Disappointed before the first issue ships

CBR has a feature up teasing Age of X by showing the files of Henry Gyrich in the alternate universe, profiling several of our heroes. What really strikes me are the relations listings, and how many characters which are not being used by the X-office and haven't been used by the X-office for years are also missing and dead in this X-men alternate universe. (And I'm going to mention specifics soon, so consider this your spoiler warning.)

And it takes me back to how when Janet Van Dyne was taken off the board in the 616 universe, the Ultimate version of the Wasp was killed in Ultimatum. How when Wanda went crazy in Disassembled it was closely followed by Wanda getting killed in Ultimates.

It's very weird to me, because an alternate timeline storyline is a great opportunity to play with characters you don't normally get to play with, to have dead people alive and inactive people active, and make villains into good guys and bystanders into heroes. It's a really cool playground, but time and time again Marvel seems to decide that when something happens in the 616 universe it is reverberated across the multiverse! Hell, in "Ghost Box" Beast outright states that this is the case with M-Day, meaning that we aren't going to get to see an alternate timeline where mutants are the majority except for House of M flashbacks.

I know there's writers who get it, and we had a lot of variety in Hickman's Fantastic Four excursions and that Exiles is all over the fucking place, but it seems to me like ongoing things like the Ultimate Universe and large scale events like Age of X are squandering huge opportunities by having the same cast in a different setting. Don't get me wrong, Magneto, Rogue and Cyclops are awesome but we can read them together ALL THE TIME right now. We can't really read Cyclops and Havok at the moment because Havok is lost in space. We can only read Magneto and the twins in a single bimonthly series now, otherwise we haven't seen them since House of M. We can't read Rogue and Destiny now, ever, because they killed her off so damned long ago and she's just not a character who gets resurrected.

And these are things that would be fresh and unusual because we haven't seen them in the regular universe for so long. I still maintain that one of the greatest X-crossovers in history is Age of Apocalypse, partially because the only character who absolutely had to be absent was Xavier. With that rule in place, we got a lot of odd relationship stuff that we simply could never see the way 616 was set up. We had Nightcrawler and Mystique as a bickering mother-and-son team. We had Magneto as a loving husband and father, with a supportive relationship with his son (I am a bit irked they killed off Wanda in this crossover). We had Rogue as a mother and stepmother. We had Quicksilver and Storm in a romance. We had Cyclops and Havok raised together by Sinister. We had one-off death Blink alive and active, which actually led to the creation of the freaking Marvel Multiverse by being so popular she launched a series based on traveling through alternate universes!

It was a dystopian setting, but it was expansive and varied. Age of X so far strikes me as based on the same scarcity mentality that is driving the mutant plotlines in the regular universe. There was a "Decimination" and now the vast majority of mutants are dead rather than depowered, so it's a worse place where all the same characters are active. I like Mike Carey, but... it seems so small.

This is without even getting into how the Vision's presence could've averted the whole thing.

I was going through my LibraryThing where I came across something that got old irritations going:



Avengers West Coast Visionaries: John Byrne, Vol 2: Darker Than Scarlet (Prelude to House of M)

I normally adore long, unwieldy titles, but this did not bring me joy. No, it did not.

Prelude to House of M. Who do they think they're fooling?

I don't know if that was a fan or if Marvel retitled it (I've heard they did re-release it), but we all know no one planned this far in advance. We know that the whole shitty Darker Than Scarlet storyline was just to get rid of the husband and kids so they could use Wanda as a sexpot again. It was just a really stupid story that left a really stupid open end that Bendis thought he was oh so clever in catching, even though he missed the storyline afterwards where the whole crazy thing was settled and the children were too. Really it wouldn't piss me off so much that he'd used it as an excuse to break up the Avengers if he'd closed up the loophole at the end but no... He had to leave Wanda crazy so he could do House of M.

House of M wasn't a great story idea. It certainly didn't justify leaving the Scarlet Witch in that state. I don't COMPLETELY hate it (I think Pietro and Wanda are the most sympathetic characters in the mess, followed by Magneto and poor innocent Lorna) because it had nice art and issue 7 was heartfelt, but it was really just 5 issues of getting the band together framed by domestic violence and the X-men being hypocrites. This was never anything more substantial than a way to off the mutants and undo the really awesome stuff Grant Morrison did with mutant culture. It also provided a convenient excuse to completely divorce the X-men from the high ground by having them throw aside everything they've ever fought by suggesting they kill a mutant--who hasn't done anything to THEM--for being too powerful. Honestly, one of the reasons I fucking hate House of M is it has made most of the X-men entirely unreadable to me. (I still give Cyclops a pass for a lot of horrible shit because he was the only dude on that side to say "Wait.." but nobody listens to Cyclops when he doesn't want to murder people) They're a bunch of fucking hypocrites, and will be as long as no one points out that they pretty much caused M-Day by reacting to Wanda exactly as nonpowered humans react to them. There wasn't a single mutant at that fucking meeeting that hasn't lost complete control of their powers at some point in their careers. Professor Xavier ALSO took out the Avengers when he did, and no one--not even Pietro who was for having the government put him under guard--suggested he get executed.

I honestly can sympathize with the Avengers in that series. None of them except Wolverine pushed to kill her. They didn't want Magneto to take her away, they had to bargain to try and get her back. No one could really trust that Pietro wasn't going to freak out the second they tried to explain this, so of course they didn't tell him. I can get through House of M and still like the Avengers, and I even suspect this was on purpose. After all, didn't things end for the Avengers with getting Hawkeye back to life? They got a little reward it seems.

Of course, their actions, going along with the X-men to do a full assault on Magneto and distract him while Dr. Strange snuck in to see Wanda (because... this wouldn't make anyone tighten security around the most important person in the universe to the perpetrator/the only family member the deluded and ridiculously powerful party guests would believe couldn't defend herself?) were pretty stupid, but I think the Avengers overall handled it better. No one wanted to kill her and the Wasp wanted to ask Wanda for her input.

But oh god, the X-men. Every time I look at it I can't help but think they deserved to get slammed on for taking that position in the beginning. Before the beginning, even. Professor Xavier was entrusted to treat a woman who was said to be losing touch with reality. When confronted with memories of her giving birth--an event that even after Darker than Scarlet did happen was still something that happened OUTSIDE of her head--he decides to tell her that the children never existed and to forget that memory. Which is bullshit. The children did exist, they just were a trick from an external force. They weren't a delusion only Wanda saw. They weren't a delusion she caused everyone else to see by telepathy. They were a fucking trick by a fucking demon. All the events happened. The children weren't a result of her breakdown, her breakdown was a result of the children turning out to be a big trick. And as the trigger for her original breakdown was that Agatha Harkness fucked with her memory (and to Byrne's credit, the entire WCA team thought that was stupid and her father and brother knew nothing about it until after she freaked out), naturally the solution to a relapse is to fuck with her memory again. Professor Xavier can only have made her WORSE with his "therapy", but he gets none of the blame for House of M nor for supporting the option of killing her. ("I don't know what else to do, Scott" my ass.) He really should have been the one saying "Now, Emma" in the damned X-meetings, but instead he was breaking the idea gently to Magneto.

Hell, Emma actually prevented the peaceful resolution of House of M by stopping them from recruiting Captain America. Despite the fact that he's probably the only person in the group who could have talked down Wanda (and, after the reveal, Pietro), Emma vetoed him because he was too old. So in the big fight scene, when they find out who's idea this all is and they need someone with a clear head around to take control, Steve Rogers is not there. Instead we have a bunch of idiots who let the person who knows the least about any of the players--someone those jackasses really should have been looking after in case she might decide to get hurt or do something really stupid--decides to activate Magneto, the biggest most violent temper on the board. All change of a peaceful resolution disappears, and the mutants of the universe get fucked over because they didn't have Jean Grey at the meeting telling them they were a bunch of assholes for coming up with this.

That said, I did notice that Dr. Doom came out okay during the whole mess. So maybe they did mean to fix Wanda and blame Doom for both her breakdown and Pietro's really bad idea (Seriously, he was helping her focus her powers and unless he was under the same mindfuck I don't see how they'll explain how he let Reed Richards and Sue Storm are dead while Dr. Doom is still in power slip by), or maybe it was a really fucking big oversight and Heinberg caught it. It doesn't solve my problem with X-men, but it does make me optimistic for the Maximoff twins.

Sanity in the Weird World of New X-Men

Yesterday:

I haven't been that keen on Morrison writing Wonder Woman though -mostly because the women that I'm familiar with Morrison writing as lead characters are all written as psychological cases (Crazy Jane, Ragged Robin, Boy, Emma Frost and Jean Grey are all the ones that come immediately to mind) and for me, Wonder Woman should be as far from that as possible. I suppose that just because I can't think of a woman he hasn't written that way it doesn't mean that he can't write a woman that way, but I'd like to see it first I guess.

I think what's killing me about this comment is that I'm not sure what he means by "psychological case." You'd think he means someone who has a severe mental health issue, but there's the inclusion of Jean and Emma. Back in New X-men Morrison certainly delved deep into their psyches, but the major psychological issues on the team belonged to Scott and Professor X. Emma and Jean were having a relatively normal conflict, the sort of thing that might happen between two mental health professionals: one woman was unable to effectively counsel her husband while he had a psychological breakdown because she was far too close to him, and the other woman was taking advantage of that psychological breakdown to begin an affair. The confrontation issue--when Jean came home and locked Scott out of the room while she took Emma on a tour of her issues--wasn't the same as delving into Crazy Jane's past or the 'Nuff Said issue where they entered Professor Xavier's mind--and both women displayed the mental health needed to survive on his battered psychic landscape without falling prey to the dangers there--and saw just how messed up he was.

Even at her coldest in Morrison's run Emma is not portrayed as a complete sociopath, instead she's a woman who is willing to cause a great deal of social trouble. Morrison did examine her mental health by giving her secondary mutation that would cushion her psyche from an extremely traumatic experience, as well as be a metaphor for her way of dealing with people socially--which is basically what someone of Emma's personality type does, they act cold and cruel to prevent others from getting close enough to hurt them--and he had Jean take her back into her past to remember exactly why she's unable to let people get close to her. Super-powers aside, Emma wasn't a "psychological case" as in a woman unable to function because of her mental illnesses, she was a normal woman behaving in normal human ways that are often hurtful. You could say a lot about Emma Frost, but you can't say Morrison portrayed her as insane. (Whedon did, though.) She was affected by the tragedies she witnessed (cold as Emma acted, there were several points that the hell she went through in Genosha was evident, and it was her strength of will keeping her together and not a lack of heart), and she was formed by the household where she was raised. She was perfectly healthy and functional, she just had issues like people have issues.

Jean was even saner. Surely everyone has at least seen a loved one grow into a different person because they become stronger. Sometimes it's a bit hard to deal with, especially when that loved one doesn't realize they're acting any differently. Jean had the power of the Phoenix again, and it frightened the hell out of many of the other characters. She was perfectly in control of it and didn't see the problem, didn't fully comprehend just how strange that seemed to the others, and at this high point in her self-esteem was further away from her husband's misery than ever. This situation is a really good metaphor for when someone suddenly discovers a talent or started experiencing success or just gets her life on perfect course while her husband is feeling lower than ever. There's a major disconnect in her perception of herself, and the perception others have of her, but she doesn't pick it up. This is actually even more compelling because Jean's one of the more perceptive telepaths in the Marvel Universe and she does know people are uncomfortable, but because she's at a high point in her life and because--unlike Professor Xavier and Emma Frost who seem to just invade whoever's psyche they want--she respects people's privacy and doesn't pry into their thoughts she doesn't realize just how removed she is from them at that point. The affair hit her like a foul ball in the back of the head while signaling the hot dog guy. She attacked, and as some women do verbally, telepathically zeroed in on the weak spots of her opponent and let her have it.

I notice this is a thing Morrison likes to do when he writes a solo book. He likes to explore the character's emotions and personality, but he doesn't do it like other writers do. The in-thing with Bendis, Millar, Winick, Johns and a few other popular writers seems to be to have characters explore their emotions by sitting, brooding, and talking it out with other characters. The psychological problems of the heroes are spelled out, stated explicitly by other characters, the narration, or the character themselves. Disturbingly often the writer finds a way to have someone assure the hero they area normal for having these issues and spell out the tie to your real life. Morrison rarely says anything flat out and takes full advantage of the medium and genre to explore the character's psyche through conventions, powers, events, and even staging. Bulleteer may be the most I've seen one of his heroes brood. She has doubts about her place in the universe after gaining superpowers and finding out her husband was actually an asshole, and she comes to terms with them by acting as a superhero, observing the weirdness of the universe and how others deal with it, and then verbalizing the theme of the book in a multi-stage fight that utilized a refrigerator and a car engine. Batman--who legitimately can be described as a psychological case under most writers--creates an entire other personality that leads back to the greatest tragedy of his life, and Morrison explains it sparingly with flashbacks. Shining Knight experiences a coming of age tale that literally involves fighting the perversion of everything she held dear as a child. And the underlying theme to all of these stories is that the extraordinary--the problems of the superheroes--are not abnormal psychology but are metaphors for the mental experience of your average human being.

Now, if what the commenter means is "psychological case" as in "case-study of human psychology" as opposed to someone who should be committed to a therapist's care, then yes Morrison writes most of his female (and male) leads that way. In this case I completely fail to see what's wrong with an in-depth examination of what makes Wonder Woman tick amidst her fighting beings from the future, the past, another universe or beyond the multiverse.

If he means the latter, I'm not sure what version of New X-men he read but it's not on my shelf.

Update to My Sentry Rant

A slight update to my post a few days ago.

It seems that outraged fans have pestered poor Mike Carey, the writer that's been handling Rogue the most, to the point that he answered them. On Facebook. (But we have a quote!)

Mike Carey: Wow. I need another cup of coffee.

Okay, guys, I'm going to comment here in a fairly circumspect way. I've responded to some of you in one-to-one message threads, and I'm going to ask you not to come back to me on this, because there won't be anything I can add.

As everybody knows, I try not to do ret-cons - and as I type that, my nose just ... grew by about a foot and a half. What I try not to do is "type 2" invasive ret-cons that erase things that are commonly supposed to have happened. I'm shameless about type 1 ret-cons, where stuff happened but you just didn't know about it until now. The whole of the Professor X incarnation of Legacy was made up of stories of that kind.

This is a type 1: it happened, because Rogue says on-panel that it happened. It was behind the scenes, invisible, and the chronology isn't clear, but it happened. Is it surprising? I think so. In terms of Rogue's behaviour in relationships, her sexual morality insofar as we can infer it, her personal history up to this point, this revelation is hard - on the face of it - to reconcile.

But as someone says above (sorry, thread is too long to find the reference again quickly) what we know is minimal, and we can fill in an infinite number of stories around these few details. There are ways it could have happened that would make sense. I won't be the one who tells the story of how it actually did happen, but I'm accepting that it happened and the story is there to be told.

Characters in a shared fictional space are created by a kind of consensus. Someone dreams them up and puts them onto the stage, but a whole lot of someone elses then fill in the blanks. When you get contradictions, or apparent contradictions, fans build their own conception of the character from the parts they like most or believe in most.

This is a dangerous and frivolous analogy, but look at the Bible. I'm an atheist, but I'm happy to acknowledge that there's a core of teachings in the Bible that vast numbers of people base their lives on - but crucially, it tends to be a different core for each of them. You take what makes sense to you, and you view the rest with some mixture of tolerance and caution.

I think you have to do the same with shared universes.

I hate that that's on Facebook so I can't exactly verify it, but I have no reason to distrust All Things Fangirl in this matter. It's good in that we won't see it referenced, but bad in that it stays in continuity and we won't ever see Rogue think about it, so if some weird writer comes along who likes the Sentry and this retcon... Well, it'll just seem even more out of left field.

I do just want to point out again that the problem isn't that Rogue's been with a guy other than Gambit, or that Rogue's been with a guy, or even that it's that jerk the Sentry. It's just that, as Carey notes, it doesn't suit her to have a romance that she actually went all the way with that she's never thought once about. Too much of her history is wrapped up in it. Especially with someone with implied immunity. If it had been a retcon involving a regular X-man she sees all the time (okay, not Kurt, that one would be way too creepy) and it was a temporary power loss... Or a villain like Magneto (it's pretty obvious why they wouldn't be together, and their breakup has been dealt with)... But yeah, this? Is stupid and infuriating.

Also, I've been reminded the same writer who wrote this piece of shit funeral special also wrote the Civil War special where that blockhead reporter told Captain America he was out of touch because he didn't watch American Idol or know what Myspace was. And the narrative in that book didn't say she was an idiot, it took Ed Brubaker to have Bucky say (without naming her) she was an idiot in Young Avengers Presents: Patriot.

Just like this funeral special didn't say that Cyclops and Johnny Storm were fucking gossips who should shut their fucking yaps or that Rogue was more upset about recent X-men events than about this guy we never saw her meet. Come to think of it, Cyclops? That's probably the most credible source for gossip you have on the X-men shy of Nightcrawler, and probably the very last person AFTER Nightcrawler to blab a secret.

So, to recap, according to Paul Jenkins the Sentry was an inspiration, a great guy, the best friend to everyone in the Marvel Universe, and the lover if it was impressive despite terrorizing and keeping his poor wife prisoner... and Steve Rogers was out of touch with the American People so he was wrong during Civil War.

Yeah.

Forget Death, the Character Needs to Be Eradicated From Continuity *Spoilers*

(Update: There's a followup post with a Mike Carey quote.)

Spoilers Below

Only the Sentry could be such a gawdawful black hole of originality and creativity that the character would piss me off the most of all in a single page of his funeral issue.

For those of you not following the current Marvel metaplot, the Sentry was created years ago as an April Fool's Day joke that actually wasn't too terrible to read left alone, but that went horribly awry when a writer who shall remain nameless rescued the character from the annuls of Marvel Imaginary Stories (I mean, Imaginary-Imaginary not Real-Imaginary like we've been reading) and brought him into the Marvel Universe in all his insanity. To be fair, I suspect this writer brought him back because he originally intended to write the Scarlet Witch in a tragic fallen hero trilogy where the Marvel Universe mourns the death of someone who as once a friend who had to be destroyed for the good of the universe. Then sometime after Part I was published (and he'd committed himself to Part II) someone pointed out to this writer that the Scarlet Witch had fans (and possibly that the way he drove her insane didn't really fit into continuity but that may be giving Marvel too much credit), so he handed off the Scarlet Witch (and Part III, now her redemption arc) to a television writer who would put her at the bottom of his priorities list, and dug up the fucking Sentry as the new centerpiece.

I have no information that confirms this is the behind-the-scenes chain of events, but judging by the way the crossovers since Disassembled have lined up Siege would have been the natural fall/redemption arc of the Scarlet Witch since the whole mess was started with Disassembled and House of M. I also got the impression from Son of M and the corresponding fates of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch in the Ultimate Universe that they never intended to make Pietro Maximoff a heroic Avenger again (a Dark Avenger I could see, especially if Wanda's in the Sentry role). So without any inside information, I think Wanda being switched out for Bob is a fair conclusion, and honestly a charitable one because it suggests that this miserably clumsy insertion of Robert Reynolds into the Marvel Universe storyline and his seizing of not only the current metaplot but of every character's history and continuity was not intentional. It was them salvaging a storyline that could have been eyesearingly infuriating in all aspects, rather than fucking infuriating in one funeral issue. Specifically, one half-page of one funeral issue.

For those of you who missed my four-score-and-seven twitter posts ranting about it, I'm referring to this fucking page:



Yes, that's Scott Summers and Johnny Storm gossiping about Rogue and Sentry. Implying with the first question that she was in love with him, in the second that she fucked him, and in the last that they don't know when or how long the affair lasted.

(Full disclosure: when I first heard that Rogue lost a boyfriend, I was overjoyed because I thought Gambit was the next death in the X-men: Second Coming crossover event, and I hate Gambit. Then I discovered they had retconned in this relationship, I was enraged because not only were my dreams of Gambit's death shattered, but they had found the one character in the Marvel Universe besides Juggernaut that was an even worse choice to sleep with than Gambit.)

This page, which pisses me off beyond all words, perfectly illustrates exactly what is wrong with using the Sentry as part of the Marvel Universe proper. Rogue has apparently been fixed so that she can control her powers (good for her, but I'm not sure how long this will last), but she was originally a character built around an inability to experience physical intimacy. Her power means that she sucks the life out of anyone she touches, and it manifested when she got her first kiss. She has been a woman with a traumatic and miserable romantic life, and seemed to be consigned to the role of Marvel's Designated Perpetual Virgin. Because she's not celibate by choice, this has been a large source of angst, and is the driving source of tragedy for the character. It makes her romances tortured and fascinating. She was often put opposite energy fountain Gambit, because he might be able to generate enough to survive a kiss but she never wants to risk it. Sometimes she has been lucky enough to start seeing someone who can block her power, a force-field generator like Magneto or his clone Joseph, but even then it's never been made clear if they went anywhere.

The point is that since human contact was such a rare and idealized experience for Rogue, an event like the loss of her virginity is certifiably a Big Fucking Deal. It is a monumental experience for this character. It is her story more than anything else, because it is a moment that she has been denied all her life. It is a Rite of Passage that long boarded off to Rogue (with little detour signs leading to "Experience Prejudice", "Prove One's Valor in Combat", and "Absorb the Memories, Powers and Life Force of An Entire Other Person"), and she expresses the pain of that roadblock in every appearance. Breaking through that roadblock, whether it's through a temporary depowerment, or a forcefield, or a character powerful enough that she doesn't completely absorb him, is a major life experience for Rogue. It is something that should affect her for the rest of her appearances, making the event she can never experience now be something she misses and giving her a comforting memory when confronted by the cold reality that she can't even shake hands.

It is noteworthy enough that it deserves a three-issue mini-series with romance-novel style covers, a lush exotic locale, a tender build-up of affections and at the very least a soft silhouetted kiss then a fade to black. Then, most importantly, the fallout. The incredibly important reason why she did not stay with the person that could actually touch her every day for the rest of her life. Was it his choice or her choice? If it was his choice, how did she take it? If it was her choice, why? Because the reason for giving up the thing you want more than anything else in your life says a hell of a lot about what kind of person you are.

Even now that she can control her powers (again, not sure how long this will last before someone wants tragic Rogue back), the loss of her virginity is still an important event for her because physical intimacy is something that was denied to her so long. It is at the very LEAST something that needs to be covered in her own book and not any other character's. We're talking about the fulfillment of a lifelong dream of Rogue's here, something more special for her than the other character who might be involved for a laundry list of reasons.

But instead this event is implied not in any of Rogue's wistful memories, not in the most private thoughts that comfort her in her darkest moments, but in a half-page tribute to the Motherfucking Sentry.

A character that never thought twice about Rogue. A character who had a wife that he brought back to life after her death and kept prisoner in his tower because he couldn't stand the thought of anyone hurting her. A character who had an affair with a princess on the moon because I suppose that wife wasn't enough for him. But it's in HIS story that we learn about Rogue's earliest tryst. And not even from her, we find out from freaking Cyclops talking to the Human Torch. We don't know what she loved about him, besides the fact that this was a man and she could hug him (and really for Rogue it's perfectly understandable if that's all there was). We don't know what he saw in her, if she was just there and vulnerable or if he'd been attracted to her for a long time before they found out she could touch him. We don't know why they didn't stay together. (Except, maybe for the wife--or was this before the wife?) We don't know anything about this story except she could hug him and she told Cyclops they were together, on the way to the funeral. She never thought once about him in her own book since this happened, but now that he's dead--possibly the only man she's ever slept with/after all that angsting about not being able to even hug or kiss another person--she feels really awful.

This is a pivotal point in Rogue's life, where she experiences what she has been denied since her powers manifested--manifested and destroyed innocent dreams of a lifetime of romance and human closeness that had been forming at that very moment--this is the fulfillment of a lifetime of fantasies... and this moment is reduced to a punchline in order to glorify the adventures of the fucking Sentry.

And that is the ultimate problem with the motherfucking Sentry being shoehorned into the Marvel Universe. He becomes the Sun around which the rest of the Marvel Universe revolves. Forget every niche occupied by the characters of Marvel, those aren't their stories. Those are just backstories so that we can read about how wonderful the Sentry is! The Marvel Universe goes from being about the characters we love, the ones we love to read about, and becomes All About Bob.

Did you know Angel was once afraid to fly? Amazing, a mutant with wings being afraid of that. Surely, that's something to have overcome during his training under Professor Xavier, and an experience he can perhaps now recount to help guide a younger mutant to accepting their powers, right? Nope, it's something the Sentry helped him through and is now a memory of how awesome Bob is. Why? Doesn't add anything to Angel, but it has to be there for Bob because he has to have taught the X-men something early on, or he wouldn't have been a notable hero in the Silver Age. Warren overcoming his fears? All About Bob.

Did you know that Reed Richards had a best friend outside the Fantastic Four? Someone close to him that wasn't Ben, Johnny, or Sue--his FAMILY members? Why, it was the Sentry. so fucking perfect that one of the most standoffish men in the world was open to him. All of this bonding, of course, happened off-panel during the most important moments of Reed's life. You know, the moments we read that didn't have the Sentry in them. The moments where we watched him fight his own preoccupation with science and exploration to learn to socialize and appreciate his own family. The hundreds of little teamups where Tony Stark and Hank Pym slowly developed enough of a friendship with Reed that he would collaborate with them on large projects rather than just continue working on his own in his own little cubby-hole like he was always inclined to do. Don't get me wrong, Reed's not an unfriendly man or an extremely shy person, I actually consider him one of the more compassionate characters I've read--but he is incredibly self-absorbed and work-absorbed. Even Sue and Ben can barely get him to come up for air, so if he has a friendship outside of his small, insular group--a friendship where he would actually consider someone other than Ben his best friend--then it's something that built up over time and is a very big thing in Reed's life. It is something we find out about in Reed's story, not in that other character's story. But nope. It's only in Sentry stories and Sentry flashbacks that it comes up. Why? Because it's nothing to do with Reed. Nothing gets added to Reed because he was friends with the Sentry, and the Sentry was there during those moments. It's to show that the Sentry was smart, so smart he was friends with the smartest man in the world. And to show that the Sentry was a great hero that everyone was comfortable with off-duty too. Reed's friendship? All About Bob.

Did you know that Crystal slept with the Sentry? This, I suppose fits a bit. She likes temperamental, impulsive men with light coloring it seems. Of course, she doesn't remember the affair. He does. Why? Because the Sentry was there in the Silver Age, and he had to have gone to the moon. And what could he have done on the moon? Why, he can sleep with Crystal, because she's just some dumb slut, right? Not because she married too young and let two guys push her into choosing one or the other. Not because of her own insecurities or desires. Nope, doesn't matter why Crystal did it, because that romance (unlike the ones with Johnny, Pietro, Ronan, and the couple guys she slept with while she was married to Pietro) had nothing to do with Crystal's situation or storyline. It was because sleeping with a moon princess is just something a Silver Age hero does. Crystal's love life? All About Bob.

And of course, there's Rogue. Poor Rogue, starved for the touch of another person. Rogue who it turns out had her first full sexual encounter with none other than the Sentry. What led to this? How did she react? How did the realtionship end? Was there even a relationship? Who cares?! It doesn't matter what Rogue's role in this was, only that there was a void in her life and the Sentry filled it. Why? Because Rogue losing her virginity isn't about Rogue, silly. It's about how wonderful the Sentry was and how much we miss him! It's just one more throwaway moment in a list of moments of how awesome the Sentry is, how he saved everyone's lives and helped everyone do everything, and was the Supermanlike inspiration they needed because Captain America somehow just didn't cut it. Not only that, he is so amazing that not only did he have a romance with the X-men's poor chaste belle (as much as waypost, apparently, as teaming up with Spider-man, befriending Mr. Fantastic, and sleeping with Crystal), but he actually fucked her which not even Gambit or Magneto can seem to pull off. He got the the prize, folks, and what is possibly the most desired experience in Rogue's life? You guessed it, All About Bob.

Now, if I'm right in being charitable and the whole point of this was that the writers and editors at Marvel original wanted to use a character who was actually a hero during the Silver Age and had the impact already, well good for them for not killin off an actual character. But dammit, there's a right and a wrong way to introduce a new character to the universe.

Strangely enough, the very writers who brought back the Sentry is the one who did it the right way. See Alias, the series that introduced Jessica "Jewel" Jones-Cage to Marvel readers a few years back. Jessica was a former superhero with a Silver Age era origin. She was a classmate of none other than Peter Parker, and had a little thing for him. She fantasized about the Human Torch before she got her powers. She had a bad run-in with a Daredevil villain that led to a single adventure with the Avengers and a lifelong friendship with Carol Danvers/Ms. Marvel. She knew Luke Cage, and eventually married him and had a child with him.

This was an incredibly subtle retcon, a million times more restrained than the Sentry. Jessica had a Silver Age tie to Spider-man, but he didn't know she was alive. (In New Avengers, when she brings it up, he vaguely remembers her as "coma-girl".) She never met the Human Torch or the Fantastic Four during her brief time as a hero. When the Avengers rescued her from the Purple Man and offered her a slot on the team, she turned them down and retired. The ones who remembered her remembered her as a hero who retired after some tragedy, but not as anyone who made a huge impact on their lives. Carol's friendship slips between the panels because Jessica was out of costume the whole time, and Carol was usually in a team book. It worked that she had a civilian friend off-panel we hadn't met. It worked that one of Peter's classmates became a superhero, then retired. It worked that Luke Cage had met her sometime in the interim and they dated. She didn't take over these characters pasts, and their important life moments didn't suddenly become background to Jessica's story. She slowly joined their lives, a little bit at a time, with small things in the past that we reasonably wouldn't have seen.

But they didn't go subtle with the Sentry. They went all out, and shoved him into every book possible. He had a tie to every character in the Marvel Universe that was presented to the readers as fully formed and functional, a tie we never got to see formed even though we'd been watching the rest of these characters grow into the people they are for years. We were just introduced to this guy, Bob. We were told he was a great hero everyone loved but tragically were forced to forget, and then we watched quickly lose his mind while everyone discussed what a great guy he was. There was no restraint. This was all-out assault strategy, where they shoved him everywhere and gave him every Silver Age experience we can come up with. It was like they brainstormed for a session or two and just ended up using it all so the heroes would love him.

Which of course is why so many readers hate him, and why so many of us would love to just forget him. This leads us to a problem with Rogue and Sentry. Chris asked me what was so bad about it, aside from the storytelling technique sucking, and I gave him a few paragraphs worth of ranting about it. His response? "Got it. Fans want to see Rogue lose it."

And here's the thing: He's absolutely right. Fans want to see Rogue lose it. We're rooting for Rogue romantically, for her to get what she really wants and to control her powers or at least find someone who isn't affected by them. We don't want her to wind up alone, and we want to be there with her when she attains some closeness with a human being. I'm not saying we want a XXX-rated X-men special showing every detail of her first night. But we want to at least see the guy, the attraction, the gentle connection forming, and the kiss before they cut to another scene. We don't want to find out that the entire relationship happened off-panel in a book about a character no one really likes but dammit, Marvel really wants us to accept as part of the world.

We want to be there for Reed's growth as a person, and watch him open his heart to his family and friends. We don't need to find out his best friend and confidante has been there all along, off-panel, in some character we never met and never bought as a character in the Fantastic Four.

And we really, really, don't need Crystal to be fucking guys that don't feed her storyline. Because much as I dislike Crystal, her romantic links are all she has in character history and they are her choices and about her life, and giving them to the Sentry is just plain shitty.

And most importantly of all? The Marvel Universe doesn't need a cheap Superman knockoff to inspire them. They have Captain America and the original Human Torch to inspire them. We don't need a guy who's better at that than them, is every male character's best friend and mentor, and who manages to fuck every desirable woman in the universe.

And as much as there are certain moments I want to read about involving these characters, I'd rather not read these moments using some new character that I already hate because for years he's been shoved into the backstory of all our old favorites no matter where he fits properly because they need his death to count for as much as possible. It's for the best that these moments be written using the relationships that have come about naturally in the character's own story paths through their own books and crossovers with supporting characters and guest stars that fit into that world without taking it over or overbearing the people who don't really care for them at first.

So for the love of all that's good and holy, let's close this as the last chapter on the Sentry, bring back the Scarlet Witch as a hero, and forget any of these important life events were ever connected--let alone attributed--to this incredibly uninteresting character.

Marvelous thoughts

Courtesy of Brainfreeze:



If this is timed for July 4th, I might be able to keep my ice cream money.

And if we're reading this promotional stuff right, I hope Bucky goes back to being Winter Soldier rather than some silly new identity. Winter Soldier is actually a pretty good codename, considering the alternatives, and I absolutely adore that character design. Honestly, I wish he'd wear his Winter Soldier outfit and just use the shield more often.

~~~~~

A conversation on Twitter about X-Men merchandise led to the realization that Wolverine is the Lancelot of the X-Men. This probably isn't anything original, but those of you who haven't seen it come up should consider these three points:

-- Lancelot was added in the 12th Century to a mythos that dates back to the 5th Century.
-- Wolverine was added in the 70s to a franchise created in the 60s.

-- Lancelot's romantic plotline includes many women (most named Elaine), but revolves around a mutual attraction with Guinevere, who is married to the King.
-- Wolverine's romantic plotline includes many women, but revolves around a mutual attraction with Jean, who is married to the team leader.

-- Lancelot is a Frenchman in an English court.
-- Wolverine is a Canadian on a US team.

-- Lancelot periodically goes off wandering to avoid being tempted by the Queen. At least once he went crazy and lived in the woods like a wild animal.
-- Wolverine periodically goes off wandering into other people's books. At least once he went feral lived in the woods on the schoolyard grounds like a wild animal.

-- Lancelot is now such a central character that a King Arthur movie or book without Lancelot is almost unthinkable.
-- Wolverine is now such a central character that not only is an X-Men team without Wolverine is almost unthinkable, he has to guest-star in every comic Marvel publishes. Hell, they once did a whole month where everyone just fought Wolverine! He was in the fricking Invaders that month!

I'm certain we can find more if we tried.

~~~~~

And finally, I'm more extensively annoyed at Marvel over on Robot 6. Enjoy.

X-Men 3, Post 1

My plans fell through a little bit, but I still had a full weekend. I bought a hat; went to a wild party and danced on my sprained ankle; learned to clumsily curtsy with a hurt ankle; got to judge a male beauty contest based on knees (Sadly, I didn't get pictures or mooned this year); I heard a version of the "Devil Went Down to Georgia" based on the old folktale Tamlin; filled my new camera's internal memory with pictures of the backs of kilts (I'd share, but it's still in my friend's car); got my picture taken with a cute actor, an Owl and a Hawk; and I still made it back in time to see the movie I'd wanted.

X-Men: The Last Stand Spoilers

Spoilers Here
I'd never considered myself a Cyclops fan. He was always just there. Scott Summers, default leader. By being there, he was the guy in charge. He occasionally got to angst externally, very rarely about himself, but Scott was so beautifully repressed that he was perfect for the background solid, strong, silent character. It always took another character to bounce his emotions off of, and he was used to highlight their plot. He was a foil for one of the other characters. when he angsted, it was because of a plot involving Jean, or his brother Alex, or Wolverine. The emotional plot would be carried by someone else, Scott was there to enhance it by adding tension or understanding as the situation demanded. Scott was always the take-charge type. I could take or leave Scott. He never seemed extraneous when he was there, he never seem needed when he wasn't. I was neutral to the character.

Until I saw this movie.

This movie effortlessly showed me just how much I loved the uptight, restrained, perpetual-stick-up-his-butt, macho holding back his feelings, cowboy wannabe Scott Summers.

I am, now and forever, a Scott Summers rabid fan. I love him, and always will.

And you should all be impressed with this movie's ability to show how necessary and unique the underappreciated leader of the X-Men is. We should all be rabid Scott-fans come the end of this movie, because the way in which they chose to foster the Scott-love was clever and unique.

They chose to foster Scott-love by virtue of his absence.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, for the very first time in Fourteen years of X-posure to the cartoon, the movies, and the comic book, I saw a plot where Scott Summers should be present, but wasn't.

As a kid, I always felt bad for poor Hera, the goddess of marriage, trapped in that farce of a union with Zeus. She needed a divorce and a new man, but as that wasn't possible, and it wasn't possible to control Zeus' behavior (she tried once), she tried the best possible course of action -- making an affair with Zeus more trouble than it was worth. For that, she was always demonized and vilified and just plain trashed. Women like Athena and Artemis, who could never imagine themselves in that situation, and even some of Zeus's affairs (like Hermes' mother Maia), regularly looked down on her and did their best to help out the criminal in the relationship, the out of control and unfaithful husband. People shook their heads at her and told "Shrewish wife" jokes about her. Rather than be the symbol of united love she shopuld have been, Hera is remembered as uncontrolled jealousy (Even though she showed no jealousy towards the earlier two wives -- Themis and Metis -- or towards her own sister Demeter who had a daughter with Zeus) and a symbol of the supposed prison of marriage (which is still present when you see people making "Are you sure you wanna suffer like the rest of us?" jokes about it to gay right's advocates). And people say Zeus is the one who was cursed! Ha!

When I was a little older, I got into Arthurian romance. I never liked Guinevere and Lancelot. Here was a love triangle, and there was the non-marriage being touted as the purer emotion. The better love! The "if only things were different" matter. And so, for breaking promises, jeopardizing the kingdom, giving into their own desires rather than loyalty to society, the two are glorified as the ideal example of courtly love. Admittedly, I did feel sorry for Guinevere, before I actually read the story and saw her kick Morgan's lover out of court for the same damned thing. Hypocritical and worthless. Guinevere embodied the worst stereotypes of femininity, and was surrounded by considerably more positive female characters (including Arthur's unfairly villified sisters), and yet she remains the most notable female in the Cycle. Why? Because she was bartered for beauty, deified for it, and she attracts the attention of a particularly good bruiser. And she's still generally portrayed as a positive character! Which again, makes a mockery of marriage.

At least, though, with Lance and Gwen we had a small bit of redemptive guilt, unlike with Tristan and Isolde, who both needed to die. Badly. They were outright shameless and didn't feel the least bit bad about it. Bastards.

But to the side was X-Men. I was always fond of the Jean-Scott-Logan triangle. Why? Because there, in an idealized modern setting without all of the societal quantifiers that can make a marriage unequal or a trap, the right couple got married. Yes, there was an animal attraction to Logan, but it was always properly resisted, and for the right reasons. Not for a sense of duty or a need to keep a contract together. No, Jean resisted her attraction to Logan because she actually loved Scott Summers, and he loved him. The two belonged together. They were paired since Uncanny X-Men #1. It's part of why I didn't mind Emma Frost macking around Scott when Morrison was writing New X-Men. Because it was assured that the stronger relationship was between Scott and Jean and once Scott got his head clear enough, he'd be back to Jean's side, just as she always was when she split off with Logan. In Age of Apocalypse the two were so drawn to each other that even though Scott was on the villain's side and Jean was with Logan, they ended up making a break for it together. It didn't matter that Jean was dead/absent and Scott had tried to replace her, or that Scott was dead/absent and Jean tried to replace him, or that they were in a wacky alternate timeline, the bond always won out in the end. These two people were meant for each other, and neither Logan's animal magnetism nor Emma's mental meddling could ever seriously mess that up.

So, why, in this travesty of a movie, did Scott Summers die by his wife's hands to be replaced by Logan as the one who talks her back from the brink of destroying the world?

That's quite a slap in the face. X-Men goes from a clever idealized parallel to an actual Arthurian story. Lancelot wins again, the loyal knights who respect marriage, women's choices, and don't sleep in other people's tents (when they're occupied) are beaten into the ground, Arthur is shown as an ineffective king prone to rages of jealousy and easy manipulation, Guinevere the damnable is glorified for weakness while Morgan the Wise is vilified for strength.

Meanwhile, on the other side, they try to replace Scott as Leader with Storm -- only to have him actually be replaced, once again, with Wolverine who ends up making all the command decisions while Storm looks lovely in her silvery cape and new haircut. (If the rumor that Scott got cut because Halle Berry demanded to be the central character is true, then she got totally snowed in that deal.)

And even though Scott's only face value is in reference to the Great Wolverine as a sparring partner, they can't even leave him with that dignity. Instead, they manufacture tension between Wolverine and Beast, and resolve it with little of the emotional involvement or joyful banter they had during the first flick.

Hugh Jackman is a beautiful-looking man, but dammit, I'm sick of seeing Wolverine carry the X-Men franchise to the detriment of the many rich and varied personalities and relationships found in the comic books.

And that's just the Beginning of the Problems with this Movie.

(Oh, and while I hate having to say this, I'm just going to jump the gun here because you never know -- if someone links to this post in a misguided attempt to support an anti-gay marriage argument, they are a moron, as this is about fidelity and trust and not politics. Thank you.)

(And the same goes for trying to support anti-divorce or "Feminists killed marriage" or any other idiotic arguments. I mean it, marriage is a sacred bond and not to be twisted into legal slavery by puritans who put their noses into other people's business.)