{"id":2660,"date":"2014-07-20T11:41:53","date_gmt":"2014-07-20T10:41:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2660"},"modified":"2014-07-20T11:41:53","modified_gmt":"2014-07-20T10:41:53","slug":"marvel-100th-anniversary-special-x-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=2660","title":{"rendered":"Marvel 100th Anniversary Special: X-Men"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marvel 100th Anniversary Special: X-Men<\/em> is\u00a0a\u00a0truly misbegotten mess of a comic. \u00a0It is tempting to call it “misconceived”, but that\u00a0would actually be unfair; the central concept of these specials\u00a0is potentially interesting in various ways, and this story even starts off\u00a0by\u00a0attempting to take one of the interesting approaches. \u00a0But having done that, it steers vigorously into the first available ditch.<\/p>\n

The high concept of these\u00a0specials is supposedly to imagine what Marvel’s flagship titles might look like in 2061. \u00a0Crucially, it is not meant to be projecting\u00a0fifty years into the future of the characters; the assumption is\u00a0that the sliding timeline remains in effect, so we’re\u00a0rather less far advanced into the characters’ future. \u00a0And the\u00a0story here dutifully reflects the wonkiness of Marvel time:\u00a0most characters are slightly and non-specifically order, while\u00a0Shogo is now an adult.<\/p>\n

Now there are several\u00a0ways you could make this work. \u00a0You could\u00a0play it for laughs and do something about the way the characters will never truly be allowed to drift too far from their original concept – though the X-Men are not the best example of that, given\u00a0their turnover of secondary characters and the way in which the format has been changed over the years.<\/p>\n

Or you can go meta and try to imagine a style of superhero comic as drastically different from the present fashion as\u00a0today’s comics are from the Silver Age. \u00a0This comic doesn’t even attempt that; stylistically, it resembles nothing more than a competently rendered\u00a0What If<\/em> one-shot. \u00a0Granted\u00a0that\u00a0it’s an approach that requires serious levels of ambition\u00a0and\u00a0formal inventiveness, the premise\u00a0demands at least some superficial concessions, which the story doesn’t even attempt.<\/p>\n

Or you\u00a0could look at the\u00a0way US society is progressing and ask how the X-Men’s central metaphor might be being played in 50 years time. \u00a0That too is an interesting idea in theory, and according to promotional interviews, it’s the one that writer Robin Furth was trying to go for.<\/p>\n

The end result of that is a set-up in which Cyclops, having redeemed himself and become\u00a0a national\u00a0hero at some point, has just been elected as the first mutant president of the United States, a result which the story\u00a0presents as exceptionally divisive. \u00a0Reading between the lines, Furth presumably thinks that in fifty years time we’ll potentially be doing the Marvel Universe version of the first gay President, which as a real world estimation doesn’t feel all that unreasonable.<\/p>\n

That, roughly, is where the good ideas in this comic end, and where the problems begin. \u00a0For starters, this doesn’t feel like a story sufficiently far removed from the set-up of the present day. \u00a0Though there’s some cosmetic tinkering with background characters, and the trainees from Bendis’\u00a0Uncanny<\/em> run are written as full and established X-Men, the\u00a0story gives the impression that in fifty years of further stories, essentially three\u00a0things have happened:\u00a0the X-Men have\u00a0reunited into a single faction,\u00a0Scott has been redeemed by a big\u00a0win over some baddies, and Scott has (in the previous issue) married Emma. \u00a0The story makes heavy use of\u00a0characters introduced in the last couple of years, but appears to assume that none will debut in the next 45. \u00a0One wonders whether Furth is aware that the threshold for implausible comic presidents was crossed some time ago when DC put Lex Luthor in charge.<\/p>\n

So this doesn’t feel like a story that\u00a0Marvel\u00a0might\u00a0find themselves doing in\u00a02061. \u00a0On the contrary, it’s a storyline I can very easily imagine appearing\u00a0in five\u00a0years – maybe even two.<\/p>\n

Problem number two: having decided that her story is about the fault lines over\u00a0the acceptance of mutants (or whoever they stand for by\u00a0that time) in 2061, Furth proceeds to do literally nothing with that. \u00a0There are a bunch of one-note protesters outside the White House, but they’re plainly the extreme end of anti-Obama crackpots with the serial numbers filed off. \u00a0That’s not a problem in itself; all stories about the future are in some sense about the present. \u00a0But there’s no exploration of the theme; there’s just a bunch of nut jobs waving placards, as the story wanders off in a different direction entirely.<\/p>\n

That direction is a mysterious cosmic thingy which erases Emma from history on page 3, leaving Scott as the only person who can remember that she ever existed. \u00a0The rest of the comic consists of Scott insisting that\u00a0he definitely had a wife,\u00a0and the rest of the X-Men indulging him. \u00a0Scott blames the protestors outside, despite\u00a0there being no evidence\u00a0that\u00a0this was anything to do with them, as opposed to, say, a super villain. \u00a0So he does what any poorly written\u00a0nitwit would do: he goes\u00a0outside to\u00a0stand on an armoured car and yell at the protestors through a megaphone. \u00a0One of them promptly shoots him, which in the circumstances\u00a0feels like a\u00a0reasonable and measured act of literary criticism. \u00a0Scott fires back, which is\u00a0presented as a PR disaster (even though he’s clearly shot and bleeding, and surely the bigger issue ought to be\u00a0that the President appears to\u00a0have had a psychotic breakdown and is spending his time yelling through a megaphone about his imaginary wife).<\/p>\n

A whole bunch of other mutants are then randomly removed\u00a0in the same way Emma was, and finally Scott himself is vanished. \u00a0The disappearances turn out to be\u00a0the work of Phoenix, who tells Scott that the world is not ready for him to lead it, that “your Presidency will bring about war and disaster”, and that in order to avoid this future he must “undo the past”. \u00a0Everything fades to white and the final\u00a0two panels show Scott and Jean celebrating their wedding anniversary.<\/p>\n

Where do we begin?<\/p>\n

Even on the surface level,\u00a0as a piece of plotting, this borders on incoherent. \u00a0It barely connects with\u00a0the protestor\u00a0story. \u00a0The story gives Scott (and the others) no choice in being “disappeared” yet still wants to present its final\u00a0page as if Scott had made some sort of choice. \u00a0The only evidence in the story\u00a0to support Phoenix’s claims that Scott will be a disastrous\u00a0President come from his response to\u00a0the\u00a0sudden disappearance of his wife – which was Phoenix’s fault in the first place. \u00a0Leave that\u00a0out of account, and the implication\u00a0here seems to be that even a mutant who can actually win\u00a0a presidential election would be so divisive that he’d better not bother. \u00a0What is Furth suggesting that he should have done\u00a0instead? \u00a0Stay at home and not make trouble until America is a better place\u00a0(something that will have to be brought about by the non-mutant majority,\u00a0since the mutants should be\u00a0quietly waiting for conditions to improve)? \u00a0The story seems to be heading in that direction, but it’s so unlikely that Furth would intend something so ridiculous that I can only conclude she just hasn’t thought it through.<\/p>\n

And in what way does bringing Jean back solve the problem? \u00a0Is the suggestion meant to be that Scott somehow goes on to become a better\u00a0or more broadly acceptable President? \u00a0How, for god’s sake? \u00a0Or is the idea that he never becomes President at all? \u00a0In which case, again, what does Jean have to do with that? \u00a0Is the moral here simply supposed to be that\u00a0the X-Men franchise took an irreparable wrong turn by killing off Jean Grey? \u00a0If so, again, why? \u00a0Is there a point to any of this besides blind nostalgia for\u00a0Scott and Jean as a couple?<\/p>\n

Why did Phoenix remove Emma before everyone else anyway, aside from the obvious fact that if she hadn’t,\u00a0there wouldn’t be a story? \u00a0Is Scott’s response supposed to be demonstrating some sort of point? \u00a0If so, (a) it doesn’t, and (b) why is Phoenix trying to make that\u00a0point, when she\u00a0apparently doesn’t require Scott’s consent to do what she wants?<\/p>\n

Why does Phoenix even care about a war on Earth anyway? \u00a0This is a cosmic entity that casually destroys planets, for god’s sake.\u00a0 Even ignoring that, isn’t destruction and rebirth precisely her thing? \u00a0When has she ever shown the slightest concern for human geopolitics? \u00a0And since when does she have precognitive powers? \u00a0And since when can she alter history at will?<\/p>\n

The ending\u00a0doesn’t even work within the logic of the “100th anniversary” conceit. \u00a0Furth\u00a0appears to be positing that by 2061, Marvel still won’t have brought back Jean Grey. \u00a0So\u00a0she’s proposing a story in which Marvel\u00a0resets history to\u00a0at least the end of the Grant Morrison run, in order\u00a0to bring back a character\u00a0that the readers of the day won’t care about in the slightest, because she hasn’t been used in over half a century. \u00a0Why\u00a0would anyone in 2061 want to see that? \u00a0John Byrne will be dead by then! \u00a0Even if this were a remotely good idea on some other level, it’s a story for a notional final issue, not a notional anniversary special.<\/p>\n

From a reasonably promising high concept, this comic ends up with a story that doesn’t work on a plot level, doesn’t work on a thematic level, and doesn’t even work on a gimmick level. \u00a0It’s truly, truly bad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marvel 100th Anniversary Special: X-Men is\u00a0a\u00a0truly misbegotten mess of a comic. \u00a0It is tempting to call it “misconceived”, but that\u00a0would actually be unfair; the central concept of these specials\u00a0is potentially interesting in various ways, and this story even starts off\u00a0by\u00a0attempting to take one of the interesting approaches. \u00a0But having done that, it steers vigorously into […]<\/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-2660","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\/2660","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=2660"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2661,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2660\/revisions\/2661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}