House of X (Return of Hickman)

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Today at 12:17 PM

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best news all day - LET'S FUCKIN GOOOOOOOO

 

 

 

 

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Marvel Comics Announces House of X/Powers of X by Jonathan Hickman

 

 

Writer Jonathan Hickman will launch two new X-Men titles starting in July, following the end of the current "Age of X-Man" story, as announced during the publisher's Next Big Thing panel at C2E2 2019.

The two titles are House of X and Powers of X, and will mark Hickman's first work for the publisher since the end of Secret Wars on 2016. Pepe Larraz will draw House of X while R.B. Silva will draw Powers of X. Marte Gracia will color both titles.

"Let me just say that we have radical, radical plans for all of you. I grew up primarily a DC Comics guy; the only book I read of Marvel growing up was the X-Men," said Hickman during the announcement. "All the books I've done at Marvel up to this point, those were fantastic jobs - but they were jobs. This is was the first book I've loved before I started doing."

"I probably haven't been more proud of anything I've worked on than this. I think all of you will be pretty jacked. We're doing some different radical stuff. Two books that'll you have to read both to stay tuned, but there's a good reason for it."

[Visitant]

This last week I finally stopped picking up the Age of Xman titles. Too much to care about when Uncanny by itself is so good. Looks like we're back to old man cable with this new title. 

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[Iambaytor]

I know he's your boy but I feel like X-men at this point is just noise, when there's earth shattering changes every six issues there's really nothing to anchor to anymore.

[Keth]

That tweet tho.

 

 

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22 hours ago, Iambaytor said:

I know he's your boy but I feel like X-men at this point is just noise, when there's earth shattering changes every six issues there's really nothing to anchor to anymore.

 

well the current run tied up this week, and again i think it was the most i've enjoyed it in years - but it's clear they've been playing fast & loose with the body count because some form of a reset button is coming.  

 

this last run had its issues but i really dug it, can't say ive had an x-men run i'd considered buying in trade, again, since like messiah war 

[Iambaytor]

Everything is a big deal now, I think the X-Mansion has blown up like three times in as many years.  Apocalypse and Sinister and Proteus and Phoenix and a cavalcade of big bads have been slotted in and out like crazy.  Aside from the solo books, only the kid X-men managed to capture what made the series good to begin with.  Everybody wants to right their own Dark Phoenix saga when they take on the X-men, not seeming to realize that that story hit as well as it did because it was the culmination of 20 years of much smaller scale stories.  Hickman's an event guy and that has its place but what X-men needs is somebody to pump the fucking brakes, just let them exist in the world for a year or two before putting them back in mortal peril and on the run again.

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so, House of X & Powers of X - Hickman's 2 series building towards whatever comes next - both had their first issues drop, and it's clear from the jump he's in it for the long haul here. 

 

House was an interesting approach to the asteroid M/genosha/island off san fran utopia idea via Krakoa, and ending on magneto was interesting enough to almost sidestep

the fact that they didn't actually show you the place proper yet

 

Powers is telling a larger story about a future way beyond days of future past, and the long con sinister played.  it's crazy seeing set pieces like nimrod factor in so much.

 

again, haven't been as exciting for a team X book since grant's run. 

[Iambaytor]

They did this exact thing in Ultimate X-Men like 10 years ago

[Keth]

^See, yeah, I've read both House and Powers, and all I can think of is that this all sounds familiar. When I'm not utterly confused about what's happening here (I thought, big X event, relaunch, must be easy to jump into right?), I'm figuring out what the big revolutionary thing they are doing for the X-men here.

 

Is Xavier evil? Is this House of M alt-reality? All a dream? If its all real and actually gonna stick, then yeah this is all pretty cool, but this is just feeling like... disposable plot I guess?

 

I dunno, I may be off base, or asking the wrong questions. I don't have the backlog of history in my brain of everything that has happened to the X-men, so what's confusing to me is making perfect sense to someone else.

 

 

Of course, the biggest question I've always had is why the fuck do people still hate the X-Men in the first place when you have a family of freaks running around, a literal Spider-Man, and the goddamn Hulk? Is blue fur just too hideous still? Or is mutie racism still a thing?

 

It's still pretty fun tho...

I need a cheat sheet for all of this.

Edited August 1, 2019 by Axels

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12 hours ago, Iambaytor said:

They did this exact thing in Ultimate X-Men like 10 years ago

 

they did not, but it's a moot point because literally no one cares about what went down in UXM (or most of the ultimate universe if we're being honest) 

 

i get that it's cool to knock this & want smaller stories - in the 90's, i loved when they'd do single issues of them playing baseball out front or the like, rather than being in space again - but the x-men kids were shit that bendis dropped on all the writers with no clear plan, and the book was already in the gutter as it was.  

 

what bendis, brubaker & co did manage to do in the last decade and a half was turn the avengers into what the x-men were in the 90's: the flagship team book, with writers/artists competing for their solo books as well.  x-men as a team has been about where spider-man was after the clone saga ended terribly forever now, and we can talk about how MCU not having the movie rights/FOX doing some interesting things but mostly butchering it factors in, but be it that or editorial not wanting bigger talent on those books, the point is that yeah, x-men is/has been event-laden forever now but no one's cared forever. 

 

the era of cleremont that you're talking about is late in his run - he literally was handed the book when it was functionally dead in 1975 and ran it damn near solo until the very early 90's when ijm lee & crew basically pushed him out.  it was a mess of dangling plotlines after that, as you'd expect, and while there wasn't nearly as much overall direction, people like mark waid came in with age of apocalypse & the like and did some amazing stuff...but again, the book has basically had a few highlights but mostly crap since morisson's incredible run.  

 

hickman does universe building: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. exists as a show because of Secret Warriors, and i cannot stress how much Secret Wars was the best event in well over a decade - but as you said, only because he was given avengers for years to build towards it. 

 

he is literally the writer marvel needed to revive this team.  and even in the few issues we're seeing week to week, that's already what we're getting: world-building, not events.  

 

axels - ed piskor's Grand Design is still ongoing, and it's the best x-men summary ive yet seen (plus i love dude's work) 

[Iambaytor]

They absolutely did, though.  Like almost verbatim, the miracle medicines and Mutant Utopia, I'm pretty certain that whole speech Magneto gave was paraphrasing the one Kitty Pryde gave.  World Building is great but it's pointless without character, I read his Avengers run and while it was great having all the action figures in the bathtub at once while you dream up a high sci-fi overstory I can't think of a lot of character beats that resonate with me from that period.  There's nothing in Age of X #1 that feels like I haven't seen it before, in fact it all seems super done at this point.  It's even kind of a ripoff on the previous X-men story arc. And you can bet all this shit's gonna be scrubbed from continuity in 5 years max.  Cyclops just undertook a powerful personal journey, coming to terms with the villain he had become in recent years, now he's back to mad-dogging the Fantastic Four.  People love the X-men because they're relatable human characters, not otherwordly god-beings, that's the Inhumans' bag.  I don't think this will be bad but it's going to be another cacophany in the noise of epic X-men stories of the 21st century, regardless of how big-thinking and well written it is.  You have to earn big stories and X-men hasn't earned one since the 00s.

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i don't know what age of X is about here anymore than i remember UXM, same with cyk as the next magneto which ill agree was a really interesting concept/evolution of the character but they literally ran him off a cliff & into a fart cloud death, so I'm mote than okay with moving past that too 

 

and if you really didn't enjoy Hickmans avengers run, we're at an impasse here man. it was one of the best in years and, again, culminated into an event that not only tied in/justified the original 80s event of the same name (looking back, clearly it just existed to sell action figures, but still), while giving some of the best what if character moments since AOA...seriously, it was like a house of M that actually delivered. 

 

if anyone has my faith that they'll a) carry the weight of that continuity while finally  doing something new and b) be left alone long enough by editorial to do it, it's him.  dude built back fury/spy marvel in a way no one had managed since steranko, pushed the FF into the future foundation (still a fan favorite), gave S.H.I.E.L.D. its deeper mythology & ended the 616 in the best way possible. I'm not looking at that sideways 1 issue in because millar did something vaguely similar in the era before smartphones, probably moments before reminding everyone that he can't see s story through to save his life. 

[Iambaytor]

I enjoyed Hickman's run fine especially on the heels of revisiting the super mediocre-to-bad Bendis run, but it wasn't what I would call a character book, which it didn't have to be because most of the characters in it had their own solo books so their characters were established on the sidelines.  X-men doesn't have that, we'll have a few X-solo books that I will be honestly surprised if they even acknowledge any of this because X-men book exists in its own pocket universe so that the mansion can explode 8 times a year.  I'm not arguing the man's bona fides, I'm just saying that the last thing the X-men need at this point is something big and mythical, big and mythical is all they've been since Wolverine died and it's meaningless at this point.  Say what you will about the X-kids but Jean, Scott, Bobby, and Hank are all better characters for those stories.

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i mean yeah, the event rollercoaster has been nonstop (and maybe i'm down on wolvy these days, but i didn't think the phoenix angle was so cool?) 

 

you're spot-on about avenger solo books vs x-men, i mean that was true even in the cleremont days...the wizard polls in the 90s to keep getting gambit a regular series were so consistent, haha.  

 

i gotta ask though: i balied on bendis' shit early.  are you saying the younger x-men had the potential for the stories you'd wanna see, or were there solid arcs with them i missed?  cause even when they went to the original x-factor in the day, i was never hung up on the original 5 the way others were, i thought the new x-men rainbow team was so much more fun/interesting 

 

also your point on character stuff....did you feel that way throughout hickman's avengers run, or did you get to see it through? cause early on with ex nihilo (sp?) and all was neat but didn't really stand out, but by the incursions, you had

 

a really interesting illuminati that built on what bendis had tried 
a likewise kinda cool cabal of a lot of new villains and a namor who later got shot down so hard by DOOM his ancestors felt it
t'challa is king of the dead and at namor's neck now (the payoff was satisfying)
thor going out into the sunset fighting with hyperion 
dr strange overstepping his limits/soul with dark lovecraftian shit no one knew he had
the brightest minds of the 616 out of ideas/saves
ALL HAIL DOOM

by its end,  shit really stood out for me, and i know you'll say we have these events on the regular, but for an actually-universe-ending one, i really dug the writing of everyone coming to terms with time & options running out, all while some of them are doing horrendously awful shit to buy time 

 

like, i love jason aaron & am thoroughly enjoying his turn on that book (now that his magnum thor opus just tied up), but i'm not expecting any of that level stuff from it 

[Iambaytor]

I mean, I can't think of a single instance post-Dark Phoenix that Phoenix being involved in a story hasn't sucked but they didn't commit to it with Wolverine at all, the hot claws haven't even come up in quite a while. It was one of the many big ideas that floated through the X-men comics and amounted to nothing, adding to the melange of unimportant important things.

 

I can't comment on the Kid X-men pre-Secret Wars but theirs was the only one post-Secret Wars that actually had a through-line and good character stuff. Not just with the kid X-men, either, because it mined some good character beats out of X-23 and Kid Apocalypse as well, Beast's turn to the occult as an extension of his scientific pursuits and of course all the stuff with Iceman coming out of the closest which was introduced clumsily and stupidly but made for one of the better X-men solo books.  Then of course it made me care about Jean and Scott who I've always found to be two of the most boring characters in the X-men canon, it's a shame they seem to be squandering that now that the adult versions of the characters are back in the forefront.  I mean Kid-Jean and Old Man Logan's character dynamic was one of the better things in this last run of X-men books and I can't overstate how good that Cyclops solo about him and Corsair is, if you haven't read it you really really need to.  They even brought in Jimmy Hudson from the Ultimate Universe (AKA the only good non-Miles Morales-related character the Ultimate Universe had left) and Bloodstorm from the Mutant X book.  They later killed them off unceremoniously as part of the bullshit tying up of that story to get back to the status quo, which also involved killing Cable and giving us the lame Kid Cable but the journey to the shitty ending was at least worthwhile.  But yeah, I also never cared about the OG X-men, I've pretty soundly been bored by all of them for as long as I've been reading the comics but with the exception of Angel it really breathed some new life into the characters and made me enjoy them.  Unfortunately only Iceman's character development seems to have stuck.

 

I haven't read all of the stuff between Infinity and Secret Wars but I read most of it.  There was a lot of interesting stuff in there but it was all pretty plot-driven rather than character-driven.  The incursions was a really neat moral idea and seeing people bounce off all that was great but it was a lot of big personalities: Namor, Doom, even T'challa is a bit larger-than-life.  Captain America brought some humanity to it but he got side-lined pretty early on and Spider-man would've been great at towing this line but unfortunately it was Otto rather than Peter who was under the mask for most of the run.  It's an excellent story and the time and care put into it was great, but it was a story involving personalities dealing with big events, not so much people grappling with internal change.  It was there, but it wasn't the focus by a long shot.  Secret Wars did rule, though.

 

And actually I think Jason Aaron is a good counterpoint to Hickman.  His run on the Avengers has been a lot more scattershot and if Marvel doesn't let him see this through it'll be a shitshow, but he's the master of the long game.  His Thor run started pretty weak but he has really developed his characters and saw them through to the end, even his shorter Dr. Strange run that started out by ripping off his first Thor story arc really developed and grew the character in really interesting ways and he's doing that within the confines of the Avengers with She-Hulk and Ghost Rider and even Gorilla Man.  He's telling big stories but giving them small human stakes and that's the kind of shit the X-men needs.  Now, he is awful at events that he didn't have time to build up to because Original Sin is fucking terrible but with say, War of the Realms which he's been working up to for years he really nailed it.

 

Hickman may pull this out, my problem isn't that he's a bad writer I just don't think his strengths are going to work the complement what's been going wrong with the X-men books for so long.  I don't even need baseball issues, just give me some human stakes because the dated bigotry metaphor was always fatigued in the greater Marvel universe (people are willing to commit wholesale genocide on one group of superhumans but seem at very begrudgingly tolerant with all the other?) and we no longer live in a climate where you can just straight up call out racism, homophobia, transphobia, or whatever.  "We've started a utopian society and using our powers to hold the world at bay from combating us" is a great story but there's nowhere to build from there; you either hold the status quo, which is boring and people will stop caring (see: Inhumans) or you bring it all down around their ears and they have to start over which is what literally everyone has been doing for over a decade now.  Save Proteus and Legion and Phoenix and Sentinals and Apocalpyse and Mr. Sinister for special occasions, lets let these characters be relatable again so that when Storm or Cyclops or Wolverine do some insanely big and momentous thing that it actually has some impact.  Remember when Wolverine's biggest moment was falling through a bunch of floors of a building and not dying?

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yeah, maybe dark phoenix is like what weapon x is to  - a story that casts its shadow too far over any attempts to (constantly) revisit it 

 

On 8/3/2019 at 2:27 PM, Iambaytor said:

I can't comment on the Kid X-men pre-Secret Wars but theirs was the only one post-Secret Wars that actually had a through-line and good character stuff. Not just with the kid X-men, either, because it mined some good character beats out of X-23 and Kid Apocalypse as well, Beast's turn to the occult as an extension of his scientific pursuits and of course all the stuff with Iceman coming out of the closest which was introduced clumsily and stupidly but made for one of the better X-men solo books.  Then of course it made me care about Jean and Scott who I've always found to be two of the most boring characters in the X-men canon, it's a shame they seem to be squandering that now that the adult versions of the characters are back in the forefront.  I mean Kid-Jean and Old Man Logan's character dynamic was one of the better things in this last run of X-men books and I can't overstate how good that Cyclops solo about him and Corsair is, if you haven't read it you really really need to.  They even brought in Jimmy Hudson from the Ultimate Universe (AKA the only good non-Miles Morales-related character the Ultimate Universe had left) and Bloodstorm from the Mutant X book.  They later killed them off unceremoniously as part of the bullshit tying up of that story to get back to the status quo, which also involved killing Cable and giving us the lame Kid Cable but the journey to the shitty ending was at least worthwhile.  But yeah, I also never cared about the OG X-men, I've pretty soundly been bored by all of them for as long as I've been reading the comics but with the exception of Angel it really breathed some new life into the characters and made me enjoy them.  Unfortunately only Iceman's character development seems to have stuck.

 

no, i gotta go grab that cyk solo.  and i could swear i read hickman was giving us old cable back, since kid cable seemed like yet another idea that never had anything interesting done with.  i dug kid apoaclypse from wolvy's time as headmaster & then deadpool talking to him in x-force, so that might be worth checking out too.  

also, id read that x-men season 1 (i wanna say by hopeless?) was a standout effort but ive not gotten around to it yet either.  but yeah, as someone who again was never into iceman, im curious what changes they made to his character now 

 

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And actually I think Jason Aaron is a good counterpoint to Hickman.  His run on the Avengers has been a lot more scattershot and if Marvel doesn't let him see this through it'll be a shitshow, but he's the master of the long game.  His Thor run started pretty weak but he has really developed his characters and saw them through to the end, even his shorter Dr. Strange run that started out by ripping off his first Thor story arc really developed and grew the character in really interesting ways and he's doing that within the confines of the Avengers with She-Hulk and Ghost Rider and even Gorilla Man.  He's telling big stories but giving them small human stakes and that's the kind of shit the X-men needs.  Now, he is awful at events that he didn't have time to build up to because Original Sin is fucking terrible but with say, War of the Realms which he's been working up to for years he really nailed it.

 

 

yeah after this, i can't see them pulling aaron too soon - he did this with wolverine & others before here & there, but the scale here is tremendous.  i love that he's taking leftovers from other arcs (savage she-hulk, unsure rider reyes, unworthy hulk etc) and having to make them mesh, all while playing with some of the corners not really explored post secret wars: namor manage the ruins of atlantis, vampire wars, all of it.  i was hoping for man-thing but at least we got a part of him.  

 

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Hickman may pull this out, my problem isn't that he's a bad writer I just don't think his strengths are going to work the complement what's been going wrong with the X-men books for so long.  I don't even need baseball issues, just give me some human stakes because the dated bigotry metaphor was always fatigued in the greater Marvel universe (people are willing to commit wholesale genocide on one group of superhumans but seem at very begrudgingly tolerant with all the other?) and we no longer live in a climate where you can just straight up call out racism, homophobia, transphobia, or whatever.  "We've started a utopian society and using our powers to hold the world at bay from combating us" is a great story but there's nowhere to build from there; you either hold the status quo, which is boring and people will stop caring (see: Inhumans) or you bring it all down around their ears and they have to start over which is what literally everyone has been doing for over a decade now.  Save Proteus and Legion and Phoenix and Sentinals and Apocalpyse and Mr. Sinister for special occasions, lets let these characters be relatable again so that when Storm or Cyclops or Wolverine do some insanely big and momentous thing that it actually has some impact.  Remember when Wolverine's biggest moment was falling through a bunch of floors of a building and not dying?

 

 

i mean, i think having them with their utopia for an extended amount of time & even building on it before its inevitable ruin (by hickman's own timeline so far, it goes for a bit) is something different to that formula, given that the race towards either days of future past or age of apocalypse has been such breakneck speed the last so many years, it sometimes feels like humans ducking the cylons in the opening of battlestar galatica or something.  the 198 was probably the closest we've seen to extermination, and im still not over how dumb/hamfisted it was to pair them off against the inhumans for years there.  

 

part of me thinks "feared & hated by a world they seek to protect" is cliche but such a part of their tao, fussing about it feels like "why does spidey go from wise-cracking to dark?", "why does daredevil suffer so much" etc type questions...like, it's kinda written on the tin.  the explanation i'd always assumed was that the world largely knows how supes get their powers, but mutants are among us in a way that likely resonated during cold war era fears when most of their best stories were written.  

 

which speaks to your last point there: yeah, that and his subsequent floor-by-floor cleaning up must've been so goddamn cool when it first went down, but the cat's so far out of the bag now that you'll only get that moment again from him in a UXM type relaunch.  at this point, i'd prolly meet you in the middle & say newer x-men (the ones hickman just introduced so far seem like the future hybrid ones) should get solo issues the way cleremont did to introduce gambit, psylocke etc in the day and give them a chance to breathe.  

 

do you really think the analogy can't work now though?  grant clearly pushed it from racism to homophobia in the early aughts, and the last writer had issues with misogyny & really did a piss poor job of trying to make it about transphobia with rhane (...) but with bigotry in general back in vogue i couldn't help but think a good writer could still make it fit. 

 

on a side note: i still need to read mutant x and exiles, and ive kinda wanted to go back & read a quieter team book like generation x more too sometime 

[Iambaytor]

Definitely get on that Cyclops book, read the two volumes of the Iceman solo as well, they're not as good as the Cyclops book and deal with the adult version of the character rather than the kid version but it's an interesting exploration of him trying to find his place in the world dealing with being a mutant and a recently outed gay man in the modern era, the issues with his parents and Lorna are great. But it also features Dakken and I fucking hate that obnoxious asshole so your mileage may vary.  It's at very least nice to see a solo book about an openly queer character that's about his sexuality but also about other things.  I've not read the season one book but I've been a fervent supporter of Dennis Hopeless since Avengers Arena, so I'd give it a shot.

 

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i mean, i think having them with their utopia for an extended amount of time & even building on it before its inevitable ruin (by hickman's own timeline so far, it goes for a bit) is something different to that formula, given that the race towards either days of future past or age of apocalypse has been such breakneck speed the last so many years, it sometimes feels like humans ducking the cylons in the opening of battlestar galatica or something.  the 198 was probably the closest we've seen to extermination, and im still not over how dumb/hamfisted it was to pair them off against the inhumans for years there.

  

part of me thinks "feared & hated by a world they seek to protect" is cliche but such a part of their tao, fussing about it feels like "why does spidey go from wise-cracking to dark?", "why does daredevil suffer so much" etc type questions...like, it's kinda written on the tin.  the explanation i'd always assumed was that the world largely knows how supes get their powers, but mutants are among us in a way that likely resonated during cold war era fears when most of their best stories were written.  

 

If Hickman makes this work then it's going to be because he turns this into a sort of political fantasy drama on a cosmic scale, lets racist flatscans serve as the backing track and deals with the interpersonal conflicts of the mutants now that they're all in a position of power.  It's still more of an Inhumans story and still biting a lot from those last few Ultimate X-men arcs (which I hasten to add were pretty interesting if not great, great character beats but the Ultimate Universe was running on fumes at that point and it was showing) but it creates the potential for making these people interesting again.  Along with rote repetition of the greatest hits villains, unending destruction of the mansion, and characters going on a killing spree of leftover characters from another writer's run for cheep feels, I hate how often X-men stories are "Here's a vision of what will/might come to pass", the writer is coming up with an idea and working backward to it.  We have enough dystopian future timelines in the X-men universe, the moment that Cable met Bishop we should've put a cap on that and said "no more dystopias, we have enough." We've sign the X-men fight off extermination, I get that the point is that you can't beat bigotry because it's never-ending but this story has been stuck in that rut since the 80s.  Age of X-Man was a fucking dial tone but the concept of the X-men and co. having to turn their conflict inward rather than busy themselves trying to oppress/protect humanity was far more interesting than Cyclops' Island of mistfit X-men book.

 

I'm not saying remove it from the story entirely, but it doesn't have to be THE focus.  Daredevil is more than Catholic guilt, Spider-man is more than a guy who uses humor to deflect from his existential woes.  I mean, look at some of the best best solo books we've seen in recent years: Hawkeye, Vision, Hulk, Scarlet Witch, Thor, Doctor Strange, they took what was best known about the character and set it to the side to explore who else they were in addition to this one-note thing that's already been deeply explored in 30+ years of comics.  And I mean, there's plenty of heroes in the Marvel universe who don't have their origin stories widely known who get a pass from the mutant-hating populace, even though the mistreatement of the Inhumans was a plot point in that big story arc a year or so ago but they were far and away treated better than mutants have historically been despite the fact that they're effectively the exact same thing.  My biggest pet-peeve with this logical divide is how much of a dick Captain America is when he pops up in these books despite how virtuous he is in everything else, Cap's not a tool of oppression that's literally his entire point.

 

As much as it's tempting to go with protestors and torches and bricks being thrown through windows (especially in the current climate), we've seen that done to death.  How does "post-racial" America deal with mutants, how do the X-men handle a world where the vast majority of people are outwardly supportive of mutants while holding up a much more insidious system that oppresses them in more subtle ways.  But honestly, do we need to do that anymore?  The X-men were a salient commentary on racism and bigotry in an era where you couldn't talk about those things in a publishing medium ostensibly meant for children.  We can talk about race, we can talk about queer and trans people now.  It's like that infamous panel of Kitty Pryde being asked if she's a Mutie (a fictional slur for a fictional race of human) and she flippantly asking him, a black man, if he's an n-word.  I see what they're getting at but it kind of feels like it's talking down to oppressed people for a company's main take on bigotry be in the form of a story about genetic abnormalities that only manifest as bizarre powers and physical deformities. Tell stories about oppressed peoples, not fantasy analogues, we've developed enough as a species to where this kind of ham-fisted symbolism isn't necessary anymore.  Don't get rid of it, just dial it back a bunch, bigots are rarely so kind as to be cartoonishly evil generals building armies of giant laser-shooting robots and even when they are there's more to be explored in the systems that allowed those cartoonish overlords to acquire the power they have rather than just focus on the cliche.  A good writer can make the old hatred & feared bit work, but a really good writer would realize it's a crutch and tell a better and more nuanced story instead.

 

Ultimately the key to success of these books will be spending time with these characters in the midst of these big plot developments (it's no coincidence that Rogue and Gambit are among the most interesting characters at the moment because they've been off having their own adventures and pointedly staying out of X-man and Cyclops' bullshit.)

 

And yes, read Mutant X.  It's a fucking crime there's not an omnibus of that book out there somewhere.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[The NZA]

okay see, now we're getting into this shit

 

adding iceman to the pile on your say-so, i guess i assumed it was bad cause the outing by baby jean was awful.  also yeah, dakken should stay dead forever for being a compilation of wasted ideas.  

 

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And I mean, there's plenty of heroes in the Marvel universe who don't have their origin stories widely known who get a pass from the mutant-hating populace, even though the mistreatement of the Inhumans was a plot point in that big story arc a year or so ago but they were far and away treated better than mutants have historically been despite the fact that they're effectively the exact same thing.  My biggest pet-peeve with this logical divide is how much of a dick Captain America is when he pops up in these books despite how virtuous he is in everything else, Cap's not a tool of oppression that's literally his entire point.

 

yeah, but then we're getting into the weird believability of stuff like civil war (that all masked vigilantes sans spidey were somewhat beloved before stamford, a concept i only enjoy when its like she-hulk making light of it in a comedy setting).  i guess as a kid i enjoyed the duality of magneto's kids being mutants who were beloved on the avengers roster, because no one knew.

 

in that regard it was interesting because yeah, the integrationist model was dated but the parallels were still there: when say, an avenger went rogue, it was a negative reflection on them/their team, not metahumans as a whole.  classic x-men were playing respectability politics constantly, and whenever magneto made early moves to create said utopia, all xavier's team could think of was how poorly that was gonna reflect on them.

for real - i know it's dated but i loved Fatal Attractions.  if i remember it right, mags was reacting to human attacks on his satellite, and even then what he did was knock out NY's power grid - then here comes the x-men, with his own kid attacking him and wolverine trying to murder him.  looking back, the way that xavier's awful mind-wipe turned against him feels a little like justice.  

 

but yeah, cap as a dick authoritarian towards them feels like something stressed in the last 10 years with the AvX nonsense, followed by old man cap (during sam's time with the shield) where i thought he was just shitty in every book/decision he made.  again, the last run before hickman's current one at least showed him trying to understand & work with cyk...for years, i thought that was his role, the one avenger who'd check in on them & give a shit about their plight.  you're right that i hate it when that's forgotten. 

 

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As much as it's tempting to go with protestors and torches and bricks being thrown through windows (especially in the current climate), we've seen that done to death.  How does "post-racial" America deal with mutants, how do the X-men handle a world where the vast majority of people are outwardly supportive of mutants while holding up a much more insidious system that oppresses them in more subtle ways.  But honestly, do we need to do that anymore?  The X-men were a salient commentary on racism and bigotry in an era where you couldn't talk about those things in a publishing medium ostensibly meant for children.  We can talk about race, we can talk about queer and trans people now.  It's like that infamous panel of Kitty Pryde being asked if she's a Mutie (a fictional slur for a fictional race of human) and she flippantly asking him, a black man, if he's an n-word.  I see what they're getting at but it kind of feels like it's talking down to oppressed people for a company's main take on bigotry be in the form of a story about genetic abnormalities that only manifest as bizarre powers and physical deformities. Tell stories about oppressed peoples, not fantasy analogues, we've developed enough as a species to where this kind of ham-fisted symbolism isn't necessary anymore.  Don't get rid of it, just dial it back a bunch, bigots are rarely so kind as to be cartoonishly evil generals building armies of giant laser-shooting robots and even when they are there's more to be explored in the systems that allowed those cartoonish overlords to acquire the power they have rather than just focus on the cliche.  A good writer can make the old hatred & feared bit work, but a really good writer would realize it's a crutch and tell a better and more nuanced story instead.

fuck, i always forget about that dumb panel 

 

yeah, it'd take a writer with a great deal of nuance to really cover the colorblind era of culture/legislature we've had for years now, where the oppression is more subtle/gaslit and only mags and some folks call it what it is.  

you know what's really being missed out here?  if we're clearly going towards a man/machine dominated future (humankind trades its soul to nimrod & co just to not be passed up by homo superior), there's a strong & really relevant analog here to #whitegenocide type bullshit, and the nihilism of white supremacy (refusing proper healthcare/benefits, burning the earth etc to make sure minorities don't get it).  the pieces are all there now, so i'd not be surprised to see a shift in that direction, honestly.  

 

but yeah, i do dig the quieter stories too, it's just ive read too many forgettable minis/one-shots over the years of solo x-stories to bother unless someone recommends a particular one. 

[The NZA]

rereading god loves, man kills and damn, i may just go back and read most of cleremont's run, there's such greatness here 

 

also, House of X # 2 dropped today, and hooooooo boy

 

 

 

so they weren't gassing that "most important moment"  bit...her character just got a great deal more interesting here.  seeing how the timelines played out is cool, id dig seeing more of that drawn out though.  

 

 

powers of x (ten) as like year zero, year ten, year one hundred etc makes things feel more cohesive too

really waiting to see how apocalypse ties in here, beyond his timeline with moira 
 

also god i really love how the post astonishing x-men/messiah war era of phoenix 5, AvX, Schism etc is just called the lost decade 

 

edit found the timeline!

 

i had to read this one before people on my twitter/etc spoiled it, shit is like my game of thrones right now