Where Have All the Mutants Gone?

X-Men: The 198 Files is a fun read, a one-shot special that compiles a list of characters that the Office of National Emergency (of Marvel’s US Government) is keeping track of. These are the confirmed, surviving mutants to date (there’s this big event happening in all the X-titles right now, if you haven’t heard). It’s got short bios and power descriptions, as well as small, previously used illustrations of all the remaining heroes, villains, and civilians (I wish they’d do new, exclusive art for these sourcebook-type titles, but ehh). There are three characters per page, and it’s info-taining, but the dark blue-colored “links” are hard to read; one still has to tilt the comic book at a certain angle. Here are some of my comments on the contents:

1. Squirrel Girl is only a low-level threat? Come on. She defeated Dr. Doom, M.O.D.O.K. and Thanos! GLA is a humor book, I know, but she should’ve been considered a high threat. It did mention that she beat Dr. Doom.
2. Mr. Sinister isn’t here, so he’s depowered. Doubt it… but the baddest big bad an ex-mutant? Hmm. Wonder how that’d go.
3. Artie Maddicks isn’t here! Yay! Unless the poor kid’s dead already.
4. X-23 was a ho. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
5. They’re still hinting that Ernst (the progeriac-looking kid from Morrison’s run) is connected to Cassandra Nova (but it’s already believed that Cassandra was “reprogrammed” to learn morality using a Shi'ar entity’s body, and she’s now called “Ernst”).
6. Glad to see Lila Cheney, Sabra, Diamond Lil and Ursa Major here. They’re underused; hope someone does interesting things with them.
7. There’s a mutant codenamed “Bling!”. With exclamation point. Hokay.
8. Gateway is the great-grandfather of time-lost mutant cop Bishop. Right.
9. It's interesting that the Lehnsherrs (Magneto, Polaris, Quicksilver) were depowered, with the possible exception of, of course, mucked-up-like-Hal Jordan-Wanda.
10. Nightcrawler and Scarlet Witch have a child in an alternate future, Nocturne, and in the tradition of Cable, Stryfe, Rachel Summers, Psi-Lord and Bishop, she’s in the current reality/continuity. Hope Marvel would hook Nightcrawler and Witchy up. Wanda can finally get knocked up with her own real kid and she can wish everything back to status quo once this whole “no more mutants” storyline gets boring.

Oh, this isn’t 198-related but I read in some reviews last year that in Liefeld’s 2005 X-Force mini, Stryfe was revealed to be… the long-dead Domino! From the future! I dunno for sure how that went down, but I think I wanna read it. Morbid attraction and all that. Hehe.