{"id":2445,"date":"2014-03-15T21:11:33","date_gmt":"2014-03-15T21:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2445"},"modified":"2014-03-15T21:11:33","modified_gmt":"2014-03-15T21:11:33","slug":"x-men-legacy-300-forgetmenot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2445","title":{"rendered":"X-Men Legacy #300 – “ForgetMeNot”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marvel has long viewed numbers as less a counting system and more a promotional opportunity, and here we have a prime example of that – a comic labelled as\u00a0X-Men Legacy<\/em> #300, devoted to celebrating ninety-three fabulous issues of\u00a0X-Men Legacy<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Bizarre as it may seem today, the series that became\u00a0X-Men Legacy<\/em> started off back in 1991 as\u00a0X-Men<\/em> vol 2, spent many years as the flagship of the line, and changes its name to\u00a0New X-Men<\/em> for a while in order to play host to the Grant Morrison run. \u00a0But\u00a0then it became\u00a0X-Men Legacy<\/em>, which was essentially a vehicle for solo series to be branded under the X-Men name.<\/p>\n

That’s about all that links the three runs that appeared under the\u00a0Legacy<\/em> banner – Professor X, Rogue, and Legion. \u00a0But nonetheless, this epilogue issue is seemingly intended to serve as an epilogue to all three. \u00a0Or at least, that seems to have been the original idea. \u00a0So all three writers – Mike Carey, Christos Gage, and Si Spurrier – return to collaborate on the final story. \u00a0And they’re joined by three artists who worked on the different incarnations of the book – Tan Eng Huat, Steve Kurth, and Rafa Sandoval.<\/p>\n

But there really\u00a0isn’t<\/em> any common story to be told with these characters, besides which Professor X and Legion are both dead. \u00a0So is Rogue, if you believe\u00a0Uncanny Avengers<\/em>, but the last issue of that series ended with the destruction of planet Earth, so it’s pretty obviously heading towards a cosmic reboot. \u00a0That leaves the creators in the downright odd position of writing a farewell to three barely related comics about three separate characters, none of whom is available to appear in it.<\/p>\n

Wisely, their solution is not to bother. \u00a0In plot terms, this story is standalone – there’s a flashback to “Age of X”, and we check in on Christos Gage’s subplot about Mimic and Weapon Omega, but that’s pretty much it.<\/p>\n

Instead, the story involves a depressed girl trying to break into the school (her back story is glaringly based on the Vanderbilt rape case), getting caught by the security systems, and ending up with a new lease of life after getting the life story of the X-Man who comes to disentangle her – a guy we’ve never seen before who identifies himself as ForgetMeNot.<\/p>\n

ForgetMeNot has the unfortunate mutant power to be completely forgotten when you stop looking at him. \u00a0He’s been on the team for six years now. \u00a0The conceit is that he’s been in loads of stories, you’ve just forgotten he was there. \u00a0So have the rest of the X-Men, because his power works on them too. \u00a0Which means he leads a shadowy existence in the school, continually having to explain to people who he is and how he got into the room.<\/p>\n

It’s the sort of thing designed to wind up continuity purists. \u00a0And it has to be said that even on its own terms it doesn’t really make\u00a0sense. \u00a0The story claims that Xavier was the only person who could remember him, because he could use his powers to set up permanent reminders in his own mind. \u00a0That makes Xavier’s death a big deal for him. \u00a0But it so obviously begs the question of why Xavier set up similar reminders for other people, or why other telepaths aren’t doing the same thing now, or even why the school doesn’t have loads of signs pinned to the walls saying “Hey, remember this guy”, that you kind of have to chuck a lot of goodwill at it, in order for it to work.<\/p>\n

But despite that, I think Spurrier – and it reads very much like his basic story, with the other two contributing flashbacks linked to their own runs – just about gets away with it here. \u00a0Partly that’s because it’s a cute enough idea to earn it, but mainly it’s because it’s necessary for the story’s point, which is that the overlooked guy on the margins has to come to terms with the fact that his contribution will never be remembered or appreciated, and must learn to be satisfied with his own knowledge that he did something worthwhile with his life. \u00a0No, it doesn’t logically work, but it only needs to carry you with it for long enough to make its point.<\/p>\n

What does any of this have to do with\u00a0X-Men Legacy<\/em>? \u00a0Pretty much nothing, in any literal sense. \u00a0But the central theme – that the value of your achievements does not depend on being remembered – plainly resonates with the self-cancelling end of Si Spurrier’s Legion arc, making more explicit the case that unavoidably got a bit rushed in the previous issue. \u00a0Perversely, the fact that this story will plainly never be mentioned again becomes, for a change, a point in its favour; its characters (who we will never see again either) are changed by their experience, which is all the story needs in order to work. \u00a0If it aspired to any wider continuity implications, it would be betraying its own point.<\/p>\n

Pointing to any real connection with the Carey and Gage runs is trickier, to put it mildly, and this is where the attempt to link back to the two earlier runs that happened to share the same arbitrary title starts to feel a bit forced. \u00a0The early Carey stories, in particular, were downright obsessed with continuity; this story is practically the direct opposite of that.<\/p>\n

But the callbacks to the two earlier runs don’t do it any harm, and if you’re willing to roll with the premise, it’s a good story on its own terms. \u00a0Knowledge of anything that came before is not required – in fact, it’s barely even relevant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marvel has long viewed numbers as less a counting system and more a promotional opportunity, and here we have a prime example of that – a comic labelled as\u00a0X-Men Legacy #300, devoted to celebrating ninety-three fabulous issues of\u00a0X-Men Legacy. Bizarre as it may seem today, the series that became\u00a0X-Men Legacy started off back in 1991 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-x-axis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2445"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2446,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445\/revisions\/2446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}