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Rochallor posted:I think he's talking from an in-universe perspective? At least, I've been wondering that. From the tone of stuff like "the pretender" it's clearly supposed to be written by someone in-universe. I was thinking it was info compiled by Moira through her lives and prepared for the Moira X timeline. Ah, yes; I was being dense, I wanted to take a light dig at Hickman's obsession with creating aesthetically appealing infographics.
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Sep 5, 2019 16:57
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One of the infographics in HOX #1 was explicitly written by Gregor, the scientist lady. I’ve been assuming the rest don’t have any specified author, like an anonymous Wikipedia writer.
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Sep 5, 2019 17:08
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Billzasilver posted:One of the infographics in HOX #1 was explicitly written by Gregor, the scientist lady. I’ve been assuming the rest don’t have any specified author, like an anonymous Wikipedia writer. It's Glob
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Sep 5, 2019 18:09
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Jim the Nickel posted:It's Glob Ok, that's another thing Morrison did right. Though like Quire, other writers have done better work with them...
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Sep 5, 2019 18:24
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danbanana posted:He has Scott develop a telepath fetish. think i mentioned this before, but reading through claremont's run there's a bit after jean's death where scott mentions difficulty communicating with a woman he likes because jean could always just read his mind and know what he actually meant. so nah, i think scott cheating on a telepath with another telepath who's more willing to delve deeper inside him is consistent with his established character
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Sep 5, 2019 18:36
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Parallax posted:think i mentioned this before, but reading through claremont's run there's a bit after jean's death where scott mentions difficulty communicating with a woman he likes because jean could always just read his mind and know what he actually meant. so nah, i think scott cheating on a telepath with another telepath who's more willing to delve deeper inside him is consistent with his established character He also had that weird sorta crush on Psylocke for a while, but I don't believe it ever went anywhere.
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Sep 5, 2019 18:41
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Yeah he started as a very repressed, prim teenager and grew into a man who for various reasons had to remain pretty repressed and, literally, pent-up. It's a nice simple parallel between his character and his powers-- he can't let loose, he can't let his facade drop. Hence one of his most iconic moments if Jean holding back his beams on that butte so they can look each other eye to eye, a moment of vulnerability and contact that for him would have been incredibly rare and precious. I think it makes total sense that he'd be attracted to partners who can understand him and "read" him without making him articulate his feelings out loud. Maybe that's not totally healthy, but I think it's a good character beat, and it made the gravity of Emma feel really real and visceral in NEX. Him and Jean had a relationship that was basically, "we're mutants, we live this bizarre life, but we also love each other like anyone else on earth" whereas Emma offered "that's fine, I guess, but I can give you something that only a mutant telepath can give you, and I'll be proud of it." She pushed his limits a little in a way that Jean never did.
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Sep 5, 2019 18:49
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Parallax posted:think i mentioned this before, but reading through claremont's run there's a bit after jean's death where scott mentions difficulty communicating with a woman he likes because jean could always just read his mind and know what he actually meant. so nah, i think scott cheating on a telepath with another telepath who's more willing to delve deeper inside him is consistent with his established character Dawgstar posted:He also had that weird sorta crush on Psylocke for a while, but I don't believe it ever went anywhere. These are both good points so I'll retract that from my comment. I could argue that Scott left Maddy AND THEIR BABY for Jean, so it seems weird that he'd leave Jean for Emma but maybe that does fit his M.O...
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Sep 5, 2019 19:54
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Archyduchess posted:
You shouldn’t like Magneto. He’d enslave or kill every human on Earth if he had his way. Xavier makes nice with him as an attempt to keep him on some sort of leash. Let’s not forget what a jerk Xavier can be, and he’s supposed to be the good guy. It’s the same thing with Doctor Doom. He only gets to act noble when there’s a larger threat, or when he’s tired of getting beat down for a while.
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Sep 5, 2019 20:56
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Morrison built the backdoor Sublime escape clause into his version of Magneto, but it's also easy to forget that Morrison's New X-Men came a decade after Claremont left the X-Books for the first time. Claremont spent a decade 'redeeming' Magneto, but Claremont's last X-Men stories also featured: 1) Magneto renouncing his belief that mutants and humans could co-exist. 2) Rebuilding Asteroid M and pointing nuclear missiles at everyone on Earth 3) Torturing Moira MacTaggart for 'influencing' him into being 'good' when he got deaged 4) Getting violent and crazed be cause of Fabian Cortez, who was boosting his powers and making him unstable At the end of the arc he snaps out of it before destroying humanity and nobly sacrifices himself, knowing he's too far gone. But then in the decade between X-Men #3 and #114: - Magneto come back, creates an EMP pulse that shuts down the entire planet, threatens everyone, rips Wolverine's bones out, gets his brain shut down by Xavier - Magneto's coma brain creates Onslaught and tries to destroy/enslave the whole planet - Magneto threatens to kill all of humanity unless they give him Genosha, they do - Magneto kills/enslaves all of the humans on Genosha, builds an army and plans to overthrow all humanity. He kidnaps Xavier and crucifies him above his throne. I'm probably forgetting something but everyone who wasn't Grant Morrison that worked on X-Men comics from 1991-2001 did a terrific job of 'ruining' Magneto, he just remixed/did the greatest hits of the previous decades, which was basically the whole run.
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Sep 5, 2019 21:18
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And Byrne was upset that Magneto was no longer a classic supervillain just because he survived the Holocaust.
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Sep 5, 2019 21:42
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Open Marriage Night posted:You shouldn’t like Magneto. He’d enslave or kill every human on Earth if he had his way. Xavier makes nice with him as an attempt to keep him on some sort of leash. Let’s not forget what a jerk Xavier can be, and he’s supposed to be the good guy. Except of course for all the comics where he's not like that. Being a fan of superhero comics is always an exercise in selective reading and I think you and I have selected very different readings. That's certainly an interpretation of the basic premise of the character, and one that, as E&C pointed out, a lot of writers have gone to. I just think it's dull and a waste, and the most obvious and easy thing you can do with someone positioned as the more radical alternative to the reformist good guys. As a member of a marginalized group, one that the X-Men comics have often turned to for allegorical heft, I like it when the character set up to provide an alternative to ameliorating the powers that be gets to be something other than a pantomime villain. Claremont and Gillen had really compelling takes on the character to me. He made sense in their hands as somebody who'd been really traumatized by violence and oppression and was less patient with the long-game than some of the X-Men. I think Dr. Doom is a different animal completely because his basic elevator schtick is that he's a supervillain but with the resources, powers, and Kantorowiczean sense of self-sovereigny of a king. I agree that sympathetic portrayals of him tend towards the icky. But I think that's because the concept is intrinsically villainous in a way that Magneto's doesn't necessarily have to be. How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Sep 5, 2019 |
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Sep 5, 2019 21:52
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It astonishes me that writers keep making Magneto a standard super villain. I'm not sure what writers think "y'know what's a good idea? Let's make this complex character more one dimensional!" One of the things I'm hoping that comes out of all this is Moira as a fourth "mutant leader" along with Chuck, Mags, and Apocalypse. It'll be nice to see a new perspective- and a female one at that- instead of having writers mash their stories around what should be established character morals. Side note: why the gently caress wasn't Magneto with the strike team on the Mother Mold? That seems an obvious job for him...
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Sep 5, 2019 22:40
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Edge & Christian posted:Morrison built the backdoor Sublime escape clause into his version of Magneto, but it's also easy to forget that Morrison's New X-Men came a decade after Claremont left the X-Books for the first time. Claremont spent a decade 'redeeming' Magneto, but Claremont's last X-Men stories also featured: I'm not a fan of the way Magneto is portrayed in NXM, but yeah, it's hard to argue (besides a couple extreme actions) that it doesn't make sense in the context of where his character is at that point. It's more that morally murky Magneto is far more interesting than Silver Age villain Magneto so that's the character people tend to default to.
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Sep 5, 2019 22:42
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I think the whole Magneto arc in Morrison's run was a reaction in a lot of ways to 1990s comics in general, and post-Claremont X-Men specifically. It was the decade where Much of the Claremont --- Morrison interregnum was a series of attempts to "rehab" Deadpool, Emma Frost, Sabretooth, Mystique, Juggernaut, Goblin Queen, etc. etc. etc., and when it wasn't that it was revealing deep dark murderous secrets from the past of Psylocke and Gambit and Wolverine and etc. Some of these developments actually worked, not unlike Claremont's storyline redemptions of Rogue, Magneto, and others. A lot of them just sort of hand-waved away torture and mass murder and sadism and used the same "well you know [other team member] used to be a criminal too!" as if Hawkeye's teenage carny thieving is equivalent to being an assassin for hire for a decade or whatever. There was (is?) a tendency to really forgive a ton of evil when it's done by the Noble Tragic Flawed Villain/Anti-Hero, whether it's Doctor Doom and Magneto or Walter White and Tony Soprano or Darth Vader or George W. Bush or whomever. And it's worth remembering that the storyline that Marvel chose to run immediately preceding Morrison's revamp involved Magneto kidnapping and crucifying Xavier in his war palace as a sign of what he would do to people disloyal to him in the coming Mutant vs. Human war he planned on starting. It would be kind of weird to do a "aww, ol' Magneto isn't so bad, he's just got anger issues" as the direct follow-up.
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Sep 5, 2019 23:30
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I think Magneto even wore a complete black outfit on that story just to make sure you knew he was EEEEVILL. Morrison's Genocide Magneto didn't bother me, honestly. He was a pathetic man who was so deep on this undercover vengeance mission that when he hit the drugs hard, it hosed him bad enough just to turn into an worse version of Scott Lobdell's Magneto.
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Sep 5, 2019 23:39
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Morrison during a 2004 interview- “What people often forget, of course, is that Magneto, unlike the lovely Sir Ian McKellen, is a mad old terrorist twat. No matter how he justifies his stupid, brutal behaviour, or how anyone else tries to justify it, in the end he's just an old bastard with daft, old ideas based on violence and coercion. I really wanted to make that clear”
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Sep 5, 2019 23:43
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The Logan/Kurt moment was genuinely beautiful
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Sep 6, 2019 00:15
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danbanana posted:It astonishes me that writers keep making Magneto a standard super villain. I'm not sure what writers think "y'know what's a good idea? Let's make this complex character more one dimensional!" Their primary goal right now is to protect omega level mutants. That being said, good luck to any of those clowns trying to take out Mags.
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Sep 6, 2019 00:51
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I don't like to oversell Morrison's stuff because, frankly yeah, a lot of it is really...not dense, exactly, but just...off-the-wall enough to not be what you want to be reading these books for. And there is definitely that Tom-King-esque element where these characters have a hard time with the challenges he throws their way, but only because he's written them so differently from usual selves so that these challenges would actually be a challenge. I didn't like a lot of his ideas the first time I read them, either. But I just can't get too bothered about those things when compared to the amount of stuff he gets completely right or that he made right. I don't think I would even like mutants that much nowadays if he hadn't normalized the concept of them as a cultural entity in this fictional universe. And actually "outing" Xavier's as a mutant school...I mean, it seems preposterous nowadays to even envision that there was a time that Charles and the others were, like, just going around pretending that they were ordinary humans. And his Jean just flat-out sets the standard of what Jean should and could be. Ever since reading this latest HoX issue, I just can't help but flash back to that panel between Jean and Xavier, pretty early on in Morrison's run, where he orders her to fetch him his chair or whatever and she's goes "That tone of voice might work with Scott, but not with me." The degree of difference between that and how others have characterized Jean is just...I don't want to harp on it, but it's so steep.
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Sep 6, 2019 01:31
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CubanMissile posted:Their primary goal right now is to protect omega level mutants. That being said, good luck to any of those clowns trying to take out Mags. Jean's an Omega level mutant and she's went. I had the same argument and my friend says they wouldn't have made any of the forge out of metal which seems like a stretch
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Sep 6, 2019 01:37
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Synesthesian Fetish posted:Jean's an Omega level mutant and she's went. I had the same argument and my friend says they wouldn't have made any of the forge out of metal which seems like a stretch That's a good point. Maybe Magneto just isn't an "field" guy anymore.
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Sep 6, 2019 02:06
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Just here to heap praise on Hickman's run so far and this latest issue in particular. Gregor's righteous anger falls flat when you realize she's been working to top the death toll presented earlier in the issue. Before his suicide Gregor's husband laments not having children with her and this doesn't draw any sympathy from me. Children for what? Born forfeiting their humanity, born into subjugation to mad gods created in human's own image of disdain and self-loathing? Mutants and their children dream of freedom and liberation, even for the humans. Humans want to put an end to dreams even and especially their own.
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Sep 6, 2019 02:32
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Strange Poon posted:Mutants and their children dream of freedom and liberation, even for the humans. Humans want to put an end to dreams even and especially their own. Do they? It seems like nobody has asked “humans” what they want. The “human” governments are eagerly cooperating with Xavier to get his wonder drugs. I don’t think any “humans” voted for the machine future. The Mother Mold is being built by a bunch of weirdo mad science loners. What strikes me about this series is that individual characters beyond five or so have been eclipsed by ideology and inevitability. Ultimately nobody is getting to build a future they actually want.
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Sep 6, 2019 03:13
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We've already been once to constrain spoiler tags to day of release only, you don't need to bother with them any more.
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Sep 6, 2019 04:17
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Rand Brittain posted:Do they? Ok, but it's not like you ever see humans in these books staging protests for governments to stop using huge mutant killing death robots.
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Sep 6, 2019 04:28
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I will say that if there's one thing Hickman's run has done so far, it's to make me think twice about the plight of humans in a future run by mutants. It might be partially because he's making Xavier such a big dick and Krakoa really bizarrely antagonistic, but I'm actually a bit more interested in the human side of the argument this time around instead of just brushing it off like every other time someone has tried establish to these sorts of anti-mutant characters. Imagine a future society where random genetic circumstances of your birth will make you either godlike superpowerful or just slightly deformed. Imagine your child's classmate being automatically a math genius because his mutant powers allow him to talk to numbers or something, while your own child has purple feet and that's it, and then also your estranged nephew one day develops omega class plant control powers and becomes set for life because the upper echelon of this society literally sees him as their most valuable resource. It would be a most extreme sort of meritocracy on a level that pervades every aspect of life. Of course, the X-Men's side of the argument (pre-Krakoa, I suppose; I've no idea what their current social philosophy is) would be that we already kinda have that. Some kids are already better at other kids at some things, and some people are just born privileged and powerful in ways that have nothing to do with superpowers, and what's important is that we teach everyone with those advantages to be responsible with them and to use them to protect the less powerful and fortunate. But then, we already have trouble doing that, so an extreme paradigm shift to the point of "literally everyone has superpowers as determined by fate" would very arguably just flat-out upend world society as it currently stands. BrianWilly fucked around with this message at 04:37 on Sep 6, 2019 |
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Sep 6, 2019 04:33
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Archyduchess posted:Except of course for all the comics where he's not like that. Being a fan of superhero comics is always an exercise in selective reading and I think you and I have selected very different readings. I like both sympathetic Doom and sympathetic Magneto, but for different reasons. Magneto makes sense. Mutants need a Magneto, someone who isn't afraid to use violence against their oppressors. Peaceful movements cannot succeed without the implicit threat of violence form more militant movements. Doom I like because his story is always a tragedy, always a victim of hubris. Doom could be one of the greatest heroes around, but his ego will ALWAYS get in the way. It seeing how far he goes down the path of good before falling that provides the entertainment to me. Having either of these characters be sympathetic or acting on the side of the angels also does NOT mean that they can't be antagonists. Doom won't concede to anyone elses plans or vision. Magneto is often time too willing to use violence as the first, last, and only solution. Even when these characters are pointed at the same beneficial goal as our heroes, even when they're acting for the greater good, they can be an onstacle and cause more problems than they solve. To me, that will always be more interesting than just cackling supervillian who wants to rule the world.
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Sep 6, 2019 04:38
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Ate My Balls Redux posted:The Logan/Kurt moment was genuinely beautiful My favorite laugh was when Wolverine finished his bit and he left about 10 corpses. Nightcrawler finishes his bit in the next panel and leaves two guys tied up.
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Sep 6, 2019 04:44
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The Magneto series was 'fun' for that. He's depowered? He'll still murder people with staples and your own fillings.
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Sep 6, 2019 04:47
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Billzasilver posted:My favorite laugh was when Wolverine finished his bit and he left about 10 corpses. Nightcrawler finishes his bit in the next panel and leaves two guys tied up. That's like the two ways to play a Metal Gear Solid game. And agreed that Magneto is the man, on the Magneto talk, great great character. Rooting for a flawed and in real life terms not good character is fun. Morrison's reading in that quote to me is too literal of a take on the character. It's like talking yourself out of a great thing.
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Sep 6, 2019 04:59
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Some people don’t buy into “I used to be a genocidal maniac, but I’m ok now.” It’s fine that the X-Men let him into the fold, but let’s not pretend they didn’t cut their teeth stopping him from stealing nuclear missiles. Better to have him as an ally than as an enemy.
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Sep 6, 2019 05:11
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It's cool that there are multiple readings, just Grant's take there to me is a bit overly blunt and missing a lot of what people dig about Magneto. He's embraced all sorts of nutty comic book things over his years when it tickles him, especially gold/silver age stuff, he just doesn't happen to dig on Claremont Magneto I guess. So we disagree there.
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Sep 6, 2019 05:25
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Yeah, when your whole race is down to 0.00000029% population or whatever the number is, and practically every future you've seen has you dead or in camps, there's no way you're keeping someone of his abilities on the bench for whatever apocalypse might be coming your way.
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Sep 6, 2019 05:26
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I think Morrison's whole point is that (with certain characters, if you take Morrison's general "everything counts" attitude) you can't really take someone's promise of reformation seriously the tenth or fifteenth time they go "yeah I murdered a grip of people and attempted to exterminate and/or subjugate the human race but I'm a changed man and there's no way I'd try it a sixteenth time!" He did a similar thing (which I also understand how people don't really like it) with Cyclops, whose arc always seemed to be "something super traumatic happened to me and my family but you know, I'm a stoic and good man and I'm just going to handle my poo poo and move on, no big deal!" He let Cyclops actually have the nervous breakdown he probably deserved after the fourth or fifth "you have a secret brother"/"your dad isn't really dead, he's a space pirate"/"your girlfriend is an evil god"/"your girlfriend is dead"/"your girlfriend might be back from the dead no wait it's just a girl who looks like her"/"your girlfriend isn't dead after all!"/"your wife is actually a clone and also a demon"/"your demon clone wife is trying to ritually sacrifice your son"/"your son has a deadly future disease and you'd better send him into the future"/"your son is back and a murderous cyborg dude or maybe that's just a clone of your son"/"your girlfriend is dead and/or a god again"/"you've been merged into an evil god and living in the sewers for the past six months trying to bring about the end of the world"/etc etc etc Some of this is just the nature of the beast, everyone wants to tell The Story with these big characters. It's why Spider-Man has had the general public and the hero community call him an untrustworthy good for nothing piece of poo poo they'll never respect before coming around to realizing he's a real hero like forty times. It's why Marvel's sliding timescale has compressed to the point that the Thing gets depressed and angry about how he's just an ugly rock monster no one likes before realizing it ain't so bad every 3-4 months. It's why Johnny Storm is a hothead with no sense of responsibility until he finally steps up and takes things seriously just for two weeks then becomes a hothead with no sense of responsibility again. It's why Reed Richards forgets to be a loving and caring member of a family and learns to love again every time a relative or friend has a birthday or anniversary. It's why Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne have reconciled and put the slap that ended their marriage behind them at least a dozen times before someone reminds them that it existed and they have to go through the reconciliation all over again. And yeah, it's why pretty much every single person since 1991 who's written an X-Men book for more than a few issues has rolled up their sleeves and gone "okay, can people accept Magneto as a hero? I''m finally going to be the one to write this story! But first I better have him threaten a genocide or three to push him to the brink." Morrison was just the first person post-Claremont to not bother. Edge & Christian fucked around with this message at 06:14 on Sep 6, 2019 |
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Sep 6, 2019 06:11
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Claremont had pretty thoroughly reformed Magneto as at worst a dude who wanted to live separately from humans and offered other mutants the same opportunity. Claremont's last story in his first huge run was Magneto offering sanctuary to some mutants who crashed Asteroid M, and raising nukes from the wreck of the Leningrad to give himself retaliatory ability in case of attack from humans. It wasn't until he found out Moira had hosed with his infant brain when he was age reverted that he even attacked the X-Men. The problem is that everyone afterwards took a complex character that had mostly reformed and turned him back into a genocidal maniac.
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Sep 6, 2019 06:17
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CubanMissile posted:Ok, but it's not like you ever see humans in these books staging protests for governments to stop using huge mutant killing death robots. Earlier on Magneto even brings up Operation Paper Clip. He's making a nod as to what people / governments are willing to tolerate and what extent they'll forgive if it gets them what they want. Nazis are monsters but uhh well we can forgive them and work alongside them as long as it allows us to exterminate the mutants (very topical!). I wondered if this was meant to just be about human extremists and it might be but I feel the scene I mentioned, Moria's experiences in her lives, and so on make it clear that no one person is responsible for the genocide, it seems to be what mankind works toward almost no matter what. Up to this point, the only life Moria lives a peaceful and fulfilling existence happens to be the one where no one, including herself, knows that she's a mutant. To come back to Magneto, I get the feeling Hickman isn't trying to reform Magento either but has a different take on him than Grant. The series so far has made me more sympathetic to Mageneto's extremism and I can say for the first time that, even though I think Apocalypse is a villain, I can kind of understand why he's doing what he's doing. Much like Moira, re-living these experiences over and over can radicalize you.
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Sep 6, 2019 07:07
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Apocalypse looked like a hero in the X-Factor annual where he fought the High Evolutionary.
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Sep 6, 2019 07:32
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Ate My Balls Redux posted:Claremont Boy, that train's never late huh. Cabbit fucked around with this message at 07:41 on Sep 6, 2019 |
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Sep 6, 2019 07:39
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I like how that arc ended with Magneto basically telling the X-men " just get the gently caress outta here." You could really feel his weariness.
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Sep 6, 2019 07:45
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