X-Men In General

Giant-Sized X-Men: Jean Grey and Emma Frost comes out this Wednesday and this is a new variant cover for C2E2. And I think we can say that the subtext is rapidly becoming, uh, text.

Even if his run turns out to suck in the end I will always be grateful to Hickman for finally burying the hatchet on the extremely uninteresting Logan-Jean-Scott-Emma love quadrangle.

Introducing that whole mess was not one of Grant Morrison's finer moments.

Edited by HamburgerTime on Feb 23rd 2020 at 8:55:37 AM

The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."

Morrison's run is famous for reversing the "mutants always lose" trope. It had a positive view of the mutant's future when Xavier adjusted his tactics after Genosha. (Decimation was imposed by editorial after he left.) Before it came to an end, mutants apparently were winning in Life 2. The point is, there's no stealth genocide by Sentinel that you were proposing, so there shouldn't have been one in Life 1 either.

Again, no stealth genocide by Sentinels. You yourself said the X-Men defeated them. (Destiny was actually talking about Moira being chained.) Destiny feared the potential of the cure, but she and the Brotherhood prevented it from being used in that or any other life, ergo a win for mutants.

A.I. and Sentinels may be inevitable, but that doesn't mean they'll win. I won't accept a character's statement at face value when it's contradicted by the actual events on the page.

No, it didn't. In fact, mutants end up worse off than before at the end of his run. In fact, in "Here Comes Tomorrow," we even see another Bad Future, one that Jean herself has to prevent by going back in time and getting Scott and Emma together. (Yeah, it's weird and kinda gross.)

The X-Men always defeat the Sentinels and the Sentinels always come back. That's kind of the point. Just because there wasn't any genocide at the time of Moira's death doesn't mean that there wouldn't be in the future. After all, if things went perfectly fine in the future, why would Destiny kill her? Destiny knows the future and she knows Moira's death resets the timeline and she intentionally kills her to reset things.

Really? I tend to take what characters say at face value unless they are explicitly tricksters or liars. And nothing that Moira stated is contradicted by what we see in the book:

• Life 1: No idea what happens to mutants, could be genocided in the future.
• Life 2: No idea what happens to mutants, could be genocided in the future.
• Life 3: Moira killed by Destiny since Destiny can see the future and does not care for it (i.e. probably genocide).
• Life 4: Moira meets Xavier and helps him with the X-Men. Mutants genocided by Sentinels.
• Life 5: Moira meets Xavier and convinces him to isolate mutants from humans with Faraway. Mutants genocided by Sentinels.
• Life 6: Mutants fight against Sentinels in a long, drawn out war, but eventually post-humanity takes over and cages the last two mutants before trying to ascend to technological godhood.
• Life 7: Moira kills the entire Trask family, but Sentinels are still created and genocide mutants.
• Life 8: Moira teams with Magneto, but is stopped by Avengers and X-Men. No idea what happens to mutants, could be genocided in the future.
• Life 9: Moira teams with Apocalypse, which results in a long, drawn out war with Sentinels. The same "black brain" hound Cylobel that shows in Life 8 also shows up in Life 6 suspended in ferrofluid, so some things appear to be inevitable. Mutants definitely genocided.
• Life 10: Now.

Once again, some things appear inevitable. Cylobel's body appears in both Life 6 and Life 8. Nimrod appears in Life 6, 9, and 10. Sentinels appear in 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, and 10. The only ones we don't know about were the ones where Moira dies before any genocide happens — which doesn't mean "no genocide," since we see in some timelines, the genocide takes place over a hundred or a thousand years.

Edited by alliterator on Feb 24th 2020 at 9:06:30 AM

On a new topic, saw a post on SD about the 7th issue of X-Men:

Wow. That's classy.

For those who didn't click, it's about Wanda, aka the Pretender. It's nice they're teaching kids to...despise someone driven insane by things beyond her control.

It's like they are trying to forget all the mitigating factors. I'm not even sure if I want Wanda to be a mutant again.

Also, how is she a pretender when both Xavier and Magneto identified her and Pietro as Mutants?

One Strip! One Strip!

So yeah the X-Men are a cult I guess.

Then again no one likes Wanda’s anyway.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

Just make her a mutant again and Magneto's daughter again, because all these retcons were shit.

I don’t think that will make her anymore likable.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

Just don't have the usual numbskulls derail her again.

Who says she's unlikeable?

She was driven insane by circumstances beyond her control, and helped to fix it alongside Hope.

The mutants are holding a grudge (understandably), but they act like she deliberately tried to destroy them, and has deliberately been pretending to be a mutant.

And they are twisting children to feel the same way.

One Strip! One Strip!

Boy I can't wait for someone to nuke Krakoa (preferably without killing all the mutants again) from orbit and "Xavier" to drop all pretenses of being sane.

Stella ~Part 3 (Atelier Shallie)

...I don't want that either.

I just want them to stop being jerks.

I swear, everyone in marvel is a jerk these days.

One Strip! One Strip!

But X-Men are jerks to humans & humans deserve it.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

Yeah, well make the humans stop being jerks.

I've said the mutant hate is ridiculous at this point (they've been at the genocide all the mutants stage forever now).

There should have been progress. I know it feels like race relations in the real world have taken a million steps back sometimes (because god knows they probably have), but comics have the advantage of showing us how things can be better....and they aren't doing that.

They especially can't do that if they nuke Krakoa, indicating the mutants shouldn't have tried in the first place.

JUST. MAKE. THINGS. BETTER.

One Strip! One Strip!

As regards cultiness, I must reiterate my big concern: that their shiftiness is being played up so that the narrative can come down on the side of the "hated and feared" status quo being preferable to Krakoa, and the X-Men having Gone Too Far™ in their quest for, y'know, basic dignity. That Hickman loves the characters there's no doubt, but he's also a middle-aged white guy and after such harebrained attempts at Seeing Both Sides™ as Spencer Cap I can't help but be nervous.

Hope that all makes sense.

The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."

Can we, like, not call for Krakoa to get nuked? Like, seriously? It's honestly kind of ridiculous. I mean, Krakoa doesn't have any any more spotty a record when compared to a lot of real world countries (less, probably) and we aren't calling for them to get nuked.

Seriously guys, that's a little fucked up.

Edited by KarkatTheDalek on Feb 26th 2020 at 9:16:04 AM

Oh God! Natural light!

You say that like humans aren't jerks in real life. They are. A lot of them.

Then the story is over. Make everything perfect and you have no more story to tell. The world becomes a utopia and nothing bad ever happens and nobody is a jerk to any mutants and everyone lives happily ever after.

Instead, Hickman is telling a story about how the mutants are making things better for themselves, but doing it in a very, very questionable way. There is a reason that most of Issue 7 is framed by Cyclops and Nightcrawler having a conversation about Crucible, about how they think it might be wrong, but that it's not up to them, about how Nightcrawler has so many questions about their new home and no answers. Nobody is saying that what the X-Men are doing is perfectly right and a-okay — but, at the same time, they are making things better for themselves and, hell, even making things better for humans via the three drugs.

Would you want them to throw all that out and keep striving for some vague dream of human/mutant co-existence? A dream that has died over and over again?

Issue 7 is pretty fucking great, because it doesn't frame what they are doing as good or bad. Yes, they are blaming the Scarlet Witch for depowering a million mutants — because she did that. (Keep in mind that her being possessed by Cthon was a later retcon and probably not very many people know it.) Yes, the Crucible involves a depowered mutant fighting Apocalypse to the death so that they can be resurrected, but at the same time it's their choice, they can choose to live as human, Apocalypse even states that there is nothing wrong with that◊, or, if they want, they can go through the Crucible.

And yes, it is a little creepy and a lot cult-y, but you know how Lenil Francis Yu tends to draw Storm with completely white eyes? When Melody Guthrie is resurrected and Storm greets her, her eyes are completely normal.◊ There is a reason that they do this, that they feel better when they do this.

Again: not saying it isn't wrong to question things, like, you know, Apocalypse and Exodus and Sinister, but also how cult-y things are. But at the same time — if you could live a better life in a paradise island with other people like you, wouldn't you?

Also, in this issue, Nightcrawler finally asks the question of souls, like "Are our souls merely waiting for our empty vessels when we resurrect or do they move on? How do I know I'm really me?" And considering Nightcrawler was resurrected before without a soul, that's a pretty interesting question.

By the way, this is a great conversation to read in terms of the issue and they discuss a lot of what the issue is about and what it means to them.

Edited by alliterator on Feb 26th 2020 at 6:58:44 AM

Also Icarus is back. Yay?

The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."

"Make things better" does not mean "make things perfect".

My thoughts:

• Exodus talks about the depowering like it's a Fate Worse than Death and ignores the actual problem with Wanda depowering people. Namely, that some of them died without powers to protect them.

• You'd think the Krakoans would be more sympathetic to someone with power flare-ups. How many people have died every time a mutant manifests a power they couldn't control?

• I very much agree with these two comments from the scans daily page:
  • "They decide what's right for all of us." Because obviously Benet Du Paris has never decided to do something for what he felt was The Greater Good against the wishes of others.

Like trying to euthanize Charles Xavier, for example.

and

• Apocalypse created two worlds that drove mutants to extinction or very near to. Three, if you count Cable's world.

Glass houses, Exodus.

In which case, I say that: they are making things better. Just not in the way you think they should.

Because to him it is a Fate Worse than Death.

To be fair, I don't think Apocalypse really knows anything about the Age of Apocalypse world and how things were there. This Apocalypse seems like his credo — the "survival of the fittest" — has all been about making mutantkind strong enough to take control of their own destiny/the world. Which they are doing now, what with Krakoa and the Five, so Apocalypse sees no need to kill mutants anymore (I mean, he's still doing so during the Crucible, but with the knowledge that they come back to life).

Edited by alliterator on Feb 26th 2020 at 9:45:05 AM

I loved all of that commentary of the morality of resurrection, but the biggest thing I got from this issue is that Scott and Logan are definitely boinking.

I will say this much for Hickman’s run:

He’s got me paying attention.

He’s got me cheering for the X-men to win this despite wincing at some of their actions.

I may not like everything about Krakoa, but I like it enough to want to see it succeed, and even when I argue against the direction the X-men are taking in universe, I can’t deny it makes sense, and that from a meta perspective it’s great.

One Strip! One Strip!

new event x of swords pronounced ten of swords. its pretty much what you expect all the x-men get swords.

They become the Espada?

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."