A member of X-Force is using his authority over the Five to make some bodily changes, and he could inspire more impactful tweaks to mutantkind.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for X-Force #17 by Benjamin Percy, Joshua Cassara, Guru-eFX & VC’s Joe Caramagna, on sale now
Since the formation of the Five — consisting of Egg, Elixir, Hope, Proteus and Tempus — the X-Men have seemingly largely conquered death as a threat. This has allowed them to restore mutants who’ve died, and in some cases even improve them in minor specific ways.
As revealed in X-Force #17, one notable member of the X-Men’s black ops team, Quentin Quire, has been abusing his privileges with the resurrection capabilities of the Five, and he’s hinted at their true potential in the process.
Since joining X-Force and doing his part to help Krakoa, Quentin Quire has found himself repeatedly thrown into life-threatening scenarios that he doesn’t end up actually escaping. No one has died as many times as quickly as Quire has, which means that he’s gotten pretty used to the resurrection protocols and how they allow the Five to restore dead mutants to life. Because of his recent run-ins with death, Quire has gotten very used to the process and its full potential. And with his connection to X-Force giving him a certain amount of authority over the Five, Quire has taken to making some more specific adjustments to his resurrection.
This includes changing his natural hair color to be pink or rose gold, eliminating specific hair follicles across his body to remove the need to shave, and even adjusting his eyesight to 20/20, giving him perfect vision. While some of these — such as the improved vision — have a justifiable reason to be carried out due to his often strenuous responsibilities, the Five note that many of these changes are “absurd” and a waste of their valuable time and energy.
However, this does raise some interesting questions about the potential of the Five to change how mutants live going forward. Genetic manipulation on mutants especially has been a long-running and dark element of X-Men stories, but now the X-Men have the means to affect their own genealogy in positive ways.
If the Five are restoring someone already, there’s no reason not to make certain changes for better health, especially if so requested by the mutant being revived. This could allow the mutant population to eliminate genetic problems like genetic diseases, effectively finding a way to eliminate some ailments from the mutant genome. The Five are already toying with the DNA of other mutants whenever they revive them, and Quire’s requests ask them to take that to a more ambitious level. This could even result in the reborn mutants being given a physical advantage over their previous forms, not unlike the genetic experiments of a character like Mister Sinister. The fact that, for the most part, mutants would be capable of giving their consent over any changes removes some of the moral hang-ups that have prevailed in many of the other times mutants have been used in this way.
If this practice becomes widespread, the Five — who write that changing genetic code does take some effort — deem it a good enough reason, this could be a major piece of making mutants even more collectively impressive, even potentially making powers like super-strength of healing factors commonplace. Quire may be abusing the Five’s powers for his own personal cosmetic enjoyment, but there’s a lot of potential here in changing how the mutant race grows going forward, especially if it begins to address matters beyond the cosmetic ones that Quire has been calling on and help mutants achieve their full potential. There are still plenty of minor elements of the resurrections that need to be figured out, but Quire’s antics tease at the kinds of changes that the X-Men’s resurrection protocols could really be capable of making.
