Nation X #3 (2010): Diamond Lil dies

The third installment of this anthology series continues to show how hard it is for mutants to accept each other in their Utopia after having been outcasts for so long, and even to accept their roles as citizens in a larger nation-state. It’s all fine–short stories that are quick reads–but there’s little that matters except for story #3, by Chris Yost and Karl Moline. And it’s creepy AF. Diamond Lil arrives on Utopia, where her ex-husband Madison Jeffries is not thrilled to see her. They have several public quarrels but then eventually end up sleeping together on the floor in a sub-basement. It appears that they’ve reconciled but… Did Madison Jeffries murder Diamond Lil? …It appears that, off-screen, Jeffries murders her and submerges her body. If you didn’t read the caption boxes carefully here, you’d have missed the death of a long-standing (albeit minor) character–as well as the reemergence of all the bad sides of Jeffries that many (like me) have been wondering about. I note that her death happens during Selene’s invasion of Utopia, where it appears she was killed by Mortis. But I like my version more.