Uncanny Avengers Spoilers: Delusions of Future Past

In today's issue of Uncanny Avengers, Rick Remender and John Cassaday's Avengers vs. X-Men spinoff Avengers title, Havok and Scarlet Witch took center stage and were treated to horrifying psychic visions of a Days of Future Past-flavored future. Among other things, Remender brings back the social undertones of the X-Men in a big, bad way, suggesting that under his regime, he'll target ostensibly universal rights and strip them from mutants--rights like marriage, voting and shared public utilities. While the "public utilities" bit is a bit dated, both the marriage rights and the right to vote are very much in the headlines as things being denied to segments of the populace. That's not the only thing he brings back, though, and the other will turn a few heads in comic book circles. As anyone who's been reading the book knows, the longtime Captain America villain has turned in his Cosmic Cube lust for an interest in Charles Xavier's brain. Having stolen it out of the mutant leader's corpse, he's been using it to approximate Xavier's powers, including but not limited to telepathy, mind control and the ability to detect mutants.

For Xavier, it isn't the first time his powers have been turned against his cause of racial harmony (although having it be a Nazi who's using the powers now might gall the previous one, a survivor of concentration camps). Shortly after he "mind-wiped" Magneto back in the '90s, Xavier found himself struggling for control of his body and powers with Magneto's psyche, of which he had essentially made a backup copy and then tried to keep it stored away in the back of his own mind. The result was a powerful villain called Onslaught, who betrayed the X-Men and went on the warpath, only to finally be killed when the collective sacrifice of more than a dozen of Marvel's non-mutant superheroes took him out. Over the course of the story, Onslaught took on a persona of his own and grew from a dysfunctional part of Xavier's/Magneto's brain into a being all his own, using the pair's powers without their consent. And now, another bad guy has come around who thinks he can harness the power and wear that silly red-and-purple psychic armor. Yep, folks--Onslsaught is back. Any questions?