Snap Into Marvel– Xorn Is What Happens When A Character Seems Too Cool To Quit

Real Names: Kuan-Yin Xorn, Shen Xorn

First Appearances: New X-Men Annual 2001 (September 2001) as Kuan-Yin, X-Men (vol. 2) #157 (May 2004)

Powers And Abilities: Both Xorn brothers possess miniature celestial objects in their heads, the full impact of which is contained by the dampening helmets they wear while giving them electromagnetic and gravimetric abilities. The celestial objects also endow them with healing abilities and self-sustenance, such that they don’t need to eat or breath to survive.

Comic Book Chronicles

When you get into the “distill complicated decades-long narrative history into a handful of pithy and understandable paragraphs” game, Xorn is the kind of character who becomes your white whale, your Mount Everest. Everyone knows Spider-Man’s origin. Hulk is easy. Xorn, on the other hand, is the kind of character for which stuff like the Official Marvel Handbook or this column exist.

Xorn starts out simple enough. Introduced in the pages of Grant Morrison‘s New X-Men, Xorn was a Chinese mutant with healing abilities and a star for a brain contained by full-faced metal helmet. “Has a star for a brain” is one of those quintessential Morrison concepts, something that sounds cool as hell but makes zero sense the moment you think about it too hard.

Xorn quickly became a fan favorite, and within the pages of the comic, developed a rapport with the “special class”, those mutant teens with more grotesque or less obviously-suited-for-combat powers.

Then, in one of the best executed reveals of the modern era, Xorn took off his helmet and revealed himself to be the X-Men’s longtime foe Magneto in disguise. That helmet? Kept telepaths from discovering his identity. The fact that Professor X had regained his ability to walk earlier in the series? That was Magneto, using his powers along with some nanobots in Xavier’s spine to allow him to walk.

Taking the special class with him as his new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, Magneto set about wreaking havoc on New York in the “Planet X” story, culminating in his death by decapitation at Wolverine’s hands after Magneto killed Jean Grey.

But after “Planet X” ended, the powers at be inside the X-Men office and Marvel at large made a few key decisions. They decided:

1. They didn’t want Magneto capital-D dead.
2. Since everyone seemed to like Xorn pre-Magneto reveal so much, there should be a non-Magneto Xorn.

And so it was that Magneto was quickly resurrected in the pages of the third volume of Excalibur, and a new Xorn was introduced in Chuck Austen‘s (now just regular, no New) X-Men. This new Xorn was Shen Xorn, and he revealed that the “Magneto” the X-Men had killed was actually his twin brother, Kuan-Yin Xorn, who had decided to infiltrate the X-Men as himself pretending to be Magneto for…reasons (that partially involves John Sublime, an ancient sentient bacteria — see above re: Morrisonian concepts — who was the overarching villain of New X-Men, and the Scarlet Witch, who maybe used her reality-altering powers to make Kuan-Yin Xorn look like Magneto for further…reasons).

With Kuan-Yin Xorn dead and the real Magneto alive and well (and never a Xorn), Shen Xorn briefly joined the X-Men. Possessing a black hole for a brain (in contrast to the star-for-a-brain of his twin brother), Shen Xorn ultimately helped the X-Men defeat another iteration of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants before disappearing. He resurfaced in a few places after that, including as the puppet ruler of New Tian during the Secret Empire event.

During the X-Men’s “Krakoa Era”, Kuan-Yin Xorn was resurrected along with countless other mutants, and the brothers, using the names Xorn (Kuan-Yin) and Zorn (Shen), were enlisted by Legion to serve as failsafes against him should he ever lose control of his powers. Most recently, Kuan-Yin Xorn has appeared in the current X-Men series, serving as a healer to Cyclops’ team of Alaskan-based X-Men, essentially coming full circle around to where the character started.

To recap:

• Kuan-Yin Xorn: Star-for-brain, pretended to be Magneto, lost his head, currently on the roster of the Alaska X-Men.
• Shen Xorn: Blackhole-for-brain, never Magneto, was on the X-Men for a bit after his brother.
• Magneto: Never actually a Xorn.

Fit & Finish

Xorn isn’t a character with a ton of looks to his name; even his current appearance in X-Men is basically just a variation on his New X-Men jacket look (which was itself more of a “school uniform” kind of thing than a distinct look). As such, his base card and initial variants all feature variations on the same appearance.

If Marvel Snap is going to treat the Xorn brothers as one card and not give Shen Xorn his own card (which seems likely), there’s some wider variety future variants could explore, such as the New Tian or X-Men: Blue uniforms. I’d love to see a Xorn-as-Magneto from “Planet X” variant someday, but that would probably be too confusing.

Of the two variants Xorn gets at launch, the Creative House Pocket card appears to be original to Snap. The Frank Quitely variant, meanwhile, is taken from the cover of New X-Men #124.

Form & Function

As principally a Move card, Xorn’s Marvel Snap entry is clearly taking for its inspiration the whole “masquerading as Magneto” plotline (which, to be fair to the developers, is the easiest and least-complicated thread in Xorn’s story to look to for inspiration). Like both Polaris and Magneto, Xorn moves other cards, and like Magneto, Xorn specifically moves 3 and 4 cost cards.

What makes Xorn unique is that he moves both your cards and your opponents, and that it’s not an On Reveal card. This gives Xorn a further element of possible disruption beyond just the Move aspect (and synergy with cards like Scream and Kraven).

A turn 2 Xorn makes a lane un-Cosmo-able for turns 3-6, or can help move cards out of lane to make room for more behind Hope or Angela, or into a better lane (like playing Sage on Xorn’s card-heavy lane then moving it elsewhere). This perpetual “repel cards of a certain cost” ability feels like a nod to comic book Xorn’s celestial brain matter, and is a smart twist on the Magneto “family” Move ability.