The X-Axis – 2 June 2013
It’s a busy week, with X-Men relaunching, Wolverine and the X-Men kicking off its next major storyline, and Savage Wolverine wrapping up Frank Cho’s arc.
Well, kind of.
It’s also a podcast weekend, so don’t forget to check one post down for reviews that include a fuller discussion of X-Men.
Gambit #13 – Hmm. This book is on its way to imminent cancellation, and so naturally enough, it’s in wrap-up mode. The lengthy Joelle arc ended last month, but seemed to be setting up a cliffhanger where Gambit’s thievery-related sidekick Fence had been killed by Tombstone, or something to that effect. In this issue, Tombstone’s nowhere to be seen; instead, it’s an issue of Gambit trying to help his friend by stealing technology from Tony Stark’s apartment – which is going to help, apparently, because Fence is a cyborg, so, yeah, technology.
That’s all fine, and it gets the book back to its usual heist formula, something it does quite well. And if you’re wondering why Gambit doesn’t simply ask Iron Man for help, the final page kind of has an answer for that too, even if the art is rather confused. (Surely Gambit left that thingummy on the outside of the building?) Iron Man himself is off in Guardians of the Galaxy right now, so Jim Rhodes shows up to investigate, and we get Gambit having a brave stab at piloting some stolen Iron Man armour. Yes, we’re asked to believe that he can power it entirely with his own powers, and that this somehow avoids him having to switch it on and have to deal with the security controls, and yes, that’s objectively ridiculous even by superhero standards, but for whatever reason, I’m willing to let the book have that one.
But… why does the cover have him fighting somebody in the Iron Patriot armour, which doesn’t appear in this issue at all? The solicitations don’t shed any light on it – the book shipped two issues in May, and the shared solicitation copy all relates to issue #12. Still, this has signs of last minute changes of direction. Considering which, it’s really surprisingly okay.
Savage Wolverine #5 – This, in contrast, isn’t.
It’s the final issue of Frank Cho’s run, which has not been unproblematic, but at least has hitherto displayed enough basic coherence to suggest it was heading somewhere. Wolverine is mysteriously transported to a hidden island where he meets up with Shanna the She-Devil, also trapped there. There’s some sort of anti-technology field that prevents them calling for help, so they set out to get rid of it. Meanwhile, Amadeus Cho also randomly shows up on the island, meets the locals, and establishes that the field is also holding Something Terrible, so it mustn’t be brought down. Everyone converges on the Important Temple, at which point the Hulk shows up for no apparent reason. Oh, and somewhere in here, Shanna was mystically revived with a power-up.
So! We’re clearly heading towards a big showdown in which a different solution is found and there’s some sort of pay-off for everything that went before.
But, no, we’re not. What actually happens: there’s a big fight, the Something Terrible escapes, it flies off into space and reports back to its boss, who’s apparently going to invade the earth at some point. The end.
No, seriously, that’s it. That’s how it ends.
If you’re wanting an explanation of why everyone was teleported to this island in the first place, the answer is apparently the throwaway line of dialogue in issue #3 where the local priest suggested that the Something Terrible something just brings people to the island in the hope of getting himself freed – though he must be doing so at quite a rate if this story is anything to go by. There never seems to be any particular reason for selecting the Hulk, or Wolverine, or Amadeus Cho, all of whom are in basically interchangeable roles that could have been played by anyone. Shanna does get her power-up, but it plays no real part in the finale. And then it just kind of stops.
The book even has the nerve to pause so its characters can laugh at Cho’s jokes (which aren’t funny).
If this was the middle chapter of a twelve-issue arc, it would be just about acceptable, since you’d assume that some sort of actual resolution was still in the offing. But as the conclusion of a story, in Cho’s final issue on the title? Abysmal. It’s the sort of issue that leaves me genuinely annoyed at having my time wasted.
Uncanny X-Force #5 – In which the story pauses for an issue so that Sam Humphries can try to explain what he’s doing with Bishop – admittedly, a character in need of fairly drastic work to rehabilitate him following his inexplicable misuse in Cable. If you were thinking that the whole of that storyline was going to be written off as mind control, then apparently not; this issue has him stranded in the far future, apparently returning to sanity, taking up yet another new career as a Revenant hunter, and then being taken over by the main Revenant (which is the owl persona) and… well, that bear thing.
So yes, Cable apparently still counts – though his behaviour in that series is raised by the other characters, who describe him as “psychotic”, so maybe we’re going for a combination of mind control and mental illness to restore Bishop to viability.
As for the bear, this issue does explicitly bill it as “the demon bear”, which seems a bit odd. Unless it’s a massive coincidence, this appears to be a reference to a New Mutants storyline from the early 1980s, which the series has yet to explain to readers under the age of 30, and which has no apparent connection to any cast member. (The demon bear was the arch-enemy of Dani Moonstar, basically.)
I’m kind of confused about where all this is meant to be heading, to be honest.
Wolverine and the X-Men #30 – This is the prologue to “The Hellfire Saga”, a storyline that Marvel have actually promoted with a few house ads. (Not that I see many of the house ads these days, since I’m now getting most of my books digitally. No great loss.)
This book has a tendency to veer from lunacy to more conventional plotting, and this issue sees the book in one of its more conservative modes – even though it’s setting up a story involving the Hellfire kids, perhaps the most ludicrous high-profile villains in Marvel today. It’s an array of subplot scenes shuffling assorted characters into place for the main story. So Beast tries to enlist Xanto Starblood (you know, the alien scientist who wanted to kill Broo) to cure Broo. That doesn’t go particularly well, as Starblood not unreasonably points out that Broo seems like a fairly ordinary and healthy Brood to him, and then does a runner with the Club.
Idie, it turns out, knows perfectly well that the Hellfire kids are trying to manipulate her, and she’s trying to infiltrate them. That’s a relief, since she was in danger of coming across as a complete idiot. Quire finds this out, but ends up being mistaken for a traitor by the X-Men, so of course he ends up having to try and rescue her himself, which means he has to switch sides too. As for the actual traitor, that picks up on a background subplot we’ve all kind of been ignoring for a while.
Pasqual Ferry (with a couple of assistants) provides the art for this issue. I’ve seen more dynamic work from him, and his Quentin Quire looks about thirteen, but it’s still good clean work that fits the story, and with nice expressive characters.
Issues like this aren’t really stories in their own right, so time will tell how many of these things pan out; I still have reservations about whether the Hellfire kids are sufficiently viable as proper villains, rather than comic relief, to be taken seriously in a main role. Put another way, the baseline of Weird has to be set pretty high for those characters to work, possibly higher than it is in this issue. Much as I like this book, after thirty issues it still hasn’t sold me on the brats, and if we never see them again after this storyline, I won’t miss them.
X-Men #1 – I’m not going to repeat everything we said in the podcast, but here are the key points. Despite its seemingly unqualified title, X-Men is plainly the D-title at best, behind Uncanny, All-New and Wolverine &…, but by putting Olivier Coipel on it, Marvel are at least giving it a shot. Brian Wood was already on the book before the relaunch, but this does appear to be a clean start. And that’s good, because while those earlier issues had a lot of good material, they were dragged down by a central concept I never bought into. Now we can put that aside and move on.
The promotion suggested this would be “the female X-Men title”, and there are clear signs of that in the issue – a storyline that involves a male-versus-female battle between villains, and a roster nobody would choose if they weren’t consciously aiming for an all-female roster. (Two telepaths? Four characters who are already being used in other books?) But Wood’s editorial expressly disavows that as the central concept; instead, it seems his focus is on making this the trad X-Men book, for long-time readers who want a familiar cast (you’ll note Warbird isn’t in this issue) and a more conventional team-book feel that isn’t to be found in the other titles. It’s not a priority I’d have expected from Brian Wood, but it’s the one we’ve got.
So this is an issue devoted to bringing Jubilee back into circulation – the fact that she’s a vampire is glossed over – and setting up John Sublime and his long-lost “sister” as the villains for the first arc, giving it the connection to X-Men history that it’s going to need if it’s taking this route. Wood’s good with establishing the character voices, and Coipel’s always a strong artist for a solidly traditional-yet-modern superhero title. There are more than a few niggling plot holes – how exactly did Jubilee get that baby onto the aeroplane, for example? – but on the whole it’s a sound first issue that turns out to be less gimmicky than the promotion had suggested it might be.
I’m really enjoying Wolverine and the X-Men right now. I hope the prologue is an accurate teaser to how much of a climax the Hellfire Saga will be. X-Men #1 kinda disappointed me though. I bit slow, and each of the characters (except Jubilee and Rachel) could’ve used more development and been less generic.
As one of the surviving Jubilee fans, I’m really hoping they play the vampire thing for comedy. I’m sure there’s potential there, with her personality.
Also, I’m pretty certain Husk’s character just got utterly assassinated, but I’m too busy laughing to care.
As much as I actually liked the book (and Brian Wood in general), the cast of X-Men #1 annoys me a little more each time I think about it. There are certainly enough female X-Men that they didn’t need that much overlap in skill sets/abilities. We have five characters who are traditionally described as some kind of martial arts expert, and four characters who are frequently used as thieves/infilrators. And Psylocke and Kitty Pryde, both of whom ninjas. Two ninjas! In one book! Who does that?
It’s the fate of everyone who wears an X, though, isn’t it? To become massively overpowered, progressively more competent, and unfeasibly more beautiful. Then evil, then mad, then dead, then a ninja-vampire-cyborg-powerless-Avenger-queen-clone. From an alternative reality (hence the tattoos).
I’m sure that if more people had liked Maggott, maybe if Eany and Meany had popped catface, he’d’ve been one of the Phoenix Five.
(maybe not)
//\Oo/\\
I think we all might be a bit surprised at how not D list X-men could turn out to be.
Look at its competition, you’ve got All New X-Men which is going no where fast, and is a gimmick book to the extreme. Not a bad gimmick, but its gonna be hard to sell it on the long term, and everyone kind of knows that
Then theres Uncanny, which has a team that while I kind of like it, I think it puts a lot of people off, Cyclops and Emma or no Cyclops and Emma. Its certainly a faster moving book than All New, but it doesnt really feel like the main X-men book.
Wolverine and the X-Men is prob my fave Marvel book, but its for a particular audience, and the focal characters of that book are years and years away from being big players in the Marvel universe, if ever.
Then you have X-Men. X-men has an X-men roster, it might be missing a Cyclops or a Wolverine, but it has the most traditionally valid roster of any of the X-books right now. Its a super hero book with character drama and some soap opera. It will probably unlike Bendis’ books move ahead at a decent clip.
A few months back I would have said that they’d never let the other x-books be the ones to set the tone of the x-line, not with Bendis heading two of them, but thats changed since they announced Battle of the Atom. Thats a crossover that came out of Jason Aaron’s brain, and if he’s the guy thats masterminding the big 30th anniversary x event, I think that says a lot about Bendis’ role in the line at the moment.
You said here and in the podcast that nobody would choose this particular roster, but look at our current male X-Men, and tell me who you think would have been put on this team if it wasnt for the all women thing. Sure the all female things is a gimmick, but its a totally organic gimmick that needs very little explanation to make it work.
> You said here and in the podcast that nobody would choose this particular roster, but look at our current male X-Men, and tell me who you think would have been put on this team if it wasnt for the all women thing. Sure the all female things is a gimmick, but its a totally organic gimmick that needs very little explanation to make it work.
Well, straight away Chamber has history with her from Gen X (although he’s another telepath, and Wood seems to be heavily playing down Rachel’s telepathy already). And… well… everyone’s going to hate the idea, but we’ve got an X-Men team formed specifically to protect Jubilee of all characters, and Wolverine ISN’T involved?
I haven’y listened to the podcast yet, so my apologies if these plot quibbles were discussed there. I liked X-Men #1, but if SPOILER Arkea was wanting to possess Omega Sentinel, what the hell was she trying to accomplish by crashing the train? Even if she was unaware that the destination the X-Men were trying to get her to held someone like Omega Sentinel, it still makes no actual sense plotwise, at least that I can detect.
And I’m not sure exactly how Sublime would know Arkea could possess technology since he cast her off the Earth a billion years ago, quite a while before there would’ve been a whole lot of technology for her to possess (unless the Celestials left a few gizmos lying around). Maybe his “she is alien-evolved” line was intended to gloss over that.
Those are just nitpicks, though. Overall, I thought it was a decent first issue.
Areka doesn’t crash the train until just after Jubilee talks about the man following her (i.e. John Sublime). So it stands to reason that she and Sublime can detect whatever hosts they’re in (which makes sense, since other wise he’d have no way to know she was back). And if she’s just bacteria anyway, she could just jump into one of the survivors of the crash.
I’m not really clear on how he could know what her abilities are either though. Unless what Wood was getting at is just that Areka has possessed aliens before, and therefore woul dhave access to unknown alien technology that she could apply against them.
Uncanny X-Force #5-
It looked to me that Humphries is also going to rehabilitate Bishop having Storm destroy Bishop’s memory of his pursuit of Hope, effectively “killing” that part of Bishop, so that the character can be used without the baggage of being a genocidal maniac.
Matt Fraction did the same thing with his Iron Man run by having Tony Stark loose his memories of the period from Civil War to Dark Reign, so that Tony could pay for his “crimes” while still being around as a hero. Fraction then never mentioned it again however.
I don’t know if it might have happened already, but is anyone going to ask Bishop what the terrible disaster was that Hope was going to cause?
Levi has a point – I was hoping there’d be a ‘main’ X-book again that wasn’t Bendis, and W&TXM’s too wacky for my liking, so this could be what I’m looking for. On the other hand, the way Marvel’s promotion works, I can’t see them backing it as much as those others, or keeping to an artist of Coipel standard for more than the first arc or two.
I also haven’t listened to the podcast yet (I use podcasts to keep me sane at work, and therefore don’t listen to them on the weekend) and so must also apologize if I’m about to rehash points made in the ‘cast. While I overall enjoyed X-Men #1, I had some major issues with a few points:
1) If I interpreted the art correctly, they saved the people on the train by getting them all into the back of the train then cutting loose the first three cars and letting them crash into the oncoming train (let’s ignore the physics of this for the moment). So … was I the only one bothered by the fact that the X-Men react to the deaths of the people on the other train, not to mention the two engineers on their train, with a joke about Wolverine having to write a check? Couldn’t they at least have been shown offering to look for survivors in the wreckage? I get that they don’t know that the wreck was entirely their fault – if they’d gotten the baby off the train immediately instead of hanging around to chat, or if they’d just escorted the train instead of boarding it, or if they’d waited for Jubilee to arrive on her own, none of that would have happened – but they do know that the wreck was almost certainly a directed attack at Jubilee and/or the baby, so you’d think they’d feel at least a little responsible. The book seems to entirely ignore the likelihood that there were people on that other train.
2) I really hate the current direction Rogue has gone in. So she absorbed Northstar’s powers before going on the mission … why didn’t they just bring Northstar? Okay, maybe he had something to do. How exactly did she stop a train with her bare hands? I guess she grabbed someone else’s powers too and forgot to mention. How many people did Rogue stop to absorb before leaving, all of whom were too busy to accompany her on the mission. It’s a terrible precedent to have Rogue just sprouting whatever powers she needs and expecting us to just accept that she must have absorbed that power too before the mission. Frankly, it made me think that the story was written with the belief that Rogue still had her Carol Danvers powers, and hastily rewritten to explain the flight but not the strength. (And on that subject, why did she run around grabbing Northstar and, I’m guessing, Frenzy’s powers for her mission, but not also grab Rachel’s? She was standing right there when they got Storm to come with them.)
3) It didn’t strike me as “glossing over” Jubilee’s vampirism so much “entirely unaware of” it, but I suppose time will tell on that. I got the distinct impression she isn’t a vampire anymore.
4) Yeah, that “I bet she can control machines” thing didn’t make a lick of sense. Not to mention the Cassandra Nova-ness of the entire “evil twin” scenario. If a plotline’s been done in more-or-less recent memory by Grant Morrison AND the Venture Brothers, it’s kind of hard to do it again unironically.
I think that’s all I got for now. Sorry it was so long.
“And on that subject, why did she run around grabbing Northstar and, I’m guessing, Frenzy’s powers for her mission, but not also grab Rachel’s? She was standing right there when they got Storm to come with them”
She should have just grabbed Kitty’s powers, and phased the entire train, since Kitty seemed too busy to do that herself.
Dave: “I don’t know if it might have happened already, but is anyone going to ask Bishop what the terrible disaster was that Hope was going to cause?”
If they didn’t want to bother with that issue any more, a simple explanation could be that the whole thing was rendered moot when Iron Man diverted the Phoenix from Hope in the Avengers vs. X-Men series. Which, depending on how you look at it, means Iron Man’s screw-up saved the future.
Gah. I read X-Men #1 and initially liked it a lot, but now that everyone’s pointing out the plot holes and inconsistencies I’m sort of not liking it after all… Stupid common sense and reason!
It’s anyone’s guess what Rogue’s powers are these days, but I think she’s still at the stage where she can remember stuff she’s copied in the past, instead of needing to touch somebody every time.
Anyway, I’m pretty certain what she did was derail the front three carriages altogether, including the engine that was keeping them moving. This should not have stopped the rest of the train as quickly as it seemed to, and we’re left to assume that the other train either stopped itself or was taken up into the sky by winged monkeys, but still — no direct crash happened.
Oh, and you know who would be a natural fit for a book about protecting Jubilee? Rockslide. The Wolverine and Jubilee LS made him part of her supporting cast, and every team needs an ignorant kid who can have stuff explained to him.
ZZZ:
re: Northstar, it looks like he’s been running with his Children of the Vault upgrades over in Astonishing, including super strength, so Rogue could have gotten the strength, speed, flight combo just from him. And he does have a company to run and is a reluctant team player besides, so his not going along on a retrieval mission for an X-Men he barely knows is pretty IC for him.
Wood is aware of Jubilee’s vampirism; he wanted to revert her to her classic power set, but was blocked by editorial. Since she’s got her amulet that keeps her from going extra crispy in the sun, he’s just treating her vampire power set as her brand new mutant powerset.
To be honest, Avengers vs X-Men had about 5 different “terrible events” narrowly avoided, or it could be the reintroduction of mutants, or it could be… the crossover itself was the terrible event! Bazinga! (*Sorry*)
Why is there an all female X-Men book to begin with? We don’t have enough female representation in all the other X books? When i think of the X-Men I generally think of the female characters first. This is equivalent to collecting all the black characters and giving them their own book. I can’t think of any plot point that could sustain an all female (or any demographic focused cast) for more than an arc other than pure coincidence. This is insulting and a waste of a book. What are the chances of the X-Men going on a mission and not having one male character with them or a female character with them? Good writer and good artist, unwarranted affirmative action mandate? Sorry, try again.
Some of the most popular, interesting and complex X-Men are women, a gimmick like this does them and other female characters a disservice.
Wood mentioned this in another interview but this isn’t exactly that different from his previous run on X-Men where he only had one male character in his core cast. I’m not sure why people have a hard time accepting that maybe this is just the group of characters Wood wanted to use. He’s writing who in the past has gravitated towards writing women, so why should this be any different. It’s not really on him to curtail what and who he wants to write about basically Marvel decided to promote it that way. Would there be this kind commentary if it was an all male cast?
It’s precisely because AvX seems to be the point at which you find out Hope ISN’T causing a terrible disaster that they should now be asking Bishop what the hell his motivation was supposed to be.
I’ve quite enjoyed the Gambit series, more than his previous monthlies for sure. It’s a well done, self-contained book that’s been consistently entertaining and managed to include a whole range of less common characters, as well as creating a couple of its own.
I read the last issue with Joelle as killing Tombstone. He was overcome by the … whatever it was, no?
Seemed like Tombstone should be dead, but he turned up in a bit part in a more recent issue of Superior Spider-Man, so…
I’m surprised at the luke-warm reaction that X-Men #1 received. It certainly had plot problems, but the overall characterization was good. The art was pretty, with only a few blips.
My thoughts:
(1) Regarding Archea and the train wreck: why does everyone think she created the wreck? She was trying to get to the mansion. It was Sublime who was trying to kill Archea. Everyone assumes Archea is the bad guy. But the story hasn’t really set that up yet. We know that Sublime is a bad guy.
(2) The all female cast is a non-issue, precisely because Wood made it a non-issue. There was no in-universe reason given. It was just that these heroes were available for this mission. The End. That’s the right way to handle it, because any in-universe reason would be contrived.
(3) There were plot holes. If Kitty can phase a continent sized bullet made of alien metal through the planet, why couldn’t she phase one train through the other? While interrogating Sublime, why did Rachel and Betsy act like Betsy was the “big gun” and Rachel had no telepathy? Why did Jubilee insist on taking a train to the mansion instead of asking for a teleporter?
(4) There were some art problems too. How did Ororo’s breasts stay in her shirt while she was flying to the train? Where was Psylocke’s nose in the upper left-hand panel on the second-to-last page?
Until we’re told otherwise, I’m willing to accept that Hope attracting the Phoenix Force to Earth was the event that Bishop wanted to avert. The information we had on the event was that it would be disastrous for mutants and that the X-Men wouldn’t help Bishop if he explained why he wanted to kill Hope. Well we’ve seen that the X-Men did, in fact, refuse to help avert the Phoenix Force, and I can accept that the current state of mutant/human relations – especially Cyclops’s nebulous “revolution” – could lead to all-out war and genocide if not for some butterfly-effect trickle down from Bishop’s actions (say, in Bishop’s future, Hank never brought the original X-Men to the future, but the research Hank did into time travel during Bishop’s rampage gave him the idea, and their presence will actually end up making the difference). Or heck, Earth-616 could still be on the path to whatever Bishop was trying to avert, but past the point where killing Hope can change that.
@–D
The baby was smiling until they mentioned having a doctor examine it once they got to the mansion, at which point it became upset and shot a spark into the train’s electrical system. We see the baby’s spark moving through the train, which then chages tracks and we discover that the engineers have been killed by a freak electrical surge. It might be misdirection (the train shuddered or something before the baby shot the spark, so it’s possible it will be revealed that the spark was actually an unsuccessful attempt to fend off an attack on the train), but the intent was clearly to at least create the impression that the baby was responsible for the engineers’ deaths and the train changing tracks (though the baby may have had no idea there was a train on the other tracks).
I could just about buy that, I guess, but it does need to come up some time (soon). And it would still leave problems, like why he didn’t try to kill Scarlet Witch, who was the reason the Phoenix prepared Hope as a host and came back to Earth.
Could be something as simple as history not recording who, besides Hope, was responsible for what Bishop’s trying to avert, or Bishop not being much of a history buff. Like if you picked someone at random and asked who they’d kill if they had a time machine and wanted to prevent World War II. Pretty much everyone will say Hitler, and if you ask what they’d do if they couldn’t get him, nine out of 10 people are going to pause a moment and say “Uh … Hitler’s parents?”
The idea, as I recall, was that Hope (in Bishop’s timeline*) went on a rampage with the Phoenix power, and while she did create new mutants, she also massively increased prejudice towards them – while in the timeline Cable had visited, that Madrox’s “Cortex” dupe was sent to, she just made new mutants.
Obviously, we’re following Timeline B, possibly because Hope didn’t get the Phoenix first time out and had more training while waiting until Dark Cyclops had his shot.
*The Endangered Species/Messiah Complex idea of time travel was bizarre, incidentally, and didn’t seem to have any concept that a future can’t become possible unless it was always possible. Plus, Bishop’s timeline was clearly on a different path from Onslaught onward.
The stuff with Bishop is kind of baffling to me so far, since it seemed like this storyline was being set up pretty clearly to retcon responsibility for his insane villainy in the last Cable series (which, for those who missed it, goes well beyond trying to kill Hope – he killed billions of people in the process and turned a future earth into a barren wasteland). But – nothing like that’s happened so far; there’s been no indication that the Demon Bear/Demon Owl/Demon Whatever made him do any of that, so all of that is still on Bishop – so why bring him back at all, in a mind-control plot no less?
@ Steve
I would definitely complain if it were an all male cast. And although the story makes it seem as though these are the X-Men available for this mission, I doubt they can justify the improbability of this recurring time and time again.
It’s a superhero comic book. I think we’re beyond the point of having to ignore the improbability of anything.
Just because we’re dealing with the realm of fantasy and science fiction doesn’t mean you get a pass on logic and storytelling. Your fictional world can have different laws of physics and biology, but people’s choices have to make some kind of sense or else you’d might as well be writing gibberish.
If Bishop thought killing Hope would reduce prejudice against mutants, he should also have realised those mutants wouldn’t even exist to suffer prejudice without Hope and the Phoenix.
We really need to know what he was supposed to be thinking.
“The book even has the nerve to pause so its characters can laugh at Cho’s jokes (which aren’t funny).” Unfortunate confusion caused by the name, but Amadeus’s joke or Frank’s joke? (I suppose Amadeus’s jokes would also be Frank’s but so would any other joke in the book).
Re: Dave
Define “exist”, preferably to the satisfaction of characters like Eye-Boy who really would rather not have had to deal with the whole “horrible powers” thing.
Would you rather be covered in eyes in a concentration camp or live a normal life with two eyes?
Sure you can find very negative specific examples, but that’s clearly not what was in Bishop’s mind, or by that reasoning he’d be in favour of a mutant genocide.
Extinction works better than genocide there, though.
It’s not really either. Mutants are not a coherent race – virtually every mutant is a race of one (even the powers of e.g., telepaths tend to display effects, ranges and levels so different as to make them unalike). And these people would still exist – it’s not like M-Day, where a load of people were killed when their powers failed, either because they were doing something like flying at the time, or because they were left with fatal side-effects, like an elongated neck without the strength to support it. (Indeed, it may well have been a *repeat* of M-Day in that sense – people who could suddenly only breathe water and so forth).
And if you want to try “oh, mutant culture”, well firstly most of those who were part of that WEREN’T repowered (few or no were), and secondly that would flourish really well in concentration camps, wouldn’t it?
Two ninjas! In one book! Who does that?
Frank Miller.
I’m going by what’s happened, and characters’ attitudes, in the books. Beast stated that mutants were facing extinction. The X-Men, and the Marvel U, regard mutants as a race.
Its like you read my mind! You appear to know a lot about this, like you wrote the book in it or something. I think that you can do with a few pics to drive the message home a bit, but instead of that, this is magnificent blog. A great read. I’ll definitely be back.|
What are the steps to painting a wood fence?