The most important member of the X-Men is the laughable former dork named Goldballs -- which may explain why he's adopted a new name to reflect his new importance. It's a strange development, but the X-Men are living in strange times.
Under new writer Jonathan Hickman, they've moved from the mainland USA to a sovereign nation on the living island Krakoa. Stranger still, Krakoa's hatchery can produce replacement clones of any dead mutant, making them effectively immortal. And that's all thanks to Fabio Medina, a.k.a. Goldballs. Or as he's now calling himself: Egg.
The mutant is a recent addition to the X-Men cast, created by Brian Michael Bendis and Chris Bachalo in 2013. In his original appearances he was a competent member of the team, but still wasn't there to be taken seriously. His powers were just as goofy as his name: he literally shot golden balls out of his chest that would bounce around with a "POINK!" When a future Deadpool tells Goldballs, "Oh, dude, you're a legend! Can I have your autograph?" in the Battle Atom, there was no reason to think it was anything but Deadpool being Deadpool.
As it turns out, Fabio really will be a legend. House of X reveals that those balls he'd been bouncing around are really unfertilized eggs. Working together with Elixir, Hope Summers, Proteus, and Tempus as the Five, he learned how to fertilize his eggs and use them to grow new mutants. These new mutants aren't just clones: they contain all their powers and every memory up to the moment of their deaths, for all intents and purposes resurrecting them.
Now that we know Goldballs' powers go far beyond producing gold balls, it's only fitting he'd change his name. The changeover happens in last week's Excalibur #1 when Betsy Braddock, the former Psylocke and the current the new Captain Britain, arrives on Krakoa. While she's there, Fabio interrupts to let her know she's needed in the Hatchery where he and the rest of the Five grow their new mutants. He corrects her when she calls him by his first name: "Oh, and by the way, I'm going by Egg now." "...Well, that's not going to stick," Betsy mutters under her breath.
That's not the only big new development in the new Excalibur reboot. Writer Tini Howard and artist Marcus To take a hard left from the high concept sci-fi of the other X books for a fantasy adventure that sees Betsy pulling together Gambit, Rogue, Apocalypse, Jubilee, Rictor, and the villainous Apocalypse into a new team to fight a mystic force from the mythical Otherworld. And the Othwerworldly witch Morgan Le Fay offhandedly drops an even bigger bombshell: the mutant race, previously thought to be Children of the Atom born in the modern Atomic Age, that so-called "Witchbreed" date back to Arthurian times. As for Egg, we'll see if Betsy is right: will the new name stick?
Excalibur #1 is on sale now from Marvel Comics.