{"id":4312,"date":"2018-09-20T22:02:17","date_gmt":"2018-09-20T21:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4312"},"modified":"2018-09-20T22:02:17","modified_gmt":"2018-09-20T21:02:17","slug":"x-men-gold-36-feared-and-hated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4312","title":{"rendered":"X-Men Gold #36: “Feared and Hated”"},"content":{"rendered":"

X-Men Gold<\/em>, 2017-18. \u00a0It happened.<\/p>\n

Marc Guggenheim’s 36-issue X-Men<\/em> run was a self-consciously retro affair. \u00a0After years of the X-Men living on offshore islands or demon dimensions, or all the emphasis being on weird time-travelling splinter teams, here was a flagship X-Men title that was about the actual X-Men team, in the X-Men mansion, doing X-Men things. \u00a0It had been a while, and at least part of the gameplan here was to restate the basics – something a book needs now and again, to remind us of the theme in between the variations.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

On that score,\u00a0X-Men Gold<\/em> was quite successful. \u00a0It did strike a back-to-basics tone, it did have a general X-Men-ness about it, and it did throw in enough new elements to avoid being a simple tribute act; it didn’t rely much on established villains, for example, preferring new characters, even if they largely worked within the standard themes; and everyone feels in character, in a traditional sort of way. \u00a0And relocating the team to New York City, rather than their vaguely-specified upstate hideaway, should have been an interesting opportunity to do something new with the human\/mutant culture wars.<\/p>\n

The trouble is that the series rarely seemed to bring out the potential in its new ideas. \u00a0The new Pyro is a perfectly fine character as far as he goes, but still feels bland in terms of personality; there’s something for future writers to work with, but it isn’t there yet. \u00a0Lydia Nance, as a 2018 culture-wars incarnation of the classic anti-mutant bigot villain, feels topical, but in practice she winds up doing tech-based genocide schemes that have little to do with the institute she ostensibly leads. \u00a0And the implications of the X-Men trying to live in mainstream society, in a very public place – or trying to maintain their seclusion despite their choice of location – pretty much get ignored. \u00a0Even the most sympathetic New Yorker might be a little aggrieved at the X-Men just usurping a corner of Central Park (agreement with the local authorities or not), but nope, we’re not going there.<\/p>\n

Still, these ideas are largely still available for future writers to explore, and there are worse legacies for a book to leave behind.<\/p>\n

For his final issue, Marc Guggenheim faces the problem of many departing writers: he wants a sense of closure but he isn’t actually in a position to wrap up any major storylines. \u00a0The solution is to go thematic: tie up a few subplots, and then finish on a credo.<\/p>\n

So the start of the issue spends a couple of pages on Peter and Kitty, which are fine. \u00a0Then we get a Danger Room segment which tries to tie up Rachel’s arc, or at least draw a line under it. \u00a0Pere P\u00e9rez’s art, which is largely pleasing enough throughout the issue, is a bit patchy here; there are some fairly random panel shapes trying to liven up a blank room, and I’m really not sure what Rachel is doing swanning about in the sky when there’s nothing actually there for her to fight. \u00a0Still, P\u00e9rez does a solid job with the melodrama elsewhere in the issue.<\/p>\n

This brings us to the actual plot of the issue, as the X-Men respond to a new teenage mutant in Port Washington, whose powers are out of control, and who’s wrecking his neighbourhood in panic. \u00a0Brian is a stock newly-emerged mutant – he’s a glowing energy thing, he’s panicked, he’s out of control, he thinks he’s a monster, you know the drill. \u00a0And again, that’s fine given that we’re restating the theme here. \u00a0From here we get a rather good scene, in which Kitty talks him down in a solid rendition of a typical X-Men inspirational speech – it’s going to be a new life but you can make it wonderful and we can help you take control, and all that. \u00a0So Brian calms down and turns back to normal, at which point a neighbour shoots him in the head.<\/p>\n

I like this scene; it’s a decent execution of a familiar X-Men routine, and while the story is clearly not on the side of the neighbour, it can understand his point of view. \u00a0It’s by no means clear how far the guy has an issue with mutants, and how much he’s just panicked about seeing his home smashed up. \u00a0And that’s to the benefit of the scene. \u00a0P\u00e9rez paces the scene nicely, with the diagonal panels and the long-shot splash page of the aftermath.<\/p>\n

We then decamp to the nearest hospital, where the doctor is reluctant to operate because the kid is hugely powerful and god knows what will happen. \u00a0This leads to a debate among the X-Men about whether to just force the doctor to operate, with Kitty deciding that they should, before another doctor shows up to make the point academic.<\/p>\n

This doesn’t work quite as well, because the story is a bit too blatant in treating the first doctor’s professed concerns as mere excuses, and the replacement doctor compounds that by giving a decidedly heavy handed speech about how the X-Men’s hard work since issue #1 has won her round to seeing mutants as people. \u00a0Part of the strength of the mutant concept is that when you get on to characters with powers like this, people really do have sensible grounds for being afraid, and that complicates the set-up in potentially interesting ways. \u00a0It’s not like the guy refused to operate on Cypher. \u00a0But the story would have been better letting that uncertainty hang there.<\/p>\n

The idea that Kitty is prepared to force the doctor’s hand is also an interesting one; I have no real problem with the idea that in the context of 2018, the X-Men could be getting more uncompromising in demanding their place in the world, instead of waiting for things to get better. \u00a0It seems like a tipping point that would be a natural development of the traditional mutant-as-minority metaphor in the context of 2018 – and in a more street-level way than the vaguely-formed “mutant revolution” stuff from the Bendis era. \u00a0But again, it’s a point that will have to wait for development under a future writer.<\/p>\n

Still, this is a fair enough way for\u00a0X-Men<\/em> Gold<\/em> to go out – a restatement of theme, in a series which was all about restating the theme.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

X-Men Gold, 2017-18. \u00a0It happened. Marc Guggenheim’s 36-issue X-Men run was a self-consciously retro affair. \u00a0After years of the X-Men living on offshore islands or demon dimensions, or all the emphasis being on weird time-travelling splinter teams, here was a flagship X-Men title that was about the actual X-Men team, in the X-Men mansion, doing […]<\/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,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4312","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\/4312","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=4312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4313,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4312\/revisions\/4313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}