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BrianWilly posted:When the great concept behind your relaunch just so happens to be "Every X-Man suddenly buys into a literal master race rhetoric and moves to a segregationist island," you bet your rear end that I one hundred percent absolutely can and will hold a creator to respecting continuity and making sure this lofty premise actually makes sense with the characters that it drags into the fold. First, congratulations for disliking Tom King before it was cool/while he was still writing incredible comics. People mostly aren't just saying Hickman is infallible so it must all come together. People are mostly saying they're enjoying the hell out of these comics despite the flaws, perceived or otherwise. Maybe some of the characters were persuaded out of their misgivings after finding out the entire thing is a last desperate attempt to stave off genocide, maybe Xavier's loving with everyone's minds as he attempts to stave off that genocide, or maybe there's something even worse going on and he's being manipulated in some way too. Or maybe Hickman's so caught up in the big picture, and trying to radically transform the status quo in 12 issues, that he's leaving characterization behind to be cleaned up/explained away later--we just don't know yet. Either way, as a limited series I think this has been amazing, and I'm willing to forgive an awful lot for the sheer number of wtf moments we've seen. If everyone was able to move beyond Iron Man and Reed Richards running a concentration camp in the negative zone, we'll probably be able to move on from some mutants being a bit too excited about their suspicious looking mutant paradise where they're all gifted with immortality.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 19:06 |
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# ? May 9, 2024 08:35 |
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I find it sort of mind-boggling that anyone can look at HoX/PoX, a pair of miniseries explicitly aimed at setting up a Big Picture, and say "but where is the focus on the individual characters" as though the fact that there are like a dozen books that will be spinning out of this that will undoubtedly be directly focused on individual characters is all just, I don't know, unfounded rumor or something. Like, I get wanting to see those details, those individual responses, but you're not gonna find them in the book that's explicitly meant to set up the big new status quo, because if you did it would take 400 issues instead of 12. It's not rocket science. It's okay to just say "Honestly, Hickman's approach isn't doing it for me" but the dude works the way he works. If past experience is any guide it's not as though we're not going to get some of those answers. But let the overture finish before you start demanding the third act solo, is what I'm saying.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 19:07 |
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Sinteres posted:First, congratulations for disliking Tom King before it was cool/while he was still writing incredible comics. Xavier promised everyone a gigantic mutant orgy, and in HoX #6 he finally delivered.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 19:20 |
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Sinteres posted:People mostly aren't just saying Hickman is infallible so it must all come together. People are mostly saying they're enjoying the hell out of these comics despite the flaws, perceived or otherwise. Maybe some of the characters were persuaded out of their misgivings after finding out the entire thing is a last desperate attempt to stave off genocide, maybe Xavier's loving with everyone's minds as he attempts to stave off that genocide, or maybe there's something even worse going on and he's being manipulated in some way too. Or maybe Hickman's so caught up in the big picture, and trying to radically transform the status quo in 12 issues, that he's leaving characterization behind to be cleaned up/explained away later--we just don't know yet. Either way, as a limited series I think this has been amazing, and I'm willing to forgive an awful lot for the sheer number of wtf moments we've seen. If everyone was able to move beyond Iron Man and Reed Richards running a concentration camp in the negative zone, we'll probably be able to move on from some mutants being a bit too excited about their suspicious looking mutant paradise where they're all gifted with immortality. DivineCoffeeBinge posted:It's okay to just say "Honestly, Hickman's approach isn't doing it for me" but the dude works the way he works. If past experience is any guide it's not as though we're not going to get some of those answers. But let the overture finish before you start demanding the third act solo, is what I'm saying. Not all comic books are for all audiences. There are dozens of ways to write a comic, and every one is just as valid. Sometimes you have to take a backseat while the appeal to a different audience is running. That's just how the comic industry goes. My personal checklist starts with "Kitty Pryde can gently caress off forever" so the last 2 years or so weren't for me. Acting like your checklist of needs/wants is the only right one is being a douche. Now beyond that point, the obvious sinister air hanging over everything that happens in the Krakoa timeline is basically slapping us in the face with "things aren't right here". Maybe it's not yet the time to say Jean Loring took a walk on Xavier's brain.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 19:21 |
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I feel like it’s a valid criticism because it’s just bad storytelling. What’s the point of a bunch of wtf moments if all the characters feel shallow and interchangeable? And yes, this is set-up, but for what? Hickman doesn’t have to explore every single character’s feelings about this new status quo, but it’s lacked the foreshadowing that would at least give the notion of where things are going. The Namor scene is example where Hickman does this well, we see how Namor sees this situation and it foreshadow’s that Xavier’s actions may not be entirely what they seem
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 19:33 |
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I guess my complaint would be "I thought I was buying a storybook, but I was actually paying Marvel for a brochure of their products for the next year."
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 19:46 |
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Parallax posted:I feel like it’s a valid criticism because it’s just bad storytelling. What’s the point of a bunch of wtf moments if all the characters feel shallow and interchangeable? And yes, this is set-up, but for what? Hickman doesn’t have to explore every single character’s feelings about this new status quo, but it’s lacked the foreshadowing that would at least give the notion of where things are going. The Namor scene is example where Hickman does this well, we see how Namor sees this situation and it foreshadow’s that Xavier’s actions may not be entirely what they seem I feel like there's been a ton of foreshadowing, and the only question is how/if it's going to pay off in a satisfying way.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 20:51 |
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I personally wouldn't go as far as "this is just a promo for future books," but my general point remains: how many characters acting out-of-character does it take before we get to call it bad writing? How long do we have to wait for some great reveal that makes everything make sense again before it's considered bad writing? My very first impression of Hickman, from reading his mainline Avengers book way back when, was that he writes some very awesome sci-fi concepts, but that he's not good at all at the humanistic focal point. And this wasn't ever something he really ended up "fixing" in that book, and there did not end up being some great master plan as to why his characters never seemed to act like real human beings; it was simply the way he wrote that book and that's all there was to it. It was just stilted writing. There was nothing more than that. So I just, again, I get real wary at the idea that surely this is all part of some greater reveal and that there must be some profound explanation for all this that will put everything in a different light. Oh, I'm sure there's gonna be lots of surprises and twists and turns and master plans in all this, but I don't like using that to rationalize all the stuff that I just plain don't like about how this story is told.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 21:18 |
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BrianWilly posted:I personally wouldn't go as far as "this is just a promo for future books," but my general point remains: how many characters acting out-of-character does it take before we get to call it bad writing? How long do we have to wait for some great reveal that makes everything make sense again before it's considered bad writing? I agree with this and the substance of your previous post-- I remember a lot of this same rhetoric around his Avengers runs, in which the ominous and troubling ethical situations the characters were put in, and the distant, arid way in which they were often written, was waved off as just setting up the pay-off. But like-- I didn't like the pay-off either. I didn't like the world ending in nastiness and acrimony as a cabal of stiff-lipped dude kings curated their arc. I liked a lot of the mini-series and stuff that came out of it, but the run as a whole wound up leaving precisely the same sour taste in my mouth at the end as it did in the beginning. The fact is, and I don't want to cast aspersions on Hickman personally who I'm sure is very likely to be a wonderful guy, that I just don't like or agree with a lot of the fundamental moral principles that a lot of his stories emerge from, and I don't think they're an exciting or healthy way to take this medium. It's not just a clumsiness or lack of interest in adding in humanizing moments to his stories-- it's a blase disinterest in the overwhelming majority of humanity, period, in favor of telling ponderous fables about sad men making big decisions. Maybe he's exceptionally good at the kind of story-telling he likes to do-- I presume so, since people seem to love it. I just don't think it does much for me. I think a large part of it goes back to the big flaw in the mutant narrative in general-- that these are ostensibly stories about a marginalized population finding community and strength in each other, and, in the past decade or two, stories about that population coalescing as a political demographic. I love the elevator pitch of this series-- "ok, mutants have had enough and are making their own paradise-- what does it look like? what are its laws? what is its culture?"-- but I think the answers bore me because they are, precisely, answers furnished by the same kind of writer that has been furnishing them for decades: a straight white guy locked into believing that the horizon of the future is essentially, still, people that look like him except with cooler clothes and maybe super powers. My favorite three X-Men adjacent runs of all time would be -Morrison, who if nothing else has a long (albeit imperfect) history of being conversant with queer theory and culture, and well-attuned to the queerness of the superhero genre -Claremont, who is basically the Foucault of comic books and whose extravagant kinkiness has long been a running gag in online fandom -Leah Thompson's X-Tremists, which is more honest and blistering about sexuality than any comic by a guy I've ever read What's Hickman bringing to the table? I think these questions about what individual mutants think, how they reconcile their new lives with things they've left behind, etc., aren't just epiphenomenal because like, if we're supposed to take this narrative about Krakoa seriously, well, these are the people who live there, the people that make that society up. Society isn't a set of laws or a decision made by political leaders, it's the gestalt consensus and lived experience of the people that live in the midst of those laws. That's where the story is and I think we just aren't getting that. To wit: I don't buy the orgy jokes re: this last issue, because, well, why am I to believe that these characters are all going to bust into an orgy? I've seen them stolidly deliberate for pages at a time, conspire, make stern faces, and then this brief threadbare scrap of "socializing." The art sells a sense of cameraderie and intimacy and excitement, but Hickman isn't pulling his weight-- these characters still feel sexless and anomistic, like they're all hovering in orbit around each other. There's nothing there to make me give a poo poo about the macro level. I'm all in with the idea that mutant culture shouldn't adhere to the sexual and cultural mores of anywhere else-- give me polyamorous, pansexual Cyclops, give me, a la Claremont, characters just wandering around in bonding gear, let's unpack what gender presentation means in a society with a decent population of shape-shifters, lets for sure dig into all that, but like, in this comic, by this author, I barely even buy that any of these clowns are friends.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 21:36 |
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It's a bit odd, because I know in all the individual books spinning out of it, there's no way they can dodge the characters talking about the weird Krakoa beer 'n boning cult. But as far as what Hickman's doing now in HoX/PoX I also don't get the impression that there really is any singular connective tissue of reasoning for why everyone's going along with it, either. A big reveal and lots of mystery dolled out piecemeal about Xavier, Moira, the nature of Krakoa, etc.? Definitely. But the impression I get for "why is everyone cool with this who probably wouldn't be" is just "because the story says so."
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 21:38 |
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I just don’t see the same lack of characterization that you all do. Just look at Xavier being a smug piece of poo poo rear end in a top hat smiling like he’s the devil. I would say that a small number of characters have been uh, characterized very very well. Mostly magneto, and a few good pages of Emma and Sinister.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 22:04 |
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Yeah, there are a couple of characters who get to have personality, but everybody else is just kind of being buffeted along by the important people, and it's gotten to the point where it no longer feels like the world is real.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 22:11 |
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Well that’s a lot more fair and I accept it. I guess I just automatically expect that from all team books.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 22:14 |
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Real missed opportunity not putting eagle plaza forge in short shorts.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 22:14 |
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Parallax posted:she was a fighter, but she was always the loner of the group in New Mutants. maybe that's changed but Dani seems the more obvious choice for general out of that group Fritzler fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Oct 3, 2019 |
# ? Oct 3, 2019 22:23 |
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Rand Brittain posted:Yeah, there are a couple of characters who get to have personality, but everybody else is just kind of being buffeted along by the important people, and it's gotten to the point where it no longer feels like the world is real. This is the case with the beginning of every Xmen comic though. Even Claremont, he just got to everyone eventually.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 22:25 |
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I think we’re like one Moira section from tying this whole thing together (in relation to why everyone so on board). Charles used her to get Erik to go along but I doubt he did this with everyone. That said this has been very much a Charles and Moira story and she’s been uncharacteristically missing these past few issues. Not to mention there’s that yet to be revealed 6th life. She’s obviously the catalyst for this new direction. I have no doubt she’s playing a bigger part than simply getting Charles to start this.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 22:32 |
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I can agree with the premise that Hickman is best at crafting a "big picture" sci-fi structure, but it's not like he is incapable of good characterization either. He has given us some great moments and lines of dialogue in each issue. Nonetheless, the man is only human, plus he doesn't have an infinite number of pages nor an infinite amount of time to give to such an insanely large cast of mutants. This is just the opening salvo of his X-Men run. He'll be on these books for a few years (a minimum of three, from what an interview suggested, but probably a couple more in practice) and other writers will contribute to filling in some of the gaps during Dawn of X. I think each type of story has its own purpose and House of X/Powers of X is not an exception. The point of Hickman's Avengers run was that everything could go wrong in the face of a universe-ending threat...and it did. Tony, Steve and almost everyone else made a bunch of terrible mistakes. That all led to pure chaos and the new Secret Wars. Conversely, his Fantastic Four run had a (comparatively) far more optimistic tone, by the end, so it's not like everything Hickman writes will lead to as bleak or depressing of an outcome as his Avengers run. So far, we're still in the honeymoon phase of this whole Xavier/Magneto/Moira effort. Things are going great and these wins for the mutants all seem to be a little too perfect. You could even consider it to be an intentionally creepy honeymoon, given some of the hints and foreshadowing, since it's inevitable that the Krakoa plan isn't going to keep going smoothly forever. wielder fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Oct 3, 2019 |
# ? Oct 3, 2019 23:03 |
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I think "intentionally creepy" is the part that makes it hard for me to get invested, because what's going on is so divorced from really that I don't even know what I'm supposed to think about it, much less what I actually do.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 23:07 |
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Rand Brittain posted:I think "intentionally creepy" is the part that makes it hard for me to get invested, because what's going on is so divorced from really that I don't even know what I'm supposed to think about it, much less what I actually do. I can't really pretend to lecture anyone about how to enjoy a work of fiction, nor do I know what's going to be the ultimate fallout from all of this, but in my personal experience...I think it's nice to see the mutants finally getting a big break. That alone has value as part of a story, even if it won't escape from both internal and external sources of conflict.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 23:20 |
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Honestly we're only six days away from the end of the miniseries, and while that won't be the end of the bigger run that this has all been establishing, we'll all be in a better place to evaluate this thing when we have the last piece of the puzzle for this part of it at least.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 23:30 |
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Sinteres posted:Honestly we're only six days away from the end of the miniseries, and while that won't be the end of the bigger run that this has all been establishing, we'll all be in a better place to evaluate this thing when we have the last piece of the puzzle for this part of it at least.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 23:37 |
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:I think we’re like one Moira section from tying this whole thing together (in relation to why everyone so on board). Charles used her to get Erik to go along but I doubt he did this with everyone. That said this has been very much a Charles and Moira story and she’s been uncharacteristically missing these past few issues. Up until the first few pages of this issue, I don’t think we’ve seen anything of Moira X past the nebulous “Year 0” period, so odds are there’s a reveal coming next issue. But yeah, this series demands a lot of suspension of disbelief in terms of “would all of these characters really go along with this plan,” and I don’t expect the final issue to really resolve that.
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 00:40 |
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I mean if we’re talking about long setups and reveals Avengers/New Avengers began in December 2012 (New Avengers Jan 2013). So let’s say Jan 2013 for the introduction of Incursions. It took around 2 years to reveal the two main players of that event (the beyonders, Jan 2015 and Doom, March 2015). The actual why this was all happening was saved for the very last issue of New Avengers in April 2015. This story rolled through two line wide events (Infinity, also a Hickman event) and Original Sin and ultimately consumed every single Marvel book as everything died and Secret Wars / the 8th multiverse began. Not Marvel, but East of West has tons of “here’s a line or moment that’ll take years to pay off”. It’s just how he plots and sets up stories. I guess what I’m getting at is that there’s a good chance that the answer to the whole Moira 6 and why this started the way it’s starting with everyone immediately on board may take years to get here.
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 00:54 |
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Do all the of new #1 x-books drop the week after PoX #6? Or if not, which books drop first?
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 00:59 |
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Billzasilver posted:Do all the of new #1 x-books drop the week after PoX #6? Or if not, which books drop first? I don't know the exact dates, but X-Men, Excalibur and Marauders all drop in October, Fallen Angels, X-Force and New Mutants all drop in November, so my guess is one a week and we'll get the second issue of the early releases the same week as the first issue of the late ones.
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 01:13 |
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Rand Brittain posted:I don't even know what I'm supposed to think about it, much less what I actually do. But that’s precisely what’s so good about it! Hickman is resisting the urge to neatly signpost how we’re “supposed” to feel because that’s the only way to be true to the story he’s telling. In reality, liberation is messy and the foundation of new political orders is always ambiguous. Sometimes, liberation itself creates new forms of oppression which then have to be overcome in the future...but this doesn’t invalidate that the initial liberation in some sense, was still justified, that it “had to happen”. I mean, the birth of the modern world, democracy, rights, etc was a tremendously violent process but also a “liberating” one. Why should the mutant revolution be any less contradictory and hard to wrap our heads around? Sure, you could say, this is way too heavy for a freakin xmen comic, but imo, why the hell not? Isn’t watching Hickman try this crazy poo poo (even if he fucks it up down the road) a thousand times better than the years and years of mediocrity?
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 03:10 |
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Synch and Skin are back. Hell yeah.
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 10:22 |
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nemesis_hub posted:But that’s precisely what’s so good about it! Hickman is resisting the urge to neatly signpost how we’re “supposed” to feel because that’s the only way to be true to the story he’s telling. In reality, liberation is messy and the foundation of new political orders is always ambiguous. Sometimes, liberation itself creates new forms of oppression which then have to be overcome in the future...but this doesn’t invalidate that the initial liberation in some sense, was still justified, that it “had to happen”. I mean, the birth of the modern world, democracy, rights, etc was a tremendously violent process but also a “liberating” one. Why should the mutant revolution be any less contradictory and hard to wrap our heads around? I like it a lot, but I also want to say that my feeling on this is like...okay, this is a comic book that's trying to tell a smart, difficult, thematically complex story. I really appreciate that - but it also means I'm gonna hold it to a higher critical standard than I would a comic book that's consciously trying to be popcorn. Stuff like Xavier saying Krakoa won't tolerate prisons while putting Sabretooth in prison - under normal circumstances I'd just be like, "that's silly, but comics are silly so alright". In House/Powers though, where much is made of complex schemes unfolding over multiple timelines and there's a political subtext that draws from some pretty serious wells, I want to look at that moment more critically and try to wriggle out if it's an uncharacteristic mistake, or if Xavier is really that much of a hypocrite. Same deal with Jean, Kurt and Ororo being cool with eternal solitary confinement or a trial where the law is being made up on the fly.
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 10:50 |
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I just went back to check that I caught all the Academy X kids at the party, and noticed Mister Sinister creeping in the background of the Exodus + the Mutant kids panel.
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 11:14 |
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Android Blues posted:I like it a lot, but I also want to say that my feeling on this is like...okay, this is a comic book that's trying to tell a smart, difficult, thematically complex story. I really appreciate that - but it also means I'm gonna hold it to a higher critical standard than I would a comic book that's consciously trying to be popcorn. Feel like Jean, Kurt and Ororo were probably not down with the contextually-seem-to-have-been unnecessary murders going in, and can probably be forgiven for not really going to bat for Sabretooth of all people. The ETERNAL STASIS thing is, yeah, uncomfortable and hypocritical, but I don't think that's a knock against the narrative so much as a knock against Xavier.
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 12:32 |
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A couple people have insisted that Hickman has in fact been doing a lot of good character work here, and you're right. The thing is, though, is that he's been focusing on characters like Xavier, Magneto, Emma, Apocalypse, and of course Moira...and even Cyclops...these characters who have been far more radicalized, who've been hardened, who've been arguing that the ends totally justify the means, who love to keep their big mysteries and behind-the-scenes shadowy conspiracies. In other words, the only characters he seems interested in giving a limelight to are the ones who just so very conveniently aren't going to have huge problems with the master race radicalism that this new Krakoan society has been spouting. What's been conspicuously missing are any voices from any characters who would absolutely dissent against this. I mean, those characters are there -- being background fodder usually -- but the story seems completely uninterested in anything they might have to say. We've heard more direct opinions from chimeric clones in a far-flung future than we've heard from ordinary characters that the actual current story is affecting. Hell, I think the island itself, Krakoa, has expressed more complex emotions about all this than the X-Men and mutants whose lives are being so diametrically altered by Xavier's actions. And then when Hickman does devote panel time to characters who might realistically have issues with all of this, they're instead towing the company line so hard, in ways that so contradict their established personalities, that we have to assume they're being brainwashed somehow. How, exactly? Tune in next time to find out maybe! That's what I meant when I said Hickman seems stubbornly uninterested in how individual characters would engage with this new status quo; it's not that he's not writing characters at all, it's that he's only writing characters that very helpfully only have good things to say about this story. And like Android Blues just said, this is an incredibly complicated new status quo that deserves to be scrutinized from all sides, and the less that that happens, the less engaged I am by this status quo. And, again, Hickman has pulled this sort of thing before. His Avengers run was rife with situations where, like, a certain character should absolutely be reacting a certain way, or they should be saying something or doing something in a way that makes sense for them...but then they don't, and they never do, and then we move on and never speak of it again. There were situations that should be all rights be solvable within the logic of this world and the characters existing in it, but Hickman didn't want it to be solvable so we just move on and are supposed to stop thinking about it so much. That actually encapsulates much of Hickman's general modus operandi: if it's not literally happening right now on the page that we're reading, then we're not supposed to think it matters. Move on. It'll make sense later. Or it won't. Either way we're not dealing with it any more. And I can see how that approach might be useful in laser-focused-forging some of the stories that he does, but I also think it can make for shoddy worldbuilding when taken to the extremes that it often is.
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 12:40 |
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Xavier just thinks the best place for Sabertooth is in his basement. He did it in the early nineties, and nothing bad happened.
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 13:10 |
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Adept Nightingale posted:Feel like Jean, Kurt and Ororo were probably not down with the contextually-seem-to-have-been unnecessary murders going in, and can probably be forgiven for not really going to bat for Sabretooth of all people. I get the former thing, and Sabretooth is absolutely very evil, but I still feel like these (generally heroic) characters should display at least a moment's compunction about running a kangaroo court and/or handing down prison sentences without fixed term. Instead it feels very brushed aside - they all agree instantly.
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 13:30 |
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Well, the giant fireworks orgy is happening right outside their door.
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 13:33 |
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And the: "well, he's super evil, so it's okay" thing doesn't really figure up for Jean/Ororo/Kurt's motivation when they're sitting across the table from Shaw, Apocalypse, and Sinister, two of whom are probably worse than Sabretooth.
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 13:33 |
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At this point I would be so tired of the Sentinels and the Purifiers and the government stooges and the internment camps and the everything else that I would basically do anything for some stability Live on a big island monster with Apocalypse and Mr. Sinister where we all get cloned into big balls and have weird mutant orgies? Sure man, whatever, gently caress it, as long as I don't have killer robots trying to laser my face off because I have the ability to talk to fungus.
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 13:33 |
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Metalshark posted:Synch and Skin are back. Hell yeah. now Jubilee will have the chance to have sex with Skin and won't be saying that while standing over his grave!
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 13:49 |
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Codependent Poster posted:now Jubilee will have the chance to have sex with Skin and won't be saying that while standing over his grave! ...You motherfucker. (I hate how much that made me laugh.)
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 13:56 |
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# ? May 9, 2024 08:35 |
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Blockhouse posted:At this point I would be so tired of the Sentinels and the Purifiers and the government stooges and the internment camps and the everything else that I would basically do anything for some stability The whole immortality pitch is a legitimate draw to make you think twice about a lot of criticisms, too, sincerely.
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# ? Oct 4, 2019 14:13 |