againt Onslaught, and are invited to Nathan Summers' wedding party to Amiko. Onslaught hides in Nathan's mind, Earth X's Wolverine cuts off his arm to sever the connection. Bleeding to death, Warlock uses a shard of itself to create a replacement arm for Nathan with its techno-organic virus. It appears that it is unavoidable that Cyclops and Madelyne's son will lose a human arm, regardless of reality.
  • His mother Madelyne is an Aversion. She's still a clone of Jean and married Cyclops, but she seems to have no powers and they've stayed married.
• Ironic Hell: While not literal, as a resolution for Zombie Wolverine, the middle-aged Jean Grey dumps him in the reality where everyone is a Man-Thing, a swamp/vegetable creature. Thus, Zombie Wolverine cannot ever devour any flesh again.
• Mythology Gag: The series is filled to the brim with these, and Gage provides a listing of them all at the end of each issue.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: In issue #3, on seeing Dracula and Selene vanishing, Zombie Wolverine wants to be bitten by the vampire, wondering if he could be a zombie and a vampire.
• Poorly Disguised Pilot: The series's premise was first presented in the one-shot The Original X-Men (2023), by Christos Gage and Greg Land.
• Shout-Out: In issue #2, an elderly Wolverine takes his children away from the Zombie Wolverine, and laments that he let them read too much Junji Ito.
• Stumbled Into the Plot: In issue #1, Spider-Man Miles Morales is one of the sole heroes on his Earth not assimilated into Onslaught's Hive Mind. He convinces Phoenix to help evacuate all the unassimilated population to an alternate reality just before his Earth gets destroyed.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: In issue #3, Zombie Wolverine goes in for the bite on mutant vampire Selene. The woman admires Zombie Wolverine's "intelligent plan" to infect her with his zombie state, so her powers are focused on curing the virus. Zombie Wolverine simply agrees to her assessment.
• What If?: The whole premise comes off as a knockoff of the What If? animated series; specifically the "What If... The Watcher Broke His Oath?" and "What If... Strange Supreme Intervened?" episodes, with Jean Grey in the role of the Watcher, all the multiple Wolverines in place of Captain Peggy Carter, and Onslaught playing like both Ultron and Strange Supreme.
• You Are Fat: Earth-X Wolverine is repeatedly the butt of fat jokes due to his poor physical condition, to the point Zombie Wolverine accuses him of deliberately being "a tease" with his gut constantly hanging out.