Well, Iceman is one of those tricky heroes whose powers is a sphere of impossible nature that can be stretched as far as the writer wants. Red Hulk causing a problem? Convenient that his powers are based on energy-absorption and the power of cold is specifically defined as moving energy from one place to another.
They're absolutely right about Magneto vs Iron Man, though. There is absolutely nothing Iron Man can do that Magneto wouldn't conceptually have a work-around for. At the same time, Tony's "superpower" is the ability to build a machine that can do anything he wants it to. The outcome of that fight is going to be Depending on the Writer to the extreme.
And speaking of Government douchebaggery toward mutants, looks like AvX will have even more of it
◊! And keep in mind it's the X-Men people are speculating will be in the wrong here; Cyclops has been spouting increasingly Big Bad-style rhetoric as of late, and people figure it's only a matter of time before he crosses the Moral Event Horizon.
I think Cyclops has gone a bit off the rails, but he really hasn't had a choice. Threats to mutant-kind seem to pop up almost weekly for the X-men, the Avengers and superhero community do absolutely nothing to help, and in Schism it was revealed that a large number of countries have been secretly building sentinels to deal with mutants. It's pretty much mutants against the world.
To be honest, people seem to be divided on the direction Cyclops is taking.
On one side, they point out that Scott is being subjected to Ron the Death Eater. They point out that he is not being a racist bent on genocide, but is a leader trying to save his fellow mutants (whose numbers are over 100) from extinction. In short, he is in a position where he's damned if he does and he's damned if he doesn't!
On the other side, they point out that Scott is taking Good Is Not Nice to intolerable levels. They say that Scott is using We Have Reserves when the fact is they don't. Magneto even says "You're sounding like me now, Scott." Obviously, there's a problem if even the old man himself is directly making the comparison right to Scott's face!
Whichever side you agree with, I will say that Scott is a Well-Intentioned Extremist who should be careful with the means he uses to achieve his ends. You can read a preview for this event right here
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I haven't read it, but I'm told Rachel controlled it pretty well back in the original run of Excalibur.
I do agree that it looks like Marvel is pretty clearly setting it up for the Avengers to be the ones in the right here. Which doesn't mean all the readers have to agree.
The Avengers have access to the highest levels of the US government. If the US government is persecuting mutants and the Avengers aren't stopping that, it disqualifies them from being considered heroes in my view.
Well, we don't know what that cover means yet, anyway. In all likelihood, it's symbolic or Superdickery.
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Wasn't that just Kade Kilgore's company? But I agree, the US in Marvel is a Complete Monster, as is Canada. Don't believe me? Read Generation X 63-66, featuring a government employee who holds the honor of being the only villain in any work of fiction to ever make me feel physically ill.
edited 10th Feb '12 4:59:59 PM by HamburgerTime
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So how can Cap, Marvel's resident boy scout and moral paragon, work for/with a Complete Monster government? It just doesn't fit for me. If he's supposed to be a moral person, he needs to be doing something to change the government's treatment of mutants - given that his organization is substantially in charge of protecting the government from global-scale threats, he's got to have a lot of pull.
edited 10th Feb '12 5:18:32 PM by WarriorEowyn
Well, that doesn't mean he has any real power. The American military is run by a bureaucracy, and that bureaucracy typically does not like when one person tells them what they should or should not do. Even worse than that, the military branch of the government ultimately answers to the civilian branch—which, of course, answers to people like you and me. So, if opinion polls say that 78% of people think that mutants are dangerous threats to the American way of life (or, hell, even 35%), the government is going to do something about it. And Cap can go stand on the highest pulpit he wants and preach about human/mutant coexistence til he's blue in the face.
Very true, the monstrous nature of the government is not helped by the fact that every other Muggle in the setting seems to be a colossal douchebag.
He's not the American military, though. He's actually got the ability to refuse to help them unless they change their action. Given the choice between tolerating mutants and having to deal with the next major threat without superpowered assistance, the US government would have to start changing their minds. This is a situation where, essentially, going on 'strike' for even a short period would be immensely powerful.
Or, if he didn't want to go that far, just making sure the Avengers got in between the government and whatever mutants the government wanted to attack - the US government had better have enough sense to back off rather than attacking the people who are guaranteeing their survival. He has options aside from simple acquiescence to what the government's doing, or even verbal opposition to it.
Majority opinion doesn't really matter to this - a country doesn't have the right to persecute a minority on the basis of majority opinion.
edited 10th Feb '12 7:13:13 PM by WarriorEowyn
Not really. Cap is a good leader and a powerful figure, but not only has he already quit being Captain America several times, but Civil War (and its aftermath) proved that the US govt can survive without Steve Rogers.
And again, we're talking about the Marvel Universe, where people can watch the X-Men defeat an Omnicidal Maniac on national television and tell them to go fuck themselves not more than 12 seconds later.
And yet, not only does it happen everyday, but we make laws to enforce it.
edited 10th Feb '12 7:17:05 PM by KingZeal
And again, we're talking about the Marvel Universe, where people can watch the X-Men defeat an Omnicidal Maniac on national television and tell them to go fuck themselves not more than 12 seconds later.
Which suggests that, contrary to the X-Men's typical (or perhaps former, pre-Decimation?) modus operandi, acts of heroism without any obligation of reciprocal positive action by the government are not an effective means of protecting the well-being of mutants. It also suggests that Wolverine trying to give X-Kids a peaceful upbringing by restarting a mutant school in what is, functionally, the middle of enemy territory is an action that fits on a range from "imprudent" (if you're being charitable) to "idiotic" (if you're not). Peace requires people to not be attacking you.
Not really. Cap is a good leader and a powerful figure, but not only has he already quit being Captain America several times, but Civil War (and its aftermath) proved that the US govt can survive without Steve Rogers.
It's still immoral for the Avengers to work for a government that treats mutants so badly, especially if they're not using their position to exert any pressure on the government to change its actions.
edited 10th Feb '12 7:30:38 PM by WarriorEowyn
At the risk of stating the obvious, it really has to be stressed that we don't know yet how things are going to go down. Here's what we know:
The Phoenix Force is heading for Earth, having just destroyed all life on a planet (and having destroyed an entire solar system in the past). The Avengers believe it poses a threat to the Earth. Cyclops believes it could be a saviour to mutantkind. Wolverine flat-out tells Captain America that Cyclops can't be unbiased about the Phoenix Force, giving Cap a reason to disregard Cyclops's view.
Both sides have some justification for their beliefs. The stakes are high for both sides. So both sides are willing to fight for what they believe.
As far as the Utopia kids being sent to Avengers Academy, again, we don't know the details. We don't know if the Avengers attack Utopia, beat the kids up, and slap power dampeners on them. We don't know if Cyclops agrees to send them to the Academy to keep them out of the disagreement between the X-Men and the Avengers - for all the talk about Cyclops using child soldiers, he generally uses the kids only when he sees no choice, and tries to keep them out of danger as best he can.
People are complaining about characters taking actions they haven't actually taken yet. And that's just silly.
X-Men X-Pert, my blog where I talk about X-Men comics.On the first point: the issue with what you're saying is that it presumes that raising children to be heroes is an altruistic fallacy. In other words, that there's no point to being good guys if no one cares. A villainous Magneto and Malcolm Xerox would agree with you. However, that's the caveat: you're not really being "good" if you implicitly expect some immediate compensation for it.
And that leads to my second point. The Avengers (usually) don't defend the government from threats specifically. Most of the people they fight are criminals who are clearly hurting innocents or invaders that are trying to outright destroy the world as we know it. Nobody benefits if that happens, not even the mutants they'd be trying to protect. That suggestion makes it sound like Black soldiers who fought for their country prior to the Civil Rights Movement shouldn't have bothered. Or, even more poignantly, that gays shouldn't serve at all.
On the first point: the issue with what you're saying is that it presumes that raising children to be heroes is an altruistic fallacy. In other words, that there's no point to being good guys if no one cares. A villainous Magneto and Malcolm Xerox would agree with you. However, that's the caveat: you're not really being "good" if you implicitly expect some immediate compensation for it.
There's nothing wrong with altruism, but there's nothing obligatory about it either, particularly directed towards people who are trying to harm or kill you. One of the purposes of the X-Men was ostensibly to foster human-mutant coexistence. If their heroism isn't getting the humans on-side to any substantial degree, then they're failing in that aim. (Game theory also suggests that they're acting unwisely - if humans will get rescued by mutants whether they persecute mutants or not, they have no incentive to stop the persecution. If mutants protect society when the government is making progress in improving their status, and oppose/fight the government when it attacks them, that creates an incentive for the government to treat them better.)
And with regards to "you're not really being "good" if you implicitly expect some immediate compensation for it" - many people consider members of the military and police to be admirable, despite the fact that they are paid for their service. And what I'm talking about here doesn't even reach the level of wanting to be paid for repeatedly saving large numbers of lives - it's more on the level of wanting not to be attacked or murdered by the government whose citizens you're saving. That strikes me as a more than legitimate expectation, and not having it met is an excellent reason for changing your focus - not ceasing to save lives, but prioritizing saving the lives of mutants who are attacked by the government and by society rather than saving the lives of the government and society who are attacking them.
I'll stop here because I'm getting rather over-philosophical for a comic book thread.
The Avengers (usually) don't defend the government from threats specifically. Most of the people they fight are criminals who are clearly hurting innocents or invaders that are trying to outright destroy the world as we know it. Nobody benefits if that happens, not even the mutants they'd be trying to protect.
In the short term, nobody benefits from that. And of course, in the case of world-annihilating threats, there isn't a long term and nobody benefits. But this should also lead to the conclusion that the Avengers are "needed" to deal with such threats and that therefore, the Avengers have the necessary leverage to bring about some changes in government policies towards mutants.
edited 10th Feb '12 8:31:10 PM by WarriorEowyn

Tiggers - oh it puts limits, considering the range he was working at. But Magneto has shown before he has absolutely no problem picking metallic objects from within a city range to throw at people. You can proof yourself against his powers, you can't proof the surrounding area.
And the Rogue thing is kinda moot. If she can't touch you, she can just borrow powers from the other X-men, to create just the right set for the situation (assuming the right people are around)
And then there is Iceman, where the best option is just to throw Red Hulk or Thor at him and keep smashing him so he has trouble reforming.
And then you have the two mutants who can play absolute hell on the Avengers' plans. Pixie and Magick, the teleporters with global range. To say nothing of their soulsword/dagger playing hell with a magician like Dr. Strange.