X-Men In General

It's still hilarious just how HARD Romulus has been all but utterly wiped from the canon. With good reason, given how absolutely terrible he was. The only aspect of him and his story that's ever so much as acknowledged is Daken, and even than, any role Romulus is studiously unmentioned in any discussion of Daken's life and history.

I like the idea of Victor being Logan's brother much more, and I'm genuinely shocked that wasn't the connection they went with for the comics considering how good it worked in the movies.

Edited by immortaleditor on Apr 22nd 2024 at 1:47:05 AM

Romulus turned up in some of Percy's time travel scenes but, as you say, apart from Daken he's ignored.

Maybe in a decade's time he'll be rehabilitated as a Spider-Man villain, as payback for Krakoa doing the same thing to the much-loathed Judas Traveller.

I'm slightly surprised Krakoa didn't even try to reuse Romulus or Remus. She always seemed slightly more interesting than her brother. If you dialled down the fanservice and dialled up the manipulative immortal side.

Huh Daken was introduced in the same run as Romulus?

they already have selene at home they dont need remus

So I'm gonna get in on this Logan's Healing Factor discussion.

Now, as I recall, the buffing of his healing factor first happened when he got the Adamantium Skeleton removed by Magneto. Without having to work on the constant Adamantium poisoning, it skyrocketed in effectiveness (and turned him beastial for a bit). Now the issue is, that when he got the Adamantium back, no one scaled back the healing factor again in response.

You could argue that, even with his adamantium skeleton back, since his body was used to it and his healing factor had grown stronger, the Adamantium poisoning was less of an issue, but I don't know if that's really the case so much as someone just wanted said healing factor stronger.

It's not hard to understand.

Wolverine's crazy popular so he needs to be stronk.

It's that simple.

Edited by kkhohoho on Apr 22nd 2024 at 4:07:57 AM

So, a discussion in the X-Men '97 thread about the doctor who refused to deliver Cyclop's child, and Rogue absorbing his knowledge lead to a talk about mutant children who could be born with any power when they're young.

This, in turn lead to it being pointed out that most mutants don't manifest their powers until puberty, but three subjects were brought up who went against this:

Beast, who's hands and feet were abnormally large at birth, Nightcrawler, who was always blue and furry, and even the much more human looking Multiple Man, who's powers were discovered when the doctor slapped his ass as a baby (I hope that one is actually true, or I'm gonna feel and look real dumb).

And it immediately got me to thinking that, by this time, the mutants don't get their powers until puberty aspect of lore might not be as universal as it used to be. In fact, it wouldn't shock me if more and more mutants were being born with their full powers at birth in universe, to correspond with the ballooning number of mutants in the series.

There was a point where they were supposed to actually outnumber humanity after all, back during Morrison's run, so it doesn't shock me at all.

Professor X had his telepathic powers in utero, as he was able to use them to kill his Evil Twin sister, Cassandra Nova, in self-defense after she punched him in the face and tried to strangle him with his own umbilical cord, before either of them were born.

Edited by TrashJack on Apr 22nd 2024 at 6:21:06 AM

Another example is Nathan Summers, who didn't manifest at birth but he did have some telepathy and telekinesis as a months old baby.

It's been canon for a long time that the puberty thing is just what usually happens and not everyone is the same. It's like how in real life many people hit the milestones at different times in terms of physical growth. Some mutants are powered from birth, some don't get it til puberty, some even go their entire lives without their X-Genes activating because it was recessive for them. And the triggers for powers are also all over the place by extension. Again, sometimes they're activated from birth, sometimes they're activated by a traumatic event as a kind of survival reflex, sometimes they just pop on one day at total random, like how Rogue's power activated while she was making out with her boyfriend.

Mutants/Deviants are explicitly in-story meant to be the chaos to the Eternals' order, so mutant powers being hyper-diverse and chaotic in nature - all the way down to how they activate - is pretty unsurprising. To borrow a quote from Absorbing Man, "there aren't many rules... sometimes there ain't even guidelines".

Multiple Man's origin if you want to see the first usage of his powers

Peter David even turned it into a plot point in X-Factor, during the Madrox / Tryp arc, with a suggestion that mutants who manifested at birth were more common in the past, but also less likely to survive.

I miss old X-Factor.

That makes sense. A mutant baby manifesting their power as they're being born would be super-dangerous to the kid and mother alike, meaning the trait of being born with a mutation probably wouldn't spread very fair. Mutant kids in general would be less likely to survive to adulthood thanks to not having the maturity and common sense to control their powers properly. This also gets used as a plot point in one issue of the Morrison run, where Xorn has to deal with a kid who's metamorphosis power activated while he was really young, resulting in said kid causing havoc in his neighborhood in the form of a demon-like monster without really understanding what's happening. Ending in tragedy when the kid goes on a rampage trying to get his mother's medicine from the local pharmacy and the cops, unaware of what he really is, open fire on him to protect the people in the store. So it makes sense for mutants to generally bred true the trait of not activating powers until they're old enough to control them.

Edited by immortaleditor on Apr 22nd 2024 at 5:17:19 AM

Old Man Logan? I could buy Mastermind, any of the three, tricking Wolverine into killing the X-Men. Mysterio though? Wolverine's super senses should be too powerful to let Wolverine kill many, if any X-Men.

Important to remember that the Mysterio in Old Man Logan isn't the usual one Quentin Beck - who just uses special effects - but the third one, Francis Klum, who is a mutant with psychic powers. The scene where he appears also has him specifically note that many of the other X-Men were holding back because they didn't want to kill Logan.

Mysterio did once nearly drive Daredevil insane, didn’t he? And Matt’s senses are nearly as good as Logan’s.

He might have figured out a way to fool Logan’s senses.

Edit: and ’ed by . But there’s your explanation.

Edited by HandsomeRob on Apr 22nd 2024 at 7:46:39 AM

I also think all the villains teaming up with no issues is itself pretty weird. Every single villain teamup event in the actual canon is about how much all those guys hate each other and will betray each other without a moment's notice, but we're supposed to believe they all got along and willingly divided up property.

It is strange.

Maybe they had a mediator?

Especially given that the specific Villain Team-Up in Old Man Logan involved Doctor Doom and Magneto teaming up with the Red Skull. Considering that this was after Acts of Vengeance (where all three had joined Loki's plot, and which ended with Magneto leaving Red Skull stranded in a hidden bunker to starve to death; only Crossbones managing to later find and rescue Schmidt ensured that he didn't die down there), I'm honestly amazed that the Red Skull wanted anything to do with the two of them, and that Doom and Magneto didn't immediately kill him once most of the heroes were dead, since they had more than enough power individually to do so.

Edited by TrashJack on Apr 22nd 2024 at 11:25:01 AM

The Daredevil thing was less about fooling Matt's senses and more about drugging Matt with a powerful hallucinogen that made him more willing to believe Mysterio's bullshit.

Edited by M84 on Apr 22nd 2024 at 11:25:43 PM

Old Man Logan in general is honestly a big example of how Mark Millar often hobbles himself as a writer with his edgelord bullshit even when he comes up with genuinely cool ideas. The whole premise of the series - Unforgiven with Wolverine and Hawkeye in a world where the villains won - is really interesting and there are spats of inventive brilliance in there like the aforementioned use of Mysterio, symbiote dinosaurs, towns built around the places where heroes fell, an Ultron who did a Heel–Faith Turn, etc.. But it's all dragged down by Millar's obsession with being an edgy "hardcore" writer and unwillingness to do even the bare minimum to write most of the cast in-character. The latter in particular is infuriating because there are some characters Millar actually had a pretty good voice for, particularly Logan himself, who is fantastically written.

Like, it's so baffling that the same story has the haunting, heartfelt scene where Logan describes his Despair Event Horizon to Clint, breaking down into tears of remorse as he notes he knew his suicide attempt wouldn't kill him "but it hurt... and sometimes that's enough" is within pages of godawful schlock like Spider-Bitch or hillbilly rapist cannibal Hulk.

Edited by immortaleditor on Apr 22nd 2024 at 8:56:41 AM

NGL, it's kind of weird that two Bad Future Hulks end up being monstrous rapists. Maestro was a Dirty Old Man too.

Yeah, but with Maestro, he had personality traits besides being a dirty old man, and his story wasn't obsessed with edgy shock value. David held himself back from focusing on the sex crimes in graphic, exploitative fashion like Millar did.

Many comic writers have messed up at using such content, really. Makes you wary of stories involving it.