Face Front, True Believers! A Marvel Comics Thread

[gogglebob]

His power, being able to understand and translate languages, is far from being flashy, but good writers were able to get a lot of interesting mileage out of it. I haven't read anything of the stuff after his resurrection, but apparently, he's a superb fighter now? Sigh.

Legitimately, you have to understand that comics are a visual, action-based medium, and no "intellectual" powers are ever going to avoid drifting into something that would be more appropriate for multiple fight scenes. I mean, what would you expect? It's not like the X-Men writers could instantly produce a memorable, evergreen character out of, like, a dude that just sits in a wheelchair and thinks all the time.

 

[Jeanie]

Okay but they also love killing Professor Xavier. Like they first did that back when there only five X-Men. Also he doesn't stay in the chair long.

 

[estragon]

2, in fact.

I think the next issue will clear some things up. Also, just a heads up but I think issues like #4-12 or so are the weakest of the 100 issue run. The Liefeld/Simonson issues near the end are probably objectively worse, but they had such profound anti-chemistry as a creative team that they go all the way around to being an oddly enjoyable mess.

The biggest bummer from New Mutants for me was that they killed off Cypher for a loooong time. His power, being able to understand and translate languages, is far from being flashy, but good writers were able to get a lot of interesting mileage out of it. I haven't read anything of the stuff after his resurrection, but apparently, he's a superb fighter now? Sigh.

I think this is mostly fixed. He's currently the only guy who can communicate with the sentient island everyone lives on, and his most recent (to me anyway) story was about how he's a terrible fighter. So, at the moment, he is maybe more central than he's been in decades and actually doing language stuff instead of Reading Body Language or whatever, which seems to have basically been swept under the rug (correctly, in my opinion).

(I guess technically his most recent to me story was an abrupt marriage to an Original Crossover Event Character in an event that I thought was mostly terrible, but maybe they'll do something interesting with it later. Also, back to the powers issue, the marriage is also a language related story for him.)

Okay but they also love killing Professor Xavier. Like they first did that back when there only five X-Men. Also he doesn't stay in the chair long.

I will never miss a chance to talk about how soon he started to walk. He had built a walking machine by issue #23!

For some reason he used it to dress up as a cranky old man and yell at The Locust:

My favorite part of the original Xavier Walks Saga though was that the machine was imperfect, and so he also built Safety Tentacles to catch him if he fell down the stairs:

 

[Neo Skimbleshanks]

He is dressing like Gandalf for the same reason that Sauron was named Sauron... LotR was hot in the 60s, I guess.

 

[Octopus Prime]

"Some sort pf hermit... in the garb of a past cenury. Begone! The Locust needs no friends!" is an intensely funny line to me

 

[Octopus Prime]

"The time will come when I may ask them to risk, or even sacrifice their lives, and when that day comes, it will only happen if that order comes from a place of respect"

Hey... Hey Chuck?

Hey Chuck?

That's a pretty friggin' messed up thought to have about teenagers, Chuck.

That's a really messed up thing to think about Teenagers who you are the primary caregiver for, Chuck.

CHUCK, GO TO JAIL NOW, PLEASE!

 

[Octopus Prime]

YOU HAVE KNOWN THESE KIDS FOR, LIKE, THREE MONTHS. YOU'VE TRIED TO MURDER ALL OF THEM FOR 2 OF THOSE MONTHS BECAUSE YOU WERE A BUG-LIZARD AT THE TIME.

 

[LBD_Nytetrayn]

Hey... Hey Chuck?

Hey Chuck?

That's a pretty friggin' messed up thought to have about teenagers, Chuck.

That's a really messed up thing to think about Teenagers who you are the primary caregiver for, Chuck.

CHUCK, GO TO JAIL NOW, PLEASE!

Oh, I dare say that's par for ol' Chuck...

 

[Octopus Prime]

It’s telling that there’s, like, three distinct villains who were created because Chuck just can’t stop thinking about how much he’s going to need to kill some teenagers

 

[Jeanie]

 

[Octopus Prime]

Declarative statement, yet entirely too mild

 

[Neo Skimbleshanks]

Have a strongly held feeling that Professor X really isn't that bad. He is just sometimes written to have done bad things, like all comic book characters. Characters I don't like? Are willfully evil.

Sometimes I wonder how some of his mind control antics read in the 60s but I'll never know because I'm young. I'm 23, even.

 

[Positronic Brain]

I honestly wonder how much of that early Xavier creepiness was just Stan Lee being Stan Lee. Which doesn't excuse the creepy, but it'd explain so much (I still cringe at early FF and Invisible "I know my place" Girl)

 

[Felicia]

Regarding the previous discussion on Cypher, I found this idea funny (from the comments to this excellent blog post):

The more I think about it, the more I realize that one of the most entertaining stories you could do with Doug Ramsey is that his power to comprehend all communication makes him understand the almost intolerable privilege he enjoys as an upper middle-class white boy attending a private academy for "special" children, and it damn near crushes him with guilt.

 

[estragon]

Apparently Hickman's X-Men title is ending and there's going to be a new X-Men #1 written by Duggan? I guess Hickman is still the head of the X-line and will have a new of some sort title later, but I kind of do have to wonder if something has gone wrong internally or if they've getting some mandate to boost sales with gimmicks. I remember how he was very precious with that title (they wanted to do legacy numbering, and they did at first, but then he made them take it back and un-legacy number it after the fact to emphasize this was his special baby distinct from all that came before), so I'm somewhat skeptical it was all in his master plan to just stop writing it so soon.

Also I'm in the minority who doesn't care for Duggan's Maurauders at all, but judging by fan reaction online it's what a lot of people do want out of an X-Team book these days. (I do/did like his Extreme Teen Cable book, though, weirdly, even though I don't care about any version of Cable. This attachment might even be my issue... I like a lot of the cast of Maurauders but don't like how he writes basically any of them.)

 

[Adrenaline]

My understanding is that the Gala event will involve the naming of the new official "X-Men" team, which means a new X-Men book for them and another title for Hickman's umbrella X-Universe stories. I wouldn't assume the title change is the result of plans changing.

 

[Octopus Prime]

I'm generally not a big fan of Comic-Star Lord;

But I have to give props to him here

 

[estragon]

I feel like Al Ewing's S.W.O.R.D. is the current spin-off X-title that feels the most like it's taking place in the world set up by HoXPoX, not just in terms of setting but like it's taking the thematics seriously. A lot of titles are technically set on Krakoa and even care a lot about the rules, but they feel like they're just standard X-books with Krakoan set dressing and also the characters die more often because it doesn't matter so why not. But the emphasis in S.W.O.R.D. on creating mutant circuits to do the impossible sets it up to be an extremely natural extension to the resurrection protocols that are so core to the concept of the Krakoan status quo.

Also, I love that Ewing brought back Peepers from Jack Kirby's absolutely bananas Captain America Annual #4, a totally bizarre one-off that felt like a repurposed Fourth World script in all the best ways.

It's too bad the the second issue ended up being a tie-in to a crossover I am unlikely to ever read or care about, but like the opening issues of his Mighty Avengers run Ewing really made the best of it. I never felt like I was missing out by not reading the crossover, and he continued doing great character building instead of letting everything get derailed.

 

[Adrenaline]

I'm looking forward to reading King in Black when I get to it. Besides Al Ewing, Donny Cates is one of my favorite current Marvel writers and his Venom run and the related events are a lot of fun. It can come off as silly and grimdark I guess but he's really putting his stamp on the universe with this dark cosmic horror corner of it that seeps into everything he's written.

 

[Octopus Prime]

I did start reading King in Black myself this past week, and am enjoying it more than I thought I would have.

Getting past how inherently ridiculous Knull looks is a hurdle, I admit

 

[estragon]

I hear that Cates is good and I believe it, but I just don't care about Venom or symbiote lore unless Tom Hardy is in a lobster tank.

(Also my way too comprehensive X-Men readthrough is in late '96/early '97 now and it's... a lot of books. That's all the superheroes I have room for until I reach the point when they start cancelling books. The ongoings were already a lot, but at this point I think they greenlit literally any mini-series someone pitched them.)

 

[Neo Skimbleshanks]

Thrilled you're approaching Mutant X in but a year and perhaps mere hundreds of single issues.

 

[Olli]

I did start reading King in Black myself this past week, and am enjoying it more than I thought I would have.

Getting past how inherently ridiculous Knull looks is a hurdle, I admit

Knull also sounds ridiculous if you happen to know Swedish

 

[Octopus Prime]

I don't doubt it, but am eager to learn more about this!

 

[Olli]

Lo and behold: https://www.thelocal.se/20200702/swedish-word-of-the-day-knull/

 

[Octopus Prime]

On the subject of King in Black (CW: big ol' chopped-off head)

The Thunderbolts tie-in is... pretty good!

 

[estragon]

Thrilled you're approaching Mutant X in but a year and perhaps mere hundreds of single issues.

Honestly I am beginning to feel this way too because I I think that post-Onslaught Howard Mackie's X-Factor is maybe the strongest title in the entire line. He had to resolve a lot of dangling plot threads from the Peter David era and the treading water era before it had a stable creative team again, but he did that while setting up a lot of longterm plots that are paying off now, in a way that frankly is not happening pretty much anywhere else in the line anymore. I'm excited to see something he gets to basically start from scratch.

In part Mackie's X-Factor stands out at this point in time because a lot of the other books feel pretty checked out or actively falling apart. Larry Hama's Wolverine used to be the most consistently strong title but he's leaving soon and feels like he's treading water a bit. Scott Lobdell may be a terrible person but he did a pretty good job getting the main X-Men back on track but now he's also leaving soon and obviously does not care at all about anything except Generation-X and even then Bachalo's art mostly carries it. X-Force is caught up in incomprehensible Shatterstar retcons, and Excalibur seems like it's been given an editorial mandate to Please Just Be Normal at the cost of anything that made it interesting or gave it any identity as a title, or else maybe Ben Raab just wished he got a mainline X-Men title instead of Excalibur and is doing his best to make it basically that instead. It's not a very good time for the line! X-Man and Cable are weirdly both Fine, which makes them better than most books in the line but nothing to write home about.

In contrast to this, Mackie has some pretty clever plotting and is really leaning into making the book more like a political thriller, taking advantage of the government setting (as opposed to Peter David mostly using it as a vehicle to make jokes about Political Correctness Gone Mad or whatever). This also seems to be where Mystique is getting for the first some development that really stuck going forward, positioning her more as an anti-hero rather than just a sympathetic villain who cares about Rogue. The emphasis on being on the the team being run at this moment also feels the most to me like it evokes the spirit of my favorite Claremont-era storylines.

edit: Also, as a general observation, more broadly basic quality control has fallen through the floor in this era. Typos, mis-colored characters, or incorrectly assigned word balloons are way, way more common than they used to be. Some errors are inevitable in collaborative serialized work on tight deadlines, but there are so many in this era that it just creates the sense that the teams aren't working in harmony. They don't have the capacity to put out the volume of content they're churning out in '97, which includes not just all those ongoings but a totally absurd amount of mini-series.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Thanks to a tie in with King in Black, I started reading Black Cat.

Heist Movies in a Crazy Comic Book a world is so very much my jam.

I can not fully express the amount of my jam this is.

 

[estragon]

I was reading an issue of Cable from 1997 and thinking, "The dialogue in this cold open is suddenly way better than I expect from this period, what's going on?"

And then I get to the credits page and...

Ah okay yeah that makes sense. Apparently it was one of his earliest gigs.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

Is this near the period where Joe Casey starts writing and it gets a bit of a Jack Kirby look?