The X-Axis – 25 June 2012
One day late, and there’s an awful lot to write about here. Loads of Avengers vs X-Men tie-ins bloated the line last week, but for a change the publicity centres on a book that’s sitting the crossover out…
Astonishing X-Men #51 – Yes, it’s the much-hyped gay wedding issue. I now pronounce you man and supporting character.
As I said last time, if you leave aside the promotion and focus on the actual story, this is quite the odd little arc. It has two distinct threads which, so far, appear to be wholly unrelated to one another. There’s Northstar proposing to his boyfriend to demonstrate his commitment and set up their wedding in this issue. And then there’s the mystery villain mind-controlling villains and getting them to attack the heroes. It’s there to provide the obligatory action, but thus far it’s had no apparent connection to the wedding story – except on the purely mechanical level of having Northstar and Kyle get caught in the crossfire.
Nor does that story actually get resolved this issue – instead, it largely goes on hold for a month in order that we can do the wedding, though Marjorie Liu does take it forward by trying to push the idea that the villain is in fact Karma. I’m really not sold on this side of the storyline, which thus far boils down to random low-rent villains attacking. Presumably Karma’s being mind-controlled in turn, so “revealing” her as the villain doesn’t actually take us anywhere; and within the context of this arc, I don’t think Liu has really done enough with Karma to explain why we should care about her involvement anyway.
So much for that. What about the wedding? Considering the way that this story has been promoted by Marvel – not to mention the rather odd appearance at the end of the issue of a one-off advertisement for the welcoming nuptial services of the Office of the City Clerk of the City of New York – it is difficult to shake the suspicion that this issue started life as a press release and worked backwards from there. But then any gay wedding story would have to work hard to escape that aura. The first time you do anything of this sort, the novelty factor tends to overwhelm everything else. The main point of the story is simply the fact that it’s being done at all. You have to work through a phase of “Look, we’re controversially doing THIS!” before it becomes sufficiently familiar to build a wider range of stories around it.
Given that, Liu takes the sensible approach of playing it straight; there are no melodramatic twists, merely a bunch of characters gathering for a wedding and having some gentle conversation beforehand. There’s no need to play up the gay angle, since by force of novelty, it’s inevitably going to dominate the issue regardless. Instead, it’s mostly people musing about the value of commitment. If you’re buying this story for the gay wedding – which is the idea, after all – then a gay wedding going more or less smoothly is what you get, for some fifteen pages. The only sequence that really plays up the Topical Issue is a two page scene where Warbird politely and respectfully informs Northstar that she doesn’t believe in gay marriage and won’t be attending. It’s a perfectly okay scene, though it has to be said that Warbird – a relatively new character who’s mainly been treated as a comic relief character’s sidekick and doesn’t even come from this planet – is a very safe choice for the role. Dramatically, it would have been more interesting to give those opinions to a more established character, but it would also have been more risky in terms of audience response, and (a better reason for not doing it) it would have put more emphasis on a scene that’s really only there as a polite concession to the existence of people who haven’t come round to the idea yet.
Mike Perkins’ relatively photorealistic art is a good fit for this sort of material, though there are a couple of slightly weird facial expressions in there, and by god do his characters’ suits need pressed. Still, you’ve got to like the attention to detail in moments like Northstar and Kyle lifting off the ground together, which looks at first glance like they’re both flying (it wouldn’t really work if Northstar was just hauling him by the neck), but on closer inspection has Kyle perching on Northstar’s shoes.
As will be obvious, I think there are inherent limitations in what you can do with stories of this sort at this point in what I shall call the Controversy/Publicity Cycle. Given those limitations, the result is reasonably decent, though you’ve got to suspect that people will look back on it as a charming artefact of the time.
Avengers Academy #32 – “Avengers vs X-Men” really isn’t that overblown as a crossover – after all, X-Men and Astonishing X-Men are sitting it out entirely, as are most of the lower-tier X-books – so it’s something of a surprise to find Avengers Academy embarking on a second tie-in storyline. Then again, it’s also one of Marvel’s lower-selling titles and, frankly, it could probably use the help. On the positive side, Christos Gage has once again come up with a story in the margins of the crossover that delivers the promised tie-in but keeps the focus firmly on his cast and the strengths of this series.
The tie-in here is that the Phoenix Five – the five X-Men empowered by the Phoenix Force – are going around destroying military hardware and anti-mutant military hardware in particular. And so Emma Frost turns up at the Academy to obliterate Juston Seyfert’s Sentinel. Wisely, however, Gage puts the focus here not on his guest star, but on X-23, who’s in the regular cast. For those of you who don’t remember Juston Seyfert, he was the lead character of the short-lived Sentinel series from the Tsunami imprint, who found a wrecked Sentinel in the woods and reprogrammed it. Not unreasonably, X-23 is also wondering quite why a boy and his pet genocide machine are hanging around the compound.
There are plot holes here – even given Juston’s overriding directives, why isn’t the Sentinel at least trying to apprehend mutants? Did the Academy staff not check its programming, or did they simply not care? – but the basic idea is strong, with X-23 coming round to recognise Juston’s irrational attachment to his Sentinel and empathise with it. That’s a good X-23 story, it’s a strong use of Juston as well, and while it doesn’t need the crossover to work, it plugs in quite happily. Everyone wins. If there’s a criticism to be made here, it’s that some of the regular cast are getting shouldered aside, but the story is well suited to the crossover, so I’ll let that slide, for now at least.
Avengers vs X-Men #6 – So, the Phoenix Five now have the power of the Phoenix and they’re using it to become the Authority…
…
Um…
…
Hold on. The X-Men are trying to turn Earth into a Utopia. And obviously, it’s a “power corrupts” deal (it wouldn’t be much of a story if it was just the vastly powerful X-Men demonstrably making the world a better place for the remainder of the running time). And a brief sequence in which the Scarlet Witch has a vision of the Phoenix destroying the original, Silver Age line-up of the Avengers will only fuel speculation that this whole thing is heading towards some sort of reboot.
But.
Wasn’t the whole point of the Phoenix coming to Earth supposed to be that Cyclops thought it was going to save the mutant race and bring them back from the brink of extinction? I mean, that was kind of the plot driver for the whole series to date. That’s why the X-Men were fighting the Avengers over Hope in the first place. And now they’ve got the Phoenix power. And are they using it to do anything at all to avert the near-extinction of the mutant race and restart mutant births? On the face of it, no. Is any character querying this obvious yet wholly unexplained change of priorities? Once again, on the face of it, no.
Given the build-up to this point, you can’t gloss over a plot point like that. But that’s exactly what this issue tries to do. It’s a sudden swerve to the left that tries to ignore the central premise of the first act, and that just won’t fly.
New Avengers #27 – More flashback. The red-head girl has a mysterious confrontation with the Phoenix and disappears. End of flashback. Hope speaks to Spider-Man and is inspired by the old power/responsibility motto. That’s basically it.
To be fair, in the context of the crossover as a whole, three issues just to set up the idea that Iron Fist might be quite important is probably about right, and hell, it’s something to do with the New Avengers issues. Some of the art’s quite nice. The bit with Spider-Man at the end’s quite good. But Hope’s written as a cipher, and there’s not a great deal here that I remotely care about.
New Mutants #44 – Meanwhile, outside the crossover, we have a comic that’s just doing its own regular stories! Those are the Defenders on the cover (two of whom are also in the Avengers, because Marvel teams are very incestuous these days), and they’re evidently our guest stars for this arc, but the emphasis is firmly on the regular cast. Basically, the Defenders drop by the alert the New Mutants that something reality-warping and very important is about to happen to them. Hopefully they’ll sort it out for themselves within 72 hours, whatever it turns out to be, or otherwise the big guns from the Defenders will have to pop back and deal with it, which sounds like it might be a bit of a sledgehammer affair. So probably best if the New Mutants can deal with it themselves. Whatever it turns out to be.
In what is presumably an example of editors not talking to one another, since it seems most unlikely to be an unadvertised crossover, the issue then regrettably goes on to duplicate the “is Karma taking over people’s minds” storyline from Astonishing X-Men. Talk to one another, guys! Fortunately, it then settles into a rather more effectively creepy sequence of time going wrong and weirdly inexplicable things happening, pitched nicely at just the right level of arbitrary oddness.
Oh, and the comedy old woman who lives next door is back, with more stew. The jokes with her are nicely paced but I can’t help feeling they’re played awfully broad compared to the rest of the book.
Secret Avengers #28 – Back in the backwaters of the crossover, still ploughing through a plot line all the other books long since abandoned, Secret Avengers is doing a story about the Phoenix attacking the Kree home world and facing the outer space team. Um, before the other outer space story in Just Plain Avengers, where the same team fights the Phoenix again and Noh-Varr turns on the team…
Tasked with doing something off entirely peripheral to the crossover proper, Rick Remender and Renato Guedes deliver something relatively self-contained, with the focus being on an appropriately campy religious leader (“Minister Marvel”) trying to bring the Phoenix to his home world for cultish reasons. The recently revived Captain Marvel naturally gets to sacrifice himself so that he can inspire Carol Danvers into launching a new solo series.
It’s a reasonable idea in theory, but Guedes’ art isn’t to my taste; as with his work on Wolverine, there’s something a bit flat about it that just misses the mark. And perhaps more to the point, it’s a story that spends a lot of time telling us how awesome Captain Marvel is rather than putting forward any particularly convincing explanation for why I should agree, other than a fairly standard piece of heroic sacrifice. I often have this feeling when Captain Marvel gets dusted off; he comes across as a generic hero who happens to be Kree and of whom the creators are inexplicably fond, presumably because they remember his 1970s series where I can only assume he was somehow more interesting. You know, beyond the fact that “he’s an alien”, I’m not sure I could even tell you what the core concept of the character is. Perhaps one day a writer will remember to tell me.
Uncanny X-Men #14 – This is bannered as an “Avengers vs X-Men” crossover, and from the look of it the arc as a whole will justify that. But this issue is in fact the beginning of a second Mr Sinister arc, and doesn’t feature the X-Men at all. Instead, Mr Sinister and his society of other Mr Sinisters have set up their own London “deep beneath the Earth’s surface”. This story is about one of the Mr Sinisters who fancies himself a radical journalist, hoping to get an audience with the main Mr Sinister so that he can try to change him – by force, if necessary. It’s not the villainy and world-conquering that bothers our current hero so much as Sinister’s current conviction that everything is mechanical and pre-ordained, which leaves no place for free will.
As you can imagine, despite the crossover connection (and it does have one, namely the plan that Sinister outlines near the end), this is much more in the vein of Kieron Gillen’s regular issues. It’s a story about free will and whether rebels are a part of the system whether they like it or not – and how you should deal with the possibility that everything is preordained. Dustin Weaver produces some beautiful artwork which nails the aesthetic of an all-Sinister version of London. And the cliffhanger is a lovely idea that brings the whole thing back into the crossover fold while still keeping faith with what’s come before. It’s a great return to form for the book after a couple of issues of more conventional crossover material, and hopefully the rest of the arc will be able to keep this up despite the demands of the crossover context.
Wolverine #308 – Well, Wolverine breaks his conditioning and defeats Dr Rot and his weird henchmen, which is all pretty much as you’d expect. However, there’s a twist – one which will hopefully be reflected to some extent in other books, since it’s the sort of thing that ought to be – which is that in healing himself from Rot’s mental interference, Wolverine ends up rebuilding bits of his memory from scratch, and forgetting great chunks of stuff, such as the identity of supporting characters.
Now, we’ve been here before with Wolverine having bits missing from his memory. It was a long-running storyline for ages back in the 80s and 90s. But since the gaps in his memory this time are shown to be much more recent, it looks as though we’re not simply hitting the reset button; it seems to be more a set-up for a story about how much of your personality is formed by your experiences and what difference it makes if you no longer remember them.
Paul Pelletier’s art captures the dementedly off kilter bad guys very nicely, and I think this pulls back a bit from last issue’s mistake of making Rot too logical and conventional. The sense of madness is presented more effectively here, at the same time as pushing a central theme of malleable identity that seems to work for Cullen Bunn’s wider direction. Overall, a good storyline, which wraps up a stray plot line while setting something up for Bunn’s future stories – which we’ll apparently get to once the Sabretooth thing is out of the way. (God help us all.)
X-Factor #238 – Basically a set-up issue, with the cast splitting into groups to pursue their own little stories. Rahne is going looking for her missing demon child with Rictor and Shatterstar in tow. Madrox wants to go back and investigate the weirdos in Seattle. And Siryn and Havok are investigating a serial killer whose modus operandi looks awfully like Siryn’s. Lots of conversation, lots of set-up. Fortunately, that’s the sort of issue that plays to Peter David’s strengths. Artist Paul Davidson doesn’t seem quite so comfortable with page after page of people talking in offices, and there are some rather generic backgrounds and expressions that feel a little underwhelming. Still, he’s better when the story gives him a bit more to work with, as in the opening couple of pages, and his art is never less than okay.
Loved “notes from the sinisterground” but maybe loved JIM more.
Add in casanova and a great week for funny books.
There are four things that I thought about reading this weeks books, three of which match yours.
#1 – Why do people have such a fondness for Captain Marvel? He was never interesting to me, and I was around during his original run (for some of it, anyway). He or his memory keep getting resurrected in one way or the other and I alway wonder why.
#2 – As you pointed out, if Scott’s whole belief system is based on the Phoenix coming to restart the mutant race – why haven’t he and the other four restarted the mutant race? That was the crux of the battles with the Avengers, and why they were protecting Hope – and now it’s like they have this whole other list of things to do.
#3 – I also could not quite figure out how all the Avengers issues fit together. I’m convinced they really don’t but I also realize it’s probably just better to pretend that they do. Coordination in crossovers these days at either company seems to be a low priority.
#4 – Since when could the Scarlet Witch materialize out of thin air? Magical transportation has never been one of her abilities (then again, neither is flight but she seemed to be levitating a few issues back). She seems to be able to do whatever the plot calls for the last few years without any regard to past descriptions and exhibitions of her power.
Mike:
WRT #2, it makes sense that Cyclops would make sure that nobody can exterminate the mutants again once he’s gone to all the trouble of reigniting the species.
WRT #4, the Scarlet Witch’s power itself is probability manipulation, but she’s also studied a lot of Marvel Universe-style magic over the years, and teleportation is explicitly part of that package. I seem to remember her mentor Agatha Harkness being very good at it.
I very much enjoyed the AXM wedding issue — really, that was a lovely character moment with the twins and the more Liu ignores and/or sidesteps Alpha Flight v. 4, the more endearing I find her writing — but I still think the Northstar and Kyle relationship business should have been saved for the second arc. There was too much mystery here and not enough solid set-up for what solits suggest is going to be an ongoing villain.
And, yeah, having a no-risk character like Warbird be the voice of dissent was an almost offensively weak token nod to “realism”. If you’re going to do that, make it a character that Northstar or the reader has some stake in, otherwise it’s just plain toothless. At least explain exactly what aspect she’s objecting to — she’s an alien, so it’s not even a given that it’s homosexuality that’s the problem; for all we know, she doesn’t approve because there’s some kind of Shi’ar cultural taboo against PCs marrying NPCs. Very disappointing.
That said, I still pre-ordered the hardcover. I enjoyed the story far more than I complained about it and it’s nice to have a book that’s both character focused and has a cast I’m not completely sick of.
On a strict reading of the Warbird scene, bearing in mind that I know nothing about Warbird other than that she is obviously Shi’ar, I couldn’t tell if she was objecting to the gay marriage or a wider non-belief in the institution of marriage, hetero or homo. I thought that as an alien from an obviously warrior-like background she could have an objection to marriage generally, possibly something along the lines of having a partner makes you a worse warrior because personal ties give you a vulnerability that an enemy could exploit.
The issue itself was fine and I liked that it underplayed the scenario. It doesn’t convince me to get back on board with AXM though as it yet again failed to justify its reason for existence. What is the role of this team? Why do they even consider themselves a team with a roster? Do they have a roster and if so, why?
Well, seems my Phoenix-is-possessing-the-XMen theory got blown out of the water… though some of Scott’s dialogue seems un-Scott-like, a lot of it is very Scott Summers, not to mention the scene with him and Emma just sitting around reading books. I suppose they could always have them say he was subconciously influenced by the Phoenix ala Sublime, but still.
And the Avengers really do come off as quite petulant. Of course, anyone who’s read a comic before will know they’ll end up being right (that the Phoenix is up to something dasterdly) but in-universe there’s no reason for it beyond WE JUST KNOW. At least Beast lampshaded it.
This was really a strong week for books. Casanova, Unwritten, Saga, JiM, X-Factor…
I enjoyed the Secret Avengers arc, though I have no idea it’s supposed to jive with Avengers. I don’t think the set up with Captain Marvel was quite as weak as you make it out to be, Paul. He doesn’t need a reboot, he’s a relic from his time, and these sorts of stories are clearly nostalgic for the Kree/Skrull war stories from the silver age. There were some good moments and the art, though not perfectly suited for space epics, was enjoyable.
I’ve got a bad feeling that, at the end of AvX, the Founding Avengers will be the six characters from the movie.
On the plus side, that would be an excellent “jumping off” point for all Avengers titles and I’d save lots of money.
“If you’re going to do that, make it a character that Northstar or the reader has some stake in, otherwise it’s just plain toothless.”
Should have been Aurora.
Does aurora still have multiple personalities, including the prim school mistress?
She still did as of the last issue of Alpha Flight. Dunno if that’s been changed since. I think she’s only got the two of them. “Aurora” and “Jeannie-Marie” (the prim school mistress)
Poor Aurora. Doomed to repeat the same storyline over and over again:
“My two personalities are at war with one another!”
“Oh, now I’m better.”
[generic villain manipulates Aurora’s mind]
“My two personalities are at war with one another!”
At least at the end of the Alpha Flight mini, Aurora and Jeanne-Marie seemed to be able to get along, Crazy Jane style.
By the way, Suzene, thanks for warning me away from buying that AF mini. I borrowed a friend’s copy, and you’re right: it is bad.
As for who should be opposed to Northstar’s marriage: It has to be someone else from his team to have any long-term traction, right? And who else on that team is going to care? Gambit, maybe. He’s in Astonishing, right?
Re: AVX #6 & the reversal of M-Day, Tom Brevoort says on Formspring: “The language in AVX #6 fell by the wayside, but the over/under is that the Phoenix Five aren’t able to restore the mutant race. So they have to do the best they can with what they’ve got.”
It’s bizarre that this wasn’t made clear, given that it’s supposed to be one of the major motivating factors of the story, but I guess they might remember to put it in next issue…
@Thom: You’re quite welcome. Always happy to save a fellow Alphan money (at least until November, when the third AF Classic trade hits. 😉 ).
Speculation for a while was that Cece Reyes would be the one refusing to attend, given that she’s Catholic and was on none of the covers. I would have hated it, but it also would have had some emotional resonance something and had potentially interesting repercussions down the line — would you put your life in the hands of a doctor who thinks you’re a lower class of human?
Aurora would have been my last choice, much for the reasons you stated — it’s been done. And I do get very tired of JP being the “good” sibling who’s just a bit heavy handed in trying to help his poor, crazy sister, while JM is painted as the violent, ungrateful shrew.
If I’d had to pick someone to do the refusal, it probably would have been Mac Hudson. Just tweak it to: “I respect you, but I don’t believe in this; I’m just here because Dept H said we should show solidarity with a former Flight member.” There enough history there that the rejection would mean something, not enough to put a damper on the whole day, and I’d have actually believed that JP would address Mac as a teammate and friend. Warbird just has no importance to the day and trying to pretend that she does is laughable.
“The language in AVX #6 fell by the wayside”
fucking hell. Brevoort really is shameless in his efforts to defend how terrible his comics are, isn’t he?
“As for who should be opposed to Northstar’s marriage: It has to be someone else from his team to have any long-term traction, right? And who else on that team is going to care? Gambit, maybe. He’s in Astonishing, right?”
Gambit would have been a good choice. Plus, we could have gotten a really shitty phonetically-spelled French accent argument out of it. “Zis and zat!” versus “Dis and dat!”
I think Marvel really squandered an opportunity here. I think it would have been interesting to see a few (not all) of the X-Men characters– these people who have spent many years fighting for equality, inclusion, tolerance, etc, come to the realization that when it comes right down to it, they just can’t support gay marriage. I think that would have provided a nice moral dilemma for some of these characters and some nice moments of introspection.
On the other hand, Paul’s probably right in that you don’t want to risk intellectual properties (but then why do the story at all?)
@Suzene — It might be a little bit of a stretch to have Mac Hudson be so conservative. But maybe I just assume all Canadians are liberal and open-minded? Anyway, Mac wouldn’t have much of a leg to stand on, since he started his relationship with Heather when she was what, 16? Or maybe that would have been a great retort for Northstar. Hmm, now that I think about it, I like that conversation more than I thought I might. 🙂
If it needed to be someone with a direct connection to Northstar’s past, I was going to suggest Heather Hudson, especially since she’s still out of her mind at the moment. But that probably would have turned the wedding into a superhero slugfest and ruined the whole mood of the thing.
“But maybe I just assume all Canadians are liberal and open-minded?”
Definitely not. I’m liberal and open-minded but I live in Calgary. Next month we’re hosting our annual Calgary Stampede Exhibition, or as I like to call it: “White Pride Week.”
In Uncanny I wish they would have explored what the Five are up to a little more since this is their book, after all. Maybe that’s more a problem with the miniseries not giving us much about them in issue 6. Having said that, the issue as is was pretty great and the final splash page with Sinister on his throne surrounded by Madelynes was, frankly, awesome.
@Thom – “But maybe I just assume all Canadians are liberal and open-minded?”
Oh, read up on some of what Harper’s doing up up north. Canada’s got more than its fair share of conservatives.
Mac’s had more than his share of strongarm moments when it comes to dealing with the X-Men (not to mention his own team), and he’s been willing to follow orders of a government that leaps clear over “conservative POV” into “cartoon supervillainy” again and again and again. Even after Dept. H tried to shoot him into space, he went back to their employ. So, really, I don’t have a terrible lot of difficulty seeing him as the sort of fellow who’d default to “I do what X authority tells me is right”, whether that authority is his PM or his religious beliefs. Not to say that he’s incapable of independent thought or a complete tool — he did draw the line at literal brain-washing, after all. I can just see him not being able to see the issue from Jean-Paul’s POV.
So, what exactly happened in the sewers in Astonishing X-Men? #48 and #49 had some flashforwards to it, and this issue featured a couple of vague flashback panels, but it’s like Marjorie Liu forget to actually tell the story. Yes, we get the bits with Northstar and Kyle, but nothing else. Last issue’s cliffhanger was Northstar facing off with Gambit and Wolverine – shouldn’t that get more than 1 wordless panel in this issue?
Meanwhile, from the “don’t these people talk to each other”, the New Mutants plot about the fabric of reality itself being threatened feels a bit similar to the long-running X-Factor thread about the walls of reality getting thin, portending some sort of omnidimensional catastrophe.
Another voice agreeing with the people who’ve mentioned that Journey into Mystery was good this week – I can honestly see the cliffhanger ending going in so many different directions that I have no idea what’s going to happen next.
Overall I thought the wedding issue was well done, but two things bothered me (aside from the fact that I occasionally couldn’t tell whether Northstar was supposed to be smiling or grimacing, but while I don’t think that was intentional, it’s certainly not implausible considering how nervouse he was):
I’m not sure Havok was the best choice of character to have say “I can’t stop thinking about what my grandma would say about all this.” Would Havok even remember his grandparents? I guess he could be talking about his adoptive grandmother, but considering how messed up his adoptive parents were, it strikes me as odd that he’d particularly care about the opinions of his adoptive grandparents (and I don’t buy that he was speaking hypothecially – “As an orphan, I never knew my grandparents, but I tend to assume at least one of my grandmothers would be homophobic and that shapes my opinions”). It’s not a plot hole or anything – for all I know his adoptive grandmother was the voice of sanity while his adoptive parents were trying to remake him in the image of their dead son – but I like Havok so I’m extra nitpicky about him being portrayed as having reservations about gay marriage (I’m kind of glad Nightcrawler’s currently dead – it would really piss me off to see him portrayed as less-than-supportive just because he’s Catholic, and while I have no particular reason to believe Liu would do that, it’s an obvious way to go if you’re looking for someone to paint as the token less-than-enthusiastic person who’s not a bird alien).
My other problem – and I’ve mentioned this before – is that I can’t decide which would be worse: to have the X-Men’s only openly lesbian member (I know Bling! is a lesbian too, but every time I’ve seen it brought up it’s been in the context of her trying to hide it, and I personally don’t really consider students who don’t go on missions “real” X-Men anyway) go bad during the gay wedding plotline, or having to endure another damn Shadow King story. Please let there be a third option, Marjorie Liu! Anyone but the Shadow King!
Havok could have been referring to Corsair’s parents. Not sure if they are still alive (or if any writer cares about them enough to address the issue) but Scott and Alex did have a relationship with them.
@wwk5d
I’d assumed their biological grandparents were out of the picture since Scott and Alex were sent to an orphanage after the plane crash instead of going to live with family, but I did a bit of googling just now to get to the bottom of that since I wasn’t sure. From what I can tell, Corsair’s parents (Philip and Deborah Summers) are still alive (or at least were as of his return to Earth) but Scott and Alex had no idea who they were or where they lived until Corsair told them as adults. So Alex probably has met his grandmother, but it still seems he’d care what she thought about gay marriage, given that he never met her unil he was an adult and she apparently didn’t care enough her grandkids to look into what happened to them after her son disappeared.
(And yeah, you can argue that she assumed everyone died in the plane crash, but the state of Nebraska had a pair of orphans that they KNEW were named Scott and Alex Summers, whose next of kin they’d presumably be looking for – it couldn’t have been that hard to find them if she’d tried.)
(Lord: “…it still seems WEIRD he’d care what she thought about gay marriage…” That missing word changes the meaning of the entire sentnce. That was a bad one.)
I think the previous Uncanny X-Men tie-in issues have made it relatively clear that only Hope (in conjunction with her Five Lights) can re-ignite the mutant race, being “designed” for it and all.
I guess it will be come up in the main series sooner or later as well. Or at least it should.
I would rather have not even Warbird doing such silly objections to gay marriage.
Even in real life (TM) it is already a stretch that objectors even exist in the first place, even among conservatives. People who actually know Jean Paul and have fought at his side would he hard pressed to convince themselves to object on any grounds.
@Andy – #48 showed that Northstar’s fight with Wolverine and Gambit got cut short by Iceman’s intervention; the most recent issue made mention of it. I liked the flash-forwards as device to keep the reader speculating what was going on or how much of it was even real, but it’s not the kind of thing that works well with a month’s gap between installments. It’ll probably read better in trade.
@Luis – Do you mean people who object to gay marriage, or do you mean someone who would show up at a wedding just to say that they’re not coming to the wedding? (RSVPs are something else Shi’ar warriors apparently don’t recognize the validity of.)
@ZZZ – Bling’s bisexual, and it seems like she’s past the point of being closeted about it. She was pretty up front about how cool it was to be wrapped in Rogue’s strong arms over in X-Men Legacy anyway. 😉
I mean pople who object to gay marriage, Suzene.
Sure, they do exist. But actually representing them in such a story lends them a weight and a degree of credibility that they simply do not deserve. They are rare, diminishing and alienated enough in real life, and that would be so much more true in the context of the story.
Heck, it just comes to me that a greater issue in the Marvel Universe would be that mutants and humans are allowed to marry and have offspring together.
And that ship has sailed for, what, 35 years now?
No, I say let the dying cause that is homophoby die in peace. Its memory shall not be raised in the book.
@Luis – Um, no. Sorry to say, people who object to gay rights are a vocal majority. You might have noticed the struggle we’re having with getting equal rights for LGBTQ citizens, for everything from job protection to marriage. As a queer reader, I don’t object to that ugliness being shown because it exists, it’s something we have to deal with every day from strangers on the street, co-workers, and family members, and it’s worse if we live as openly queer.
My objection to it here is that it’s, frankly, watered down to the point of being nonsensical. Liu is trying to convince the reader that there’s something at stake here when Warbird is still more or less a cipher to the audience, when Jean-Paul “Look How Many ****s I Give” Beaubier has barely known her long enough to remember than she exists let alone care if objects to his love for Kyle, and where Warbird’s own reasons for objecting are vague enough that it imparts no greater understanding of the character. It’s quite literally a waste of pages, and it’s not as if modern comics have the space to spare.
@Suzene – You’re absolutely right. I remembered lots of panels with Bling! thinking about how much she liked Rogue but I didn’t remember her saying anything out loud about it (or liking guys too). Since you mentioned it, I googled her and two of the first pictures I got were a panel with har calling Julian hot and the panel you were talking about where she talks to someone (I can’t tell who it is) about being held by Rogue.
So I guess Karma is the only openly lesbian X-Man (unless there’s another I’m forgetting), but because Bling! (I know the exclamation point is silly but it’s fun!) is openly bi, not because she’s a closeted lesbian.
@ZZZ – I think you’re right. So far as the X-Men (and associated hangers-on) go, I know there’s Northstar (gay male), Anole (gay male), Karma (gay female), Bling! (bi female), Mystique (bi female), Rictor (bi male), Shatterstar (pansexual male), and Daken (bi male). I can’t think of anyone else.
But back to your original point, I’m both hoping it is and isn’t the Shadow King. On the one hand, I agree that he’s terribly overplayed. On the other, he’s plagued Karma and her family so often over the years that I’d really like to see her get in some payback. So on the fence at the moment.
@ZZZ
With regards to Philip and Deborah Summers, I think it’s a case of the writers dropping the ball. In the 80s and up till the mid-90s, they would appear every couple of years (they even attended Scott’s wedding to Maddie). Granted, Scott was much closer to them than Alex was, but there was a relationship there that later writers seemed to forget about.
At least they were introduced as characters, I don’t seem to recall anything being done with Scott and Alex’s maternal grandparents, or any potential relatives from that side of the family. Then again, new family isn’t always a good thing, I never liked Vulcan.
Graymalkin is also gay (I don’t think he’s been seen in a book in a while but he’s on the back cover of the wedding issue). And Claremont clearly intended Storm to be bisexual but I don’t think anyone else has written her that way.
Yeah Storm liked the ladies, in fact she had a bit of a thing with Shadowcat, until Shadowcat and Magik got close after Colossus slept around during Secret Wars. I know it all sounds like slash fanfic or one of those dreadful things where people read a whole tawdry relationship into a single innocent speech bubble, but that really was Mr Claremont’s actual intent. He’s said as much in interviews.
But you know who would really be interesting to object to the wedding? Wolverine. Man’s 150 years old, he’s bound to have a few old-fashioned notions that he can’t shake. I can see him as being in favour of homosexual relationships in general, but marriage should be a sacred institution between psychopathic superhero and foreign mafia princess.
I could see Bishop objecting to gay marriage, even before his hell turn.
Um, what interview did Claremont *ever* admit to any of that? Because that not only sounds like slash fanfic, but really bad slash fanfic at that…
Slash and Yukio, now that wouldn’t have surprised me, which would also make Yukio bi, which also sounds right, for her character.
I never thought of any X-Man as being opposed to gay marriage, really. Seems to run counter to the whole concept of what they’re fighting for.
I can see Gambit not liking the idea of marriage at all, and that could be an interesting take if he was used to make the point in the first place. Could have seemed intolerant at first, only subverted later when he says he just thinks Northstar’s making a mistake. Ah, well.
Why isn’t Wolverine chuckling during the whole “Til death do you part” line? I’ve had that scene in my head since this story was announced.
@Suzene: Fair enough about conservative Canadians. I was revealing my own hopeful naivete in my previous post — I always like to think of Canada as a place I can retreat to when things get bad enough in the U.S. Not very realistic, I know, but let me have my dream. And good point about Guardian being the government’s puppet.
@Si: I always got more of a maternal vibe off of Storm in regards to Kitty in the comics, though I wouldn’t be surprised if Claremont imagined more between them than he could freely write for Marvel. Have you ever read his novel First Flight? I read it many years ago, but if I recall correctly, some thinly veiled analogs of Storm and Kitty get it on pretty thoroughly.
@Suzene – Thanks. So I guess it didn’t get forgotten so much as just twisted beyond recognition. What’s the point of an end-of-issue cliffhanger that has already been resolved by a flashforward two issues prior?
I suppose there are examples of stories that work well when told out of order, but this is not one of them.
on which character(s) should oppose gay marriage:
any mutant opposing gay marriage would be a bit of a stretch. like gay republicans, they probably exist, but they simply dont make much sense. so warbird actually is not such a bad choice, also given her military background.
gambit wouldnt really work for me. cant quite explain why… its just not how i see the character. isnt he all ‘live and let live’?
cecilia reyes… would be a little out of nowhere, just like her sudden flirtation with gambit. but i guess its possible.
speaking of gambits romaces, what about frenzy? she could work.
bishop, i could totally see in that role. of course, hes out of circulation at the moment.
oya probably is opposed to gay marriage, but that character has probably enough issues as it is, she doesnt need to be burdened by this.
i just realized i went through a bunch of dark-skinned characters, and now i feel racist.
“I never thought of any X-Man as being opposed to gay marriage, really. Seems to run counter to the whole concept of what they’re fighting for.”
Doesn’t necessarily mean anything. There are people out there who supported the American civil rights movement, but oppose gay marriage. It depends on how strongly a person feels about the institution of marriage.
Also, Bill O’Reilly is clearly no supporter of gay marriage, but that didn’t stop him from coming to Ellen DeGeneres defense against One Million Moms when they tried to bully JC Penny into dropping her from one of their ad campaigns just because she was gay.
Husk maybe? (In opposition to gay marriage)
I know she spouted that ‘only humans get AIDs’ stuff under Austen’s horrible run. Plus working class/southern upbringing…could work.
I think it’s totally feasible for anyone despite having leftist leanings in one area to be against something else the stereotypical left stands for…that’s what makes them characters and not strawmen.
I’ve know people who were obsessed with gay rights but also quite racist.
You could even make a half-hearted rationalisation that character x thinks that ‘mutants should have an impetus to breed given their current extinction problems (yes I know mutant + mutant does not neccesarily = mutant) and that the last thing they need as a species is a high profile gay marriage’.
No saying I’d agree with that, just that it would be an interesting take for one mutant to have.
Oh oh and if he wasn’t dead, Spike from X-Statix as a mutant homophobe (and sadly another dark-skinned character to go with Kingderella’s list)
“They are rare, diminishing and alienated enough in real life…”
Diminishing, yes. Rare, no. Like it or not, it remains a substantial minority opinion.
Regarding the Phoenix Five: The problem isn’t that they haven’t or can’t revive the mutant race; the problem is that neither they nor any other characters appear to think this worthy of mention, despite it being ostensibly their primary goal. That’s bad writing.
Weren’t all the Summers killed a few years ago by Shi’ar commandos? I seem to recall there was a storyline where they just firebombed a Summers family reunion to kill everyone who had any connection whatsoever with the Phoenix.
@Tim 0’Neil
Those were the Greys, if we’re thinking of the same issue.
Ooooh yeah. Sorry.
On Cyclops and Havok’s maternal grandparents, I’m pretty sure Corsair said that they were dead at the same time he offered to introduce Cyclops to his parents.