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Alright so I'm a big gay and Iceman was one of my favorite characters when I was younger and I just found out about this and... ...my initial gut reaction was, goddamn that was one of the worst-written scenes I've ever read in my life. To say nothing of it being a really badly-written outing. I mean. I guess it's almost a blessing in disguise 'cuz we don't really have equality until we have as many horrific stilted outing scenes as we do tactful endearing ones! But then of course it also really does its job because now I am interested in what's happening here and how they'll possibly explain this about older Bobby so, well played, Bendis, you terrible writer, you sneaky little gently caress, well played. I think ultimately this is probably a good thing moving forward, but it's also going to depend on how they depict it moving forward. Like it or not, Bendis has set up a really significant, character-driven mystery here that might well be -- let's be honest here -- the only interesting thing that Bobby has actually been involved with in about seven or eight years. If you can't take use comic books to take advantage of time-travel to tell stories about sexuality then heck, just what are comics even for? The problem is Bendis, of course. I absolutely, categorically mistrust his ability to conclude this plot thread in a good way, because at this point he's the writer who, no matter how intricate and compelling his setups, still makes you go "So what the heck was the point of all that?" at the end of literally any story he writes. I mean, there should not be any possible way for a revelation of this sort to not be significant and consequential and point-y, and yet I still expect Bendis to find a way to make it so. Already the setup is ringing a ton of alarm bells. (Look, I don't actually dislike Bendis as much as I do some other writers I could name, but preemptively setting expectations low in order to be surprised and impressed at the end of the day is the only real way to read his stuff nowadays. Or, possibly, ever.)
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Apr 21, 2015 21:21
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There's actually a reasonable number of gay, bi, queer secondary X-Men already, whether it's new characters or characters who've been around a while...like, more than eight or nine, which is (heh) uncanny given usual ratios. For pretty obvious reasons, the X-Men are the one long-running, mainstream team in Marvel or DC that have tended to barrel forward with this stuff. It also helps to have roughly ten thousand characters in the rosters, I suppose. Still, as was mentioned, there's a big difference between a gay secondary character shuffled within the backgrounds of books and a gay main, iconic character being prominent and unmissable as a core aspect of the mythos. Anole and Karma will probably never appear on Google news, will not be portrayed in films, will not be playable in video games...more's the pity. Iceman can and will do all those things and more. It's a retcon, there's no getting around it. It's not a "revelation," it's a big fat discounting of various existing (if negligible) storylines. Prep yourselves right now for the inevitable "reveal" of Bobby's parents as not only mutantphobic but homophobic as well, and how Xavier knew all along, and so on and so forth. But then, those sorts of things are completely old hat for comics at this point; frankly, I couldn't care less about it being a retcon if it's handled well, which is going to be the crux of everything. hope and vaseline posted:Man, Aguirre-Sacasa has a way more varied output than I thought, I had no idea he was involved with Archie and Looking was a drat good show. Deadpool posted:I don't think Bendis will be following up anything. Isn't tomorrow his last issue? 
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Apr 21, 2015 22:14
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Well, evidently Bendis has mentioned on newsarama that "This is just the first little chapter of a much larger story that will be told" so... Hnn. Over/under on when someone will set him up with Northstar?
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Apr 21, 2015 23:06
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Yvonmukluk posted:Welp, I guess this makes it official. I'll be honest, the more I hear them talk about this the less worried I am about the situation. Which of course is a dirty trap because that's exactly what these mofos want.  Maybe they'll finally use this opportunity to finally, definitively deal with his whole long-running "can't use his full potential despite being omega-class mutant 'cuz he's got self-doubt issues or whatever" thing that's been going on forever. At least, they'll deal with it until some other writer decides to bring it up again at some point.  I like to think that Emma Frost definitely, for-certain knew, and that she's gonna give Jean freakin' Grey an earful when she finds out how tactless she was about this.
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Apr 21, 2015 23:50
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Space_Butler posted:He keeps saying this is a long-term story and the full issue comes out tomorrow, but this certainly seems like his "M-word" moment in that if you take objection to how things were phrased or how actions played out, no amount of context is gonna make it okay.
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Apr 22, 2015 00:08
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Again, I'm wholly on board with the fact that this isn't written well and has problems. But the minute we're saying "This current thing doesn't make sense because of a prior thing that happened a while ago" about a current comics thing, we've already lost. They don't care about that. I mean...sometimes they should, sometimes they shouldn't, this isn't a value judgment thing, it's simply a thing: existing material is a thing to draw on if writers want to and particularly if they want to milk nostalgia, otherwise it's something for them to ignore or twist until it fits whatever they want to write now. Particularly for Bendis, but even so for almost any writer around nowadays. And really, the worst thing anyone can do right now is say stuff like "Iceman absolutely cannot be totally gay because of his fiery romance with fan-favorite sensations Opal Tanaka and Darkstar back in issue numbers asdfghjkl; during 1874!" That is absolutely the exact response that Marvel and Bendis is expecting, the exact sorts of responses they'll ignore (probably rightly), and it'll just make them more convinced that there's nothing wrong at all with the way they wrote this instead of the more subtle problematic elements that infuse the writing.
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Apr 22, 2015 01:00
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TheJoker138 posted:The same can be said with going from straight to gay. And at this point Bendis should maybe take the first piece of advice there, too. Bobby being bi would at least make some amount of sense, while this whole thing is just a badly executed retcon. It's cool to see more representation in comics, especially with a major character, but it was done in about the clunkiest way possible here. I get what you're saying in the sense that "He was into women in the past, so even if he likes men now, he has to at least be bi or else his old relationships with women don't 'make sense'," but what Bendis is trying to say here is that his old relationships with women were either overcompensation or else genuine attempts to try to figure out his sexuality. Which totally happens with gay people all the time. And, yes, that is absolutely a retcon for the character, it absolutely 100% negates prior storylines, and it's kind of executed shittily to boot, but not because it takes a character that people think is straight and reveals that he's gay.
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Apr 22, 2015 07:51
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I don't know if I'm understanding this conversation right because I totally skipped out on Black Vortex, but I don't think even Bendis would make it so that a character is only gay because of cosmic interference. I didn't get that impression from the issue, anyway. It's not clear if Bobby's sexuality was something Jean only just now realized or something she's suspected for a while, but I think she would've noticed if Bobby was attracted to girls before they went to space and isn't anymore now. Or else Bendis wouldn't have stuck in the [unfortunate] "full gay" thing.
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Apr 22, 2015 21:20
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TwoPair posted:Seriously, if they just did a story of current Iceman coming out, that would be fine, and I guess fit in with established character, and you could spin all his prior relationships failing as having been the result of self-sabotage without it being too much of a retcon. Making it Young Bobby just makes things confusing for everybody. ImpAtom posted:People have absolutely suspected Iceman for a while.     (I mean, I kid, but you can absolutely bet that Bendis will be referencing this exact, specific scene at some point.)
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Apr 23, 2015 01:19
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Darke GBF posted:Oh, and by the way, bisexual people don't exist, and being gay is a choice.
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Apr 23, 2015 02:52
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Darke GBF posted:Just put away your gay, folks. (Which is also kind of a lovely correlation to make -- it's not as if being bad at romance means that you're not straight -- but either way it's not saying that being gay or straight is a choice.) BrianWilly fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Apr 23, 2015 |
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Apr 23, 2015 03:16
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Honestly though, I remember back in 2003 most nerds would absolutely refuse to admit or acknowledge that the "Have you tried not being a mutant" thing had anything whatosever to do with gay issues, subtext, or even humor because -- and I'm not kidding or exaggerating in the least here -- they'd be positively livid at the suggestion that the precious masterpiece X-2 could have any allusions to gay issues despite the director and multiple actors being LGBT, along with the fact that it's a friggin' X-Men story. A lot has changed in ten years. ...That being said, that was a pretty dumb interview. "And now, to weigh in on this gripping controversial development, is someone who had virtually nothing to do with it and barely even knows what's going on."I actually found, of all things, this Playboy article about the issue to be pretty interesting and insightful.
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Apr 23, 2015 14:49
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Two Tone Shoes posted:Alright, tell me why a guy who is only gay and not even the slightest bit bisexual would be sexually and romantically interested in women. What other factors of sexuality am I missing that make you totally 100% gay and not fully interested in women while...simultaneously being interested in women in every way? I don't want to downplay that this is a retcon that negates prior stories; obviously all the writers who wrote Bobby's former failed relationships with female characters were not thinking at the time that he wasn't sexually attracted to them. The question, though, becomes: Does it matter? The fact that it retcons things doesn't make the story better or worse in and of itself. Bigger and smaller elements about characters get retconned all the time...again, for better and for worse. I think people just don't think it's that a big deal to retcon a straight character into being gay under the retroactive premise that he was not sexually attracted to the women he unsuccessfully dated -- most of these stories being decades old -- because that's precisely what a lot of gay people in the closet do. SirDan3k posted:The "maybe I'm bi quash" was really loving insulting to me because it was presented as some last desperate grasp at socially acceptable sexual orientation when it's the one that gets shat on by both sides.  ) here carries a lot of gross connotations, but it's absolutely 100% a conversation that could and probably would happen between a gay teenager and the, uh, friend outing them.The issue, as far as I can tell, is that people are of the the impression (probably rightly) that Bendis is simply reproducing the problematic bi-quashing conversation wholesale here not because he's trying to depict two teenagers' flawed and derogatory attitudes towards bisexuality realistically, but because it's a conversation he himself would completely, unironically have with a gay friend without seeing anything wrong with it because himself has been conditioned by by the societal biphobia that makes people think of bisexuality, however peripherally, as a transitioning phase between full straight and full gay. The crux and the irony here, I suppose, is that Bendis is in fact depicting biphobia realistically in the story by demonstrating biphobia. So you have some people saying "This is a realistic depiction of biphobia, and therefore part of the story" and others saying "This is a realistic demonstration of biphobia, and therefore harms the story."
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Apr 23, 2015 22:54
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Sometimes I forget that literally every writer after Morrison never realized Ernst was supposed to be Cassandra Nova. Ah, well.
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May 1, 2015 00:52
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I genuinely, unironically enjoy what Austen did with Juggernaut and Sammy the Fish Boy.
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May 17, 2015 05:05
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And then, of course, I also recall that he made it so Angel bleeds on people to heal them and then made him have aerial sex with nineteen year-old Husk in front of her mother.
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May 17, 2015 05:23
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Frankly, my first impressions of Morrison's run were negative too. I didn't like that he was focusing on the boring characters instead of the "cool" ones that were off in other books, I thought the whole thing with Cassandra Nova and the Mummudrai and Shi'ar or whatever was too abstruse and hard to get into, and Frank Quitely's art gave me the genuine honest-to-God impression, for at least half an issue, that this whole storyline was set in the future and all these characters were in their fifties and sixties. Nowadays...yeah, it is absolutely one of my favorite, most definitive runs on any comic ever, and I get something new from the experience no matter how many times I reread these issues.
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May 17, 2015 08:49
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He did more with characters like Cyclops and Emma in two issues than most writers have done with entire runs.
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May 29, 2015 22:13
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I'm really going to miss Storm's current costume. It was probably the best-looking "redesign" of a classic character since...I dunno, ages. All these new X-costumes are just...kinda janky and weird.
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Jun 30, 2015 21:31
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I can't help but be a bit fond of the metaphor that Inhumans' mists are literally killing mutants in the comics.
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Sep 12, 2015 07:21
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I just read it and...well...it was kinda anticlimactic, wasn't it? And not just the gaiety; the whole issue was anticlimactic. Which...y'know. Bendis. But, hey, I can live with it.bobkatt013 posted:Can not wait for Northstar to sucker punch him a couple hundred times. Which is to say...I don't think Bendis made Bobby repressed enough. I feel like Bobby admitted it (albeit to himself, and to a psychic) far too easily. I kinda wanted more angst about his repression. But there wasn't really any dramatic twist to this, was there? He just kinda sighed and complained and then there were some hugs. Young Bobby had a more dramatic reaction to this than old Bobby did. Psychics other than Jean must have realized that Bobby was gay before now, but we don't touch on that at all. In fact, we examine literally none of the repercussions of this...like, what's either Bobby gonna do about it now? Hell if we know 'cuz Bendis just ends his run on a whimper (literally Hank McCoy is whimpering in his room) and leaves all this for others to handle, exactly like how I suspected this might end back in April. 'Cuz...y'know. Bendis.
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Nov 4, 2015 22:33
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Rick posted:Bobby is catholic which probably complicates the whole thing.
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Nov 4, 2015 23:34
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She didn't out him. Both young Bobby and young Jean went to talk to old Bobby, but that's it. As of now old Bobby is still in the closet to everyone else. Although, at one point young Bobby straight up asks Jean what old Bobby is thinking, right there in front of him, and she just says it out loud like it's no big deal.
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Nov 5, 2015 00:06
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I think the vague general consensus has been that Iceman being gay is totally fine but the execution has been Bendis'd all up and down the street.Literally me, six months ago posted:The problem is Bendis, of course. I absolutely, categorically mistrust his ability to conclude this plot thread in a good way, because at this point he's the writer who, no matter how intricate and compelling his setups, still makes you go "So what the heck was the point of all that?" at the end of literally any story he writes. I mean, there should not be any possible way for a revelation of this sort to not be significant and consequential and point-y, and yet I still expect Bendis to find a way to make it so. Already the setup is ringing a ton of alarm bells. BrianWilly fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Nov 7, 2015 |
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Nov 7, 2015 00:08
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This is gonna be picking nits and it's gonna sound like I disagree when I don't really, but is it truly considered outing someone if the only person you actually tell is the person themselves? Again: I don't know, so I'm asking. My general impression of outing someone would be like posting a Facebook post about it or pulling some Margaret Cho poo poo onstage. I never once even considered what Jean did to be outing Bobby until people here said it was 'cuz, y'know, he's still in the closet. She's letting him/them tell other people himself/themselves.
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Nov 8, 2015 01:50
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It's just that I've never once heard the phrase outing be used to describe "forcing someone to come to terms with their sexuality" before now. It always meant, very specifically, "I found out you're gay/bi/trans/queer/etc, and now I'm going to tell everyone." Y'know; forcing someone "out" of the closet. An actual real life comparison would be like if Jean found Bobby's porn search history -- all dicks, no chicks -- and went to talk to him about it. I just don't equate that with outing someone.
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Nov 8, 2015 04:28
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The real question is did they crib this rule from Dragonball Z or was it the other way around?
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Nov 10, 2015 03:08
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We don't know what he did yet but you can bet that he was right. 
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Nov 11, 2015 01:01
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Hey, maybe it takes place on Battleworld.
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Nov 18, 2015 00:36
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I thought Extraordinary X-Men #2 was a vast improvement over #1. I got a kick out of the Limbo relocation 'cuz it hearkens back to the ridiculous schoolground antics during Wolverine and the X-Men.
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Nov 19, 2015 05:31
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I liked that young Jean getting together with young Beast was some kind of big important payoff at the end of Bendis' run and immediately afterwards Lemire was like "Nah I don't care." I really liked this. Not sarcasm.
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Nov 20, 2015 00:06
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Who doesn't want to attack the Inhumans? #ScottWasRight
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Dec 3, 2015 01:33
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But she wasn't really talking about herself, she was talking about "Wolverine." She was talking about the identity that Logan created and that she's adopted, like, just a couple weeks ago from our perspective. It makes sense that she's not only still settling into the name but also treating it as a fun, intimidating new persona to embody. Like when Sam Wilson became Captain America, he talked (and still talks) about it like a separate identity, "This is what Captain America would do, this is what Captain America is like." I thought Laura's line made perfect sense in that she's trying to explain to Warren the dumbass that she was in no danger at all, that being on fire was all part of the Wolverine shtick. I thought the issue was pretty great, really.
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Dec 17, 2015 12:39
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I actually liked Old Beast in that little snippet of Uncanny Inhumans I read. "I've hosed with the timeline so much that I'm now aware when other people are loving with it."
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Dec 22, 2015 07:01
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I don't know how anyone could read Morrison's Jean Grey and come away thinking that she has no personality? In his run she became the de facto leader of the X-Men. She threw herself completely into the role of a teacher and activist who was, let's be real, pretty much single-handedly holding the school together through that era. She was the public face of the new X-status-quo and symbolized the thriving, beneficial power of the mutant race; the fact that she died at the end of the run was, in hindsight, a pretty fitting metaphor for the way that mutants would subsequently get treated. It's no coincidence that "Hope," the salvation of the mutant race, was modeled after Jean (and was in all likelihood just Jean's reincarnation until someone -- probably Bendis -- dashed that idea), and that even today young Jean is being touted as the thing that will hold the current X-Men together. At the same time Morrison-Jean was constantly struggling with the fact that her marriage was breaking apart for no fixable reason, despite the ironic fact that the more distant she and Scott became, the better of a character she was. It was a very succinct Morrison way to say "Look, I know you're super sad that things are changing, but things are better if they change." It was the same with her Phoenix powers; she became bit by bit more confident and powerful as she stopped holding back and became the person, woman, and mutant that she could really be, all the while that everyone around her was muttering and fussing that change is scary and that she's scary when she doesn't suppress herself to make other people happy (which wasn't even Morrison's original thing; this was happening to Jean all through the 90s as well). And on the other hand this made her really prideful and stubborn (and kind of a sarcastic little poo poo) as well. She kinda just saw things the way she wanted to see it and everyone else was just wrong 'cuz they're not as awesome as her, which led to her being unaware of plenty of problems happening right under her nose, which arguably led to her own demise. Compared to most other characters back then -- or even now -- Jean came across with fucktons more depth and personality. BrianWilly fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Dec 23, 2015 |
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Dec 23, 2015 00:38
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I super miss Mike Wieringo.
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Dec 25, 2015 06:23
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Huh. Finally caught up to Extraordinary and it's...not that bad? I mean, I can totally see people getting bored with it and peacing out, but I'd been expecting a much bigger disaster from all the horror stories I'd been hearing. It's mostly just aimless, but if you really like the characters then it's not the worst thing to read. (All-New is much, much better though)
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Mar 17, 2016 01:42
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My eye twitches uncontrollably every time Ernst appears in books nowadays because apparently zero people understand that she was supposed to be Cassandra Nova, but otherwise the issue was fine. "It's globbering time" was pretty great.
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Apr 21, 2016 01:26
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hope and vaseline posted:In the Imperial arc, Jean tricks Cassandra Nova into the shi'ar Stuff's body (some kind of weird polymorph with recording/impersonation abilities) which ends up re-setting her cognitive functions to the state of a child. We last see her being psychically re-educated. In the next few issues Ernst shows up, and it's revealed in the final arc that she's basically the re-educated Nova in the guise of Xavier's sister, but now with his ideals. (Ernst is also conveniently an anagram for Stern, as in a stern headmistress) He also reintroduced the giant Genosha-destroying Sentinel in the Danger arc, under the premise that "No one wondered where it went?"...except that Morrison established exactly where that Sentinel went during that issue where Jean and Xavier found Polaris in Genosha's ruins. 
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Apr 21, 2016 21:22
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Honestly, I dunno if they're gonna want to go hog wild with the Shi'ar right in the next film. I think it might be more likely, if they're doing a Mr. Sinister plotline, for them to keep it a bit more Earth-based and somehow introduce Cable, especially if they wanna do a Cable & Deadpool film at some point.
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Jun 1, 2016 04:03
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