If you can't stop a violent killer whale or his vengeance-minded son, what do you do?
Call in... a psychic... whale hunter?
I'm not sure how telekinetically launching the harpoon is better than doing it by hand, but this guy seems cool and collected, right? My lack of background detail and color doesn't give us many clues about what time of day it is, but there's a decent chance he's wearing those sunglasses strictly for fashion purposes.
The subtitle “Free Your Mind” is a reference to the En Vogue song, which I think we were playing in band that year. That's probably where the psychic idea came from as well.
The X was of course the Roman numeral for 10, but also more than likely a reference to “Malcolm X,” which came out in 1992, the year before this burst of creativity (which sounds a lot better than “waste of time and notebook paper”) was happening. I never saw it; I probably just liked the weird juxtaposition of an Oscar-nominated movie about a real person with my fake whale movie franchise.
I'm not sure I made the connection between psychic powers, mutants and the letter X, but you know who did? Grant Morrison.
In 2002's “New X-Men” #129, the mysterious Fantomex informs Professor X and Jean Grey that the X in the Weapon X program that laced Wolverine's skeleton with adamantium was actually the Roman numeral rather than the letter. If nothing else, it provided some relief from all those coincidental X's floating around the mutant corner of the Marvel Universe.
Weapon X was just one iteration of the Weapon Plus program that, as Marvel lore has it, began with the super-soldier serum that created Captain America. Fantomex himself was Weapon XIII (if the Marvel Fandom wiki is to be believed). The 2019 Wolverine & Captain America: Weapon Plus one-shot delivered a blackboard full of Easter eggs tying Marvel characters and concepts like Man-Thing, Luke Cage, Venom, Nuke and even Brute Force to the program.
Some of these connections may have been referenced previously or elaborated upon elsewhere. The one that stands out to me the most is Weapon II, who appeared in the 2016 Squirrel Girl-Howard the Duck crossover where a variety of animalistic characters were hunted by the Cosplay Billionaire.
In his debut in “Unbeatable Squirrel Girl” #6, this diminutive living weapon announces he's “the best there is at what I do, but mostly what I do is gather nuts for winter.” He has claws and talks like Wolverine, but apparently precedes Wolverine by eight generations. So is he like Wolverine or is Wolverine like him? (Trust me, this wouldn't even be the weirdest Wolverine origin theory out there.)
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