The X-Axis – 7 April 2013
I’ve been away for a few weeks, so we’ve got another backlog built up. Let’s cover the digital books first.
A+X #6 – I’m going to assume this is a “poker game” theme issue, rather than just a case of accidentally commissioning the same story twice.
The lead story by Peter David and Giuseppe Camuncoli teams Captain Marvel with Wolverine, which strains the premise a bit given that Wolverine’s been in the Avengers for eight years now. Anyhow, this is whimsical banter in search of a point. A couple of mildly amusing moments, but I expect better from these creators, even when they’re going for throwaway.
Mike Costa and Stefano Caselli’s story teams the Thing with Gambit – yes, I’d forgotten the Thing was in the Avengers too, but he was. This one at least has a plot – a simple one, but that’s fine for the length, and while the execution is middling, the premise and the twist both play nicely off the characters. It’s nothing to go out of your way to read, but it is at least a proper short story that specifically needs these two characters.
All-New X-Men #9-10 – The solicitation copy for issue #9 promises that “The original five X-Men get new costumes!” Nothing remotely of the sort happens in the issue itself. The solicitation copy for issue #10 asks “Who will join Cyclops and his revolutionary crew? The answer will shock you!” It won’t, because the answer isn’t in the issue. What does happen in the issue is that an unidentified character announces their defection as a cliffhanger – so the cliffhanger is something that was in the solicitation. Oh, and incidentally, despite being utterly misleading, both of these solicitations continue to appear as the description text on Comixology.
What does happen in issue #9: the original X-Men do a Danger Room training exercise for a few pages, the main point being that they’re rookies and aren’t very good yet. Marvel Girl’s telepathy ethics remain a bit dodgy – though Bendis has badly botched the escalation of this plot, since her treatment of Angel last issue, in front of a crowd of witnesses, far exceeded anything she does in this issue, yet seems to have merited nothing more than mild disapproval. Nor do I buy for a second the idea that anyone who’s spent any time living with Xavier can’t grasp the issues involved. While the initial cliffhanger suggested some promise in this storyline, this issue goes a long way towards botching it.
Mystique breaks Lady Mastermind out of jail to join her new Brotherhood, so that’s something actually happening. And Angel finally gets around to complaining that he can’t see any sign of this “mutant genocide” they were supposedly brought to the present to prevent, and that (also) finally prompts Beast to deliver the long-overdue exposition which attempts to justify that claim. Essentially, the argument is that Cyclops’s approach is going to spark a war with the humans at a time where the mutants can’t possibly win. Fine, I suppose, but if that’s the idea, it should have been established long ago. And then Cyclops’ present day team shows up for the cliffhanger.
With issue #10, Mystique’s crew wreak a bit of havoc while impersonating the original X-Men, and then the entire rest of the issue consists of gripping conversation building up to the big reveal of the aforementioned moment that’s already in the solicited. Much of the actual tension here lies in young Cyclops getting to hear his older self’s side of the story and concluding that he’s being misled about what happened.
Oh, and incidentally, the plot of issue #10 goes out of its way to mention that Jean can’t read the minds of Scott’s team because they’re wearing psychic blockers. You may recall that the plot of Uncanny #3, also by Brian Bendis, went out of its way to try and justify the tortuous plot on the grounds that Scott’s team could potentially have their minds read. This is aggravating.
These are alright issues, I guess – Stuart Immonen’s art covers a multitude of sins, which is fortunate, because it has to. There are some interesting ideas about the characters. But we’re ten issues in here, thirteen if you bear in mind that Uncanny is essentially the same book, and the title is taking forever to get to any sort of point. It’s increasingly clear that Bendis may have embarked on this storyline because he wanted to write scenes with the original X-Men in the present day, not because he had any particularly clear idea for what they would do once they got there. At this stage, the threat should be far more developed than a few subplot pages in which Mystique is pushing some sort of unspecified plan.
And judging from the discrepancy between the solicitations and the actual stories, if anything the book is actually getting slower compared to the original plan. What the hell?
Cable & X-Force #6 – Colossus dutifully goes to serve his time in an American jail, and Dennis Hopeless gets some quite good material out of that. I like the idea that Peter is determined to decline any offer to escape, and there’s some good material with Kitty visiting him too. Meanwhile, Boom-Boom takes his place on the roster, and the rest of the team break into Colossus’ prison – not to rescue him, but because by a happy coincidence there’s something in the basement. Oh, and Cyclops shows up at the end. Nothing like having the same cliffhanger in two books in the same week, is there?
This is settling down into being an entirely solid comic, and one that’s even got a voice of its own in its dry sense of humour. I’m still not convinced that it’s got anything distinctive enough to carve out a niche in such an overcrowded market. But it’s doing some good work with Colossus, and that’s earning it some goodwill from me.
Savage Wolverine #3 – You know how I said issue #2 was less obnoxious about the T&A? Well, cancel that. This issue opens with a dreadful comedy segment of the tribal chief offering girls to Amadeus Cho which feels like it belongs in Carry On Up The Savage Land. Oh, and Shanna is being cast in the role of stroppy klutz so that Wolverine can get exasperated with her. Annoyingly, there’s a reasonably interesting plot in here, and a lot of good visual storytelling, but I really do have major, major problems with its attitude to women. It’s not that I’m offended by it, as such – it’s too pathetic to get worked up about in that sense. It’s more that I find the attitude enormously creepy and it completely cancels out any entertainment value the issue would otherwise have for me. I just don’t want to be in the company of the sort of people who’d produce this, quite frankly. You might think that’s harsh, but that is my honest response to this sort of comic, and I suspect it’s a more widespread reaction than a lot of people in the industry realise from inside their bubble.
Uncanny Avengers #5 – Olivier Coipel takes over on art for the start of the second arc. The Apocalypse cultists from X-Force have got some new babies to raise, but Kang promptly sweeps in to co-opt them for his own purposes. That aside, it’s mostly an issue of new team members being introduced and more tension between the A and X sides of the team.
Those new members are Wonder Man, the Wasp, and Sunfire. Wasp’s been out of circulation for quite a while, and seems as good a choice as anyone for this book, which, after all, does need people who clearly fit into the “traditional” Avengers and X-Men categories. Wonder Man is more of a problem because he has to be rehabilitated from the storyline Brian Bendis did with him in Avengers. In fact, “storyline” overstates the coherence of the whole affair; it consisted of Wonder Man randomly insisting that the Avengers ought to shut down, and pointlessly attacking people, with no pay off or reason whatsoever. The whole thing was pretty much a mess.
Obviously that gives Rick Remender a lot of work to do to justify Wonder Man’s presence on the team and turn him back into a workable character. His solution is pretty much to acknowledge the broad strokes of Bendis’ idea while ignoring the details (which aren’t worthy of serious attention anyway). So we have here a Wonder Man who’s prepared to help out the team in a support role in order to lend Wanda a hand, but refuses to fight because he insists that he’s now a non-combatant. It’s an awkward shift from what Bendis was doing, but that’s more a reflection on Bendis than on Remender, who at least manages to drag the character’s storyline into the ballpark of recognisable human behaviour.
As for Sunfire, he’s been in limbo for a good long while, but I can see the appeal of using him. He’s an underdeveloped character, and this book needs a few cast members to call its own, without having to share them with other titles.
Havok’s “don’t call me a mutant” speech in this issue has raised a few eyebrows. Personally, I see it as just not very elegantly phrased. The idea is presumably supposed to be that he wants to be judged as an individual and not as a mutant, which is pretty much fine. On the other hand, in downplaying any idea that being a mutant is central to his identity, he’s running counter to pretty much everything the X-Men have been saying for the last few years. The X-Men have been almost entirely focussed on the notion of building a mutant community since House of M, so it’s odd to have Havok outright reject that approach. That said, Havok has always been on the periphery of the X-Men and rather less of a true believer than his brother. A lot depends on Remender’s thinking here. If Havok’s meant to be setting out the X-Men’s world view, then we’ve got a glitch. But if this is meant to be his personal view, and something the other X-Men might not actually agree with, then Remender might be on to something.
Uncanny X-Force #3 – So it’s another issue of running around chasing Spiral and her girl, basically. Not a huge amount to add to what I’ve said about previous issues, really. It’s quite solidly done, Garney’s art is good, clear and dynamic, and the book shows a pleasing interest in actually explaining key points of history for newer readers. It’s terribly unfashionable these days to pause the action to explain a character’s origin story, but you just can’t assume that everyone remembers Spiral’s back story from the late 1980s, and taking a moment to hit those key points so that this series stands on its own terms is something that more writers ought to do. Plus, considering the tangled mess that Sam Humphries has inherited with some of these characters, he’s pretty good at cutting through to the bits of history that matter to his story, so that those flashbacks can be kept short.
It’s also looking as though this story is going to attempt a rehab job on Bishop, who was horrendously misused as a crazed lunatic in the last Cable series, but shows up here in a version of that character which makes pretty clear that it’s going to be explained away as outside influence. More curious is the nature of that outside influence; the art shows a giant stylised bear within his mind, which looks awfully like Bill Sienkiewicz’s Demon Bear from New Mutants. That’s a terribly obscure reference for this book, though, and not one that obviously connects to any of the characters the book is using. Still, if that is where they’re going, I’ve at least got reasonable faith that Humphries will explain it properly when the time comes.
What we’ve got so far is a series that isn’t bad at all, but has yet to develop a clear enough premise and voice of its own to easily mark out a space in the line. There’s time yet, I guess, but it’s got to hit that big hook soon.
X-Men: Legacy #8 – This issue has Legion attempting to help – kind of – one Santi Sardina, a loser kid who suddenly develops the mutant power to… claim credit for everything. So if anyone sees anything remotely impressive or laudable while he’s nearby, they’re compelled to give him all the thanks. As you can imagine, the idea is that this isn’t particularly satisfying. Legion’s initial idea is to give Santi purpose by encouraging him to become a politician so that he can be the first mutant president, but then he comes round to a route that focusses on Santi himself.
This book is getting a bit Steve Gerberish – we’re getting oddball characters with powers that are of real-world practical utility but no combat value whatsoever. But it’s also a bit rough around the edges in terms of thinking through the theme. For example, the problem with Legion’s initial idea is clearly meant to be that he’s focussing on his own agenda rather than Santi’s well-being. Legion doesn’t seem to have turned his mind to whether Santi would be any good as president, or what he might actually do in the role, or what symbolic value he could have without disclosing how he got the job (which would surely cause some sort of backlash, unless Legion’s imagining a happy America of mental enthrallment). In short, there are some far more fundamental objections to the idea beyond the one that Legion is ultimately concerned about. More to the point, you get the awkward feeling writer Si Spurrier hasn’t really thought this stuff through either, or at least is happy to just ignore it because it doesn’t fit his theme.
And while Legion’s eventual solution to Santi’s problem makes sense – do work anonymously so that you know the credit is genuine – the story makes it a bit easy for him by making him an artistic genius. In fact, Santi’s more of a theme-illustrating concept than an actual character, and that’s where this story doesn’t quite land for me. But on the other hand, the concept’s a good one. I like what this book is trying to do; it’s just not always quite nailing it in the execution.
So that’s everything I’m getting in digital format. Let’s take a very quick race through the other X-books from the last three weeks, since we’ll never get caught up otherwise.
X-Termination #1 / Astonishing X-Men #60 / Age of Apocalypse #14 – We’re three chapters into this crossover and it’s looking pretty dreadful right now. The plot is basically that all the jumping between dimensions has weakened some wall or other and released… uh, thingies, evil thingies. They’ve got no discernible personality or agenda, they’re just sort of humanoid devourers. Since two of the participating books in this crossover are being cancelled, it’s then time to wipe out the cannon fodder. It feels tacked on to Age of Apocalypse, and frankly, we were never given enough time to care about the later characters from X-Treme X-Men. There are a few decent moments, mostly involving Nightcrawler, but on the whole it seems to be little more than a mass cull of unwanted characters.
Gambit #10 – Gambit and Joelle break into a Hydra base and steal a thingie. It’s not one of the more inventive issues and there are some clarity issues with the art – most glaringly, a big establishing shot of the main setting fails to get across the fact that it’s full of stasis tubes containing the guys Gambit will be fighting in the rest of the issue. And I really don’t understand what’s going on in the closing pages, which can’t seem to make up its mind whether Gambit’s genuinely trying to warm Joelle up or stopping to randomly have sex with her in a snowdrift. It’s so odd that I can’t help wondering if it’s one of those scenes where the artist has misunderstood the intention of the script, but then what else is Rogue meant to be reacting to when she shows up at the end?
Wolverine & The X-Men #27 – Crikey, Iron Mask. That’s a villain I didn’t expect to see in this book. Anyway, this issue Dog Logan tries to prove his theory that he’s the better teacher by leading the kids in battle against the villains he’s brought through time (including the aforementioned western baddie). The idea is quite good, and at least tries to turn Dog’s status as a C-list Wolverine clone to advantage by defining him as a character who chafes against that. I confess though that (again) I don’t really understand what the closing pages are going for – once Dog and the kids have been captured by the bad guys, why is it a big deal that he throws a tantrum? It’s just a weird beat to end on, since we already know Dog’s angry.
X-Factor #253 – “Hell on Earth War” continues, as X-Factor remain on the run (while all the main heroes are too busy fighting the random demon hordes to figure out what the problem is). The format of hell lords approaching Tier and eventually getting torn about by him is becoming a bit apparent here, but Peter David still finds other ways of gently advancing the plot, so that there’s a sense of progression here which – cough, cough – some other books might care to emulate.
Did lady mastermind always dress like that or is cleavage-heaving black leather costumes a requirement for blonde ladies on Team Summers?
Okay, I’m glad I wasn’t crazy when I got confused that the original X-Men didn’t get new uniforms, since I wasn’t sure where I had read that. And the cliffhanger at the end of #10 just seemed cheap – they could easily have had the last page actually show who was going over to Cyclops’ side, and let THAT be the cliffhanger. But noooo…
I did appreciate that Lady Mastermind’s time with the X-Men was noted, though. That was back near the start of Mike Carey’s run, I think, running around with Cable, Rogue, Mystique, Sabretooth… that was a weird team.
@ alex: yes and yes.
“Cable, Rogue, Mystique, Sabretooth… that was a weird team.”
So weird, I didn’t believe it and couldn’t read it.
I appreciated that in A+X, Captain Marvel and Wolverine took sides on the “issue” that spoke to their personal philosophies and world outlook, which at least hints that there’s something at stake here. Granted, it’s too understated for its own good, it goes rather against their established relationships, and it’s a throwback to a debate I remember PAD going into great, great detail on over in his own blog a decade or so ago, but it’s something.
Likewise, I appreciated that, after years of Beast claiming the moral high ground in order to justify all sorts of appalling behavior, *someone* called him out on it in Astonishing X-Men 10. That went a long way in redeeming the glacial plot, in my mind.
“It’s increasingly clear that Bendis may have embarked on this storyline because he wanted to write scenes with the original X-Men in the present day, not because he had any particularly clear idea for what they would do once they got there.”
Unfortunately, that’s kind of a Bendis trademark. How many times in Avengers did he make a big deal about adding someone to the roster only to do absolutely nothing with them? Thing, Storm, Echo, Daredevil…
Edit: I meant, of course, All-New X-Men 10.
And yeah, I had forgotten that Storm was ever an Avenger.
Wow, that’s a pretty major discrepancy between All New X-Men #10 and Uncanny X-Men #3. Indeed, having seen the preview pages for Uncanny X-Men #4 it looks like the telepathy issue is only going to be complicated further. That Bendis is writing both titles makes it particularly inexcusable.
And the cliffhanger ending was ridiculous, especially since from a dramatic perspective there’s only one character it can possibly be.
I thought it was strange before that Emma’s new costume was almost the exact same one as lady mastermind’s. But now that lady mastermind is back and still in the same outfit? Hopefully that don’t have many scenes together that might get confusing… 😛
“alright issues, I guess” – so some of Bendis’ better team book work, then.
Thing was in some of the Avengers vs X-Men fights, so I think it’s fair enough he gets to appear as part of the ‘A’ side in A+X.
For some reason, that description of Havok’s speech reminds me of the first time he appeared during Claremont’s run way back when. Back when he and Polaris were giving up superheroing and earning Ph.D.’s in geophysics. Doesn’t seem like a stretch for him.
On a lighter note, anyone else thing that Tabitha Smith might make a good rival for Gambit? It probably wouldn’t work long term, but I could see a short, high-energy, almost slapstick story coming out of it.
Sadly, Mystique’s plan is hardly vague — she wants to steal a lot of money and live comfortably, per her dialogue this issue and last. in essence, Bendis has done with her what he did with hordes of Avengers and other villains in that title with his Hood plotline, making them generic criminals because that’s what he feels most comfortable writing.
The Bendis books are turning into a disaster for me. The X-Men and GotG are both basically reboots that do whatever they want but since past stories are referenced and dismissed with a wink they aren’t “reboots”.
The titles he is writing feel like new 52 books and it’s a shame I’m really enjoying other NOW books that deserve the attention.
“This is settling down into being an entirely solid comic, and one that’s even got a voice of its own in its dry sense of humour.”
In fact, Cable & X-Force is slowly but steadily becoming my favorite among current X-books :).
“It’s increasingly clear that Bendis may have embarked on this storyline because he wanted to write scenes with the original X-Men in the present day, not because he had any particularly clear idea for what they would do once they got there.”
I’m still hoping he does have a clear idea for Cyclops’ Mutant Revolution storyline, because that’s by far the more interesting one. So far, most of what might have been major inconsistencies, such as Magneto’s treachery and Beast’s “Mutant Genocide”, have been cleared up.
“If Havok’s meant to be setting out the X-Men’s world view, then we’ve got a glitch. But if this is meant to be his personal view, and something the other X-Men might not actually agree with, then Remender might be on to something.”
It does look as if Alex turns rapidly from “X-Man put in charge of an Avengers squad” into “Avengers squad leader who just happens to be a Mutant”. Since this somewhat defeats the purpose of his original appointment, I hope Remender has a plan. Havok always worked best when used as a foil to his brother, and with Scott becoming ever more Mutant exclusivist, it makes sense for Alex to go in the opposite direction.
The Bendis X-books are still much better than expected. But wasn’t Mystique in charge of the Hand last time we met?
I know it’s bad form to call attention to older storylines, especially really bad storylines, but some of Havok’s experiences, either in the Mutant X-verse which went through the worst-case mutant vs. human scenarios or as a Starjammer among alien species that wouldn’t think twice about lumping all humans together, would give him a fairly unique perspective on human-mutant relations. And Remender’s got a bit of a history in mining characters’ pasts.
With uncanny avengers, it’s more a case that were getting an alternate view point. From Logan speech about how the “mutant community” was just some “cult kook aid Scott was selling” to the speech Alex made about the word mutant being a barrier to break down, and mutants teaming with heroes, were getting a message that human, mutant, doesn’t matter, just judge the individual.
Also being used as a counterpoint for the Scott’s squad. So we have 2 different POVs in 2 different teams, headed up by rival brothers. We’re obviously building towards something big down the road.
As for the reviews you’ve given the Bendis x-books, it sounds pretty much what I expected. I’ll buy them when they come cheaper.
I’m constantly distracted by the levels of telekinetic power that Jean is throwing around in ANXM, when at this point in her history she was still kind of in the “juggling textbooks” category. More fodder that either these aren’t our X-Men or Bendis hasn’t really done his homework, I guess.
I don’t get the controversy over Remender’s/Havok’s sentiments in Uncanny Avengers. It seems perfectly reasonable to me – “judge me as a person, not by the peculiarities of my genome.” I like that approach to X-Men philosophy a whole lot better than the way the issue has been handled for the last decade or so.
There is a lot of fear building with all of the x-books currently.
Mystique and Sabertooth are running around for the new Hellfire Club in one book, robbing banks in the other. It all seems very muddled at the moment.
Lady Mastermind only ever called herself that because her sister went by just Mastermind (I realize there is more to it than that, but that whole beat in All New X-Men 9 drove me nuts)
I’m hoping what Jean says about not reading there minds is a feint, she’ll send young beast to go with them, and keep only the O5 in the know.
And honestly… the Rogue, Cable, Sabertooth, Mystique, Lady Mastermind X-team, WAS AWESOME! The best of Mike Carey’s run, a wicked lead-in to Messiah Complex, and hitting some wicked character beats. My favorite is Mystique’s curiosity about her legacy in the future and Cable tells her the word Mystique has become it’s own thing like a Judas. It’s a wicked run, and should be given a chance. None of the characters are thrown in at random, they all have genuine reasons for being involved. IS GOOD!
> None of the characters are thrown in at random, they all have genuine reasons for being involved.
One of which was “sink Cable & Deadpool“… :grrr:
1.) I wonder if there haven’t been some last minute changes made to Bendis’ 2 books.
I remember in an interview he gave when the new Uncanny was launching he said that a “Dr. Doom-level villain” was controlling the Sentinels against Cyclops and that it was someone who had never fought the X-Men before. I believe the advance solicitations for Uncanny #3 mentioned this, but nothing like this was in the issue.
2.) It also seems like the editors aren’t coordinating very well; Mystique and Sabretooth have been working with the Hellfire Brats for a year now and there should be some reference to this in All-New X-Men.
3.) I agree with Chaos McKenzie that Mike Carey’s X-Men issues are great. X-Men #200 especially is a great issue with a couple of reveals within a few pages that are extremely well-paced and changed everything for the book.
4.) X-Termination is terrible. I know it’s only half over, but I really think this is the worst X-Men crossover ever. They really should have just ended both Age of Apocalypse and X-Treme X-Men with #12.
Bendis and others, Brevoort I think, have said in a few places that the new costumes are still on the table for the future. They WERE going to be revealed in #9, but then someone realised that the 50th anniversary is right around the corner, and they wanted to wait for that to be closer, to make more of an event out of it.
Sadly, the solicits were already out by the time this occurred to anyone.
X-Termination: Where you can tell who’s writing each bit by how out-of-character which players are!
Alright, that’s a little harsh. I do think Liu did a good job with her lead-in and managed a decent moment or two in AXM #60, but this whole thing is generic as hell and isn’t going to please anyone. I’m reading AXM and I don’t care about these interlopers. Likewise, I’m sure the folks reading AOA and X-Treme aren’t pleased to have their teams join in just to be treated as canon fodder. And really…
*spoilers*
…while I think Remender deserved most of the flak he’s gotten for Havok’s speech and his own childish reaction to criticism of it, I imagine he’ll be off the hook if the casualty list for this cross-over goes the way it appears to be and includes three gay characters and a black man.
Suzene… I really don’t know what the issue with the havok speech was? It was fine in content and tone for my liking. Just curious what your take in it was? (Just the speech itself. Remender’s reaction or outside politics need not apply)
@Matt
I’m sure David Brothers probably has the best take over on 4thLetter but the problem with Havok’s speech is it seems to imply that minorities should abandon their cultural identities to fit in with the majority.
It’s all good saying ‘Take me as an individual’ but Havok says ‘Mutant is divisive…we are all humans’ what if he said ‘Black is divisive…we are all humans’? It’s kind of insulting.
As a nerdy aside/my pet peeve I personally hated how Alex rambled on about no man having the power to make choices for others in regards to Scott when he was stood on a podium next to the Scarlet Witch.
@Jacob
Andrew Wheeler’s article Comics Alliance had a pretty good take on it too, but yes, largely that. There’s a difference between “take me as an individual” and “ignore this thing that makes up part of me as an individual”; one’s demanding acceptance, the other easily comes across as self-hating. To then expand that to an entire population that you’re presuming to speak for is arrogance at best and a call to assimilation at worst. To me, the fact that Alex was standing next to Wanda when he decried Scott’s actions wasn’t what undermined his speech, it was that he made the comparison it at all when he himself tried to speak for the entire mutant population in the next breath.
And I do think Remender’s reactions factor a lot into how much benefit of the doubt he should be given for this scene. Lots of minority leaders fail at actually representing anything beyond their own narrow interests; giving the mutant rights movement its very own Dan Savage in Alex Summers is a potentially interesting storytelling option. But when the guy writing the story has said that Alex is pretty much his personal mouthpiece and every vibe I’m getting in the aftermath screams “one more clueless white, straight dude with a bruised ego”, then I’m really not inclined to be very generous in my reading.
A lot has been said about the “let’s all get into the closet” aspect of Havok’s speech. And fiar enough. But not much has been said about the fact that he invites people to call him Alex even though even his closest friends call him Havok; and that he wants to be treated as a normal person while he runs around in a black unitard evaporating Nazis with his laser arms.
So here’s a question then: if not Havok, who would be a better fit for that storyline? Someone who isn’t necessarily identified as a superhero (Anole, perhaps)? A celebrity like Dazzler or Northstar? Someone like Kitty Pryde who’s left the team and lived a normal life for a while?
@Taibak – I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with using Alex in the role if the storyline is going to smack him in the face with his own privilege and naivete at some point. There are aspects of Alex’s character that could account for the POV in UA #5, including the fact that he’s spent some time chasing “normal” and failing to catch it. (Heck, I was revisiting the ATFW reviews of Chuck Austen’s “Holy War” recently and had to admit that Austen’s Havok and Remender’s Havok line up pretty well so far as “insensitive smeghead” characterization goes.)
But a writer who flat doesn’t get why Alex’s speech would hit a very sore point with minority and allied readers isn’t a guy I’d trust to handle that storyline.
“On a lighter note, anyone else thing that Tabitha Smith might make a good rival for Gambit? It probably wouldn’t work long term, but I could see a short, high-energy, almost slapstick story coming out of it.”
Gambit & Jubilee were friendly “rivals” during the short CC & Jim Lee run on UXM.
I think Havok’s role is perfect. He’s doing the Barak Obama thing: I’m not a “Black President,” I’m an American President who happens to be black. Havok isn’t a “Mutant Superhero,” he’s a superhero who happens to be a mutant.
It’s very consistent with his past character. He’s always wanted to be judged by his work, and not his genome. That was his motivation for leaving the X-Men and staying away; that was why he was reluctant to participate even when he came back in #219-#250. That’s why he stayed on Genosha. It was his rationale for accepting a role leading X-Factor. It was his reason for joining the Avengers.
It’s also consistent with the premise of Uncanny Avengers; we’re superheros. Judge us on that. Don’t judge us as “mutants.”
I just wish he had asked to be called “genetically challenged.” 🙂
I think some of the consternation around Havok’s speech arises from the idea that an entire minority group needs to be united in its thinking about assimilation v. distinction. It doesn’t.
There have always been differences of opinion between groups of queer people about the best way to live our lives (as an example). Some anti-assimilation gays characterize the idea of same-sex marriage as giving in to the dominant culture. Other groups obviously think it’s the key issue in advancing civil rights.
Given the number of mutants running around the Marvel universe, I’d have to think that they would have different ideas about how to interact with the non-mutant population. (In fact, isn’t that the basis of the entire Xavier v. Magneto feud?) And that they would have different ideas about how much “mutant” would define their identities (as opposed to “superhero,” “brother,” “boyfriend,” or whatever other identity was relevant to them).
I think it’s a great idea to explore different story options afforded by the realistic difference of opinion characters have about their shared identities. I’ve only read one comment by Remender on the subject, and he came across as a jerk, so the story might go off the rails at some point. But it’s barely started, so I’m interested to see where it goes.
I just re read the speech and I still agree with its tone. For the last few years the x-men have been militarised on an island claiming mutant culture and acting like a cult. Havok is saying in his speech that he feels this is the wrong path to take and that by standing around screaming “we’re mutants and different and you WILL accept us or else” with a back to the wall and a line in the sand it’s actually further driving the a wedge between the human and mutant communities.
Alex is taking the same standpoint as Xavier in that for successful integration into the existing community, even the world, is to just find your place in the world and get on with it.
Let me put it this way: I have workmates who are genuine nice people, hard workers, who are Samoan. I don’t say I have Samoan workmates. By labelling it that way, you could make a case that I’m separating them from myself, because I’m classing them as Samoan upfront, as if that somehow makes them different.
Alex doesn’t want to be seen as a mutant superhero and an honest man, he wants to be seen as an honest man, and a superhero, that happens to be a mutant. Reorganising the priorities of the descriptions lessens the divisiveness of human and mutant, because we’re focussing on qualities that would make us decide if we like him or not, before we dwell on his mutancy.
Matt and –D, the problem is that Havok didn’t say “I’m a president who happens to be black” or “I’m not a Samoan workmate, I’m a workmate who happens to be Samoan”. He said “I’m not black” or “I’m not Samoan”. He preaches assimilation, not integration. Now I’m fairly sympathetic to Mr Remender, I can see his intentions were noble, and beside that I’m very wary of judging the events in a single issue of a comic serial, since this could be the setup for just about anything that we don’t know about yet. But I fully understand why people who struggle with being accepted every day of their lives would be insulted by a comic hero saying “have you tried not being gay?”
Sorry, this has been argued to death all over the place. A lot of people must be bored and frustrated by it.
I really don’t read it in the tone of him saying “I’m not a mutant”. I read it as “don’t call me a mutant, because that very word raises a boundary between us, so instead call me Alex and judge me on my actions, rather than my genetic makeup”. So to me it would read the same as “don’t call me gay, because that very word raises boundaries between us, so instead call me Alex and judge me on my actions, rather than the fact that I love dick”.
(Yes, the dick joke is an attempt at humour to lighten the mood)
And hey, in a meta sense, if we’re all talking about the speech like this, I’d say that means it hit the right tone. They way it speaks to all of us is different, and a true recreation of a political hot potato. Remender may have wanted us all to smile on nod along with Alex, but instead he’s created a much more human drama.
Yeah, I think there’s a huge chance for it to be an interesting debate within the universe itself – as Thom H. points out, there are always differences within the minority groups themselves as to how to approach things. Do I want to be accepted to the point where saying “look over there at the black guy” is the same as “look over there at the guy wearing shorts”? Or do I take pride in being black, enjoy being part of the “black community”, characterizing that as its own separate thing, etc?
That said, I think Remender lost all goodwill that he could do something interesting with that when his response was “if you disagree with Havok’s speech, go drown yourself in hobo piss.”
If there ever was a time for Marvel to do the whole Team Edward/Team Jacob, Rock/Cena, I’m with Cap/I’m with Iron Man pick a side blitz this would be it.
As Original Matt points out its a balanced argument for either side ATM.
Though given how the pro-reg characters were written in Civil War I expect Scott’s team to get a lot more villainous soon so we can root for the ‘right’ person – Alex. (Even though weirdly I assume the pro-reg villainy came about because of the liberal leanings of a lot of the writers which makes me think theyd root for Scott more?)
I also liked original Matts reading of Havok’s speech. Initially I was disgruntled by Havok using ‘Dont call me mutant’ instead of ‘Dont call me mutie’…the closest thing to an anti mutant racial slur. But I can see Matts logic in his reading and it’s given me food for thought.
Still not sold on it, partially due to Remender’s twitter explosion.
As an aside, this is one of the many factors that keeps me coming back to House to Astonish – the discussion in the comments had actually been a discussion. Many other places would have turned into a flame war long ago.
” Sadly, Mystique’s plan is hardly vague — she wants to steal a lot of money and live comfortably, per her dialogue this issue and last. in essence, Bendis has done with her what he did with hordes of Avengers and other villains in that title with his Hood plotline, making them generic criminals because that’s what he feels most comfortable writing. ”
And she’s a hundred years old or so. With all Mystique’s done in her life, shouldn’t she have more than enough to buy that South Pacific Island and retire in style? If her only ambition here is money, that’s profoundly reductive, and erases even more of the promise Bendis’ All-New X-Men started with.
Paul’s comment about how it seems like Bendis brought in the original five for banter first and story later (if at all) puts to words why I’ve lost interest in this book.
@matt c… I think Remender had his initial blow up because he didn’t realise people would read the speech a different way. It was meant to be just a one page speech we all go “yeah, intolerance does suck” and move on. He has done an interview about it and (I believe) deleted the comment. It’s become way more of a talking point than it should have.
Honestly, I didn’t think there was a different way of reading it until I read Remender’s comment on twitter, and realised the Internet was blowing up over it.
And as for only realising via the author on twitter, it brings me to my next comment.
@jacob… Flame war is right. I looked at a comic forums once some 5 or so years ago and it read like a bunch of 10 year olds in a playground screaming;
“wolverine could too beat up Spider-Man.”
“Could not”
“Could too!!”
“If you think wolverine could beat up Spider-Man then you must suck off dogs. Only people who suck off dogs think wolverine could beat up Spider-Man”
“But only people who root their mums could think that Spider-Man could beat up wolverine, and I’d rather suck a dog than root my mum”
And on it went….
I couldn’t click the X button quick enough.
I’d like to point out that there are some pretty good discussions over at the forums on uncannyxmen.net. Not to say they never devolve into a flame war, but frequently the folks there have good insights and comments on the comics.
It’s so hard to write a credible supervillan because… well… real people don’t act like that. In my line of work I meet a lot of people who commit crimes; most don’t think or act like Mystique or Sabertooth or the Red Skull or even the Wrecking Crew.
Relevant in a quite tangential way: http://groups.google.com/group/net.comics/topics?hl=en
(and what took me there: http://groups.google.com/group/net.comics/browse_thread/thread/4eeba9a9b0fe0817/1cdaf7df610e0376?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=transformers+1#1cdaf7df610e0376 )
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Next year’s big crossover: Social Justice X-men vs. Republican Avengers!
@Matt Craig,
WTF? Those links appear to lead to google group discussions from the mid-’80’s, which, of course, is entirely impossible.
What is that?
It’s freaky, innit – or possibly phreaky, given the context (see Ed Piskor’s Wizzywig).
I didn’t connect one computer to another computer until about ’89/’90 – my friend’s brother had a cradle modem (like WarGames!) attached to his BBC Micro, then my friend Winty got one for his Amiga. We had Telnet(?) or Gopher (?) at school to connect to careers and council computers in about ’91, then nothing new until about ’94, when I discovered Netscape, Usenet and rec.arts.comics.marvel.universe (about the same time as Paul, I think).
It just amazes me on every level – the familiarity, the heterogeneity of subject matter within the group (no demarcation between Marvel/DC/indie), and the thought of all the stuff they had ahead of them! Image, Heroes World, Onslaught, Simon Furman, Crisis(DC), Crisis(Fleetway), Invisibles, Neonomicon, Pogs. But most importantly, the tone. Which is (or appears to be) largely respectful. Nowhere to hide, I guess.
I mean, at this point, Bendis is eating too many chocolate puddings (if you’ve read that comic). Comic Book Confidential hasn’t come out yet. That was my first real glimpse of the breadth of American comics – still a bit wood for trees with British comics at 10/11.
Stick this into YouTube, though: wl3SI4IHnFg Nostalgia is a dangerous thing, but this is History.
I mean, I’ve long known that Comics has a short-term memory problem – giving rise to the same few real-world headlines we all loathe so much – but I thought twenty years online was a long time. And it’s NOTHIN’.
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Aw, this was a very nice post. In concept I want to put in writing like this moreover – taking time and precise effort to make a very good article… but what can I say… I procrastinate alot and by no means seem to get something done.
Paul, we all love the X-Men but I knew this would happen with Bendis writing “All New…”, he has no long term vision. He is plodding along like he did w/the Avengers titles. When he pitched the concept to management I,m sure the main selling point was simply – “would’nt it be kewl to do a book on the time displaced original X-Men. The book started out with a lot of promise and momentum (unlike Bendis’ other recent work)and started to sputter after 3 or 4 issues. I think I,m done with issue 10. On another note, I am glad I saved my money avoiding Age of Ultron – another plodding series, albeit with beautiful renderings of rubble.
I made the jump from trade reader to serials when secret invasion started. I continued with serials until siege. I quit comics for a few years then, fully realising that serials was a crap format and I was better off holding off for a while and getting the trades cheaper. Note that this was during the time of Fraction Uncanny X-men and Bendis avengers and crossovers.
Even as a cheap trade, fear itself was crap.
In that vein, I had little hope for 2 Bendis x-titles, as I’d already sat through several frustrating years of good ideas not followed through because the banter took precedent to storytelling. I read the first issue of both Bendis x-books.
I’ll wait for cheap trades.
@D – to answer your question more directly: Google Groups essentially subsumed Usenet, and so acts as an archive of a lot of Usenet discussions from the whole history of Usenet. Which is how there can appear to be Google Groups conversations from a pre-Google era.
@D – Back in the mid 90s, there was a service called DejaNews that archived Usenet posts. It expanded itself and apparently collapsed. Google bought up the pieces (and the archives) and folded it into Google Groups.
I remember DejaNews fondly. I didn’t know that it turned into a shopping comparison site, though. I just remember it being there, then not being there, and then Google Groups suddenly having Deja’s Usenet archives. (There were long periods around Deja’s decline where I’d lost Usenet access, and interest.)
Not paying attention to what writers may say on social media, as I think their writing should stand on their own, I would like to remind people that when the X-Men went through the siege perilous, Colosus became and artist and Havok became a fascist. He’s a dick. He’s always been a dick. Assimilationist sell-outs are two a penny in every minority group – taking highly paid jobs and then denying there’s any real problem apart from the rest of the minority group’s failure to play a full part in society. If the old Xavier/Magneto division was Martin Luther King/Malcolm X, Havok is like every black activist in the UK (and presumably the US) who’s taken a highly paid consultancy job for the government to tell black people what their problems are.
My issue with Uncanny Avengers is having Captain America, Thor and Wolverine on the team. It’s boring, it makes conflict within the team fairly tame and the shoehorning of Apocalypse into Thor’s history in the latest issue is just irritating. This should be a team of largely b-listers and c-listers – which would open up a potential conflict if they feel they’re not being taken seriously by the Avengers and are a PR stunt. Having, instead, the fairly patronising big boys on board makes it feel fake.