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Skwirl posted:I always remember the boob window, I forget how even without that it's still a loving terrible costume That's hilarious. Random Stranger posted:It's a full body suit, she just makes parts of it invisible. Even funnier.
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Sep 19, 2021 08:55
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There's only about two years between the Simonson/Adams "New Fantastic Four" story arc and the later "New Fantastic Four vs. Fantastic Four" (as it is billed on the cover) fight where Wolverine slashes Thing's face. Tom DeFalco and Paul Ryan took over less than a year after Simonson's run ended, and there was a ton of dumb crossover/shake-ups in a short span: FF #357: Johnny finds out he married a Skrull pretending to be Alicia Masters! (because of guest stars the New Warriors being controlled by Puppet Master) FF #369: Sue gets re-possessed by Malice as part of the Infinity War crossover, the after-effects of which that she becomes edgier and starts wearing that bad costume FF #371: Johnny's powers are out of control, he burns down a college and is a wanted criminal! (hunted by Spider-Man, Daredevil, Code:Blue, Silver Sable and the Wild Pack, etc) FF #374: Ben's face gets all slashed up by Wolverine after Spider-Man recruits the "New Fantastic Four" to bring Johnny in FF #375: The whole team gets leather jackets/vests and sci-fi guns to take down a ROGUE WATCHER FF #376: Franklin Richards comes back from the future as PSI-LORD, a hip teenager with a badass 1990s suit of armor FF #377: HUNTARA, another badass warrior woman from the future emerges, turns out she's Reed's half-sister (and evil) FF #381: Doctor Doom commits suicide by armor explosion to kill Reed Things go south from there. Dawgstar posted:It was sort of weird when it comes up in the comics, too. Sue decides somewhat randomly Reed doesn't pay attention to her anymore so she tarts up her costume and Reed is all "you've changed what you wear!" and then goes back to whatever he was doing so she basically should have skipped out with Namor.   Reed notices the "subtle alteration" of Sue's personality, and they return from the Infinity War crossover:   Despite having spent an entire crossover fighting evil doppelgangers and psychic attacks, Reed's first thought is "maybe I just suck"  That's all in one issue! The next issue is where Sue debuts her new costume  Taken out of context that one page does make it seem like she was doing it to get her husband's attention and he's too wrapped up in "other stuff", but that "other stuff" included things like "getting abducted by a cosmic being who also abducted Galactus, Silver Surfer, Iron Man, Thing, Thor, Hulk, pretty much half of the most powerful beings on the planet" and "rescuing Alicia Masters who had been kidnapped by Skrulls", the latter described by Sue as "another one of his ridiculous MISSIONS". A few issues later when the Watcher summons the FF to try to stop Doctor Doom from stealing the power of The Rogue Watcher and taking over the universe(?), she says Reed "always preferred playing with your scientific TOYS to dealing with MY concerns", while privately musing that maybe *she* should try to steal all this power and take over the universe. Then a few issues later, both Reed and Sue's powers are faltering for unexplained reasons/"exhaustion" and seeing him work himself to exhaustion turns Sue on so much that they decide to have sex in his recovery bed and "let them all wait" to go support Johnny in his trial, and then a couple of issues after that Reed "dies". A couple of issues after that, Teen Franklin Psi-Lord reveals he came back from the future to exorcise Malice from his mom before she takes over/destroys the universe, but little did he realize that Malice wanted to jump over into Psi-Lord, but a few issues after that Psi-Lord pushes Malice into THE DARK RAIDER's brain, who is an evil Reed Richards from a different alternate future. The Dark Raider is later thrown into the Negative Zone and torn to shreds, and Malice (this Malice, not to be confused with the unrelated disembodied evil psychic being from the X-Men) hasn't been seen since. Sue continued to wear the dumb costume for a couple of years post-Malice, with no real justification. The DeFalco/Ryan era of Fantastic Four was... not good?
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Sep 19, 2021 09:22
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Edge & Christian posted:FF #357: Johnny finds out he married a Skrull pretending to be Alicia Masters! (because of guest stars the New Warriors being controlled by Puppet Master) Ah, I did wonder how that particular storyline was going to resolve itself. I'm up to the FF Annual #21 so Crystal has just left and another installment of the quickly tedious Evolutionary War has just passed by. Can't say I'm enjoying it as an event.
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Sep 19, 2021 10:58
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bessantj posted:
Going back a few pages, but yes this did come up. One of Christos Gage’s first Marvel Comics was Iron Man / Captain America: Casualties of War #1. It’s a One Shot where Tony and Steve meet secretly to have one last attempt to talk things out. It brings up a lot of their past (like how Steve’s father was an alcholic and how that impacts his relationship with Tony.) It brings up the Armor Wars (Stark Wars) story and how Tony went off on his own because he didn’t trust any system to fix this problem. It also brings up the USAgent storyline where Steve handed over the Shield because that was what the authorities asked him to do. It squares these circles by having both characters (essentially) say “Yes that was what I did back then. And I thought it was right at the time. Now I’m not so sure and that’s why I’m doing things differently.” Which is the most realistic possible answer I think. Real people are never bound by the precedent of their actions. They can chose what they do.
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Sep 19, 2021 12:31
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The Question IRL posted:Going back a few pages, but yes this did come up. That's cool. I didn't expect them to really resolve anything from it perfectly because hey humans are layered, complex and hypocritical but I would expect it to come up.
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Sep 19, 2021 12:34
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The Question IRL posted:Going back a few pages, but yes this did come up. I've become a big Christos Gage fan. He's a very underrated writer.
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Sep 19, 2021 13:06
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bessantj posted:Ah, I did wonder how that particular storyline was going to resolve itself. I'm up to the FF Annual #21 so Crystal has just left and another installment of the quickly tedious Evolutionary War has just passed by. Can't say I'm enjoying it as an event. Evolutionary War as an event is one big fart. It's another one I've read in the recent past and don't remember anything because nothing about it mattered. And not in the continuity sense; I mean nothing mattered in the story itself.
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Sep 19, 2021 13:48
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Random Stranger posted:Evolutionary War as an event is one big fart. It's another one I've read in the recent past and don't remember anything because nothing about it mattered. And not in the continuity sense; I mean nothing mattered in the story itself. I know what you mean, a whole lot of nothing at the moment. "The Saga of the High Evolutionary" was a bit more interesting though I can't remember if I found out the identity of the shadowy figure that gave Wyndham the info on genetic manipulation in the first place. For a War there is not much war going on Apocalypse popped up at the beginning to tell the High Evolutionary he was going about things all wrong and his way was better but the High Evolutionary said Apocalypse's method was too violent, he said this as he was genociding a race of people mind.
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Sep 19, 2021 14:48
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I know there's a lot of weird poo poo to wrap your head around if you're living in the Marvel world but for some reason Counter-Earth always stood out as one of the wildest ones. Yep, just going about my day, take my kids to their karate lessons later, trying to forget there's an entire other loving Earth on the opposite side of the sun no biggie.
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Sep 19, 2021 16:24
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Random Stranger posted:Evolutionary War as an event is one big fart. It's another one I've read in the recent past and don't remember anything because nothing about it mattered. And not in the continuity sense; I mean nothing mattered in the story itself. Was that the first 'annual event' book Marvel did, where it all happened in the annuals?
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Sep 19, 2021 16:28
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We were speaking earlier of bad redesigns, just spotted this: The X stands for, you guessed it Sprite.
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Sep 19, 2021 16:39
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Dawgstar posted:Was that the first 'annual event' book Marvel did, where it all happened in the annuals? Yes. Then it went to Atlantis Attacks which is better in the sense that it has a coherent storyline. After that, they went to smaller crossovers in the annuals for a few years where three or four books in the same family would have a story that went through their annuals.
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Sep 19, 2021 16:40
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Dawgstar posted:Was that the first 'annual event' book Marvel did, where it all happened in the annuals? After that they did smaller mini-events in clusters of annuals: 1990: Days of Future Present, Terminus Factor, Lifeform, Spidey's Totally Tiny Adventure 1991: Kings of Pain, Korvac Quest, Vibranium Vendetta, Von Strucker Gambit, Subterranean Wars 1992: Citizen Kang, Assault on Armor City, Hero Killers, Return of the Defenders, Shattershot, The System Bytes Then in 1993 they did a gimmick where every annual debuted a new character and was bagged with a "rookie card". Of the 27 debuting characters, only four (Annex, X-Cutioner, Adam-X The X-Treme, and Legacy/Genis-Vell) have made double digit non-handbook appearances in the past twenty-four years. Only Genis has over 24 appearances, and several characters (Charon, Dreamkiller, Hit-Maker, Lazarus, Face Thief, Raptor, and Eradikator) have never appeared in a story since. There are a couple of characters with names Marvel recycled later (Phalanx, Nocturne), a few characters that didn't even make their first appearance in the annuals, and maybe the weirdest one for me, EMPYREAN. Empyrean is Jonathan Chambers, introduced about a year before Jonothan "Chamber" Starsmore. He technically first appears as a talking head in X-Men Unlimited #2 (written by Fabian Nicieza), where he appears on Nightline with Ted Koppel, arguing that mutants are a result of how humans have abused the environment, touting his book FATAL ATTRACTIONS (the crossover he is sort of appearing in!) A month later he makes his full debut (also written by Nicizea) where it's revealed that he is also a mutant, an "energy vampire" who was setting up an island "leper colony"/hospice for mutants dying the Legacy Virus, and his harboring of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants was because Pyro was dying of the Legacy Virus, and no one was particularly happy with this but they were going to leave him to it in case he had an evil secret plan. Empyrean never appeared again, except two years later in four mini-comics produced as a tie-in to Hardees' Kids Meals called X-Men: TIME GLIDERS. Anyway, the story (by Ben Raab and Mike Gustovich) involves Rogue discovering that the Brotherhood have aligned with "this low-down polecat, name of Empyrean" who steals the Beast's Time Glider with the intent of going back to the past to enslave all mutants? But Beast builds a second time glider which he uses to teleport to Empyrean's island lair! But Empyrean is already time-gliding, except he doesn't know how to use the Time Glider so it dumps him in front of a T-Rex and returns to the present. The End!
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Sep 19, 2021 17:16
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Edge & Christian posted:Then in 1993 they did a gimmick where every annual debuted a new character and was bagged with a "rookie card". Of the 27 debuting characters, only four (Annex, X-Cutioner, Adam-X The X-Treme, and Legacy/Genis-Vell) have made double digit non-handbook appearances in the past twenty-four years. Only Genis has over 24 appearances, and several characters (Charon, Dreamkiller, Hit-Maker, Lazarus, Face Thief, Raptor, and Eradikator) have never appeared in a story since. There are a couple of characters with names Marvel recycled later (Phalanx, Nocturne), a few characters that didn't even make their first appearance in the annuals, and maybe the weirdest one for me, EMPYREAN. Wasn't X-Factor's part of that weird joke... subplot is probably too strong a term but Peter David had this thing where a family of supervillains that showed up out of nowhere who very dramatically call for vengeance or plot and scheme for maybe a page or two and then accidentally kill themselves like the one who replaced both his hands with propeller blades and realized he couldn't leave his lab and then died when he facepalmed with razor sharp blades? PAD seemed to like it, anyway.
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Sep 19, 2021 17:20
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Dawgstar posted:Wasn't X-Factor's part of that weird joke... subplot is probably too strong a term but Peter David had this thing where a family of supervillains that showed up out of nowhere who very dramatically call for vengeance or plot and scheme for maybe a page or two and then accidentally kill themselves like the one who replaced both his hands with propeller blades and realized he couldn't leave his lab and then died when he facepalmed with razor sharp blades? The villain in their annual was Lazurus who revived all of X-Factors greatest enemies! Except they had no clue who any of them were.
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Sep 19, 2021 18:20
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Speaking of events, is Inferno any good?
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Sep 19, 2021 18:36
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bessantj posted:Speaking of events, is Inferno any good? Uh... kinda. The base concept, demons taking over New York and turning it into Hell by possessing everything and making the world crazy is great and a lot of people had a lot of fun with the concept. There's a lot of great moments and comics in the event. The core story is messier. It's pretty much the worst way to resolve "so what about Madilyn Pryor if Jean is back?" question and Mr. Sinister showing up after all of the interesting parts are over to drag things out for another month doesn't help. I think of it as the last hurrah of Claremont's X-Men. Not great, but has a lot of fun bits. After Inferno, you've got about three more years of Claremont on X-Men where it seems like he wants to be doing anything other than writing X-Men.
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Sep 19, 2021 18:47
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Random Stranger posted:Uh... kinda. The basic idea is done better years earlier in a three-issue run of X-Men where a Conan villain makes New York demonic and I think crucifies Spider-Man.
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Sep 19, 2021 18:52
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Like some other events over the years, the tie-ins to Inferno are better than the main event. And you can read them without reading Inferno. It's definitely not the worst X-Men crossover book though.
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Sep 19, 2021 18:56
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Random Stranger posted:Uh... kinda. I knew she became the Goblin Queen but i didn't know much about her before that. Now having read the issues after she appeared it feels like shes been given the short end of the stick. Even after Scott abandons her and her child, then losing her child she is still willing to help the X-Men to the point of sacrificing herself along with the other members to save the planet. Even when they go down to Australia shes still happy to hang out with them and help them. So to have her turn evil seems harsh. Skwirl posted:Like some other events over the years, the tie-ins to Inferno are better than the main event. And you can read them without reading Inferno. No, that's the one we all know and have talked about often, you know that one, yeah it's on the tip of my tongue...
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Sep 19, 2021 19:12
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Lobok posted:I know there's a lot of weird poo poo to wrap your head around if you're living in the Marvel world but for some reason Counter-Earth always stood out as one of the wildest ones. Yep, just going about my day, take my kids to their karate lessons later, trying to forget there's an entire other loving Earth on the opposite side of the sun no biggie. As a Comic inhabitant, you are probably used to a lot of weird stuff being in your background. Like just imagine what being in school would be like? Not only would you have had to run Supervillain drills and people spread rumours about the kid who became an Inhuman over the summer. Your education syllabus would be wild. You’d be shown documentaries about all the crazy Nazi Super weapons, how the afterlife is completely real and how Captain America stood by while Richard Nixon committed suicide when his plot to take over America failed.
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Sep 19, 2021 19:13
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why would counter earth even cross your mind when you have aliens invading like every tuesday new york just got covered in venom goo and killed like thousands of people and the next week it never happened. no one would care about something that only gets mentioned once every 20 years
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Sep 19, 2021 19:14
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site posted:why would counter earth even cross your mind when you have aliens invading like every tuesday There's bee a few dudes out there blaming it on the jews.
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Sep 19, 2021 19:21
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bessantj posted:I knew she became the Goblin Queen but i didn't know much about her before that. Now having read the issues after she appeared it feels like shes been given the short end of the stick. Even after Scott abandons her and her child, then losing her child she is still willing to help the X-Men to the point of sacrificing herself along with the other members to save the planet. Even when they go down to Australia shes still happy to hang out with them and help them. So to have her turn evil seems harsh. Yeah, I'm hoping the upcoming Inferno event will redeem her in some way (really loving hate Marvel's trend of naming events exactly the same thing as a previous event, at least DC will give their events slightly different titles, Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis Identity Crisis). You have loving Selene and Empath on that island and had Apocalypse, you can make some room for the Goblin Queen.
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Sep 19, 2021 19:23
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bessantj posted:No, that's the one we all know and have talked about often, you know that one, yeah it's on the tip of my tongue... Necrosha?
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Sep 19, 2021 19:37
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I adore the original Inferno but obviously that's not a universally held opinion.
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Sep 19, 2021 19:42
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Skwirl posted:Yeah, I'm hoping the upcoming Inferno event will redeem her in some way (really loving hate Marvel's trend of naming events exactly the same thing as a previous event, at least DC will give their events slightly different titles, Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis Identity Crisis). You have loving Selene and Empath on that island and had Apocalypse, you can make some room for the Goblin Queen. No doubt it will, some how, end up worse. Has she had much contact with Cable? Random Stranger posted:Necrosha? I just had a look on MU and it's not down as an event but they do seem to have all the issues there. Got a while to wait for that one though, about 20 years of comics, so can steel myself.
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Sep 19, 2021 19:46
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How Wonderful! posted:I adore the original Inferno but obviously that's not a universally held opinion. I like the story, but also loving hate what it did to Madelyne Pryor. So every once in a while I post something snarky at Kurt Busiek about it on twitter (he didn't write it, but he is the one who came up with Jean Grey's resurrection).
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Sep 19, 2021 19:48
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How Wonderful! posted:I adore the original Inferno but obviously that's not a universally held opinion. I recently read it for the first time and found it excellent, but I get people hating what happened to Maddie.
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Sep 19, 2021 19:53
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site posted:why would counter earth even cross your mind when you have aliens invading like every tuesday I know it's not rational but there's something about it that creeps me out more than Invasion of the Week.
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Sep 19, 2021 19:54
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Lobok posted:I know it's not rational but there's something about it that creeps me out more than Invasion of the Week. There's an early issue of Nova (the kid named Sam one, not Dick Rider) where he's in class and his teacher says there aren't aliens. This came out like a week after some massive alien invasion in New York in other comics.
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Sep 19, 2021 19:58
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The New Mutants/Ilyanna half of Inferno is a lot better than the Madelyne half - if nothing else, because it feels like a logical conclusion to Ilyanna's story, rather than an abrupt swerve to eliminate a character rendered superfluous by Jean's return.
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Sep 20, 2021 05:56
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Skwirl posted:Yeah, I'm hoping the upcoming Inferno event will redeem her in some way (really loving hate Marvel's trend of naming events exactly the same thing as a previous event, at least DC will give their events slightly different titles, Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis Identity Crisis). You have loving Selene and Empath on that island and had Apocalypse, you can make some room for the Goblin Queen. On the topic of names, I kind of rationalized the upcoming crossover being called Inferno by thinking, well, at least it's the title of a book instead of a crossover. And then I went on the wiki to find out when it was starting and promptly realized that this is actually going to be Inferno Vol. 2, after the (rather good) Secret Wars Inferno. I don't think Madelyne Pryor really even requires redemption. The original event makes it pretty clear that she's been placed into an impossible position. She's lost her husband, her child, her identity, even her entire reason for being. What happens to her is just as much of a tragedy as what happens to Magik. I thought what Zeb Wells did with her in Hellions was really great--she just wanted somebody to recognize that she was real, that she existed, that she meant something. Angry Salami posted:The New Mutants/Ilyanna half of Inferno is a lot better than the Madelyne half - if nothing else, because it feels like a logical conclusion to Ilyanna's story, rather than an abrupt swerve to eliminate a character rendered superfluous by Jean's return. I know it wasn't part of the original plan, but honestly the slow build-up to Madelyne losing basically every part of her life really works. X-Factor starts in 1985 and Inferno doesn't start until 1988; she goes through a lot of poo poo in Uncanny during that period. The only bit that's truly sour is Cyclops immediately leaving Madelyne for Jean; there's no way to fit that in with the characters as we know them and it's best left ignored. IMPORTANT EDIT: I like Inferno a lot
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Sep 20, 2021 11:39
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blaming Busiek for how Claremont and Simonson handled Madelyn Pryor because he pitched the eventual solution for how Jean Grey was going to be resurrected is nuts and I feel like I've posted this before
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Sep 20, 2021 12:48
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All I know is when Inferno was coming out, I was in 5th grade, and Madelyne's Goblyn Queen costume was a revelation.
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Sep 20, 2021 13:03
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Big Bad Voodoo Lou posted:All I know is when Inferno was coming out, I was in 5th grade, and Madelyne's Goblyn Queen costume was a revelation. Even as a horny teen, I thought it was a bit much. 
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Sep 20, 2021 13:57
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At least the story's equal opportunity, with Havok getting a matching 'costume'.
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Sep 20, 2021 14:05
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Angry Salami posted:The New Mutants/Ilyanna half of Inferno is a lot better than the Madelyne half - if nothing else, because it feels like a logical conclusion to Ilyanna's story, rather than an abrupt swerve to eliminate a character rendered superfluous by Jean's return. And happily that's self-contained that if the X-Men/Factor stuff isn't doing it for you you can just read the New Mutants stuff, although the X-Terminators miniseries is fun too which does tie in and is how Boom-Boom, Rictor and the other two wind up joining the team.
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Sep 20, 2021 15:18
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Rochallor posted:I don't think Madelyne Pryor really even requires redemption. The original event makes it pretty clear that she's been placed into an impossible position. She's lost her husband, her child, her identity, even her entire reason for being. What happens to her is just as much of a tragedy as what happens to Magik. I thought what Zeb Wells did with her in Hellions was really great--she just wanted somebody to recognize that she was real, that she existed, that she meant something. I agree. What happens to Maddie is tragic and infuriating but on those terms the story works, and it's wild how much sympathy (of a sort) she maintains just because Claremont writes her grief and rage at what was done to her so powerfully. I think the Ilyana stuff is more cohesive because, well, it didn't spring out of an unexpected swerve in another book, but the whole thing just hangs together so beautifully imo. For many reasons Maddie as the principle in a story about trauma always really resonated with me-- and a lot of that clicked into place in my head when I came out as trans-- so I get the impulse and I get why in her own way she's just as seductive and magnetic a figure as the Dark Phoenix. The Dark Phoenix is all hunger and jouissance, Maddie is the rage of whoever has had injustices against them muted, who would burn the world up to see justice done-- they're both great characters in great arcs, and I think Claremont is groundbreaking for giving women in superhero comics acknowledgement for even having those kinds of hungers, for having affective ranges that can be powerful and terrifying and real in a way that very few comics writers before him grasped.
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Sep 20, 2021 16:15
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Random Stranger posted:Even as a horny teen, I thought it was a bit much. I know, one decent gust of wind and she's getting arrested for indecent exposure.
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Sep 20, 2021 19:00
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