|
Starsnostars posted:If humans can make the leap to posthuman then I wonder if mutants can make a similar leap and become postmutant or something in order to keep pace. Isn't that like Apocalypse and Sinister's whole thing?
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 08:44
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 8, 2024 23:39 |
|
|
https://twitter.com/CharlesPulliam/status/1182068141913968641?s=20
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 08:59
|
|
|
Parallax posted:also not sure where Hickman is going with this posthuman stuff. if humans can genetically modify themselves into being something equal to, or greater than mutants, then what really separates them? i guess i don't see the significance of this being the hidden 6th Moira life, other than maybe clarifying that humans and not machines are mutants ultimate enemy. i'm sure Hickman will explore this more, but it just doesn't seem as interesting as anything going on in the current lifetime As I read it, it's not humans v mutants at that point, it's posthumans v both (but posthumans subverted ordinary humanity pretty early). Posthumanism actually seems like a good way to bring mutants and humans together on an even playing field and restore something like parity.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 09:12
|
|
|
The post-human thing is weird because there's already a bunch of post humans hanging out. Spider-Man can take out most of the non Omega level mutants on his own, Fantastic Four and Captain America are hanging around, plus there's Hulk and the various other Gamma irradiated things (that are also now immortal because of Ewing's book in a way that's better than Xavier's "hack").
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 09:33
|
|
|
Parallax posted:also not sure where Hickman is going with this posthuman stuff. if humans can genetically modify themselves into being something equal to, or greater than mutants, then what really separates them? welcome to bigotry.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 10:21
|
|
|
Is Deadpool still considered a mutant? How about the Scarlet Witch? Would be nice to see some of the upcoming runs deal with politics between the mutants and the rest of the metahumans (the Avengers and such I mean, not the Inhumans). Hopefully the writers could hold their hands on a outright conflict for once, have the Avengers be supportive of the new status quo and have good relations with some members of the mutant council (summer) and work with them to keep an eye on the more suspect ones (winter).
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 12:20
|
|
|
Skwirl posted:The post-human thing is weird because there's already a bunch of post humans hanging out. Spider-Man can take out most of the non Omega level mutants on his own, Fantastic Four and Captain America are hanging around, plus there's Hulk and the various other Gamma irradiated things (that are also now immortal because of Ewing's book in a way that's better than Xavier's "hack"). Ironman since Extremis is specifically a human enhanced with tech. I guess it's the difference between there being only a handful like Selene and Apocalypse vs a whole race popping off like AoA or House of M. Laughing Zealot posted:Is Deadpool still considered a mutant? How about the Scarlet Witch? Neither are. Deadpool is a human who got powers from Weapon Plus. Wanda is a human who got powers from the High Evolutionary. Web Jew.0 fucked around with this message at 13:09 on Oct 10, 2019 |
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 13:04
|
|
|
Didn’t they retcon Deadpool recently?
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 13:12
|
|
|
Laughing Zealot posted:
Remender did this poo poo with his "Unity Avengers" and it resulted in that Havok thing and we shouldn't really talk about it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 13:15
|
|
|
Regarding post-humans vs. mutants: Evolution as a process is *mostly* slow and leads to lots and lots of mutations that aren't particularly useful for long-term survival of a species or may even be a detriment to that (though, yes, occasionally things will happen quickly as some particularly useful mutation occurs through happenstance). Powers like Beak being a chicken man are probably of minimal use, but not actively bad (indeed, he has reproduced, so it worked out well enough). Rogue being unable to touch another person without massive side-effects is actively detrimental. Wolverine being effectively immortal is *very* useful. What you can assume from here is that the useful mutations will continue along while the detrimental ones won't, but even with exponential increases in population, it's still going to be slow. Post-humans side-step all that messiness of hoping things eventually work out and improve by simply being able to say "hey the earth has no ozone layer, and there's less oxygen in the air let's give ourselves UV-protective skin and bigger lungs" for instance. And you can add whatever super-powers you want along with it since you have a genetic catalog of every mutant that ever existed. Anything mutants can do, you can do better, and and *all* of the things in any individual. There's no need to hope that Wolverine babies and Mystique babies make babies when you can just add super-healing and shape changing to the next generation. It *is* a little interesting that the post-humans are never actually shown doing anything special beyond a panel of them flying, but that may simply be that they've so completely taken control of their immediate surroundings that they don't really need to do any of that. Yes, it's true there's lots of super-humans running around with individual powers, but what if you had a being with *every* power?  (All of this ignores the ridiculousness of a gene that lets you fly or shoot lasers from your eyes, but whatever.)
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 13:53
|
|
|
Natural selection doesn't exist in civilizations with advanced medicine and everything though. And also, the x-gene passes on but the actual specifics of a parent's mutations mostly do not.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 14:00
|
|
|
danbanana posted:Remender did this poo poo with his "Unity Avengers" and it resulted in that Havok thing and we shouldn't really talk about it. A X-men character and an Avenger hooking up isn't the most stupid idea me feels. Just reading some wiki stuff and their daughter is technically still out there somewhere? I skimmed Axis in the past few weeks and that breakup was kinda hamfisted but in an amusing way. I've not really paid much attention to Marvel and comics in general the past decade outside of Secret Wars, so there's a lot of stuff I've been catching up with.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 14:03
|
|
|
Laughing Zealot posted:A X-men character and an Avenger hooking up isn't the most stupid idea me feels. Just reading some wiki stuff and their daughter is technically still out there somewhere? I skimmed Axis in the past few weeks and that breakup was kinda hamfisted but in an amusing way. He's referring to a very dumb speech Havok gives in Uncanny Avengers #5.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 14:07
|
|
|
Aphrodite posted:He's referring to a very dumb speech Havok gives in Uncanny Avengers #5. Indeed I am.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 14:58
|
|
|
I'll be honest, the last moment where I really though "oh, he's got me now, I'm hooked" is when I was absolutely sure after those panels that he was going to have Xavier and Magneto kiss. I was scrolling down on the splash page on the next page, with the fireworks in the sky, and was like "oh wow, he's pulling the trigger. They're gonna be kissing" and I was wrong. It's petty and micro-scale but I think that would have actually begun to sold me on the stakes of this new society-- if this new ideological approach could, after all this time, allow two characters for whom it's always been fairly easy to read simmering sexual tension, to finally get over their differences and just go for it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 15:43
|
|
|
One thing about post-humans vs mutants. I can’t think of any super humans who have reality bending powers (except scarlet witch lol) and other weird Omega-level powers. Mutants ended up with Legion, Proteus, and even Franklin Richards. And I doubt a genetic engineer could ever recreate crazy stuff like Storm’s weather manipulation powers or Goldballs egg production. Maybe some of the really out-there origin stories like for humans Molecule Man and Graviton are comparable...? Edit: Now, Moira has revealed that she created two of those reality benders by combining the X-gene with genetic engineering, which adds another wrinkle.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 18:01
|
|
|
Billzasilver posted:And I doubt a genetic engineer could ever recreate crazy stuff like Storm’s weather manipulation powers or Goldballs egg production. Isn't this tied into the "new" Omega mutant definition? The idea there is that those particular mutants have no cap on their powers, with the assumption that anyone else with similar powers- including built/engineered by humans- would inherently be weaker. That's why Omegas are so important...
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 18:59
|
|
|
Chickens have Goldballs' powers. They just need to work on their kegels.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 19:02
|
|
|
Billzasilver posted:One thing about post-humans vs mutants. I can’t think of any super humans who have reality bending powers (except scarlet witch lol) and other weird Omega-level powers. The interesting thing is for all the talk about how mutants are outdated and a dead end, ignores the fact that Franklin Richard's lives to the end of the universe with his pal Galactus. I'd say it is probably important for the story that the mutants who all band together in their own society end up stuck in an intergalactic zoo. While the mutant who lives with his human(ish) family and other human friends becomes a central figure of the Universe.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 19:07
|
|
|
Ahh but Franklin also made the universe along with his family, so anything bad is their fault too.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 19:11
|
|
|
Doesn't "Mutants will wipe out Mankind and all the protagonists actively hope for and brag about that" Ruin the whole central theme of the X-Men? I always took "Next step in Evolution" to mean mutants were just that, Humanities next step forward. There would be more and more children being born with mutations till everyone had them. It meant that whatever metaphor was currently in vogue, whether mutants represented Black People or Counter-Culture alienation or LGBTQ, the whole point of "The Dream" was that they were just people who were different and deserved to be treated the same as everyone else. And every close-minded bigot who wanted to kill them was just that, a closed-minded bigot who was as wrong and contemptible as any real life racist, anti-semite, or any other group motivated by fear of what they don't understand. But if mutants are some wholly separate manner of being that if not stopped will wipe out humanity, than every anti-mutant villain not only is sympathetic, they're In the right.Every Sentinel and Purifier and so on is acting out of a morally correct decision to protect themselves and their descendants.
galagazombie fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Oct 10, 2019 |
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 21:46
|
|
|
I have to wonder about Franklin. Is it actually confirmed that he has the X-gene? I suppose it'd be weird if Reed hasn't had it genetically-confirmed. But by all rights he could have, and probably did, receive his powers from his parents having powers, right? Like Jessica Jones and Luke Cage passed on their powers to their daughter Danielle, or Jessica Drew passing on her powers to her son Gerry. And Reed and Susan are probably the modern day equivalent of post-humanity. Does that mean that post-humans having children with each other automatically makes mutants? Or is Franklin just a special case where his parents had powers but he was just born as a mutant completely irrespective of their powers, while Danielle Cage and Gerry might be considered examples of post-humanity because they're not actually mutants? But that raises more questions about how these post-humans actually maintain their genetic superiority. Let's say Captain America and Janet Van Dyne have a child, 'cuz gently caress you Hank. Will that child be "limited" to "only" having supersoldier powers or size-changing, or possibly having both at once? Is it then impossible for him to have laser eyes or weather control powers? I feel like that still leaves post-humans on the same genetic lottery playing field as mutants. The only way to supersede this is if post-humans find a way to A)swap out or change or adjust their own inborn, extant superpowers or B)do away with traditional breeding and just make all your babies in test tubes. And both methods kinda have weird eugenicist implications.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 21:49
|
|
|
BrianWilly posted:I have to wonder about Franklin. Is it actually confirmed that he has the X-gene? I suppose it'd be weird if Reed hasn't had it genetically-confirmed. Franklin has always been a mutant, as far as I know. And it was thanks to the cosmic rays, which I believe also made the birth hard for Sue.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 21:59
|
|
|
BrianWilly posted:I have to wonder about Franklin. Is it actually confirmed that he has the X-gene? I suppose it'd be weird if Reed hasn't had it genetically-confirmed. Franklin being a mutant has been confirmed in-canon, for many years now. There was a time when Marvel was pretty careful to define what was meant by 'mutant,' because their trademark on the term for use in superhero comics was a little more narrowly defined; a mutant was specifically noted as having powers that their parents do not have (which led to some concern regarding Banshee and Siryn until they made it canon that Siryn's powers were sufficiently different from Banshees because she could, for example, speak while flying, which he can't). Danielle Cage, inheriting powers from her parents, would be considered a non-mutant. They've been a lot less rigid about that in recent years because A) they have Disney lawyers now, and B) Mark Gruenwald passed away, and he was the guy to whom the whole 'no there are rules about this poo poo' was most important.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 22:00
|
|
|
He was listed as an Omega mutant and while that's technically in universe information, I think we can take it as gospel I guess. The reason Franklin is so powerful is because he has both an x-gene and cosmic ray enhancement. I don't think it's been explored what his strength would be as just a mutant or anything.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 22:02
|
|
|
quote:(which led to some concern regarding Banshee and Siryn until they made it canon that Siryn's powers were sufficiently different from Banshees because she could, for example, speak while flying, which he can't).  Nathan Grey/Nathan Summers both have omega level potential as well. So the offspring of regular superheroes and the offspring of mutants both have enormous potential. The Franklin Richards case is interesting, because his sister Valeria Richards is pretty much equally powerful as a superhero, and she has no super powers in any form whatsoever.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 22:06
|
|
|
BrianWilly posted:I have to wonder about Franklin. Is it actually confirmed that he has the X-gene? I suppose it'd be weird if Reed hasn't had it genetically-confirmed. You could make an argument for Dani being a post-human (does she have powers?), but I don't think the intention of the story is that post-humans exist in the current time, and they're "enhanced" or whatever. As for how whether other enhanced humans' kids have powers, that probably depends on the specific method by which they get their powers. Janet's probably not a great example since her powers are dependent on Pym particles. Steve's super soldier serum and vita-ray treatment probably caused some sort of change on a genetic level that might get passed along, but it's probably not likely that his kids would be able to fly or shoot eye lasers or whatever. As for the actual post-humans, I believe the implication was that they were directly genetically enhancing themselves. I'm not sure that necessarily counts as eugenics but I wouldn't be shocked if that happened, too! Billzasilver posted:
Endless Mike fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Oct 10, 2019 |
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 22:07
|
|
|
I feel like whether Franklin is a mutant or not tends to depend on whether the X-Men are popular enough at the time. There was definitely a little period where they really downplayed it. Not just for him either; in recent times, all these characters that were mutants suddenly weren't mutants anymore. It's something that, unfortunately, seems reliant on pure editorial whimsy.DivineCoffeeBinge posted:There was a time when Marvel was pretty careful to define what was meant by 'mutant,' because their trademark on the term for use in superhero comics was a little more narrowly defined; a mutant was specifically noted as having powers that their parents do not have
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 22:15
|
|
|
And at its very core isn't the whole "Mutants aren't humans and here's 10 strict reasons why" a product of a loophole around action figure import taxes that (likely) doesn't matter anymore? I always thought that was a fun fact.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 22:16
|
|
|
Hm. Cable/X-Men: Have Jean's powers, but not Cyclops's Luna: Powerless until post M-Day when some weird poo poo happened? Nocturne: Looks like Nightcrawler, but doesn't have his powers, but I guess has Scarlet Witch's, but she's not a mutant anymore (also alternate reality, but that's probably okay) Graydon Creed: Powerless Siryn: See post above Daken: Has a healing factor like Wolverine, but claws in a different configuration - I guess this counts as the Siryn exception? Beak/Angel's kids: They have mixes of Beak and Angel's powers That's all the children of mutants I can think of, though I'm sure there's more. Endless Mike fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Oct 10, 2019 |
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 22:22
|
|
|
BrianWilly posted:Seriously? This had to have been a pretty short-lived ruling because I feel like most mutant kids end up inheriting some sort of power from one parent or another. The key was that you'd see characters inheriting similar but not identical powers, was the thing - but since this was the '80s and early '90s, there weren't nearly so many time-displaced or alternate future kids of extant characters running around, so it was mostly a moot point. Also.... no, Franklin's just about always been considered a mutant, dude. The fact that he wasn't wearing an X or anything never changed his mutanthood (the way Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were explicitly made nonmutant). Like, this was a thing in the '80s when the Mutant Registration Act was a big thing in the comics:  That's Franklin there on the right, in the 'Tattletale' costume he was wearing while hanging around as the unofficial fifth member of the Power Pack. His being a mutant was a pretty integral part of the Onslaught storyline. Dude's always been a mutant, man.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 22:27
|
|
|
galagazombie posted:Doesn't "Mutants will wipe out Mankind and all the protagonists actively hope for and brag about that" Ruin the whole central theme of the X-Men? I always took "Next step in Evolution" to mean mutants were just that, Humanities next step forward. There would be more and more children being born with mutations till everyone had them. It meant that whatever metaphor was currently in vogue, whether mutants represented Black People or Counter-Culture alienation or LGBTQ, the whole point of "The Dream" was that they were just people who were different and deserved to be treated the same as everyone else. And every close-minded bigot who wanted to kill them was just that, a closed-minded bigot who was as wrong and contemptible as any real life racist, anti-semite, or any other group motivated by fear of what they don't understand. But if mutants are some wholly separate manner of being that if not stopped will wipe out humanity, than every anti-mutant villain not only is sympathetic, they're In the right.Every Sentinel and Purifier and so on is acting out of a morally correct decision to protect themselves and their descendants. Yeah your conclusion here is off because Moira knows they bigots always win. There's no path she's found in her lives that doesn't result in the wholesale slaughter of mutants. And in the face of that, peace and brotherhood kind of becomes a fool's game. Again, the metaphor for Israel here is extremely obvious: some people think a little fascism is okay in the face of genocide.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 22:29
|
|
|
Oh god that’s right, Franklin Richards was the key to the Onslaught storyline. I wonder if Moira saw that in any other timelines.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 22:30
|
|
|
DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Also.... no, Franklin's just about always been considered a mutant, dude. The fact that he wasn't wearing an X or anything never changed his mutanthood (the way Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were explicitly made nonmutant). Like, this was a thing in the '80s when the Mutant Registration Act was a big thing in the comics: I've been trying to find the first time it went from 'Franklin has powers because his parents took a cosmic radiation bath' to 'he's a mutant' and without going through the issues and reading some 70's FF issues, but no luck. He absolutely has been a mutant as far back as I can remember, which does include the mid-80's Power Pack stuff. And that was funny because Reed did everything he could to shut down Franklin's powers and Franklin still could do the astral projecting while sleeping thing (hence the name Tattletale.)
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 22:39
|
|
|
Dawgstar posted:I've been trying to find the first time it went from 'Franklin has powers because his parents took a cosmic radiation bath' to 'he's a mutant' and without going through the issues and reading some 70's FF issues, but no luck. He absolutely has been a mutant as far back as I can remember, which does include the mid-80's Power Pack stuff. And that was funny because Reed did everything he could to shut down Franklin's powers and Franklin still could do the astral projecting while sleeping thing (hence the name Tattletale.) The explanation I remember - and hell, for all I know this wasn't even in a comic, it might have been from the old Official Handbook or even from the Marvel Super Heroes RPG - was that Franklin's parents having been exposed to cosmic radiation was responsible for him being a mutant ('radiated parents = mutants' was super-common in the early days, they made a big point of Xavier's dad having worked in nuclear research), but the energies he was exposed to in utero and the FF needing the cosmic Control Rod to help him get born in the first drat place essentially 'supercharged' his mutation. But, like... hell, I can't remember when they spelled that out. Maybe even in a lettercolumn? I dunno.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 22:56
|
|
|
As far as I know, Franklin Richards was first implicitly/explicitly identified as a "mutant" in Days of Futures Past, where he's in the Sentinel camps with everyone else. I don't think Claremont/et al were thinking that seriously about what did/didn't count as a mutant at that point, it was 1980 and Gruenwald's Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe was still a ways away. They may have called him a mutant in a FF issue previously, but they were pretty loosey-goosey with the term in the 1970s. OHOTMU launched in 1982, and not to diminish the contributions of dozens of other people, it was largely borne from the twin desires to professionalize/standardize the rules/style sheets/worldbuilding of the Marvel Universe (part of Jim Shooter's agenda) and to make sense of all of the comics and how they all fit together (Gruenwald and Peter Sanderson's pet projects). Prior to Days of Futures Past, the whole "mutants as opressed minority facing an existential threat to their very existence" wasn't nearly as foregrounded in the Essence of X-Men as it grew to be, and so striking a clear line between "mutant" and "superpowered human" was somewhat less important. The fact that they put the stakes down in the 1980s in a place that makes sense for 95% of mutants but not a few created before the edict (Rachel Summers, Siryn, Polaris) was probably the best compromise they could come up with. And as mentioned, by the mid 1990s they'd abandoned this definition pretty much entirely so they haven't felt beholden to it in over twenty years.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 23:05
|
|
|
The whole parents don't inherit their their parents power thing is why Rachel Summer's mutant power is her astral time travel thing, and her TP/TK powers were either directly from the Phoenix force (or just its "residue"), and she can't move her body through time without the Phoenix force, just her mind, so that's why she doesn't do that a ton anymore. I have noticed in recent years though that the time travel part is almost never mentioned. Which I guess is fine since she's only used it a handful of times.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 23:33
|
|
|
I will also say very early on there were a few explanations for why mutants were mutants. Off the top of my head Beast’s dad, Norton McCoy, worked at a nuclear something facility. His exposure to radiation was listed as the reason that Henry was a mutant. I think at the time Hank was also said to have been born with with large feet/hands, so it didn’t hit during puberty like became established later.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 23:33
|
|
|
I also absolutely thought Professor and Magneto were going to kiss. Especially after the line in House where Magneto said (to paraphrase) "I'll never doubt you again."
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2019 23:35
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 8, 2024 23:39 |
|
|
Fritzler posted:I will also say very early on there were a few explanations for why mutants were mutants.
|
|
#
?
Oct 11, 2019 00:12
|
|
