#happened in hickman's shield run so that's a thing that's happening now I guess.... I just hope he wraps it up quickly

[luciddreamslikeelectricity]

he's going to be fighting a bunch of these things on his own, huh?

[popculturebuffet]

New X-Men Xtrospective Part 3: Imperial (NXM #121-126)

To me all you happy people! And welcome back to my X-Citing look at Morrison’s Masterwork on Marvel’s Merry Mutants!  Part One is HERE, Part Two is HERE if you feel like it. 

If not... to catch you up on last time....

All Caught up? Good. Join me under the cut as our heroes head into this old woman’s hedd to see what’s wrong and fight off an alien army while horribly ill. 

Silent, Psychic Rescue in Process:

So we pick up not long after we left off: Thanks to Beast waking up from his bat induced coma, the X-Men now know Charles is trapped in Cassandra’s body and she pulled a Freaky Friday on him, with marginally less bullets. 

And thus we get this issue. This one was part of Nuff Said, an incredibly clever theme month by Marvel and one I wish they’d try and do again at some point in some form. 

The gimmick was simple but amazing: Every issue would be mostly silent, with at most some dialouge at the start and finish to bookend it. So far i’ve only read two issues of this, this one and the X-Statix one, but it is a genuinely great idea. I do think forcing it on the entire line was a bit much, but as I said I do wish they’d do this again just make it optional: have some books opt in or do some annuals with the theme. It’s just a fun break from the usual and with this issue resulted in one of the best single issues of x-men period. 

Naturally given the name, which is cleverly displayed on a sign the x-men have because of course they do, it’s exaclty that: Emma and Jean after readying themselves (Jean kisses Scott goodbye and Emma downs a bottle of jack because why not do an alchol before doing delecate mental surgery), head in. 

Inside they find horrific old lady head doors, stone ol dlady heads around a tower that shoot lasers, and said doors also bite and puke weird goop because it’s Grant Morrison. This is his chance to just go full balls out weird.. and given last time involved skin flake golemns.. and this isn’t even the weirdest he’s done. As mentioned last time he once had a supervillian run for president using a super LSD Bike that made everyone high. 

And just to prove he can reach that level of weirndess we find charles alone, naked and with an overenlarged brain.. before he transitions Jean to a field of sperm. 

Yeah... but this DOES have a point.. as it turns out it’s a meaphorical transition into his gestation as a baby.. and how he had a twin. Yeah turns out Cassandra was not lying he did try to kill her.. but as you can probably tell by the fact she’s a genocidal sociopath, she lied by omission to screw with Hank: In the womb she tried strangling Charles to death with his own umbilical cord..only for him to use baby’s first psonic blast to send her reeling and his mom tumbling down the stairs and well.. you can probably guess the rest. Yeah.. Cassandra’s entire origin story is concentrated 

And I love it. The sheer audacity is nice and everything but what makes it really work for me is the simple concept: An evil version of charles, one almost born at the same time whose every bit as evil as he is good.. granted there’s a TON of Morally Grey in Charles Xavier ESPECIALLY post decimation and even more so now with Krakoa. But he’s sitll at his heart a well meaning person, while Cassandra at her heart is a racist genocidal nightmare. She is pure evil, with enough personality to not make her boring.. and more importanlty all the power charles has but NONE of his restraint. Part of what makes Charles noble is he only uses his powers when necessary. Cassandra.. has no such restraint and will happily mentally snap necks all day. 

So with this our heroine’s leave and we end on the iconic line “Professor Xavier killed his twin sister in the womb. We Really ought to talk. 

This issue is an utter classic. It finally explains Cassandra a bit while still leaving a ton of questions, Frank Quitely is at his best here, and he and morrison are incrediby good at non verbal storyteling. The result is surreal, unsettling and awesome. Check it out. Seriously seek this one out it’s worth the trip. It’s so famous it was homaged with a spirtual sequel in the recent Giant Size X-Men one shots. It’s excellent stuff

Imperial:

So with our first issue we open with things going terrible on that flag ship Cassandra took off on with Lilandra, empress of the Shiar and Xavier’s space wife. She’s revealed herself, is ravaging the ship and mind rapes a the helmsman into crashing it, so with no other options Lilandra sends Smasher, not the one from the avengers run earlier version, to earth to send a warning to the X-Men. 

At the School things are actually going well for a second. In an intresting move the school is changing things up with no officla timetable.. which I think means there’s no rigid class schedule and you can just do them as you please or as necessary for your power. The plan’s the same, they just want to learn from each other in building mutant society and the future. It’s ideas like this that are the bedrock of the current run and were sadly never fully realized here.. but I don’t blame this run for that. Morrison had 2-3 years and it was cut short early, leading to a rather disapointing ending we’ll get to. They never had a chance to really dig in because they were kicked out by morons and then their whole grand design was undone until Hickman un-undid it in 2019. And even then some of this like the idea of mutant culture and what not hasn’t been picked up on yet. I do mean YET, as given the sheer NUMBER of x books touching on all sorts of subjects, it’s only a matter of if not when. 

As for who’s behind this it’s a combination of Jean and Charles: Jean is using charles notes and is going at full tilt. Scott is concerned though.. both about her since she went Phoenix and Logan told him about it and because these plans may alarm the humans. ON the former Jean just brushes him off which is not right.. given what happened with the phoenix force copy of jean, which granted had her personality, memories and powers and Jean later got a set of her memories so it might as well of been and only MAYBE the genocide is something Jean wouldn’t of done under the same circumstances, he’s understandably concerned. He lost her to it last time and it did weird shit to poor Rachel, who hif you don’t know is their daughter from an alternate timeline... because the Summer’s family tree is a WAKING NIGHTMARE. Thankfully I don’t have to untangle it because there’s a handy chart right here to do it for me that was recently released in X-Men Legends, a new series featuring legendary x creators telling stories in the cracks... and given we’re getitng storys by the simosons and peter motherfucking david, yeah good stuff.

And why yes there are more than one clone in this tree and several alternate timelines. , not to mention several clones and a sexy cat lady, it’s complicated is understnading it and i’m not sure what properly states it honestly. Also if your wondering about Adam there he’s the genetic son of Cyclops mom and the ma Shiar empreror who killed her for not sleeping with him through. Again it’s complicate REALLY feels like understatement. 

Point is he DOES have a right to be worried about the thing that lead to her being cocooned for a while and left their daughter in the future at the time of this... just in case you needed a reminder after that wonderful clusterfuck of a chart up above athe x-men are really fucking weird. 

So Jean brushing that off is not okay. She does however call him out on the second one and rightfully so: This isn’t some dominate the humans manifesto: this is simply changing the course of the future and how they teach their students to create a better one instead of adhering to human norms to try and appease “the republicans’, as jean puts it.. which has only gotten MORE RELEVANT, 20 years on: Attempts to appease the norms of society and things “just because that’s how it’s been” have never been a good thing. It’s why the very writer of this comic took several decades to properly identify themselves as non binary because people were too stuck int heir ways to try and see if there really were just two genders. Fighting against the grain, finding new ways to express things that have always been there... it’s what humanity needs to do and certainly what comes after us would need to do. i’ts how we get better as a race. If something’s not working we change it, quickly or slowly. And given Scott’s huge amount of emotoinal repression lately.. I can see why she’d see the former complaint as just him being a dick as opposed to the genuine concern it is. 

Short Version: Jean Grey is fucking awesome and while he’d be the last to write her for decades, no one did it better than Grant and no one has since.  Hopefully Gerry Duggan can clear that bar. 

After this fight we get a fuller verson of what happened both at the end of issue 120 and in the big reveal last issue: Turns out Hank awoke because Charles piloted his body like a truck and needed it revealed fast. Hank’s regained control of his body and facilities by now, but in a twist of irony he helpfully points out, had Cassandra not gone a needlessly cruel and sociopathic tangent and had Beak beat Beast into a coma, Charles wouldn’t of had a body. 

As for Charles in cass’ body he’s now in a tub of goo created by it. 

It acts as a shield as well as melding him with Cerebra so he can talk to jean telepathically as his thoughts are very weak.

Thanks to this and her psychic Jaunt, Jean now knows just what the hell cassandra is: She really is Charles twin sister. As for how the hell she surivied outside of the womb and how Charles never knew, she created herself a clone body using his cells and didn’t fully manifest till now. And while she has plenty of intellegence, at an emotional level she’s fully convinced, much like an infant that only she and charles are real and thus destroying him means gaining domance over her world. So in short she’s both utterly insane and now has an interstellar empire at her fingertips. 

And the news SOMEHOW get sworse: She booby trapped her body and charles only has days before he’s vegatable, having put every psychological disease possible in there, and she’s probably responsible for their colds and the u-men. So in short their pretty scrwed but at the very least Charles plans to try to flip things, use the fact their now public (a clear tactic to weaken them) to share his manefesto, his last will and testiment if you would. 

Scott meanwhile figures since their sick a healer might be a good idea and goes solo to fetch Xorn... who just sorta disappeared after the annual and didn’t return till his arc. 

We get an utterly touching scene after this: With Logan staying on his hobbit like toes in case of another attack, Jean goes to talk to hank. Hank is still throughly traumatized from the attack, fearing Cassandra is right and he’ll just keep devlovling until he ends up in a metamoprhisis type situation. I mean it’s not ALL bad hank,.. I mean going through that guarantees a musical about you. 

But Jean reassures him: It’s okay to be afraid of her, they all are.. but as she puts it...

It’s a really powerful inspiring scene... and really afirms how well Morrison writes Jean from the previous arc onward. She’s confident, powerful.. but also caring and compassionate. Here hank’s at his lowest, disparing that this might get worse.. and she reaffirms that htis evolution is an upgrade.. he may not be the same.. but that’s okay. He’s better. It really speaks to the core message of the X-Men as a whole and why they’ve stuck around all this time: It’s not just okay your diffrent.. it’s WONDERFUL. Your wonderful for being you. Whatever meataphor you read into it, it’s at it’s core a message that no matter who hunts you or trys to shame you for what you are, they are wrong and you are wonderful. And you are not alone... your people are out there.. and they will go through hell to protect you. It’s moments like this that remind me despite the bad parts, the accidnetal transphobic metaphor last time, a subplot with Hank coming up, the affair storyline and Planet X, just.. Planet X.. this run is special to me for a reason. It has heart, character and truly gets how the x-men should work, what makes them great... while making something NEW AND FRESH from it’s bones. Pushing envelopes, chanigng things for good and shaking things the hell up after far too much stagnation. It’s just pure good comicy goodness and i’m proud to finally be talking about it after having always wanted to. 

So as we end the issue Scott grabs Xorn, whose been at a budist temple all this time, and Smasher arrives to warn earth... but his warning missed his intended target. 

Well at least he got to Hellcow’s coven.. maybe she can call in Man Eating Cow and the Chick Fill A Super Cows.. thought hey might not help. Their parent company IS pretty homophobic.. I doubt their high on mutants either. 

Testament Emma and Jean talk over things how i’ts going etc, with Emma unsuprisingly annoyed with most of the students and Jean optimsitc.

But Emma soon has bigger issues to deal with: TEEN ANGST!

Yeah 4/5 of the Cuckoos are upset Esme has a boyfriend. Their concerns in part are because without her their apparently powerless.. which given one will die and another will leave and they’ll be left with three is just factually not true, and either Morrison changed his mind later, or more likely their simply exagerating like teens do. Emma points out it’s pointless to fight this...

So... their in a domestically abusive relationship rife with sexual tension? Are you sure your not htinking of Sam and Diane, Ross and Rachel, Garfiled and Odie perhaps?

Meanwhile Angel’s sulking in a tree talking about how all the kids are stupid and she dosen’t fit in. That sort of thing. Wolverine naturally has a tactful and understandable response to this:

It’s here Angel goes from understandable, a bit hard edged and obnoxious becuase of a very rough life.. and just becomes annoying.  I do get what Grant was trying to do: he was trying to play with Wolverine’s habit of taking sassy teens under his wing by giving him a more hardscrabble one with a harder life pre-xaviers.. not that Jubilee’s was easy, but I get what he was going for.. he just dosen’t succeed. Instead of a realistic version of a teen sidekick she just comes off as an obnoxious brat whose rude to everyone including her one friend Logan and her later boyfriend.  It dosen’t help that ONCE AGAIN, Morrison flew directly into unfortunate implications without meaning to, by having the only major POC character (Bishop guest stars later and there are two significant characters during the Riot at Xaviers arc but both aren’t relevant before or after), be an abused teen with gross fly based powers and a teen pregnancy subplot. Seriously this isn’t even the LAST time Morrison shoves their foot in their mouth like this in this run. While I do like this run a lot, it’s still 20 years old and it’s still going to have a bunch of bits that have aged like harvarti left on a sidewalk, and handing out unfortnuate implications like their candy is tied for the biggest with their handling of Magneto when he finally shows up in person. It’s THAT bad a take on the character that it’s up there with accidental racisim and transphobia. 

So moving on from.. that we get Jean comforting the professor before meeting the press, giving a throughly lovely speech about how Charles got his powers 30 years ago and despite seeing the worst in humanity, used his telepathy to allow him to see past it and see deep down just how scared and alone we all felt. So she takes them into a psychic conference room and we get a very interesting exchange. 

It’s an interesting parallel to how real world disinfranchised groups, how it takes time.. but soon being a POC or LBGTQ+ goes from unrightfully perscuted to celebrated. How a group starts with hates whipsers on the fringe of things but grows to be accepted, like it always SHOULD have been. Take representation of Trans people in the media. It started with Trans people being almost entirely punchlines and sources of fucking horendous “DID DEY USED TO BE A MAN.” storylines and hurtful jabs at people who had transitioned, treating them as a sideshow instead of you know as fucking human beings. But now coming out as what you always were ont he inside is celebrated. Sure the right are dicks about it but they always will be: but most media gladly celebrates when someone comes out as trans. Same with being gay, or bi or pan or polamorus or nonbinary.  Hell I admire grant for showing i’ts not even 100% perfect once you are popular: you still have to grapple both with people wanting to copot your culture and those who still don’t understand you trying to speak for you. 

She also gets the standard question calling the X-Men an army, shoots it down with the normal global peacekeeping operation stuff.. then we get this bitch. 

Who quickly realizes she’s outclassed by Emma Frost, professional that bitch. And while Jean is understandbly going to have to erase that.. I can’t blame her for snapping her.

Just to tear this shit down.: The privacy thing is not something she’s doing. All she’s doing is spcyhic teleconfrencing, you harpy. They fight greek gods and monsters to protect your sorry ass and the last one.. just makes me absolutely livid and feels so much like a real world comment i’m suprised there isn’t a fox news logo next to her bigoted head. 

Trouble follows them everywhere they go.. because their mutants. They can’t help it. A LOT of shit like the demons, aliens, and gods and what not, I do not know if they actually did fight the greek gods but i’m not going to say for sure they did not, the norse gods defintely, not sure on greek. But the point is allt his stuff HAPPENS TO THEM half the time, or is a consequence of trying to PROTECT PEOPLE. I’m so nettled by this because this is how the marvel unvierse acts all the fucking time towards ALL super powered peoples. Mutants esepcailly but they blame the heroes and what not for being chased and harassed by guys in costumes or alien invasions or all the stuff they FIGHT. Sure sometimes they caused it but it’s either because of a monsterous person with a grudge or just because their powerful and some douche took an intrest. I’m just.. so fucking tired of asshole civlians in comics. It’s realisitc I know but it’s just hard to stomach after so many have turned their back on so many for such DUMB reasons. 

Jean recovers well pointing out the genocide and how 16 million people, 16 million possible einsteinss or mozarts are just GONE, and that their trying to focus on the future. She also brings up autistic savants who can talk to atoms and while I don’t like the use of the savant thing, as it brings to mind stuff like rainman I very badly want to see this autistic kid who can talk to atoms as someone on the spectrum myself. Also I just want the crew of HIckma’ns books in general to pour over this because there are a lot of intresting powers and personalities only MENTIONED we never saw proper that could be great characters. Just saying. 

Jean cocludes her speech to the world, including Logan whose wisely getting hammered at anearbye bar.. while Hank finds out what’s going on with their sickness.. nanonscopic sentnels in the blood. 

But while the press confrence ends well with Jean having won over the press.. things go sideways as not only is it clear Esme’s boyfriend is in fact something sinister.. but Jean falls over due to the nano snetinels, and senses Scott being taken in tibet, taken down by a group of the Shiar’s imperial guard.. picutre the legion of superheroes but blindly loyal to the goverment and far more likely to get killed. And the rest are preparing to attacking including Gladiator who if you don’t know him, has all the powers of superman as long as he retains his confidence. 

And it turns out Esme’s boyfriend is an advanced Scout, the shapeshifting amoeba blob thing Stuff, a new addition by morrison and good on him. And the Imperial Guard are here but with one goal

 Superdestroyer

On the Ship we find out both wha’ts going on with Scott and Xorn, they’ve been taken and why the shiar are attempting mutant genocide: Cassandra is puppeting ALL of them, has convinced them the mutants are infected and since Lilandra is a puppet, Scott’s words fall on deaf ears. 

Meanwhile Wolverine ambushes one of the squads, kiling one named Dinosaurer via claw to the brain, while Emma has had a dome thing put over her head and isn’t transforming into diamond to counter it because...

But the Cuckoos fight back, taking out oracle before easily handling stuff since his brain is fairly simple.. and given he’s racist against solid people and unlike the others reveling in the genocide just a tad.. yeah what he deserves. So now with a living weapon the Cuckoos make peace with Angel as they need all the help they can get. 

Jean ushers the press into the panic room, not happy about it but not having anothe roption for their saftey. Hank tells her to self distruct crebra if cassandra get sclose and goes off to join the fight and let off some steam over the situation. Hank easily routes two of them, and one , Manta tries to just fly right ot jtean wince their TK proof. How does that go?

Jean gets to saftey after that, not that she needs it and hank is quickly taken down by a batch of Superguardians.. only for Wolverine to arrive in the Sknitt of time and chop them up.. oh and as one of the puts it...

Bad. Ass. I also like the addition of the flight patch, a nod to the Legion, who the Imperial Guard were based on as those kids used flight rings. 

But while Logan and Hank easily tag team these assholes...

The SHiar call in the big guns.. Gladiator.. and I wasn’t kidding abotu the superman thing. While Logan TRIES to talk him out of it, the murders only confirm Cassandra’s bullshit and Gladiator breaks into the panic room throwing hank and wolverin’e before them having utterly decimated them off panel. I mean Wolvie is a badass.. but even he has limits. I also like recontecullizing the guard as a whole here.. showing just how TERRIFYING they SHOULD be as enimies to the x-men. Yes our heroes did win.. but barely and only till Gladiator showed up. In most cases thier clearly holding back out of affection but here hteir just at errifying unstoppable force, and also apparently used to doing genocides like this. It takes what was a cheesy shout out to David Cockrums other big artistic work, and makes it horrifying and it is AWESOME. I admit to not having liked this arc as much for the longest time but this reread, the sheer teror and hopleessness as an interstellar superman easily cuts through our mighty mutants like tissue... it’s awesome. 

Thankfully one of the Guard found smasher.. and thus the truth comes out so our heroes are given a stay of execution with Gladiator clearly horrified at what he almost did and our heroes now so sick they can barely move and Hank can’t think them out of this. 

Thankfully he dosen’t has to as back in space, Cyclops tires of it and points out something Xorn, not being as experinced nor having delt with the guard ahd thought of: G-Type, the glowly guy about to execute them, is made of solar energy.. and xorn can manipulate that thanks to his star brain. He does, they take out the rest.. and prepare to go save the day.

Losers: PIcking up shortly before where we left off we see Cassandra murder Lilandra’s advisor who figured out what she was just as our heroes escape.. and as Cassandra is having Lilnadra order all of the shiar ships to immolate themselves. 

WIth Lilandra not being any use, Cass tries to psychically force her to commit sucidie but jumping off a space ledge but Xorn saves her. Cass tries another turn at mentally breaking an x-man, pointing out all scott’s recent flaws, his increased repression his faling marriage and while it gets him to stop it dosen’t quite work as well as it did on hank, likely because at his heart Hank is simply a more emotive person. Though his REAL reason for stalling is he can’t kill charles.. which he muses just as the ship blows up real good. 

Meanwhile back at Campus the kids initaiate their plan, having Angel break in and take a dna sample. She also finds beak naked in a tank and decides eh why not and brings him with her. This ends up paying off as Beak suggests the obvious to get emma free.. just force the space guy they have over in the corner to do it. They do and it works

Back in the mansion our heroes prepare for Casssandra... but Jean and Logan object to saving her body, pointing out that getting hank to repair it is exactly what she wants, and that Jean feels she can save charles without uit, with Hank being understandably doubtful given their current condition.. but Jean’s real plan is to put charles in her head and it’s already too far in actoin to stop now: she’s been saving his memories as they flaked off and if she dosen’t do this now there will be no charles left. 

Hank evacuates the civlians to teh danger room, and has an encounter with trish who tries to apologize and get him back.. only for him to rightfully regjecter her..a and then goes a step further by capping it off with:

Yeah on it’s own it’s not TERRIBLE. Still very dated to claim your gay just to spite someone, but for the time it was acceptable and compared to some of Morrison’s other gaffes in the run it’s minor at best. But it leads into a rather annoying subplot we’ll naturally get to that’s a much bigger issue, so i’ll save talking about it in full for when it comes up again. 

Jean manages to shove Chuck into her head, but is naturally leaking a bit and barely holding it or him together and may of overestimated herself just a tad.. while on the lawn Cassandra easily takes out the guards. That said the scene of Jean taking Chuck into her head is REALLY damn awesome. Jean is the arc MVP by a mile and Hank is pretty dang good competition. 

All Hell: We open the final issue of the arc with Scott and Xorn escaping the spaceship using some teleport tubes taking Arakai and Lilandra with them. 

We open with Cassadra utterly humilating gladiator while the kid team prepares to fight her despite you know, the 8 billion to 1 odds against them. 

Jean, despite hte discknes and trying to keep an old man in her brain marches out , prepared to fight, for the kids sake. For the world’s sake. But Logan’s easily taken out and with Jean barely holding it together.. the kids prepare to fight.. likely being slaughtered even if they mean well.. onlyf or help to finally arrive with Scott and Xorn glowy porting in. We get a really sweet , short moment with scott and jean...

Scott not knowing the situation tries to have Xorn heal charles first but since Cassandra’s body is dead and unoccupied that’s a no go.. he’s still usefult hough, curing Jean of her nanosentital sickness and moving on to Scott and Hank while there’s still time. 

We find out more about cassandra: She’s a murrmadi, a bodyless parasite.. eseetinally the dark first test a person faces... she just stuck around because she was one for a telepath.. the world’s STRONGEST telepath. But really other than that part the rest just feels like stuff we alreayd heard LAST TIME, mildly repaackaged and seems enitrley like filler to pad the issue out. 

So while Jean takes cerebra, both to keep it away from Cassandra’s plans of mutant genocide and for whatever she has planned, Scott, Hank and Xorn prepare to hold the line.. and as Jean mentions.. emma’s still out in the wild. 

So we get our climactic showdown.. logan, hank and xorn veruss cassandra, with Cassandra trying to do eveyrthing she can, tear them down mentally, throw out the students with our heroes fighting back best they can. It’s good stuff.  

Eventaully Cassandra gets to Jean.. but she’s already inacted her plan, putting a piece of Xavier’s mind in EVERY mutant, and giving Cassandra one ohell ofa reason you suck speech. 

It’s an incapsulation of what i said earlier and what the runs about: alone we are weak but together.. we just might make it. More on that as we go. But thanks to Cass naturally going fo rcerberba.. she accidently restores charles and is left bodyless.

Emma finishes the fight with her own brilliant gambit, presending cassandra her body.. but it’s actually stuff , reprogrammed into a sentient brain for her to inhabit and leaving her trapped, with Charles hoping t teach the now mentally reset Cassandra.  So Cassandra is beat, the virus is stopped, and our heroes have one.. but naturally for this run.. there’s one last suprise in store. 

Charles can walk again.. and going forward will be a far more active member of the team. The team is complete, Cassandra is beaten, and the future.. is bright. 

Final Thoughts:

This arc is a mixed bag.. it has really good scenes with the first and last issues being the standouts, with the former being an utter classic with an intresting gimick and the latter being a rousing climax with tons of awesome moments, with some good mometns scattered throughout.

But that’s the arc’s issue.. it has good moments and ideas.. but they don’t quite work togehter. The idea of teh Shiar Imperial Guard nearly doing a genocide is good, but the Shiar are such flat characters.. it’s really hard to care. They just don’t have enough connection to the x-men to really have the betryal sting but aren’t callous enough for genocide protocols to maeks sense. It’s a good idea, I still support it being terrifying.. but not enough is done with it and it feels liek Grant is more concerned with throwing weirdos at the x-men than actually saying something. 

The biggest issue however is the art. While inconsitant art is an issue as they’d rotate artists.. but in previous arcs it was usually pretty evenly split but here it’s sloppy: Quitely does the first issue, van Sciver the second.. and the worst of the three Igor Kordey does most of the art. I gave him the beinfit of the doubt last time.. but this time not so much. His art is muddy and tries to be stylized but comes off confusing,ugly and not great. He’s probably a lovely guy but given he’s up against two legendary artists, his lack of style comapred to both shows badly.  And given the arc is alreayd a bit overly complicated, it makes things WORSE by giving us muddled art in a very complex storyline. The flip flopping art makes a fairly intricate story very hard to follow. It’s easily why this arc didn’t grab me in the past and even seeing some better moments, it’s not the series best. It’s not the worst either, Planet X easily takes that ground despite having far better art. It’s an incredibly muddled incredibly long feeling arc and really needed to be compressed by one or two issues but instead is just hard to get through. It’s owrth it for the rest of the runa nd the good moments within but all in all easily one of the weakest points in the series. 

Next Month on New X-Men:The X-Men soak in the new world order, and we meet fantomex, dust and the last surivivors of genosha. 

Next on this blog:Green Eggs and Ham is back!

If you enjoyed this review PLEASE join my patreon. The end of hte month is coming and I need eveyr cent I can get so join at patreon.com/popculturebuffet and i’ll see you at the next rainbow. 

[tenequalstian]

Theory Crafting for Jonathan Hickman’s X-Men Run

So, this account was originally going to have only one post. That post would be a response to the (wonderful and awesome) theory presented by Xavier Files (TL;DR the X-Men go to Mars and meet Ex Nihilo from Hickman’s Avengers). I had another theory - one that still worked with Zack’s theory - but, one that assumed some connections to another Hickman story.

My theory was that Xavier would use Krakoa to make a new “Tian” (it might not be called Tian though, as Warren Ellis and Simone Bianchi already created the 616 Tian in Ghost Box). This “Tian” would be the new homeland for mutants, eventually bringing about Red Nightcrawler and Moonstar/Rasputin hybrid we see in Powers of X.

Why did I think this? Because I felt that the color palette for the cover of House of X #1 was more similar to the color palette of Tian’s depiction in Ultimate Hawkeye. I then made up a theory all about how Hickman was using ideas from his Ultimates run (which used a lot of X-Men terminology to begin with). Basically, doing a spiritual successor to the only run he never got to finish (this theory is where the name comes from).

But, then I found something that blew that up.

I was wandering around the internet. I’ve never been on Something Awful until this past week. Hickman made a witty twitter comment about something and one of the replies stated that they thought he lurked in the Batman’s Shameful Secret boards. I checked it out, and went straight the X-Boards.

On the last page, I saw Blockhouse’s post.

Now, I’m sure we all remember BC’s reporting on this. They had no real concrete information on the books and even made it seem like Hickman wasn’t writing X-Men. But, I never heard this rumor before. I don’t know where it came from. Blockhouse makes it sound like the rumor was before the announcement but doesn’t elaborate on whether or not this rumor only pertained to HOXPOX or the whole relaunch. I’m cheap and refuse to pay money to join a forum, so, if you see this and have a Something Awful account, would you kindly ask Blockhouse where they got that rumor from? Or if Blockhouse sees this, please reach out and share the rumor. I’d be very grateful.

But anyways, without any proof or context, I put in the back of my mind and thought, “Immortality? In my X-Men? Okay, Jonathan.” Then, the gears in my mind began to turn. Hickman loves the Eternals, who are all currently dead and potentially being replaced with the Olympians. It explains beings like Apocalypse. And it wouldn’t be the weirdest thing to happen to mutants as a whole (*cough cough* AIDS immunity).

If true, this could also tie into Hickman and Weaver’s SHIELD and the Elixir of Life. That’d be dope.

As for what I’ll do after posting this? Gonna take some guesses as to what some of the new books will be. Do some fancasts for the creative teams. Come up with some fun titles for these hypothetical books. Gonna make some educated guesses, and avoid listing what I would do with the X-line (No, Clay Mann will not be drawing the X-Men anytime soon. Stop saying it).

First up, All-New, All-Different X-Men...

[paulsebert]

Secret Empire #0 Thoughts (Spoilers)

Previously: The Red Skull used Korbik (a sentient cosmic cube that sometimes takes a child's form) to turn Captain America into a bad guy. Captain America is now a loyal agent of Hydra an evil organization that is sometimes Nazi affiliated and sometimes not depending on who is writing. Captain America planned a bunch of bad stuff behind everyone's back.  Captain America turned on his evil master.  Red Skull desperate to make Cap stop admitted that Captain America that his new history (that we saw in extensive flashbacks over many issues) was all lies he made up. Captain America doesn't care because he's EEEEVIL! He kills Red Skull and sets out to take over the world... his way! This took 15 fricking issues to get to.  Meanwhile we learned that Nick Spencer should really stay off twitter.

Notes: Despite the bad reaction Spencer's Cap run has gotten I'm actually a fan of most of Nick Spencer's work. Superior Foes of Spider-Man is of one the best comics of the last decade and the The Fix is hilarious. His run on the two Captain America runs are really mixed bags.  The first two arcs of “Captain America: Sam Wilson” are really good but Spencer struggled trying to deal with real life politics in the later issues. As for the eeeeeevil Captain America book well... it's better than painful fever dream of Rick Remender's Captain America book. I'm going to try to be fair and optimistic going into this one.

Our story opens with a World War II flashback in of Hydra Cap in the mountains of Japan meeting with Kraken an obscure villain from Jonathan Hickman's Secret Warriors. Hydra's secret base looks like the Legends of the Hidden Temple set. Kraken tells Captain America that the Allie will use the Cosmic Cube (not Korbik but another one) to change reality so that Hydra doesn't take over the world. He says they're going to change his memories and no matter what he must not forget he's a Hydra Agent. Of course we know all of these new World War II memories are bullshit so... they're either illusions or maybe Kraken was manipulating Steve the whole time or... uuuugh. I am three pages in and I have a headache!

We now have a flow chart of characters. I know Secret War did the same thing but... hoo-boy. That's a bad sign.

We cut to modern day.  Cap is at S.H.I.E.L.D command with Sharon Carter.  We learn that a Chitari (those aliens from the first Avengers movie) invasion is headed towards Earth.  But the Planetary Defense shield is down.  Wasn't there a whole other organization called S.W.O.R.D that handled this? Where is Abigail Brand?

We see the Guardians of the Galaxy and The Ultimates fighting aliens in space.  I am wondering why most of the focus isn't on this and is instead on S.H.I.E.L.D HQ?  Daniel Acuña draws pretty fight scenes. Let him do that!

Meanwhile a boatload of supervillians lead by Gravitron are attacking New York and the Defenders are fighting them.  Unfortunately more of the focus is on S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters. So we’re mostly watching EVIL Cap and Sharon watching all the action.

Meanwhile Hydra has invaded the country of Sokovia the country that Ultron completely destroyed back in Kurt Busiek's run.  I know it’s played a role in Specer’s run but shouldn't it just be all empty space and dead Ultron drones now?

The narrator is REALLY going out of his way to tell us what a brilliant strategist Hydra Cap is and how all of these couldn't have happened by coincidence.  It's sort of like how every three pages in Avengers Arena someone says “gee Arcade is really a clever villain now. He sure thought of everything.”

Back in space Quasar is eaten by a space whale.  I should be upset at the apparent death of a new superhero but like... this HAS to be a set-up for her to punch her way out of the belly of a space whale an issue or two later. Right? I mean why would you waste an opportunity for an awesome action scene?

I just realized that Hydra Cap planning his scheme while the heavy hitters are in space is a LOT like the plot of Infinity.  Also the whole novelty of an EVIL Captain America story would have been a lot more at home in Axis.  Remember how Tony Stark was eeeeeevil for a year and no one cared?

Now Nitro shows up while the Defenders are fighting and Jessica Jones throws him high into the air while he triggers an explosion that looks like a homage to the opening of Civil War.  This comic is turning into a greatest hits album of other comic crossovers.

The Secretary of Defense gives Captain America full control over the U.S. Military and Law Enforcement thanks to a new act of congress so everything bad from here on out is caused by an ill conceived piece of legislation... just like Civil War!

The defense shield is turned on locking aliens out and the Defenders get backup from the Uncanny Avengers. Things are looking up for the heroes.

Suddenly a heli-carrier crashes into S.H.I.E.L.D HQ and a bunch Hydra mooks show up. Only the S.H.I.E.L.D guards aren't fighting back because Dr Faustus is brainwashing everyone.  I should have mentioned before this whole mess started that the Red Skull had psychic mindscrew powers and dude whose sole power was brainwashing people working for him.  If you really wanted to do a Captain America is EVIL story the whole cosmic cube and prolonged elaborate false history flashbacks are kind of superfluous.

Captain America orders the Hydra Guards and the mind controlled S.H.I.E.L.D guys to take Sharon Carter prisoner.  Sharon is not under Faustus' control despite the fact that if I had a drink for the number of stories where Sharon Carter was mind controlled I'd be drunk.  Sharon thinks Cap is being controlled by Faustus but...

 A Hydra guy is just standing there and has this slackjawed look like “I can't believe this shit.”  I'm going to pretend he's Bob from Deadpool. Bob's presence is the most entertaining thing about this book so far.

I could be reading “The Button” right now.  That comic has Batman fighting Professor Zoom AND Flash fighting Samurai Robots... Samurai Robots!  And it doesn't have walls and walls of exposition text...

Iron Men Riri Williams and Force Ghost Tony Stark (it's a long story) discover someone has sabotaged the planetary defense shield and Hydra guys attack them. Just as it looks like we're going to get a good fight it cuts away.

On Space Skype Captain America reveals to Captain Marvel that wave after wave of Chitari are coming and he's keeping them walled off outside with fierce alien warriors to their doom.  Cue Cliffhanger #1.

Tony Stark and Riri Williams just beat up all the Hydra Guys OFF CAMERA!  We've got like a bazillion action scenes going on and NONE of them are given any time to breath under these unending walls of exposition text.

Hey it's HELMUT ZEMO!  Which Zemo is it... the morally complex anti-villian/anti-hero from Thunderbolts? Is it the Cobra Commander-esc idiot from Avengers Undercover? A combination of the two? I don't know because he has all of three panels in this issue.

Zemo and a guy named Blackout (not the Ghost Rider Villian) have stolen the book of Darkhold.  Does anyone remember Darkhold: Pages from the Book of Sins?  It was like this early 90s quasi-horror comic about this cursed book whose pages granted evil monkey paw wishes and the people who made those wishes usually turned into monsters. Plus there was an evil dwarf.  Like that you should be revamping that into something so if you wanted Peter Dinklage to be a villain in a Marvel movie.  Oh and there were people called The Darkhold Redeemers who were trying to stop the Dwarf and one of them was a lesbian and this was like long before LGTB representation was anywhere near common in comics.  Dude I want a Darkhold Redeemers comic.

So Zemo and an obscure Avengers villian named Blackout (who looks like the poor man's Electro) use the Darkhold to banish New York City isolating it under a Dark Force dimension dome.  It's like when the Hand sealed off Hell's Kitchen in Shadowland but bigger.  ANOTHER crossover callback.  Cliffhanger #2.

Tony deducts that the next target of attack is going to be Washington DC he calls for The Avengers (several teams worth), The Champions, and Spider-Man (who I guess wasn't in New York.)  We get some big epic hero arrival poses that would look great if they weren't crammed into TINY... TINY panels.

Back in Washington an army of Hydra Helicarriers loom ominously over the White House. Hey do you remember the C-Plot from Fear Itself.  When Skadi's Army attacked Washington but no-one cared because the rest of the book was about fighting monsters with Evil Thor Hammers? ANOTHER CALLBACK!

This the B-side of a Marvel Comics Crossovers Greatest Hits Album. Side A is about 70% tracks from Secret War, the Worthy stuff from Fear Itself and a trio of tracks from Civil War, Secret Invasion, and House of M. that were popular at the time but doesn't hold up.

The nicest thing I can say about this comic is that Daniel Acuña's art is really good and if anything this is one of the best looking bad comics I've ever read.

Despite the involvement of Hydra and the 40s flashback EVIL Cap doesn't really come across as a Nazi at all and just a generic “take over the world” badguy.  On one hand that kind of seems to be Marvel backing away from the obvious “Cap is a Nazi” angle that was making people uncomfortable and angry and yet on the other hand it's also backing away from the “America is more messed up than we thought” allegory that could actually make a point this time.  Spencer isn't the guy to be doing that kind of project though.  Not sure who I could see doing that and making such a gut punch work. Grant Morrison or Kyle Baker maybe?

If this is any indication it's going to be a loooooong six months.  Maybe I should be polishing off my “Rikki Barnes: The Winter Soldier” pitch.

[sineala]

hi!! first off, thank you so much for all the comics advice you provide, they're utterly amazing and are really appreciated!! I have a question regarding the last comic ask you answered: are the comics you mentioned in chronological order? you see, I've been trying to figure out the order for some time, and i would be really grateful if you could help me out 💕

It’s sort of mostly chronological? It’s complicated, because most of the volumes start and stop at the same place but this is not always the case; I was also trying to figure out a way to list the events. As it is, the way things are listed there, I don’t differentiate between runs that start at the same time as other runs and events that happen within runs. 

It would be really useful if there were a timeline (I feel like someone must have drawn one) but this is the best I can do with just text:

AVENGERS:

Avengers v1 (1963)

Avengers v2 (1996)

Avengers v3 (1998)

New Avengers v1 (2005) & Mighty Avengers v1 (2007)

Avengers v4 (2010) & New Avengers v2 (2010)

Avengers v5 (2013) & New Avengers v3 (2013)

Avengers v6 (2015) #0

All-New All-Different Avengers (2016)

Avengers v7 (2017)

Avengers v8 (2018)

TALES OF SUSPENSE:

Tales of Suspense v1 (1959)

Tales of Suspense v2 (1995) #1

CAPTAIN AMERICA:

Captain America v1 (1968)

Captain America v2 (1996)

Captain America v3 (1998)

Captain America v4 (2002)

Captain America v5 (2005)

Captain America v6 (2011)

Captain America v7 (2013)

Captain America: Sam Wilson (2015) & Captain America: Steve Rogers (2016)

Captain America v8 (2017) #25 

Captain America #695-704  (2017)

Captain America v9 (2018)

IRON MAN:

Iron Man v1 (1968)

Iron Man v2 (1996)

Iron Man v3 (1998)

Iron Man v4 (2005)

Invincible Iron Man v1 (2008)

Iron Man v5 (2013)

Superior Iron Man (2015)

Invincible Iron Man v2 (2015) & International Iron Man (2016)

Invincible Iron Man v3 (2017) & Infamous Iron Man (2016)

Tony Stark: Iron Man (2018)

The Marvel wiki will sometimes use different year numbers from AO3 – for example, AO3 has Avengers vol 5 as 2012, not 2013. It has to do with street date vs actual recorded publication date, I think, and those differ. Also the volume numbering of Iron Man on the wiki is currently EXTREMELY WRONG and has decided that Invincible Iron Man starts literally in the middle of the Director of SHIELD run so all their volume numbers are off by one. I have fixed it in my list.

So you can kind of see from the years how they link up. There were Cap comics in the 40s and 50s (the 50s Cap has been retconned as not Steve); Tales of Suspense started in the 50s, but Tony only showed up in 1963, a couple months before Avengers started. Steve shows up in the modern era in Avengers  #4. Start reading Tales of Suspense at #39 (1963), the first appearance of Iron Man; at #58 Cap joins the book, and it ends at #99 and splits into Cap and IM, Cap keeps the numbering and starts at #100, in 1968. After that volume 1 of Avengers, Cap, and IM keep running until the mid-90s.

Marvel didn’t really invent events until the original Secret Wars, in the mid-80s. Operation Galactic Storm, from the early 90s, is probably the biggest event from a Steve/Tony perspective; this is the Kree Supreme Intelligence stuff. Then volume 1 ends with The Crossing and Onslaught, which… um. Yeah.

Volume 2 of Avengers/Cap/IM runs simultaneously for about a year. Mostly we don’t talk about this. Definitely read the Tales of Suspense one-shot which came out about now, though.

Volume 3 of Avengers/Cap/IM start at the same time, in 1998, after the whole Onslaught mess is over. Cap v3 and v4 fit into the same space of time as the entire v3 runs of Avengers and IM, so Cap v4 – which is post-9/11 – ends at the same time as Avengers/IM v3, which is where the numbering starts to stop syncing. There aren’t really any major events within v3 other than small crossovers like Live Kree or Die, until you get to Disassembled at the end, which basically wrecks everything.

The next start we get is New Avengers v1/Cap v5/IM v4, in 2005. This is basically the “Civil War up to Steve’s resurrection” era, although I guess House of M happens before CW, if you want to read House of M. This is when Bendis starts writing every Avengers book known to man. CW starts about one or two dozen issues in, depending on title (they don’t start quite at the same time). Mighty Avengers v1 starts after Civil War, and if you’re following along with events, you then want to read The Initiative, Secret Invasion, Dark Reign, and Siege as you go along. IM has a variety of writers and has Extremis (at the beginning) as well as the Director of SHIELD run. Cap v5 is the Brubaker run, and it’s mostly about Bucky. Captain America does some weird renumbering back to vol 1 #600 at the end of vol 5 and then goes on a bit and then (when Steve is Cap again) moves to a team-up book (Captain America & x) for a few issues, running simultaneously (as far as I know) with the beginning of Cap v6. Steve is alive again at the end of Siege.

Next, it’s Avengers v4/Secret Avengers v1/Invincible IM v1 in about 2010. Look for banners that say Heroic Age. And start with Avengers Prime. The Avengers is still Bendis. These three don’t exactly sync. Invincible (this is Fraction’s IM run) is already going before Siege (and therefore before Avengers v4); the arcs World’s Most Wanted and Stark Disassembled align with Siege, sort of, very badly. Steve is actually in Secret Avengers v1 rather than on the main Avengers team at the beginning of Avengers v4; he doesn’t head his own Cap book (Cap v6) until about halfway through Avengers, when Fear Itself happens and Bucky kicks the bucket (don’t worry, he’s fine) and Steve gets the shield again and rejoins the main team. Fraction’s run also renumbers at #500 because why the hell not. New Avengers v2 is also running now, starting I think at the same time as the others, but is not Steve & Tony-centric. Also AvX happens.

And then it’s Marvel Now and we have Avengers v5/New Avengers v3/Cap v7/IM v5 kicking off together in 2012-2013. This is Hickman’s Avengers, Remender’s Cap, and Gillen’s IM. Important events are Infinity and Axis. After Axis, Steve loses the serum and Tony goes evil and we get Superior Iron Man running in parallel with the ends of Avengers and Cap. And then the multiverse dies and we get Secret Wars and its associated bunch of miniseries.

After Secret Wars, in 2015, it’s All-New All-Different Marvel. (Avengers v6 is a preview issue for all the Avengers titles.) We get All-New All Different Avengers, Bendis’ IM (Invincible v2 & International), and Spencer’s SamCap. At this time, Steve is deserumed and running Uncanny Avengers; I forget the volume number. He was running Uncanny before the end of the world too. SamCap started before SteveCap did, and that one v8 issue is actually Spencer’s final issue that kept the numbering from SamCap. Important events include Standoff, which is when Steve gets reserumed (SteveCap starts after this) and becomes secretly Hydra. At the end of all this we get Civil War II.

Then it’s… I think it’s called Marvel Now 2.0? Avengers v7 starts at about the same time Bendis’ Invincible renumbers again (and is about Riri) so we’re at v3 by my count, and Infamous Iron Man (about Doom) starts. The two Cap books are still running on the same numbers. Then Secret Empire happens.

Then it’s Marvel Legacy, which means that literally everything renumbers to its vol 1 numbers because Marvel wants to make me cry, but Avengers and Invincible IM keep going with the same creative teams. Spencer’s Cap run ends basically when Secret Empire ends, and Bendis stops writing for Marvel with IM #600. Waid picks up Cap for two arcs, one of which is amazing and one of which is extremely confusing.

And now I think we’re at A Fresh Start and Avengers v8/Cap v9/Tony Stark: Iron Man have started. The current major event is Infinity Wars. There are Infinity Gems involved, yes.

You know, I thought this was going to be quicker to type.

Also I forgot to tell everyone to read Iron Age, in which Tony time-travels, cries in the rain, and hits on himself.