Merge:Decimation



Decimation is the name of the late 2005 Marvel Comics crossover spinning out of the House of M miniseries, focusing on the ramifications of the Scarlet Witch's reality-warping abilities stripping nearly all of the mutant population of their powers, reducing a society of millions to one of scant hundreds. This event, the day when virtually all the world's mutants lost their abilities, is known as "M-Day" in the Marvel Universe.

Decimation began with the self-titled one-shot Decimation: House of M: The Day After, and heralded the relaunch of Excalibur team as New Excalibur, focusing on Pete Wisdom looking for Captain Britain to head up a new British super team, as well as the relaunch of X-Factor from the Madrox miniseries. It also includes several mini-series - Son of M starring a depowered Quicksilver, Generation M focusing on other depowered characters, Sentinel Squad O*N*E showing the latest iteration of the mutant-hunting Sentinels to be robots piloted by humans, X-Men: Deadly Genesis, and X-Men: The 198 - and continues throughout the Marvel Universe, particularly in the X-Men related titles. One consequence is an upswing of anti-mutant sentiment, especially among certain religious groups, who consider M-Day to be God's judgment against mutant kind.

It has been confirmed by various sources that there are considerably more than 198 mutants remaining - the number has been referred to as "symbolic" rather than actual. Numbers for pre-Decimation mutants vary from "over a million" (House of M #8) to 16 million (New X-Men #115, where it is said that the 16 million mutants who died on Genosha was around "half" the mutant population), giving a population, if the commonly-used 90% depowered figure is true, of between one hundred thousand and one and a half million. Beast noted shortly after the event that it is impossible for the powers to simply have vanished, and that they must have been "sent" somewhere. The result of which has recently been revealed in the form of a sentient energy being called "The Collective", who has come into violent conflict with the Avengers.



Criticism
The event was designed to reduce the number of mutant characters wandering around the Marvel Universe, which had been seen as unwieldy and also a lazy way for writers to bring in new superpowered characters, without spending the time to establish their origins. However, critics have pointed out that since most of the main mutant characters survived the Decimation intact, as did over one-hundred other mutant characters, there has been effectively no change at all, merely the illusion of change. There is still a huge supporting cast, and the vast majority of the depowered mutants were nothing but background characters anyway. The choice of the number 198 was rather arbitrary, as few fans can name 198 mutants on demand anyway. Furthermore, it has not always been clear whether a character was depowered or not. For example, in Generation M, several characters were shown to still have their physical mutation, but were still considered depowered. Arguments to the effect that Marvel is thinking more in terms of a general social change are undermined by the lack of focus on such issues in the post-Decimation titles. (Also, as Peter David pointed out in an issue of X-Factor, Marvel is using the term incorrectly: "decimation" refers to the destruction of ten percent of a group or population, and not ninety percent. However, it should be noted that in current English use, the word decimation can refer to an extreme reduction in the number of a population or force, usually far greater than the one tenth specified above.)

Notable depowered mutants
While Wizard Magazine published a list of supposedly-decimated characters, it has been confirmed by Marvel sources that the list includes mutants who still have their powers, and also includes non-mutant characters. That list therefore should not be trusted.

Mutants retaining their powers
The following is a list of known mutants who have retained their powers after M-Day. Not all of them were part of the initial 198 count, such as Darwin and Vulcan.

Throughout the 12 issue series "All New Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe" it has been made clear the powered/depowered status of multiple mutants such as Abyss (depowered) and the larger part of the Acolytes (depowered). Mutants who's status remains unclear include:


 * Bandit
 * Blaquesmith
 * Blindspot
 * Emplate
 * Femme Fatales (Knockout, Mindblast and Whiplash). The other member, Bloodlust,  was depowered.
 * Lacuna
 * Nasty Boys
 * Surrender Monkey

After her ambiguous appearance in Generation M, Mike Marts revealed Marrow to be depowered in an online interview. However, both the Marvel website and Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A to Z #7 have stated otherwise.