X-Men In General

Oof.

That's sad.

They should still kick him out. I think he's left them no choice.

Also finished reading Dead X-Men #4 and Rachel discovered Xavier's Plan C involves "manifesting the Phoenix on a scale never before accomplished" but other than that nobody knows the details nor the actual endgame and it all comes across as Xavier betraying everyone left and right. There's also more crapping on Xavier and how he betrayed his own dream by this miniseries' cast in a spread. Ironically, Xavier developing a God Complex and even worse willingness to sacrifice others but himself for the "Bigger Picture" like this was the one thing Namor and Doom said he needed for Krakoa to be able to exist long term only for it to be his undoing at the hands of the X-Men. Another irony in this issue is that it's actually Rachel who had a better idea of manifesting the Phoenix via Prodigy lugging the M'Kraan Crystal across nearly all of Moira's lifetimes and across the Moiraverse actually powering it up. Now they just have to force Xavier to accept this plan w/c will climax on Rise of the Powers of X #4.

Edited by KRider on Apr 17th 2024 at 4:37:51 AM

I'm also genuinely shocked that Xavier wasn't cut off after Deadly Genesis. Bear in mind, that also came almost immediately after the revelation about Danger and her origins, which already put him on the outs with everyone. Frankly, the day that everyone gets fed up with Charles and cut him out of their life, his position as the family patriarch fully and utterly destroyed for good, was a long time coming. I just wish it was happening in a better written way.

The mention of Danger here is also reminding of that brilliant scene in the Wheadon run where Cyclops rightly calls out Xavier for how he shits on sentinels/robots/AI/transhumans in the same way humans do on mutants, which feels like an eerily prescient Take That! at how Duggan has ripped all the moral nuance out of things and removed any potential sympathy for the robots and humans.

Edited by immortaleditor on Apr 17th 2024 at 4:42:38 AM

OK, read it. Chuck telepathically tells Scott that he needs Orchis to trust him "for now," but Scott cuts him off before he can say more. So it's possible it's a ruse. Though Chuck does pull a rather nasty Psychic-Assisted Suicide on some astronauts to please Nimrod so I dunno.

...so Xavier might be pulling a scam.

But he's still leaving the X-Men out of it, which has been an issue of his, so again, I'm not shocked they're just ignoring him.

He's long since past the point where he gets the benefit of the doubt, but we'll see if his plan works out.

Given everything that's happened, would Xavier count as a deconstruction of the trope Unspoken Plan Guarantee?

TBF, he did try to explain the plan to Cyclops, but Cyclops cut him off.

And here's where he explains the plan to the White Hot Room Team! So yeah, Traitor Chuck was a false alarm, it was really 4D chess, everyone act surprised.

Still sucks for those astronauts though.

Edited by HamburgerTime on Apr 19th 2024 at 11:31:44 AM

The fact that we're getting this explanation of Xavier ensuring all the mutants he causes the deaths of will come back and his betrayal is all for the good of Krakoa but at the same time, nobody seems to give a shit about those human astronauts he casually murked is kinda highlighting a major and recurring bit of Protagonist-Centered Morality the series sometimes suffers from - even under good writers - where bad things that happen to mutants are treated like the worst thing ever while bad things that happen to humans and machines are at best moved on from like it's not a big deal, at worst treated as an unfortunate necessity or some such.

Like, we can't go five minutes without getting reminded of the Genoshan Massacre or the slaughter of the Morlocks but none of the same attention and moralizing is ever given to stuff like Dark Angel making Genocide nuke a town of innocent humans or what happened to Terra Verde in X-Force.

It's rather annoying to me that we never got a Call-Back to Hickman's "look what they've done" scene where a bunch of mutant extermination events are listed off, a reversal of that where we're given a list of mutant-on-human or mutant and human-on-sentinel massacres.

Xavier killing off those astronauts is actually what got Cyclops and the rest of the X-Men pissed off enough that they refused to listen to him anymore. So claiming nobody cared about those astronauts, especially the X-Men, is very misleading at best.

Edited by KRider on Apr 19th 2024 at 3:36:25 AM

https://comicbook.com/comics/news/x-men-from-the-ashes-magneto-new-look-beard/#1

Three different covers for X-Men: From the Ashes have been previewed and Magneto is apparently sporting a moustache and beard now.

Unpopular opinion time: I feel like I understand Xavier a lot. I don’t SYMPATHIZE with everything he’s done lately, of course, but Prodigy put it best in this week’s Dead X-Men when he characterized the Prof. as someone who believes only the big picture matters.

And you know, I think that’s brilliant. Xavier is, if anything, TOO good; he focused so much on achieving his ideals eternally into the future that he forgets about the here and now. So why care about a few charbroiled astronauts today if their deaths give way to a great tomorrow that lasts unto eternity, right?

I’m saying this because I struggle with anxiety about “the big picture” a lot myself. I feel too few in the world truly care about it, and wrestle with the question of what I can best do for it frequently.

I’m not saying what he’s doing is right, but I get him, I really do, and it bums me out a lot to see the fandom acting like he’s the Devil.

There’s my piece said. Let the mud fly.

Edited by HamburgerTime on Apr 20th 2024 at 5:50:31 AM

I don't think he's the devil. I just wish Charles didn't keep betraying everyone while trying to save them.

He definitely has a savior complex. He and ONLY he can be the savior, ergo everything he does is justified.

Xavier's had a savior complex for a very long time. As does Magneto. They're both obsessed with the idea of being the hero of mutantkind.

In Magneto's case he's a Jewish Holocaust survivor. He's experienced firsthand the lengths and barbarity bigots will go to in order to exterminate entire groups of minorities that they don't like. And it didn't just began and end w/ Nazis either w/ regards to Jews as Magneto also worked for Mossad for a time and besides being a Nazi Hunter, he most likely encountered and fought Arab terrorists who were (and still are in real life) hellbent on not only destroying the nation of Israel but exterminating every Jew they can find as well as Soviet elements who in real life fanned the flames of antisemitism in the Arab and leftist worlds ever since Israel declined to ally w/ them. And he also experienced the Karma Houdini nature of bigots, especially white bigots, bec of things like Operation Paperclip. He also definitely witnessed and experienced the bigotry his Romani wife Magda experienced, w/c was not only as bad and as long as the historical 2000-year persecution of Jews worldwide, Roma also experience extreme persecution in real life (and still do to this day) and they have the bad luck of not having their own heavily-armed nation to act as a refuge.

In contrast, Charles Xavier lived a pretty privileged life and in fact the early days of the franchise him being a Mutant wasn't actually public knowledge until his twin sister Cassandra Nova outed him.

Yeah, but Magneto's Freudian Excuse doesn't change what I said. He's always had just as much of a savior complex and ego as Xavier. It may come from a different place, but the people he murdered in pro-mutant terrorist attacks probably don't much care to hear how the man killing them and prattling about exterminating mankind had a really sad backstory and saw bad shit happen.

Magneto is ultimately more of the avatar of Israel's real life belief of Never Again. A belief that's been brought about because of 2000 years of persecution and attempted exterminations over and over again across the entire political spectrum, something that none of us have ever experienced and hopefully never do. And it's a belief that's been reinforced once again on Oct 7, 2023 and is constantly being reinforced to this very day. Xavier on the other hand is more like a sheltered intellectual who hasn't experienced the same degree of persecution and danger his entire life and he comes across as a college graduate who wants to impose his beliefs on everyone else.

Fall of X also highlighted the main difference between them. Magneto has regret, knows the names of his victims and tries to do better when possible. In fact, Magneto's been trying to do that ever since Chris Claremont started writing him. Xavier refuses to listen to anyone and keeps insisting his way is the only way and acts surprised when that thinking is used against him and whenever people call him out on his BS.

Edited by KRider on Apr 20th 2024 at 7:05:33 AM

I mean, he also wants to help people.

I'm kinda disappointed in Chuck as well, but he's always wanted to help people.

He saw that if something wasn't done, Mutants and Humans would destroy each other, so he tried to foster peace.

He's kinda an asshole, but he's still trying to do good.

Edit: You added more while I was posting. I also agree with that.

Edited by HandsomeRob on Apr 20th 2024 at 7:05:20 AM

Should I put the 2nd paragraph on a 2nd post or keep it as is? I slow down whenever I type when I have a stream of thoughts in my head and I have a hard time keeping up w/ the responses.

In other news, Ultimate X-men 2 came out and had Mei join Hisako. With a familar powerset.

Do note that there is already a Storm in Ultimate Black Panther and that I think the charterer was original for a line of alt covers featuring hypothetical kid sidekicks to the 616 heroes.

Yup Maystorm is a character Peach Momoko created for one of the New Champion covers as Storm's hypothetical sidekick.

Yeah, the idea seems to be that in 6160, Maystorm heard about actual Storm in Africa and became a big fan of her.

I wish they gave Storm her own book, or have her join the Ultimates.

The fact she's still tied to Black Panther even in an entirely new universe is annoying.

What if they both join the Ultimates?