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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.
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Oct 10, 2019 21:49
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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
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Oct 10, 2019 22:15
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Wanda and Pietro weren't the only ones who got de-mutated. Squirrel Girl is another easy example. Toro, the original Human Torch's sidekick, used to be confirmed as a mutant right down to having it be confirmed by Reed Richards and the Mad Thinker, but then was revealed as Inhuman recently. My point WRT Franklin is that...it can be as "official" as possible, as outright confirmed in-canon multiple times over as long a period as you like through the most reliable sources that you can find in-universe...but all of that can be rendered obsolete the minute that it's no longer convenient for the character to be a mutant. Hickman recently called him a mutant in the books, but did he ever even use that word, even once, in all the long whiles that he writing the FF books? Obviously, I don't like that characters' continuity can get tossed around willy-nilly for the sake of licensing. But all I'm saying is, all it takes is a single copyright change and we're right back to the days of studiously ignoring Franklin's status, or outright retconning it no matter what's been in these books. Endless Mike posted:Cable/X-Men: Have Jean's powers, but not Cyclops's Polaris has Magneto's exact powers, just greener. It used to be that the only thing Nightcrawler inherited from Mystique was blue skin, and then they went and changed it so that he got teleportation from Azazel as well. Sam Guthrie's baby has some sorta invulnerability thing. The general tendency seems to be that first generation mutants can have any random combination of powers within their family -- Cyclops, Havok, and Vulcan have different powers, Piotr and Illyana completely different, all the Guthries have different powers -- but second generation mutants get pretty directly influenced by one or another or both of their parents' powers. Any exceptions would be deviations from the norm. Of course, again, it all just ultimately comes down to "whatever the heck a writer feels like at the moment."
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Oct 11, 2019 00:46
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This is why Xavier's dream was originally so important. It was not about "mutants are better than humans." It was not even about "mutants are super special precious things and thereby need to be protected." I have no idea where people are getting those notions from. Xavier's dream was nothing more and nothing less than the idea of peaceful coexistence. The idea that people should not fear what is different, but embrace it. The idea that there does not need to be some violent genocidal revolution every time a new species appears. Yes, the Cro-magnons may have killed the Neanderthals, who may have killed whoever came before them (actually, IRL we have absolutely no idea what happened between proto-humans and the idea that they were at war with each other is purely projective), but the point is that this does not need to happen again. We can move beyond that. This is why the X-Men, at their core, are and should be heroes, because they are ultimately fighting for very core heroic values of of acceptance and goodwill. I can understand the underlying driving force of this run is that mutants have been losing and losing and dying and losing and dying and dying and dying and losing and dying and losing and dying for so long now that they've had all the goodwill choked out of them. I genuinely like that Hickman is directly addressing how downtrodden the X-Men have become, because it's far past gotten to the point of being ridiculous so yeah might as well make it an integral part of the story. But I do not like this weird reframing of Xavier's dream, and the underlying premise of this dream always failing is really crude and cynical because Hickman is essentially saying people will never ever get along and that we'll just be hateful towards anyone different from us forever. And if he really believes that the core of the X-Men is that they think mutants are better than everyone and so deserve special treatment just for being mutants, then I'm not hesitant to say that Hickman doesn't understand what the core of the X-Men actually is no matter how many fancy ideas he comes up with here.
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Oct 11, 2019 21:59
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ImpAtom posted:I would actually argue that you don't understand the core idea of X-Men.  Generations are always changing and shifting in ways that the old guard don't foresee or like; that's always been true. And so incremental change does occur. But what you're talking about with Greta Thunberg is still the same sort of activism that progressives have always deployed. It has a particularly confrontational and condemnatory tone to it, but the anger of the young towards the old -- and vice versa -- is not a brand new thing that's just happening now. Thunberg hasn't issued any ultimatums. She hasn't offered any bargains and threats. It's enlivening to see someone like her act as the voice of a tired and angry community, yet whether any real change comes from it still relies on whether the assholes in charge give enough a poo poo about the noise that she's making. Same as with the Parkland activists before her, and Malala Yousafzai before them, and Columbine activists before her, and etc. I'm not knocking it, by the way, I love and admire what they do. But I don't understand what point you're trying to make by citing this sort of activism as a comparison to Krakoan extremism when it is still ultimately just people...not being nice perhaps, but still playing within the rules, coloring within the lines, and hoping that the people in power will change their mind through the sheer force of your persuasion. That's still the classic X-Men credo, not this radicalized version. Incidentally, you're confusing "wanting peace" with "being nice." The fact that Xavier wanted peace and harmony does not mean he was bending over backwards to be accommodating and polite to humankind. But he ultimately did believe in humankind's capacity for change and the fact that not every person was a bad seed just because a lot of them were. If that's not patently "heroic" enough for this cynical new world then well. Sucks. But that was once his dream regardless and no amount of fancy words will obfuscate that. And just a point of fact: this attitude of his also applied towards mutantkind as well, the hope that not all of them will be as hate-ridden and violent as Magneto forever. 'Cuz lest we forget, time used to be that mutants caused just as much problems for other mutants as humans did. But that doesn't quite fit in with this current mutant unity theme so hey we'll just breeze past it I guess. BrianWilly fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Oct 12, 2019 |
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Oct 12, 2019 01:29
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Strange Poon posted:He's said in an interview that the X-Men outfits will be from a wardrobe that consists of all their outfits (I think he may have hinted at new ones, too?) and not a static costume, which has been the case in the past. Honestly, I don't blame him for favoring the traditional one. I think all of Jean's costumes have sucked and the traditional is probably the only one looks the best, aside from her Phoenix costume of course. Jean just really sticks out like a sore thumb right now because no one else is wearing their teen year outfits so the whole "everyone is in classic costumes" excuse doesn't really work out for her and instead just seems to single her out for being particularly infantilized in this run. She literally went from being decked out in battle armor to wearing a cheerleader-esque miniskirt. Which, depending on who you talk to, is either some other stroke of Hickmanian genius that will pay off...at some point...in the future...or just a weird creepy annoying thing Hickman is really bad at doing. BrianWilly fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Oct 13, 2019 |
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Oct 13, 2019 03:00
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I wouldn't even mind if the X-Men really were just pulling random old costumes out of their closets every other week and so Jean would wear that one day, sure, and then next issue she's wearing the New X-Men leather thing, and then Cyclops just shows up wearing his time-displaced teenage Champions suit to a Great Captains meeting or something. That'd be hilarious. But that's not really what's been happening, and it doesn't look like it'll happen in the future either, so......
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Oct 13, 2019 18:45
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All lot of those Hickman answers are in fact interesting to do satisfy me (for now) but yeah this Jean one seems a bit half-baked. He seems disappointed that no one's figured out something super obvious yet also super genius but it's like...you're the one giving us the clues soooooo...that sounds more like a you problem. And even if someone's figured it out, they'd still have to ask for confirmation since nothing's been mentioned of it in the book. Alaois posted:I do actually appreciate that his answer to "what about souls and the afterlife and all that stuff, it's canon in the Marvel Universe" is basically "yeah well a lot of things are 'canon' in the Marvel Universe that gets rightfully ignored 99% of the time and this will be too" My next question though becomes, what happens if one of the Five dies?
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Oct 14, 2019 22:10
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Let's be fair first of all that Bendis is really bad at continuity, among other things, so his idea of what's true or not is just going to be "not" in just about every case. That said, at this point it's probably just best to go with Hickman's mindset: if a writer references it then it's true. If they don't then just don't worry about it. To be absolutely completely technical about it, the "correct" answer from the last time this was officially answered in any way that actually makes any sense, is that Jean, the Phoenix clone, Madelyne Pryor, etc, are all simply fragments of each other that get separated from time to time. They're all ultimately the same person and our "Jean" has had memories from all of them since the 90s, so for all intents and purposes the metanarrative has been treating them all as if they're Jean. (Unless, as mentioned above, it just doesn't.) And who knows what the current status of the current Krakoan Jean or her memories is. *~*WaIT aNd SEe*~* and all that edit: Squizzle posted:In an X-Men run where resurrections are narratively and likely thematically central, I rather expect a major setting element called “the Phoenix” to be involved. BrianWilly fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Oct 15, 2019 |
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Oct 15, 2019 01:32
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I think I liked a lot of this a lot more than a lot of HOXPOX. Not that Krakoa isn't still a weirdo cult nation, but at least we're having a bit of fun with it.
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Oct 16, 2019 22:58
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A small touch that I like about this issue, and about Hickman in general, is when he noted that they have empaths and telepaths at hand to deal with the kidnapped children's trauma, on top of the normal healers. Because it's like...yeah. Of course they do. Of course they have those resources. And yet...it didn't used to be that way? Despite being the most powerful people on the planet with more psychics per square foot than any other superteam, the idea of using these resources to help people with trauma just...flat out didn't occur to X-writers before this point, basically. Like every once in a blue moon Xavier will go "I will help you to deal with this mental wound, my friend" to someone or another, and yet the impression that the school gave off in general was this, like...understaffed, poorly-managed halfway house that was generally unprepared to deal with the issues that it had to deal with. All the kids at the school would just wander about being traumatized by their lives forever because no one could spare a single moment to provide them with any actual healing. And it didn't actually have to be that way? Like the X-Men didn't have to move to a mutant island to remember that they have superpowers. There was really no stopping any writers before Hickman from going "Hey these people can conceivably do this, so they really probably should be doing that," but it just about started and stopped at the point where Storm waters her plants with her powers and stuff. Even Morrison didn't really utilize this sort of thing to its actual potential and more often than not just focused on mutants with more finite, non-useful mutations. If nothing else, I appreciate Hickman building a mutant status quo that actually feels functional.
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Oct 18, 2019 05:34
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Marauders was great. I knew Duggan wouldn't disappoint me. Pyro could very likely become my favorite X-Man very soon which is bizarre. Sure, the team composition is currently "people who were within grabbing distance of each other when this plot happened" but hey that worked out great for X-Men: Red so why not here. And I know Iceman's living on an island and he's in fact had uniforms in the past that were literally just underwear, but does he even have a wardrobe at this point? Is he just walking around everywhere like...that?
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Oct 23, 2019 19:24
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I have to wonder though. In House of X they refused to bring a portal plant thingy on their suicide mission because humans might, like, take it and discover stuff about it. But then...apparently there are Krakaon portals just standing about friggin' everywhere, right in the middle of busy human cities, right in the middle of strongly anti-mutant access points. How's that supposed to work? Why wouldn't the humans just study those as well? Sandwolf posted:I also thought Iceman WAS ice, the scene of him covering himself in snow kinda threw me off
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Oct 23, 2019 21:23
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I'm a wee bit curious about where this Taipei thing is going because, from my sort-of-informed sort-of-experience, Taiwan is actually fairly progressive about civil rights issues (they had marriage equality before America did, for instance) which is part of the reason why parts of that country are so gung-ho about independence from China.
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Oct 24, 2019 11:46
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Weird. I was so sure that the country was particularly progressive about that issue in particular. Which one of you punched a wall and retconned history on me
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Oct 25, 2019 08:18
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I'd like to meet all these homos
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Oct 28, 2019 04:59
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Meh. Kind of a weird thing to be achin' and moanin' about. Who cares if there's a Maggott megafan? Who are you to deprive the world of the Maggott maxiseries that he deserves!? Maybe it's less bitchy in context.
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Oct 29, 2019 02:57
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