#x-men morph

SCRMABLED THOUGHTS BELOW

I SCREAMED A LITTLE SCREAM WHEN I OPENED THIS PACKAGE.

They are so cute!!!!!!

There's a mini-series coming out taking place in the Age of Apocalypse, with Morph as part of the main cast!

For those mostly familiar with the cartoon, Age of Apocalypse was a crossover event for all the X-Books back in the 90's that explored an alternate world where Charles Xavier was killed before forming the X-Men - like "One Man's Worth" in the cartoon. (Spoiler - turns out everything sucks. Apocalypse takes over despite Magneto forming the X-Men to honor Charles' memory, and all the good guys are basically resistance fighters in a dystopian nightmare world.)

This was also the series that (re)introduced Morph into the comics. TAS series Morph was loosely based on the obscure, long-dead heroically-redeemed villain Changeling, and Morph in Age of Apocalypse was an AU version of Changeling. (And that is absolutely canon - Morph in AoA is identified as the former Changeling, pretty much every version of Morph can be seen as an AU of Changeling, except Benamin Deeds, a different character with slightly different powers.) AoA Morph had a new character design (one which continued into Exiles and then influenced Morph's design in X-Men 97), but also had a completely new, silly, happy-go-lucky personality that was obviously influenced by TAS Morph.

Age of Apocalypse Morph started out, in Rogue's words, as "that morse lil' Changeling," but apparently had a change of heart and complete change of personality and started acting like a wacky cartoon character. The most well-known and popular comics Morph is probably the guy from Exiles, who is not AoA Morph, but is another AU Kevin Sydney variant who lived a much happier life, was never Changeling, and joined the New Mutants as a kid (but is so similar to AoA Morph that AoA Blink initially mistook him for the Morph that she knows).

Anyway, I am delighted that revisiting the Age of Apocalypse means we get more Morph, even if it's only in a mini-series. I do think it's VERY interesting that the Morph on the cover there is wearing a costume that looks more like Morph from TAS/X-Men 97, rather than the costume he wore in the original AoA series:

Feel like there's definitely some X-Men 97 synergy happening with that costume change. Maybe someday we'll actually get Kevin Sydney back and alive in the 616 universe? I can dream.