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bamfdaddio · 2 years

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New Mutants Abridged: 1985

The New Mutants, the YA branch of the X-Men, are the next generation: they have to learn to control their powers and to integrate into a world that hates and fears them. As their first official spin-off, the much more coherent New Mutants are a part of the X-Men’s long, tangled history. Want to unravel this tapestry? Then read the Abridged X-Men!

(New Mutants 22 - 34) - by Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz, Steve Leialoha

My favorite subplot of this year is Sam rebelling in the softest way possible by dating a rocker chick and adopting some of her wardrobe. Of course Xavier can't even abide this, the meekest of teenage resistance, because he’s the squarest of squares. (New Mutants 24)

Whereas the Uncanny X-Men in 1985 are a bit of a disorganized mess, the New Mutants are a lot more focused. We’ve got three main arcs, and the last one barely gets derailed by the intrusion of Secret Wars II! Sure, the first arc is largely disregardable, but the second arc introduces an iconic character and the third arc, while a bit sloppy, introduces an iconic villain. So let’s goOoOo!

The Cast

Psyche - Danielle Moonstar. One of the leaders, can telepathically conjure up your greatest fear or desire. Her powers are developing: she’s slowly becoming a full-on mono-target illusionist.

Cannonball - Sam Guthrie. Other leader. Jetass with big ears. Nothin’ can hurt him while he’s blastin’.

Wolfsbane - Rahne Sinclair. Scottish werewolf. Has terrible self hatred, which isn’t odd considering the fact that she was raised by reverend Craig who put the fear of God in her. Convinced she’s going to hell because of aforementioned werewolfishness.

Sunspot - Roberto daCosta. Brazilian hothead.

Magik - Illyana Rasputin. Teleporter, demonic sorceress and resident bad girl. Is slowly being enveloped by a mysterious armour while using her powers. Willing to take all the risks.

Magma - Amara Aquilla. Lavamancer. Exchange student from a hidden roman village in the Amazon, still somehow very boring.

Cypher - Douglas Ramsey. Starts out thinking this is all some great adventurous caper, but soon realizes that his inoffensive powers (he’s an omniglot) mean that he’s forever out of his depth.

Warlock. Techno-organic alien. Goofball.

Professor Charles Xavier - Telepathic headmaster, still violating boundaries all over the place. Has adopted a more ‘hands off’ teaching philosophy later, considering some events in the sister book.

Cloakspot and Daggersbane

I know I’m not the best at keeping things short and sweet, which is partly because I tend to ramble on and partly because I’m dealing with a writer who likes to take the Neverending Story-approach to his plots and riddle them with more hooks than can ever be picked up on. (Claremont, I love you, but you’re not exactly all about the tight narrative.) In the interest of succinctness, however, we can mostly ignore the first arc of 1985, which involves Sunspot and Wolfsbane being possessed by the powers of Cloak and Dagger. It doesn’t really figure into the grand scheme of things, it’s more about Cloak and Dagger – who have never really figured into the X-mythos and are (not coincidentally!) one of the few mutants I don’t know much about – and by the end of the plot the status quo is restored: Tandy and Tyrone get their powers back, Roberto and Rahne are happy and healthy! Yay!

Legion

And then, we check back in on Muir Isle (the Research Centre for Potential Future Plot Hooks), where a mysterious patient with truly the raddest of hair is throwing a ‘poltergeist tantrum’. It renders two of Moira MacTaggart’s aides catatonic. Oops! Since this obviously a psychic emergency (and not the kind where I can’t get up from the bathroom floor because everything is horrible), Moira calls Xavier, who comes a-flyin’ in the Blackbird, together with half of the New Mutants. (Moonstar, Wolfsbane, Cypher and Warlock.)

Whatever, Dani. It’s not like you have stellar taste in lovers, I’ve seen you flirt with Sunspot. (New Mutants 26)

Waiting on Muir Isle is Gabrielle Haller, Israeli ambassador, previous paramour of Xavier and mother of David, the trouble-causing patient. Meanwhile, somewhere on the more populated part of the island (I guess? I never know if Muir Isle is just a barren rock or if there’s a tiny little Muir Town), Rahne runs into the man who raised her, the hateful reverend Craig. He calls her satanspawn because of her werewolfishness. Rahne runs to Moira’s lab for solace and for once, Moira is actually a comforting presence and not the pragmatic worst. She even tells Rahne she considers her her daughter. (Don’t ask what happened to Moira’s son Kevin, Rahne!) Anyway, such sincere emotions must be immediately punished.

Gabrielle, meanwhile, comes clean to Xavier. She mentions how she has not regretted their affair (despite Xavier being her therapist and therefore doing a hecking breach of trust), but she has not contacted him either, because of as of yet undisclosed reasons. And then, just as Gabby starts telling about “the trauma that made David autistic” (spoiler alert: not how autism works, narrative), a massive explosion interrupts them! In the wake of the explosion, Moira and Rahne are physically unharmed, but their minds are completely blank. Uh oh!

My google search has yielded a disappointing lack of people cosplaying as Legion with his iconic hair. C´mon nerds! Hop to it! (New Mutants 26)

Xavier, who is still recovering from the brutal beating he suffered, has to use Rahne and Dani’s telepathic connection to enter David’s fortified mind. (It’s funny how much X-Men and New Mutants are an extension of one another, only reading this one is like watching Angel without having watched Buffy.) Anyway, Xavier inexplicably deduces that David had three fractured personalities, each with their own powers: a telepath, a telekinetic and a ‘pyrotic’ (we’d call that a pyrokinetic nowadays). Xavier starts breaking through the very real metaphorical wall, but when David reveals the one secret that Gabrielle could not spit out (“Luke, I am your father son.”), Xavier’s concentration is broken. Oops! Promptly, the newly minted daddy!Professor, Gabrielle and all the New Mutants are sucked into the abyss of David’s mind.

Legion is one of my favorite characters, but the portrayal of his autism and his what we now probably would call Dissociative Identity Disorder is… less than ideal, especially in this era. I enjoy him later a lot more, when he becomes a fully realized character with autism rather than a plot point with a disability who sometimes triggers various dystopian alternative universes. One aspect I do love about him has fortunately been a part of the character since his inception: he is a perfect foil to Xavier. Not only because his powers are strong enough to prevent Charles from doing an easy!and!invasive!fix on them, but also because he serves a good reminder of Xavier’s foibles, on how his ideals sometimes fail him. Charles can’t control David, not through his powers and not through his rhetoric. David can always be counted on to be the reality check Charles sometimes sorely needs.

(David is also fascinating as a literary device, because the way he is treated as a character is also a sign of how much our understanding of autism and neurodiversity has changed over the last three decades. I found a great essay by Willow Callahan on the Fandomentals that unpacks that here.)

God damn, I wish this were my mind on drugs. (New Mutants 27)

This arc is Bill Sienkiewicz’ swang song for the New Mutants, but damn does he deliver some gorgeous work rendering the bizarchitecture of David’s mind.

The group is scattered throughout this mindscape and separately, they meet three different people:

Jack Wayne, a smarmy telekinetic. He is quick to paint ‘the arab’ as the cause of the warzone in David’s mind: apparently, the violence only started when he arrived. He tries to convince Xavier to kill him, if he can.

Jemail, the telepath, also referred to as ‘the arab’. Gabrielle recognizes him as the terrorist who killed her significant other. In the real world, an even younger David protected his mother from him and his AK-47 and killed him in self defense. How the hell he ended up in David’s mind, she has no idea.

Cyndi, the pyrokinetic, a wild card who likes the current status quo. Still, she helps Rahne and Moira rendezvous with Dani and Doug. (Doug annoyingly keeps at his running thread of feeling useless because he has no useful powers, but Dani points out that none of them have powers in David’s mind, SO FUCKING SNAP OUT OF IT. (The last bit might have been me. I’m still right though.))

They all meet up (sans Jemail) and Jack convinces them to journey to the center of David’s mind, where they find the boy’s memories preserved as crystals. Some are broken, some are mended. Here, they get to the core of David’s trauma, which is implied to have caused his autism (eesh): while killing the terrorists that tried to murder his mother, he felt them die in his mind. They say it fractured his psyche, although I’d say that experiencing death three times might have also caused trauma if David had been neurotypical. Then again, IAMNAP.

It also turns out that Jack has been breaking David’s memory crystals and is intent on killing the other rogue personalities so he can own David and David’s body. Jemail, who is a reflection of one of the killed man’s psyches, learned empathy and insight through David’s telepathic powers and has been trying to fix David’s shattered psyche. Jack tries to cut Jemail to ribbons with one of the shards, but Dani frightens him off with a vision that is so bizarre and outlandish (it’s of Xavier being a good dad) that Jack flinches back. She then forces Jack and Jemail to help her bring order to David’s mind and return everyone who isn’t part of David back to their bodies.

Xavier, apparently exhausted from all the useless he was this arc, wakes up two weeks later. David is making progress, even though Jack, Cyndi and Jemail all still inhabit his mind. Xavier promises to help David and never leave him ever again. (It’s amazing this huge lie didn’t fracture David’s psyche a fourth time, but whatev. It will be at least half a decade before we see Legion again. XD )

Side-plot: Magleeto

After Warlock accidentally caused Asteroid M to crash into the Earth, an injured Magneto has charted Lee Forrester to bring him to his old C’thulu island, where the X-Men randomly decided to start living until they randomly didn’t. I love that nobody cares enough about this mysterious islet to actually figure the fuck out where all this alien architecture came from. Magneto’s like: “Yeah, this is my fuck island now.” Tale as old as time: the would be mutant supremacist softens when stuck on an island with one (1) decent human being.

After this, they fuck. A lot. (New Mutants 25)

Side plot: Hellfire Happenings

Meanwhile, the Hellfire Club admits Selene and Emmanuel daCosta into their Inner Circle. Selene is a terrifying mutant who recently terrorized an Ancient Roman city hidden in the Amazon and who is currently looking to get a foothold in the modern world, and Emmanuel is Roberto’s papi. After his son rebuked him, he decided to really embrace that villainous side. Sebastian Shaw (always a delight) isn’t too bothered by the crooked Brazilian business man but does worry that the evil, blood thirsty priestess wants to take his spot as the leader of the Hellfire Club. Smart cookie, that Shaw.

Empath, one of the Hellions, continues being the worst. No worries, we love him for it.

Gladiat-ooh-la-la

While Xavier hears he’s a daddy, we check in with the remainders back at the mansion. Shirtless(!) Sam is chasing a plane! Apparently, somebody kidnapped Sunspot and Magma, and Cannonball, despite a myriad of ‘aw shucks’ lets them get away. It’s all very in media res.

Fortunately, Magik is able to interrogate one of the assaillants, revealing they were kidnapped by a secret gladiator ring somebody runs in Hollywood. (The wtf-quotient on this plot is pretty high, ngl.) Illyana bamfs them to the West Coast, but also shifts them one week into the future. Oops! Out of options, they go to Laila (Sam’s girlfriend! She’s in a band! And an intergalactic teleporter and thief!) And… WAIT IS THAT GUIDO?!

WHY have Illyana and Guido never been on the same team? More of this snark, plz. (New Mutants 29)

It might be because the art has taken a bit of a nosedive, but holy fuck, Illyana is right on the money when she calls Guido an ‘ugly lump’. Also, Sam? Running around with teleporters means you always have time to grab yourself a shirt.

Wait, why am I complaining? ANYWAY.

On a whim, Laila teleports them all to her own private Dyson Sphere. (Seriously, Sam, what are you doing with this girl? If you want someone capricious who looks good in black, you’ve got your pal Sunspot right there!) Laila also brought her background singer, Alison Blaire, a.k.a. The Dazzler! And Dazzler knows all about the gladiators! How fortunate!

Man, this plot is really held together by spit and some glue, isn’t it? Anyway, Dazzler used to be one of those gladiators and might still be longing for that life. Ever since got outed as a mutant, her life has been in shambles. (She is reduced to being a background singer, you guys. And she doesn’t even have her own comic book anymore!) But as a gladiator, she could live for the applause! Life was easy! There were no worries! (Except being killed in the arena, but that's minor.)

Together with Dazzler and Lilah, Sam and Illyana infiltrate the gladiator ring. Sunspot and Magma appear, all bloodthirsty and ready to kill! Wait, what happened to them? And who knew Roberto looked so fine in his gladiator armour?

Not looking disrespectfully or nothing, but that is one hell of a codpiece. (New Mutants 29)

Apparently, some shadowy figure forced Roberto and Amara to fight, because if they wouldn’t? Some other homeless runaways would have to fight in their stead. Their heroic hands bound, the two hapless mutants descend on their invading teammates and a confusing kerfuffle breaks out. (Some of this confusion is because of the art.)

But then! We interrupt this plot for some crossover shenanigans! Xavier alerted Magneto on Fuck Island: the Beyonder is coming! (Again!) There’s some Secret Wars II-related teleporting and Magneto recruits everyone for a fight against the Beyonder, and ugh. Whatever. Amara and Roberto share my lack of interest in this ill-advised crossover, but everyone else tags along.

So. While we wait? Who is this gladiator ring where mutant is pitted against mutant for? Are there, like, a bunch of jaded, bored and most of all rich Hollywood socialites who just… do this? This is their idea of a good time? Claremont, you love your textboxes and excessive prose, you couldn’t spare a few words to try and explain this? No? Fine.

The Secret Wars intermezzo is thankfully short, the Beyonder briefly brings out the Darkchylde for some reason I can’t be bothered to read up on. It also serves to reunite the whole team and together with Dazzler, Rachel and Shadowcat, they set out to free the gladiators, including Sunspot and Magma. So back to the main plot!

This story is mostly about Dazzler, who hasn’t earned anyone’s trust yet. (“You’re an artist, not a hero.”) Alison is determined to prove herself and not succumb to the temptation of performing for a hungry audience, but slowly, she feels herself slipping into old gladiatorial habits… Rachel, meanwhile picks up on a strange and sinister psychic presence; that same telepathic presence snatches Kitty, forces her in a robot that looks straight out of Earthbound and forces Sunspot and Magma to fight her.

A+ funky robot design and A+ for giving a literal new meaning for ‘chewing the scenery’. (New Mutants 30)

While all of this is happening, an as-of-yet unseen (but large-shaped) villain is gleefully watching and pulling all the strings, riling up everyone involved by telepathically possessing them or suggesting them into action. Who could this be? Whoever they are, they are hilariously over the top and perhaps my favorite part of this jumbled narrative.

Roberto quickly figures out that the robot contains Kitty when it uses her phasing power and he helps her shake the telepathic thrall. Kitty stumbles out of the robot and it collapses, while the crowd bays for blood. (Amara is all: "Back home the crowd was never this blood thirsty", which I would doubt. I watched Rome.)

Dazzler, still possessed (uh, probably) strikes at Kitty while the cavalry arrives. Magik, fed up with this storyline, teleports Dazzler in and out of Limbo, breaking the telepath’s hold on her. The police arrive and both the audience and the gladiators flee. If you think these spectators get off scot-free… Well, apparently, they were punished by Dazzler’s singing performance, which was so earth-shattering that they’ll never forget it and nothing else will ever compare.

Mkay. I'm just saying, I saw Adele live and I can still enjoy other people's music.

Anyway, the New Mutants pursue the Ringmaster under the shadow of fatphobism (they keep calling their enemy fatso, glut, boat or blimp, and this fatphobia will be a sad but running theme this whole arc; I’ll be delving into all that in a later episode) and then, suddenly, all is revealed! Their enemy is…

It’s not necessarily bad to portray one fat person as a monster, but when the only fat people in the narrative are evil!Karma or the Blob? Not a great look. (New Mutants 31)

Karma is a bitch

Karma threatens to let her enthralled slaves cut their own throats if the New Mutants don’t let her leave, so they kind of have to let her go for now. They decide to chase her without involving the X-Men (“We take care of our own”) so they ditch Kitty, Rachel and Dazzler and go on a whirlwind chase through time and space! (Mostly involuntary.)

See, the New Mutants infiltrate Karma’s secret compound in Madripoor, because apparently all their time with Xavier has taught them that it’s easy to sneak up on a telepath. Sure, they leave Cypher and Warlock behind as, er, ‘back-up’ (mkay, Dani), but ironically, a Boy and his Bot are attacked first. (Karma knows all.)

Karma first gloats that the professor protected well from psi-attacks, but she is a telepathic master equal to him! (This is perhaps the point where we, as readers, should figure that this isn’t entirely Karma.) She possesses all the New Mutants, except for Moonstar and Magik, who bamfs them off to Limbo. Dagnabbit! When they return, Karma’s New Mutants seem to have slaughtered Karma’s army. Whoops!

Dani picks up a lead to Egypt and bids Magik to drop them off there. Magik bams them to Egypt BC, deep in pharaoh time. They have a meet and greet with an ancestor of Storm, who sends them back, overshooting them with a mere five years! In this not-so-distant future, they meet the Bad Mutants, who are bloodthirsty monsters. Seriously, the Rowdy Ruff version of our beloved mutants is the only thing that makes all this completely unnecessary time jumping worthwhile.

Poor Sunspot, getting grey hair at the ripe old age of nineteen. (New Mutants 32)

Poor New Mutants. Even when they’re evil, they look like dorks. Anyway, Illyana finally warps them back to current Cairo! Here, Warlock, immune to telepathic powers, fled to Storm for help. Storm has figured out who is pulling Karma’s strings (hope she shared this with the group), but despite this, her plan of attack is the same as Dani’s previous one: a full frontal assault.

It goes badly, with Storm also ending up possessed. Sigh.

Magik and Moonstar try to flee in Warlock-as-a-plane, but when they end up cornered again, Illyana realizes they have to stop doing this. She delivers Danielle on Karma’s doorstep, seemingly betraying her friends! She then bamfs her and Warlock back to Limbo, where an incandescent Warlock attacks her, before she can reassure him. She has a wicked little plan…

But first, Magik first bamfs back to Xavier’s encounter with Amahl Farouk way back when. Let’s not dwell on how the fuck she even figured to what time to teleport to, because the narrative sure doesn’t! And, just like Storm, she figures out what’s wrong with Karma: she is possessed. By the Shadow King!

dun dun dun

Magik comes to Karma for an alliance and the Shadow Karma wastes no time tormenting her while he succumbs to the villain speech. He explains:

How his licentious night club in Cairo (and his gladiator ring in Hollywwood) are places where regular people come to be entertained by the temptation of the lurid dark for a little while, but in fact, s/he is corrupting them from within.

How he lived on the astral plane after Xavier defeated him. From there, he possessed Karma. And after he makes Ororo kill Xavier, no one will be able to stop him…

Magik thinks otherwise. Suddenly, all the New Mutants disappear, because Magik? Was actually Warlock (robots in disguise). And the real Magik? Was bamfing her teammates to Limbo to break the Shadow King’s hold. Magik ports them back in and they smack him around until the Shadow King evacuates ~the dancefloor~ Karma’s body. They quickly figure out he took Douglas, but Karma confronts and fights Amahl on the astral plane and he finally leaves leaves to lick his wounds.

Yay! Longest arc ever over!

This could have used an editor.

Didn’t you take Art History? Sienkiewicz is the right kind of scratchy and weird, Leialoha… less so.

Turns evil: Wolfsbane, Sunspot, Cannonball and Magma. It’s the ‘we’re in the future and we’re evil’-variant. Funnily enough, the same happened to Sunspot and Magma last year. Best unintentional period piece: the Bad New Mutants are punk. Sam has a safety pin his ear.

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obscureobsidianreblogs · 3 years

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X-Men Characters Ranking (I) The Worst

These characters aren’t what I would call the worst in the sense that I hate them and I don’t want to see them ever again, because I don’t dislike them as much as I hate how writers have treated them, many of them being basically anything other than plot devices and never having a chance to become better characters. I don’t think there’s no hope for them, only that I haven’t seen them getting chances to prove me there is.

Thunderbird/John Proudstar

This character is a joke in the worst sense of the word, basically being known as “Guy who died and unlike the rest didn’t come back”. It has reached a point Joanthan Hickman needed to create an explanation in-universe to why the hell this is the case!!! The fact all of this happens to the first native american member of the team is unfortunate. Thank God John’s own brother James, Forge and especially Danielle Moonstar came soon after to fix that.

Slipstream/Davis Cameron

I don’t want to sound mean, I really don’t want to, but I really, really, really don’t care about this character. How’s possible for a legend like Chris Claremont, who created so many memorable characters, create one so devoid of any interesting quality? If you want a X-Men male character who’s a surfer, just go with Havok in X-Men Evolution. Her sister Heather is a slightly better case, mostly thanks to the revelation that she’s actually part of Shi’ar royalty and we see her dealing with her body changing while she discovers her inheritance.

Joseph

Initially introduced as a possibly rejuvenated Magneto who decided to undo Magneto’s wrongdoings, what could have been the perfect opportunity to develop the character of Magneto was quickly wasted when writers at the time thought It would be more interesting to make him the third party in a love triangle involving Rogue and Remy. The revelation he was actually just Magneto’s clon and his death proved how much they regretted creating him.

Feral/Maria Callasantos

Maria’s backstory on paper could be a perfect way to create a compelling character: abused since her childhood, and killed her stepfather to protect her sister. Unfortunately Feral was created by Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld, who were more interested in action and fights than in writing compelling characters, and in Maria’s case it really shows. Her perpetual hostility towards her teammates quickly made her unlikeable, and soon after she was written out of the team. But while characters like Shatterstar have become fan favorites thanks to the works of writers like Peter David Feral has remained a character no writer has bothered to do anything with her, except depower her after the House of M event to later made Sabretooth kill her.

Maggott/Japheth

None of the characters that joined the X-Men after the events in Operation Zero Tolerance became universal fan-favorites, but while Marrow and Cecilia Reyes have managed to still pop-up here and there occasionally, Maggott quickly became the fandom’s punching bag, being an usual entry in the “worst mutants/powers” lists and soon after his debut became killed. In a concentration camp, just so his death could be anymore fucked-up. Yikes.

Omega Sentinel/Karima Shapandar

The idea of a biosentinel who still retains her humanity and which she uses to fight against her programming to team-up with mutants and become their friend instead of hunting them down is pretty compelling. Despite that Karima has become a punchline for her tendency to be a character who tends to get possessed or brainwashed too much in a franchise and a genre where character being possessed or brainwashed has become commonplace. It seemed like that cycle was finally going to finish after Brian Wood decided to published an all female team on his X-Men run and decided to make Karima turned back into a human but stay with her mutant friends, but all of that got thrown away when Jonathan Hickman took over, make her a biosentinel again and because he really wants to push the narrative of us vs them he made her team-up with the evil human organization who wants to wipe out mutants, because he says so. Thanks Johnny.

Lifeguard/Heather Cameron

Like I already said above Heather is a slightly more interesting character than her brother Davis, especially after the reveal of her Shi’ar ancestry and her transformation to a much more alien appearance. Although I must admit I initially dislike the character for completely petty reasons. More specifically, the fact she was introduced and paired up with Neal Shaara when Psylocke’s death was still recent, because Neal was sentimentally involved with her at the time. Shipping tends to do those things.

Stacy X/Miranda Leevald

The accusation of female characters being created just to eye-candy is one that I think gets thrown around in excess lately, but in the case of Stacy X it’s pretty much the perfect textbook example. She’s introduced as a prostitute, wears revealing clothing, her powers cause orgasms, flirts with a lot of her male teammates, and let’s not forget that infamous time Chuck Austen thought it would be a good idea to write her saying she was going to watch porn after getting in an argument. Classy. The worst part is that her example was so obvious that she never became really popular among fans, and the writers quickly got rid of her in the most unceremonious way possible, depowering her in the aftermath of House of M, without bothering to even give her the opportunity to be a better character. However, I think there’s still hope for her. In the recent Domino Annual Gail Simone gave her a heartbreaking moment in which Miranda had the opportunity to express how she dealt with her power’s loss and how it affected her.

Sunfire/Shiro Yoshida

I really want to like Shiro, I really do, the issue where he was introduced is still one of my favorites from the Neal Adams and Roy Thomas run. But it’s so obvious writers don’t know what else to do with him except remind people that he doesn’t like teamwork over and over again, feeling like an excuse to include him as little as possible. Also this is a much more shallow reason to dislike him, but I really think he needs an urgent redesign to get rid of that horrible mask.

Thunderbird/Neal Shaara

His backstory, about discovering a new secret biosentinel program that took advantage of India’s most disadvantaged population while looking for his missing brother, is actually one of my favorites on any X-Men character, being emotionally compelling with some social critic sprinkled over it. Unfortunately once he joined the team the most he did was get romantically involved with female teammates, first with Psylocke, a reason I’m sure a lot of fans at the time hated him because she was with Archangel, although tbh it never bothered me that much, and then with Lifeguard. The fact that after Karima Shapandar, the character that got turned into a biosentinel while helping him look for his brother, joined the X-Men no one single writer bothered to make him meet her again despite it was confirmed he retained his powers after House of M shows how little interest writers were in him. Ouch.

Revanche/Kwannon

Although it seems like now with Fallen Angels and Hellions they are trying to make her a much more interesting character, there’s still the fact the character was created an introduced just to have a revealing twist about Psylocke’s body swap, and after the writers realised they didn’t know what to do with her and neither they wanted to fix that, they took the easy way and got rid of her making her contract the Legacy Virus so she could die and they could keep Psylocke being a sexy purple-haired ninja.

Vulcan/Gabriel Summers

I don’t think X-Men: Deadly Genesis is the unholy abomination many fans think it is, but even I admit they make Gabriel a character really hard to like. To begin with he’s supposed to be the third Summers brother, a mystery in the franchise that was introduced back in the 90s but that never got a satisfactory resolution, only a bunch of clues that lead nowhere and red herrings, in the main timeline at least, Claremont wrote in X-Men: The End the twist the third Summers brother was Remy all along. Anyways, so Gabriel is not only supposed to be the answer to a question fans didn’t care anymore at the time, but he was also part of a retcon, one related to a part as iconic to the X-Men cannon as it is the Giant Size X-Men published in 1975 and whose main point in the story was to show a dark secret Xavier hided to the rest of the X-Men (Still handled better than the bs Bendis wrote during the Original Sin event). But Gabriel, instead of first acting as confused as the rest of the X-Men team after they discover his existence, to later discover the truth of what happened, with him too enraged to listen to reasons and start to attack everyone wether what happened to him was their fault or not, Remender wrote Gabriel as a douchebag from the beginning, kidnapping Scott and Rachel and just being plain awful, especially to the one who was actually his niece. And then there’s the whole becoming the new Shi’ar emperor storyline that I couldn’t care less… Let’s see what Hickman does with him, although my hopes are not exactly high.

#x-men #x-men comics #marvel #marvel comics #x-men characters #mutants

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