X-Men In General

...dude.

Edited by kkhohoho on Mar 23rd 2024 at 6:30:30 AM

Believe it or not, Xavier wasn’t intended to be much older than the students originally. He was born while his parents worked on the Manhattan Project, which was the original explanation for his powers. He was supposed to be a wunderkind who had multiple doctorates etc. before he was thirty.

The creepy POWER difference remains, though.

Saying Maddie would be a healthy partner in Scott and Jean's relationship is genuinely fucking hilarious considering the toxic horrorshow Maddie's current relationship with Havok is.

More seriously, the Wolverine/Cyclops/Jean love triangle is... well, I guess the way I'd describe is that it feels like something that should've been settled and forgotten about decades ago but keeps coming up because for some reason nostalgia-obsessed writers and editors think it's some kind of important part of the characters when it's mostly just a big millstone on them. It's also a big part of why I dislike Jean because it seems like most writers have no real idea what to do with her beyond using her as a prop for Logan and Scott to fight over, regressing all their character development, and no real reason for keeping her around beyond the fact that she was on the original team.

Note that Iceman and Angel frankly almost have the exact same problem. Warren is stuck constantly repeating his Archangel arc because it's all anyone remembers about him, and it took being retconned into a gay dude for anyone to give a genuine shit about Bobby. If we're totally honest Cyclops, Beast, Professor X, and I guess Magneto are the OG Lee X-Men who properly adapted to what the franchise became one Claremont came in and did his My Real Daddy thing. Jean, Angel, and Iceman have struggled to have any real identity outside their most famous stories, stories that largely used them as props for status quo changes.

Professor X is WAY younger than most people presume him to be; Patrick Stewart playing him in the movies caused everyone to envision him as middle-aged at least, but in the comics and the animated series even he's really not that much older than the OG 5.

Edited by immortaleditor on Mar 23rd 2024 at 4:50:42 AM

I don't think it was even as big of a thing before Jean dies. It always seemed to me like Claremont only positioned Logan as a legit love interest because he was mad about marvel sidelining Madelyne.

The love triangle is a very blatant case of how absolutely toxic Wolverine's popularity is. He is so popular that he warps the characters around him and make them worse.

The movies is a good case of this considering how a lot of Cyclops and Jean's negative reputation by outside fans is due to their lackluster appearance there. The movies essentially reduce Cyclops to just the cuck Wolverine steals his girl from and Jean as just the trophy girl Wolverine gets just for being the protagonist.

The love-triangle only exists to make Wolverine look better. It has absolutely no benefit to Cyclops or Jean.

If I could I would completely kill the ship did by canonizing that Jean finds Wolverine physically revolting and would never sleep with him because the very idea makes her immediately vomit. Just machine-gun the ship dead and then blow up the corpse for good measure.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 23rd 2024 at 4:57:29 AM

Given that Cyclops abandoned his wife and baby, cheated on Jean with Emma Frost, had his own unhealth obsession with her for year, and notably married his wife because she looked like his dead ex.

WHY is Wolverine the unhealthy one in their love triangle?

Wolverine notably DID move on after they got together and married a Japanese woman. Then she died because comics and Wolverine is basically Connor Macleod.

Because Jean CHOSE Cyclops. Regardless of how toxic they are, they are still an actual relationship.

Meanwhile Jean never reciprocated Logan's advances. Only once during the Morrison when their marriage was on the rocks, and Jean enabled an affair with Logan just to make Scott jealous.

Logan is objectively a creep because he could never get over a woman not giving him the time of day over the "boy scout".

The movies showcase this perfectly as it's essentially Logan coming onto an engaged woman for no reason other than she makes him horny. And the movie enables this behavior because he's the macho badass and Cyclops is a totally lame-o who doesn't deserve a gal like Jean.

Absolutely agree with you on that. It does nothing for anyone involved. Cyclops looks like a stuffy, pathetic loser. Jean looks like a philandering hypocrite. I'd argue even Wolverine suffers for it, since it makes him look like a total asshole and homewrecker with a creepy fixation. And it doesn't help that NONE of the three have even the slightest ounce of chemistry. Scott and Logan have more chemistry with literally every love interest they've had OTHER than Jean. Hell, they've arguably had more chemistry with each other.

Edited by immortaleditor on Mar 23rd 2024 at 5:51:56 AM

That seems extreme and rather petty.

The idea Jean wasn't attracted to Logan has also been repeatedly disproven.

She just thought she should be with the Boy Scout.

Well Logan/Jean is an awful pairing, I honestly see no merit to it.

It is simply an extention of Logan's suffocating popularity where he has to be the ultra-cool gigachad who gets all the girls just cause.

All it does it drag Jean down even further and reduce her to an object for the franchise's Creator's Pet.

Again there is no merit and only harms the characters involved. It should be killed dead for the sake of the characters.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 23rd 2024 at 10:01:54 AM

The most notable interaction between Jean and Logan, pre-Phoenix, was her telling him off. Even before her death on the moon, the other major interaction was Logan making a comment about liking Jean's vicious streak, and her realizing he was right about her getting harder.

Seriously, the two of them barely interacted before she died. It was a completely one-sided attraction, which ended very early on. And yet. Claremont was justified in being annoyed at Jean's death being undone and Scott's happy ending with Maddie being pulled away, but his anger had him act pissy and suggest that Jean and Logan had some powerful mutual attraction, and he even started seeing them as being an end game relationship.

Yeah, it's a shitty ship. And so much of it is based on nostalgia, and more than that, a lot of it is based on misremembered nostalgia, because it's people thinking their relationship was far closer than it was ever actually presented as, outside the '90s cartoon and the movies. Even in the '90s, the comics made it very clear that Jean and Scott were happy, while Logan had other love interests. The cartoon made his love for Jean a big deal, and by the '00s, I think that seeped into the memories of creators.

That said, comic Jean being defined by the men around her is also somewhat exaggerated. Sure, she was married to Scott, but she was still presented as being independent and capable in her own right. Her biggest stories involved Scott, but by the same token, a lot of Scott's biggest stories in the '90s involved Jean, but I wouldn't say he was defined by his relationship to her.

Jean being defined by men is another thing that feels like it's people remembering the show and the movies, rather than the comics, which usually treated her well.

Even in the 90's cartoon, Logan more or less accepts that Jean only has eyes for Scott.

During the "Nick Fury becomes Watcher" plot, Jean Grey says the two most horrifying parts of her future, her future, your past, are her destroying two populated planets and her dating Logan. Don't remember if she said "gross" or "yuck".

It's been decades since the Dark Phoenix Saga and I think we can move past the Claremont Era for discussing Logan's longing for Jean as All Love Is Unrequited.

But the merit to Logan/Jean is pretty easy for any writer. Logan is a tormented, self-hating, long-suffering man who thinks he's a monster but is actually Lawful Good despite being the Berserker. Jean is a person who can sense the genuinely spiritual and honorable man underneath his gruff persona and is not fooled by the "I'm a vicious killer, stay away!" persona he projects. Thus Jean, more than anyone, knows the REAL Logan and that he is nothing like what people think about him.

Mind you, a lot of fans have seemingly forgotten Logan is a Dark and Troubled Past struggling with PTSD character like Rambo or John Wick rather than a less deep Liefeldian Antihero.

Well he is pretty much an authority figure on par with Cyclops now. That subversive lone wolf bit is hard to maintain when his popularity power makes him one of the primary leaders of the franchise.

Ironically he's a bigger boy scout cause he's prone to extreme moralizing and mandating over how other people show act and behave....... while going out and commiting the same murders he so vehemently criticizes others for cause "I'm the only one who can handle it".

He's a very "Do as I say, not as I do" kind of guy.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 24th 2024 at 3:57:29 AM

I suppose it depends on how we view the X-men and their views on killing now.

Cyclops was the one who made the death squad to kill the Purifers (who are child murderers) and now we have them against Orchis (who are Nazis).

Aside from Jean, I don't see any objection from most.

Yeah, Logan isn't Namor. He doesn't exist only to be an obstacle. He got positioned as a legitimate love interest because things were getting weird with Cyclops at the time.

The movies decidedly did not take this angle, which is where the confusion comes from. There it is a straight up triangle.

I do feel that Logan's pining for Jean isn't good for him.

There may be a lot more people who feel the way that Sim does.

That's not a good thing. They need to have Logan let go of this thing with Jean. Times have changed and now pining after someone like that when they're married and shit....makes you look bad.

That being said, Logan's supposed to be a bit of an ass. Most of the other heroes who aren't X-men despise him, and he often is shown to be far too willing to kill (though because he often thinks things have reached that point and there are no other options) in other books, making other heroes want nothing to do with him, at least until they get to know him a bit better.

Spider-Man wasn't a big fan of him for years, despite them working together quite often, and being part of the New Fantastic Four, even up until they were both Avengers, at least until that whole thing with Mojo screwing with them happened.

The Wasp refuses to work with him outright, considering him only a killer (and now I want to see them work together because of that).

I'm pretty sure Wonder-Man wanted to bash his face in, after Logan said they should kill Wanda Maximoff (and I think he might have actually done it too).

Of course, that's in-universe. Out of universe, his popularity is—as it often tends to be—a double edged sword.

I don't think burying him is the solution though. That's gonna set a bad precedent. If a character gets too overblown, just completely destroy them and burn everything they are to the ground? That's gonna lead to other writers copying it, doing it badly, or doing it when it's not necessary.

As always, the solution is to just dial back on the things that caused these problems.

Unless it's Dr. Druid. Fuck that guy.

Wolverine is a madman though. He doesn't revel in it(except for the 1990s, and when under the pin of writers nostalgic for the 1990s). He means well, we know. He wants to help people, especially those gifted kids at the school. He's vigilant, resourceful, skilled and all around useful, but he's still mad.

"Berserker barrages", without the aide of substances no less, are not the mark of a healthy psyche. And he's gone on such barrages against his own teammates no less! One of those times was Cyclops. Cyclops can handle it, most X-Men can handle it Still, it is a nuisance. He's at best to be treated as a quirky friend or coworker who occasionally needs his space. And on the other side of that coin Cyclops has every right to say he needs his space from Wolverine, because Wolverine is a madman. If Wolverine won't respect those boundaries, then he's crossed the line into intentional nuisance considering he gets accommodated for.

Got a lot of life experience there, could always use more of that, but not unique here. Gambit's got more of it. Those enhanced senses are reliable, Beast has those too, as do Wolfsbane, Wild Child and Warpath. Don't require much medical attention. Neither do Omega Sentinel, Danger, Mercury, Rockslide and sometimes Jubilee. He doesn't maintain the Blackbird, the plumbing, the filtration, the speaker systems, the wireless internet, the foundational integrity, the gutters, windows or siding and when it comes to public relations he's a mixed bag. He does cover gaps in security, but he also tends to create them, such as when the Canadian lumberjack could not go two days eating grubs and roots, sending whichever of his sidekicks into town to get him a plate spareribs!

Keep in mind I don't really care for Cyclops. I can see why more people would rather read about Wolverine. But let's not put Logan/James/whatever he's calling himself this month on any kind of pedestal. He doesn't deserve it.

Oh, I'm not.

As I said, he's a dick sometimes, and you've pointed out that lots of characters can do what he does. Hell, there's a world where he died instead of Thunderbird, due to their overlapping skillsets (and personalities, since both were hot-heads).

I'm just saying that we have to be realistic in how we look at the characters, and maybe be careful about just wanting to spite someone because of how they're written. Logan is an easy character to misunderstand. He's also an easy character to get. If Logan has something really awful happen to him, I want it to be because it makes sense for the story, and not just because fuck him.

Because the latter can be far too easily applied to any character.

Of course, I could easily be over-reacting. I'm a fan. We do that sometimes.

And of course in the comics Logan's been respectful of Jean and Scott's boundaries for a long time. It's only really Ultimate Wolverine that was really creepy about it — to the point of trying to murder Scott to have Jean for himself — and even he stops being creepy about it eventually.

Haven’t read it myself but going by scuttlebutt, X-Force ends with Naughty Beast sacrificing himself to save Simon, who even after all he’s done is the one person he can’t bear to discard for The Greater Good. And then Simon and Nice Beast move in together. It’s apparently all VERY gay; even Percy’s detractors think he stuck his landing pretty well.

Rise of the Powers of X #3 is out and...

Unsurprisingly, Xavier doesn't kill Moira in her childhood. He does mean to, he just gets stopped by Rachel. After which Rasputin kills Sinister/Cypher... and Xavier shoots Rachel. Oh, and Enigma acknowledges that he'll devour the AI contingent of Orchis, not elevate them to godhood. Everyone gets played, it seems. Although he's now assimilated Moira, after promising her special treatment...

“Don’t flatter yourself; you were never even a player.”