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This issue of X-Factor was notable for me because of the brief mention of people not using money on Krakoa. Is this the first time we’ve gotten a sense of what the economy on the island is like? If they go full communist I am absolutely here for it.
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Dec 3, 2020 09:45
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nemesis_hub posted:This issue of X-Factor was notable for me because of the brief mention of people not using money on Krakoa. Is this the first time we’ve gotten a sense of what the economy on the island is like? If they go full communist I am absolutely here for it. What the gently caress would you buy on Krakoa? it's basically a giant replicator from Star Trek if anyone using it had a sense of taste or style.
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Dec 3, 2020 10:38
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nemesis_hub posted:This issue of X-Factor was notable for me because of the brief mention of people not using money on Krakoa. Is this the first time we’ve gotten a sense of what the economy on the island is like? If they go full communist I am absolutely here for it. Magneto did have that whole speech about how will destroy humanity with Capitalism in X-Men. Maybe it turns out the reason Moira keeps seeing robots killing them is because they're capitalist robots, So the X-Men just need to get Danger a copy of Das Kapital and everything will work out.
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Dec 3, 2020 11:24
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mind the walrus posted:Looked up the page: I took that speech to mean Destiny saw everything Moira was going to do all throughout her other lives as well. Thats why Moira won't let her be resurrected. Charles and Magneto would have a lot less confidence in her plan if they find out she's just Groundhog Day'ing it.
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Dec 3, 2020 15:04
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:Charles and Magneto would have a lot less confidence in her plan if they find out she's just Groundhog Day'ing it. I assume at least Charles knows how her powers work. He's seen all her lives, which means he knows that things run their natural course as long as she isn't interfering, knows what things she's done in previous lives that did and didn't work for her goals, etc. How is she "Groundhog Day'ing" it?
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Dec 3, 2020 15:26
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Dec 3, 2020 15:57
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Have we been told about orphan makers powers before? I couldn't remember anything myself.
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Dec 3, 2020 17:31
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No, we've never seen what his powers are.
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Dec 3, 2020 18:16
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galagazombie posted:Magneto did have that whole speech about how will destroy humanity with Capitalism in X-Men. Maybe it turns out the reason Moira keeps seeing robots killing them is because they're capitalist robots, So the X-Men just need to get Danger a copy of Das Kapital and everything will work out. danbanana posted:I assume at least Charles knows how her powers work. He's seen all her lives, which means he knows that things run their natural course as long as she isn't interfering, knows what things she's done in previous lives that did and didn't work for her goals, etc. How is she "Groundhog Day'ing" it?
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Dec 3, 2020 18:20
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I'm excited to go back to the time when every mutant's power potentially could end the world.
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Dec 3, 2020 19:37
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Well, that was the fear, wasn't it? People were lynching the poor kid who grew flippers on account of he was in the same category as guys who could flip the world on its axis. It's kind of bothered me that I've seen so many people talking negatively about Magneto's presentation in HoXPoX on, because he's being unashamedly direct in how he sees himself to the world. But he's doing that because every one of those little kids on Krakoa that look up to him, probably would have died violently and been forgotten, in whatever corner of the world they happened to come from, if it weren't for Krakoa. He chooses to be strong and defiant so that they can choose to be whatever they want.
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Dec 5, 2020 02:38
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As someone who resents "antihero Magneto" whose fans use "the Holocaust" as a shield for every vile thing he does, rather than recognizing the Holocaust as the tragic catalyst for his extremism... DoX Magneto loving rules and they've found a fantastic way to grow/square the character into someone who is using Krakoa to channel the tragedies that defined him, without feeling like a cheat or that he's betrayed his fundamental character. It's built on a lot of the great work they did in the 2010s, but still it's nice to have a "good" version of the character that doesn't come across as hypocritically mawkish, which Magneto at his worst often does.
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Dec 5, 2020 03:05
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I agree 100%. Krakoa really hits the sweet spot between Magneto and Xavier’s dreams.
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Dec 5, 2020 03:14
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He feels indispensable to how they're running things. He's a hawk, Xavier is a dove, and both know when to let the other do his thing. It's a remarkable growth for both of them.
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Dec 5, 2020 03:17
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Are we thinking of the same Xavier here? I mostly remember the Xavier who spends most of his time swanning around the island emoting "I am a supervillain now". I feel like the Krakoa era of X-Men is squandering is potential by leavening 75% of "this is a well-meant and inspiring endeavor that's going to blow up in mutantkind's faces because they've embraced everything bad about the people who hate them" with 25% of "oh, let's just be blatantly evil and not notice."
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Dec 5, 2020 04:14
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Rand Brittain posted:Are we thinking of the same Xavier here? I mostly remember the Xavier who spends most of his time swanning around the island emoting "I am a supervillain now". People say this. I don't see it.
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Dec 5, 2020 04:17
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It’s a really tired take, and doesn’t hold up. Xavier has been more aloof, and less kindly old man, but it’s clearly been shown that he has good intentions.
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Dec 5, 2020 04:31
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Xavier has always had good intentions and the take that he's a villain always boils down to "the ends don't justify the means" and Deadly Genesis where he was objectively a poo poo monster. That's not a bad take either, but it's a bit stolid after roughly a quarter of a century beating that drum. DoX Xavier, while creepy-looking, hasn't done anything evil other than be firm and explicit that he's no longer holding pretensions. He's created a tenuous but stable political system that allows all mutants to express themselves, codified rules of law that said bastards are agreeing to, and developed a system of engaging with the human world that allows co-existence without the naivete that mutants will be tolerated without some measure of force. He's very explicit about that in his message too:    The last bit gets dark, to be sure, and the framing makes it clear he does not have "good" intent, but it's framed alongside Magneto and Moria to signify that this is a hybrid approach. Xavier is not the center of this operation. No one is. That's part of why it's working so well. As the member of more than one irl minority population-- I really loving get where he's coming from and am tickled pink to see these characters acting in a sensible way for a change. It's something I wish my communities had the leverage to do, because make no mistake the only differences between this and any other empire is the level of leverage, the systems designed to keep minorities an underclass, and the ambition to take over other empires. And that's Xavier's ultimate contribution-- he provides the temperance to know when to pull back and be diplomatic, while Magneto and Moira know when it's time to not take any poo poo. And it's a look that suits Xavier well. He could go down the path of a straight-up villain, but to be honest that'd feel pretty hackneyed and the exact kind of late 80s/90s poo poo that this run seems to be explicitly avoiding a retread of. Which is loving refreshing. I love that era too, but some fans want to encase the franchise in amber right there for all time, and it feels a bit Peter Pan-ish. This isn't like Spider-Man's marriage where you could make a plausible argument that for marketing reasons it's objectively better for him to be a bachelor. This is a group milieu that has expanded substantially since Jim Lee made that one cover, the TAS theme song got lodged in everyone's head, and we had a blast playing Marvel vs. Capcom and it feels really loving good that they're not afraid to act like it. I'm sure the whole thing will blow up somehow and we'll regress back to a school with a small class just in time for the MCU adaptations to get underway-- unless they pull a dark horse and make Krakoa the next Wakanda with some tweaks, which would rule but is highly improbable-- and depending on the dismount I might hate it, but for now this poo poo is crescent fresh and I see none of the "Xavier is behaving like a villain" stuff. mind the walrus fucked around with this message at 05:10 on Dec 5, 2020 |
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Dec 5, 2020 05:00
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The best outcome, IMO, is Krakoa being permanent, but the governance thereof being fluid and thus, sometimes, Xavier et al aren't as welcome as others. Mutants retain their homeland and maintain a strong outward face while having the occasional internal struggle.
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Dec 5, 2020 05:06
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mind the walrus posted:Xavier has always had good intentions and the take that he's a villain always boils down to "the ends don't justify the means" and Deadly Genesis where he was objectively a poo poo monster. That's not a bad take either, but it's a bit stolid after roughly a quarter of a century beating that drum. See, when I see a comic book using this visual language to depict someone, the message I receive is "this person is super-evil." He has villain coding. Adder Moray posted:The best outcome, IMO, is Krakoa being permanent, but the governance thereof being fluid and thus, sometimes, Xavier et al aren't as welcome as others. Mutants retain their homeland and maintain a strong outward face while having the occasional internal struggle. I think the main issue with Krakoa being permanent is the persistent subtext of "we will conquer the world and make non-mutants a permanent underclass as soon as we can get around to it." Well, that and, like with the Superhuman Registration Act, I feel like "mutants will not be subject to human law" is one of those things that's going to mean whatever a given writer wants it to mean. Some of those things are basically justifiable and some are pants-on-head ridiculous.
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Dec 5, 2020 05:17
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It's only a villain speech if he's wrong.
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Dec 5, 2020 05:24
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Rand Brittain posted:See, when I see a comic book using this visual language to depict someone, the message I receive is "this person is super-evil." He has villain coding. But in the context of the story and broader franchise I don't see it as foreshadowing. It's to establish Xavier as adopting a dominant stance, and a deserved one given the context of the franchise which has seen mutants literally genocided over, and over, and over. Without that literal half-century of context it does seem villainous, but I think it's reductive and kind-of boorish to tl;dr a story solely down to its framing. By that logic The Joker is good guy because the 2019 movie frames his mental breakdown through visual language as justified and triumphant.
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Dec 5, 2020 05:31
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I like the current X-books. But I've said it before and will say again that the worldbuilding has been very flimsy and the longer this goes unaddressed, the less compelling it will be when it finally is. The entire conceit of making all mutants members of a racial state and inviting them all to just pack up and self-segregate in their own pureblood mutant nation is so loving loaded as concept which absolutely goes against the ideal of human-mutant harmony, and it's utterly mind-boggling that so many X-Men seem to have bought into the snake oil, and no books -- not the main title or any of the others -- seem to be the least bit interested in trying to explore these ramifications. Families ought to have been torn apart over this. Entire factions of mutantkind ought to be deriding this as the sort of cult that it sounds like. The one justification for why an entire race of people are going along with this hook line and sinker is that the violence and genocide against their kind really has gotten so bad that they don't have any choice but to drink the kool-aid, but there's really only so far that will get you, and the books honestly haven't even delved into that mindset all that much anyway.
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Dec 5, 2020 05:48
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Ehh, like 90%of the world goes along with Israel and 3 times as many mutants died in a single day on Genosha as Jews died in the holocaust. And Krakoa doesn't involve displacing anyone from their ancestral home.
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Dec 5, 2020 05:56
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X-Men has had issues about Scott discussing how he and others feel about it, and people very much not being comfortable with aspects of Krakoa.
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Dec 5, 2020 06:04
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The problem is that mutants are by and large not a racial lineage. Anyone, from any background, could become a mutant. It's more like someone finding out that they're gay in their teens, instead of any racial or cultural heritage (for the most part). Imagine someone making Gay Island and telling everyone, alright pack your bags and get with our program, and then every gay person just...does it? Like it doesn't sound completely mental? So if you have a child or a wife or sibling who's a mutant, what happens? Do they just loving...leave the household? Do you go with them? What kind of strain does that put on people, what kind of onus does that place on this mass displacement of mutantkind from their old homes and friends and family? Do these mutants just not consider themselves American anymore, or Chinese, or Indian, or Wakandan? And yet none of this has been touched on whatsoever. Not one single word. We just see someone like Northstar's husband floating around in the background of X-Factor like none of this affects his life at all.
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Dec 5, 2020 06:08
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BrianWilly posted:The problem is that mutants are by and large not a racial lineage. Anyone, from any background, could become a mutant. It's more like someone finding out that they're gay in their teens, instead of any racial or cultural heritage (for the most part). Imagine someone making Gay Island and telling everyone, alright pack your bags and get with our program, and then every gay person just...does it? Like it doesn't sound completely mental? Yeah, the thing is that a lot of important details have been left unspecified, and until they do people are forced to fill them in with their own answers, and those answers are not going to be the same in all cases and thus people will take away a very different picture of what's going on.
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Dec 5, 2020 06:12
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BrianWilly posted:The problem is that mutants are by and large not a racial lineage. Anyone, from any background, could become a mutant. It's more like someone finding out that they're gay in their teens, instead of any racial or cultural heritage (for the most part). Imagine someone making Gay Island and telling everyone, alright pack your bags and get with our program, and then every gay person just...does it? Like it doesn't sound completely mental? I mean, there's tons of examples of gay people or other sexual minorities forming their own separate enclaves within a society for purposes of self expression and mutual defense, main difference is Mutants have their own island. I'm willing to bet there's a poo poo ton of gay people who, when faced with discrimination, repression and violence or death would loving leap at the chance to move to gay island. Edit: this just popped up in my Twitter feed, seems appropriate to the conversation. https://twitter.com/wwacomics/status/1334893359631110145?s=19 Air Skwirl fucked around with this message at 06:36 on Dec 5, 2020 |
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Dec 5, 2020 06:28
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BrianWilly posted:The problem is that mutants are by and large not a racial lineage. Anyone, from any background, could become a mutant. It's more like someone finding out that they're gay in their teens, instead of any racial or cultural heritage (for the most part). Imagine someone making Gay Island and telling everyone, alright pack your bags and get with our program, and then every gay person just...does it? Like it doesn't sound completely mental? New Mutants almost brushed up against this with Beak and Angel, and some offhand mention that not all mutants are flocking to Krakoa. It's a swerve in that story because Beak/Angel have a good reason not to run over, but it does fail to address that issue. But I think you're underestimating just how badly a minority might want to go somewhere with guaranteed leverage, especially where jobs seem to be essentially elective other than "you might need to jump in and punch a demon alongside all your friends" and things like food, housing, healthcare, and most goods are a complete non-issue to acquire at your leisure. I don't know about you but I wouldn't hesitate to abandon everyone but my dog and gf to go somewhere like that and defend it to a painstaking death. That said you're right that it's an obvious issue that should be dealt with dramatically, and one of the failures of the run thus far is that there's been a primary focus on setting up new antagonists (which I actually think they've done a good job with) and relatively little on fleshing out the implications of Krakoa on the "average" mutant side of things. I do think having at least one book focus on it would be wise. New Mutants seems like the natural fit and it sucks they haven't followed up more, but I also get that it's the "family of longtime friends" book and that serves a niche too. mind the walrus fucked around with this message at 06:57 on Dec 5, 2020 |
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Dec 5, 2020 06:47
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The Morlocks are living in Arizona aren't they?
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Dec 5, 2020 06:52
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I'm not especially convinced by a trans reading of these comics until the actual printed issues have actual trans characters in them. Writers can go ahead and do it, and you know, obviously Claremont was hamstrung a bit by what he could get away with at the time but he made the minority allegory angle of the mutant concept a lot less facile by just pitting actual minorities on the team, working in what was under the circumstances an admirable amount of queer elements, etc.. Trans people aren't non-Euclidean beings that the naked eye slides off of, if anybody wants to write a story about trans people they can just make trans characters. Anyway. The "gay island" thing. I mean, that's a complicated situation too, because 1) for centuries queer people have to greater or lesser degrees often voluntarily self-separated, either in social constellations, communes, cooperatives, etc., and in non-Western cultures were often given specialized and protected social roles. So-- on the face of it, I think a lot of people would choose to go live on a gay island. Like-- I dunno-- Fire Island. I know that for sure many if not most queer people, before moving somewhere, do their homework to see if there is queer community there, if there are queer-friendly health resources, etc.. This is all a byproduct of what racial minorities have also always known-- a place can't be a home for you if it doesn't avail you of the resources and the community and the protections to make it so, and in those regards there is a real substantial power in numbers. On the other hand, Krakoa isn't a real place and even in the context of Marvel it's a pretty fantastical setting. People leave Fire Island because they run out of money and need to go back to work, young queer kids move out of warehouse collectives because the warehouses usually suck, in the 20th century thriving gay bars vanished overnight after being smashed up in police raids, etc.. Krakoa isn't really like that. It's a fortress and it's also Eden. It gives everybody there everything they could want-- there's no death. There's no want. As we saw in this week's X-Factor, there's no money. If you're living there and not looking around at the outside world and not... I guess being slaughtered by Apocalypse in a ghoulish masochistic ritual... it's a paradise. There's a huge difference between "come live in my gay art collective, it's nine people and we only have two bedrooms but you can sleep in the hallway closet, oh also the building has racoons in the walls" and "come live on this tropical post-scarcity island with teleportation plants all over the place so you can visit Sweden and Chile and the moon whenever you want." I would want to live there and it would have not particularly much to do with identity or community and more to do with the fact that everything about living there seems outrageously luxurious.
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Dec 5, 2020 08:29
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Having read, you know, Hickman's two earlier huge runs on mainstay Marvel titles I kinda feel like these dangling questions about the Krakoa situation will be addressed instead of ignored.
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Dec 5, 2020 08:39
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https://twitter.com/nolapfau/status/1335066469307060226?s=20
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Dec 5, 2020 10:30
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Skwirl posted:Having read, you know, Hickman's two earlier huge runs on mainstay Marvel titles I kinda feel like these dangling questions about the Krakoa situation will be addressed instead of ignored. We're already well past the point where we should've heard a ton more doubts from a ton more characters than we have about the whole mutant exodus and how that affects regular mutant and human lives. At most, I expect there to eventually be some social resistance to Xavier or Moira's decrees, like oh wow apparently they're shady! I can't believe we trusted them! (Except that's...not actually my problem here, with this story. The worldbuilding itself is the problem)
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Dec 5, 2020 11:58
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BrianWilly posted:I feel much the opposite. Everything about his previous work tells me he has zero problems having characters just baldly ignore important details or questions that they really probably shouldn't be ignoring, as long as he gets to manifest the big plots and smart-sounding words he wants to. I kinda need examples of what you're talking about.
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Dec 5, 2020 12:04
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Off the top of my head the Avengers had the literal embodiment of the actual universe at their beck and call, who kept babbling on...repeatedly, ad nasaeum, to the point of irritation...about the universe being broken, and at no point does literally anyone on either team just ask her what the problem is. And you think this is building up to to something big or interesting but it ends up just being something that never happens and is never addressed. The whole Incursions plotline was essentially a story where a straight answer would solve all the problems, so no one ever asks and no one with answers ever offers. Because the story hinges on them not doing that. It was also a story where I realized very quickly that the characters weren't going to drive the plot, but instead the plot was going to drive the characters, for good or ill. The Illuminati will try something to stop the Incursions, or learn more about them, or whatever, but it doesn't actually matter because Hickman already decided it wouldn't. It's all gonna fail because of [insert big magical science nonsense here]. But then, one issue later, someone like Doom will somehow accomplish the literal exact thing they were trying to do, not particularly because of any sensible reason why he would succeed where they failed, but really only because the story doesn't work otherwise so everything's just gonna bend and twist to make that happen, and then we move on to the next time this same thing happens. And all that's before we even touch the actual characterizations involved here, which ends up being less about a group of flawed people who screwed things up due to their hubris, and more like these people were made flawed and hubristic so that they would screw things up. I like Hickman's ideas, but this perception of him as some sort of master plotter who checks all his corners and leaves no stones unturned is really overblown. There's plenty to nitpick about in his writing, just like with anyone else. BrianWilly fucked around with this message at 13:26 on Dec 5, 2020 |
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Dec 5, 2020 13:24
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Not that it solves Hickman's problem with not addressing some of the issues he created, but some of this was addressed in Zdarsky's X-Men/Fantastic Four series. It's all about should Franklin leave the F4 to live on Krakoa. But I guess what was all done in some one shot that I don't think many people read?
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Dec 5, 2020 15:02
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I think Hickman's Fantastic Four/FF stuff was very good but all of his Avengers books left me completely cold. I felt like he set up interesting questions about power in them and what it means to have power, or more precisely, to just kind of blunder into a monopoly on power, and then didn't answer them in ways that felt meaningful or substantial to me. So I don't know. I've liked some of his stuff, I've strongly disliked some of his stuff. I'm not going to give him the benefit of the doubt but obviously I'm still reading and largely enjoying the Krakoa books.
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Dec 5, 2020 17:21
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Rand Brittain posted:I think the main issue with Krakoa being permanent is the persistent subtext of "we will conquer the world and make non-mutants a permanent underclass as soon as we can get around to it."
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Dec 5, 2020 18:25
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How Wonderful! posted:Anyway. The "gay island" thing. I mean, that's a complicated situation too, because 1) for centuries queer people have to greater or lesser degrees often voluntarily self-separated, either in social constellations, communes, cooperatives, etc., and in non-Western cultures were often given specialized and protected social roles. So-- on the face of it, I think a lot of people would choose to go live on a gay island. Like-- I dunno-- Fire Island. I know that for sure many if not most queer people, before moving somewhere, do their homework to see if there is queer community there, if there are queer-friendly health resources, etc.. This is all a byproduct of what racial minorities have also always known-- a place can't be a home for you if it doesn't avail you of the resources and the community and the protections to make it so, and in those regards there is a real substantial power in numbers. Other than "being mutants" there's not any other common experiences/affinities that any two mutants drawn out of a hat would have in a way that "gay island" or "trans island" or Israel or Liberia or Galt Gulch would presumably have. If you combined them all into a singular location and basically went "hey, here's a place for anyone who isn't a neurotypical white WASP cis person with no disabilities!" This is even discussed in various books when they talk about creating/building a mutant culture -- not just a Krakoan culture, but one for mutants -- in a way that I assume no one would discuss in a real world equivalent. There's a ton of things about said culture and how individuals in it would feel and respond to the separatist and supremacist aspects of it that I don't think have been explored very deeply in anything published yet, and I hope they do so. But it's also a science fiction story using six decades of accumulated lore so the idea that it could ever be cleanly mapped to anything feels weird and mostly appears to lead to people getting mad when it doesn't.
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Dec 5, 2020 18:47
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