Marvel Comics General

You are right. The original Xorn from Morrison's run - the one with the star for a head - is Kuan-Yin Xorn. The second Xorn used to introduce the "Xorn impersonating Magneto impersonating Xorn and Sublime is in there somewhere too" and who did stuff like running New Tian is Shen Xorn, and has a black hole for a head. They're twin brothers.

Edited by immortaleditor on Apr 18th 2024 at 7:12:54 AM

And those Uyghur twins from northwestern China bear an astonishing resemblance to an ethnically-Jewish man who was born in Germany (and that man was once able to convincingly pass himself off as a Sinti Rom for a while; and his movie self was famously played by an Englishman, and then by a man of both Northern Irish and German descent).

Edited by TrashJack on Apr 18th 2024 at 10:14:59 AM

Ah-ah... evil bacterial spray. Big difference.

Trimming the hedges, one trope at a time.

That Sublime stuff was just weird. But it was very Grant Morrison.

Disgusted, but not surprised

Even for Morrison and how high concept their run was and for as much as I adore it, it has it's weak points and Sublime was definitely one of them. When he was taken from just a dickhead self-help guru turned cult leader to "evil fungus that is ackshully responsible for anti-mutant bigotry" the plot was very much lost. Though in fairness, the Krakoan Age's reimagining of him as basically a leftover bioweapon from an ancient war with delusions of grandeur did salvage the character as a concept in my eyes, mostly by keeping him weird but not making him too intrusive and obnoxious.

The weird thing is that it was a plot already done by John Byrne

Morrison does it less badly but it’s just weird they both did very specifically similar plots

Forever liveblogging the Avengers

There's a third similar character too: The Harvester from Warren Ellis' X-Man run, of which he's the Final Boss. He's not a micro-organism himself, but he claims that he kickstarted the evolution of Earthly life and all life thus contains parts of his essence... which he's come back to collect.

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

Oddly enough, that's the nature of Chrono Trigger's Lavos. It's also an alien entity that crash-landed on Earth and then spent the ages nurturing life Earth...so it could eventually slaughter it all and harvest it.

Disgusted, but not surprised

Honestly, the basic concept of Sublime and Byrne's similar thing is a sound one. The idea of one of the X-Men's archenemies being a kind of eldritch prehistoric organism, an evolutionary throwback lashing out at the oncoming future, is actually pretty cool and clever, especially given it thematically suited Morrison's run and it's themes of the old trying to cling to relevance by passing their worst qualities onto the young. And the idea of Kick and Sublime using drugs like it to spread his arcane influence is also pretty good.

It's just taken that step too far of trying to use it as a Hand Wave for everything bad to ever happen to the X-Men and mutants as a whole, making it out like Sublime is controlling the entire planet to make it hate mutants, and that immediately bungles the whole idea by making the character into a borderline Villain Sue and bungling the themes of bigotry by blaming it all on a singular outside threat instead of societal problems and power structures.

Like I said, the Krakoan Age really salvaged it by scaling it WAY back to just the bare concept of "there's a freaky eldritch super-organism from prehistoric times that hates mutants and humans in general".

Warren Ellis may be a scumbag but his work has some interesting ideas. Another arc in his X-Man portrayed the multiverse as essentially a giant spiral staircase, with less "advanced" universes at the bottom and more "advanced" ones at the top. Nate visits the very topmost universe, the Brilliant City, basically a Crystal Spires and Togas utopia writ large across an entire universe (and you thought Coruscant was over the top!).

He ultimately discovers there are beings even higher than this, who look like star-studded giants and are so unimaginably advanced even the Brilliant City residents have no idea what they are.

In short, can't wait for Al Ewing to arc-weld that one.

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

Oh my God I did not expect Jason Aaron to be writing a new Namor series

His handling of the guy in Avengers wasn't the most popular and he's directly following up on that

Edited by slimcoder on Apr 19th 2024 at 12:02:51 PM

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

I thought Aaron was leaving Marvel?

Yeah, not enthused.

Annoyingly, the Qabiri arc and Harvester/Anti-Man issues aren't reprinted or on MU - and I haven't got paper copies to hand - but I think the Harvester was presented as more modern.

His arrival is a pastiche of the Kents finding Superman — which doesn't go well for them, with Pa screaming that it's not a baby just before they're harvested.

The seeds of that may have been planted long ago, but the harvester himself has only been here for a few decades and seems to be gradually weaving himself into Earth's ecosystem. By the time Nate confronts him, everyone within hundreds (?) of miles is connected to him, and he can't be harmed without harming them. If left unchecked, he'll draw in the whole planet and then harvest them, killing everything and sending the energy back to his unseen masters.

---

Edit: On an entirely different note, Landy's new Avengers Unlimited arc is great fun.

Edited by Mrph1 on Apr 19th 2024 at 12:48:11 PM

Read through the July solicits.

"What if Donald Duck became Wolverine" is a cute idea, and as always, Peach Momoko has a gorgeous variant cover. Wait, the story is based on frigging Old Man Logan? Wow. It honestly sounds amazing.

Blood Hunters having a Hellcow story is already great. Having a stunning Declan Shalvey cover that prominently spotlights Hellcow? Even better.

Alex Ross' FF covers are always gorgeous. The one for #22 really stands out.

Blood Hunt: Psylocke seems to have her in her '90s costume, huh. The Momoko cover is characteristically beautiful, and has her in what looks like an interesting variation on her '90s costume. The solicit indicates she's still with Greycrow, which is neat.

Momoko also did a gorgeous cover for Blood Hunt: Laura Kinney.

Ooooh, very cool David Mack variant cover for Ultimate Black Panther.

Three great covers for Ultimate X-Men. And hey, Ultimate Surge, neat.

Spider-Man: Reign 2 is . . . a choice. Kaare Andrews is pretty damn good, so if nothing else, it'll look great. But what a weird story to revisit, considering how poorly-received it was.

You know, I have to say, the Assembly, that new team showing up in Spider-Woman. I like their designs. They look neat.

The Queen of Nevers in Scarlet Witch? Cool. She was a really interesting concept from the Slott/Allred Silver Surfer, it's neat to see her pop up in other places. Also, three gorgeous covers.

I dig the framed covers for Annihilation 2099. Good throwback to the original 2099 comics. Also, a Silver Surfer who serves Mephisto. Yeah, that's definitely something Mephisto would do.

X-Men X-Pert, my blog where I talk about X-Men comics.

Reign 2's existence is easily understood as simply being cause Miles.

Whatever was done with Peter first, has to now be done with a Miles version.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

Earth X time for the last time.

Issue 12

Issue… X?

You know, it’s never explicitly explained what the X in Earth X means and now there’s an X as an issue number.

Iron Man holds the line. Galactus: Earth’s last hope. The ending and lots and lots of sequel hooks.

Earth X was a very interesting ride. I can’t say I loved everything it did and some of what it did felt fairly pointless as of the end of this series. Some of what it did was just to set up a sequel. But I can admire how tightly plotted the story was and how it tied up the entire Marvel universe in a fairly tidy Celestial-shaped bow.

It’s a bummer to see a Bad Future where all the heroes are dead, retired, or depressed. Or combination thereof. But the living ones mostly get a glorious return to form by the end.

I enjoyed as the big mysteries of the setting were slowly unspooled for the audience and the characters. Although some of the mysteries were also fairly pointless.

And it’s an interesting thing to read this little-discussed series and see the seeds of so much future Marvel planted within.

I’m going to read Universe X and Paradise X. I’ve even already read a bit of Universe. I’m not sure whether I’ll liveblog it because it’s definitely not as cohesive as Earth X was. But it’s weird. What it apparently tries to do sounds fascinating. It might be worth liveblogging just to document the madness since I couldn’t find a lot more than the bare bones synopsis when I looked for information on the sequels.

It’ll be a while even if I do. I need a Break X.

Forever liveblogging the Avengers

So what exactly did Venom-Girl achieve in this entire series?

I'll teach you a lesson about just how cruel the world can be. That's my job, as an adult.

This is going to sound bad but by stupidly leaping at insurmountable odds and getting mind controlled by the Skull, it helped Peter get his head out of his ass.

That’s in terms of actual nameable things that she did in the comic. Although she’s also been being the Spider person Peter refused to be for years, going out and trying to save people, upholding the great power great responsibility thing that Peter has given up on. And her costume makes my eyes water. That’s something, I guess.

Overall, Earth X doesn’t do a lot with its new characters. There’s a whole new X-Men team and I could not tell you anything substantial about them.

Thing has two Thing children. They’re not very deeply characterized.

I think the only exception is the Skull, who is an antagonist so we get a lot of time with him, and Daredevil and I don’t understand why he gets so much focus for the very little he contributes

I can’t criticize too much for the new characters not getting a lot. There’s so many characters and so much going on that only a few characters get significant focus.

Edited by Bocaj on Apr 19th 2024 at 9:54:02 AM

Forever liveblogging the Avengers

I made a page for Sub-Mariner: The Depths, a scary horror story using Namor.

The Protomen enhanced my life.

Ooh, awesome, that's one of my favorite underrated Marvel stories!

I like it a lot too! The Marvel Knights imprint had a lot of neat overlooked stuff.

The Protomen enhanced my life.

I'll say for the Namor solicit, this part does not bring the hype as they think it would.

"An epic that will redefine the King of the Seas in the manner of Jason Aaron’s PUNISHER series!"

We're talking about the Punisher run that completely brutally deconstructed and annihilated the character's entire mythos and philosophy leaving him nothing.

I'm not a Namor fan, but thats not something I want for the character.

Edited by slimcoder on Apr 20th 2024 at 12:42:11 PM

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

What happened in that Punisher run exactly?

The Protomen enhanced my life.

In summary...

• Frank had been secretly watched by the Hand since an early age, and had murderous tendencies ever since childhood.
• In the present, the Hand offered him the role of their new leader and champion, which comes with a bunch of cool powers. They resurrected Frank's wife Maria to persuade him.
• As with everyone else who's been entangled in the Hand, Frank got a bit corrupted. He also had them bring him the worst of the world's criminals every day as captives, so that he could start each morning by executing them.
• The Hand kept trying and failing to resurrect Frank and Maria's kids.
• Maria revealed that she was about to divorce Frank due to his disturbing behaviour when the family died in the park.
• Assorted superheroes tried to stop the supernaturally empowered Frank. Maria then discovered all the things Frank did in their family's name, just how many people he'd killed... and shot him. He got a The Reason You Suck from her speech afterwards, while held prisoner by Strange and the other heroes.
• Frank used the remnants of his power to escape Doctor Strange and teleport to Weirdworld, breaking ties with the Hand and becoming a champion of innocents there.
• The Hand started looking for a new child to groom as his replacement.
• Maria sold off Frank's safehouses and other assets, giving most of the profit to charity. She also revealed that she's pregnant.

The end.

Oooooof, I'll bet there are lab frogs that weren't as dissected as Frank.

Now I'm wondering what's the worst they could do to Namor… Make it so that all his efforts and constant backstabbing for Atlantis has made it so that even Atlantis has a low opinion of him?