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bamfdaddio · 3 years

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X-Men Abridged: 1981 - the Body-Swap

The X-Men, those body-swapping mutants that have sworn to protect a world that hates and fears them, are a cultural juggernaut with a long, tangled history. We’ve been untangling that history for a while, but sometimes, you really want a more in-depth look. Interested? Then read the (un)Abridged X-Men!

(Uncanny X-Men 151 - 152) - by Chris Claremont and Josef Rubinstein

Emma Frost and her frenemy Ororo Munroe have not been getting along! One fateful evening, as the two quibble away, they mysteriously switch bodies and minds. Talk about your Freaky Friday! What lessons will they learn, walking a mile in one another’s shoes? And will they be able to switch back, or will they stay in each other’s bodies forever? Mutant Monday, coming soon to a cinema near you. Starring: Elizabeth Banks, Angela Bassett and Elliot Page. (PG-13)

For a moment, we’re in a proper period drama: a letter delivers ill tidings!

I love that Kitty’s parents are so self-involved that it took them A WHOLE YEAR to realize that it’s weird that Kitty is the only non-adult attending the Xavier Institute.

I can only assume the mailman interrupted a pool party of some kind? Or a communal shower? I get why Kurt would not swim a lot - all that fur - but did Scott wear that while they were splashing around? Was it a beach volleyball competition where one half got to wear swimsuits and the other half superhero costumes? Most importantly, was Scott’s costume always this tight?

Not that I’m complaining, mind you.

The awful thing is that Kitty’s parents are transferring her to the Massachusetts Academy, not realizing that headmistress Emma Frost is, in fact, a terrible human being. Charles, uncharacteristically, says that changing their minds telepathically is a line he does not cross (any more) and half the viewing audience bursts out in laughter. More importantly, last they saw Emma, she was kind of dead-by-Phoenix, so it might be better there this time? Kitty does a Classic Teenage Stomp-Off and Storm comes to comfort her. Kitty cries that life is unfair (“My parents are only doing this because they’re splitting up”) and Ororo tells her that yes, life is unfair. You just gotta roll with the punches as best you can.

To be fair, bald men are technically all cheek, so it doesn’t matter where you kiss them.

While I enjoy the relationship Kitty has with the other X-Men (Scott gave her a compliment! Logan told her his name!), especially the mother-daughter-bond she shares with Ororo, the whole Piotr-thing always gives me pause. Even if we’re being very generous with age, Kitty is, what? 14 going on 15? And Piotr is… 19? At best? I get why Kitty would have a crush on him: he’s a gentle hunky giant: at fifteen, my teenage ass would have felt the exact same viz-a-viz Colossus’ upper arms. The fact that Piotr reciprocates feels skeevy, though, especially because they’re always treated like star-crossed idiots these days.

Skee-vy.

Ororo drives Kitty to Massachusetts, where her young ward is greeted by someone named Muffy and whisked away for orientation. All seems well. Ororo stands in a parlour, surveying the grounds and considering that they should have fought harder for Kitty. Still, nothing seems too wrong just yet: this Academy just seems very preppy.

Not-at-all-dead Emma takes her cue and jumps out, saying (essentially): “Surprise motherfucker.”

There’s a flash of light, and then...

I’m willing to bet that Emma’s EVIL journal has the following to-do-list: - Steal Storm’s body. - Experiment with her powers. - See how good Storm looks in white. (Leather? Fur?! Both!??) - REWARD: Smoke break.

I wonder if Emma’s plan hinged on being able to body-swap with Storm, or whether any X-Man would have sufficed. Was her original target Xavier? Cyclops? What if one of Kitty’s parents had brought her to Massachusetts, would she have taken Kitty instead?

In a locked cell, Storm wakes up in Emma’s body and is horrified. I wonder why Emma didn’t take any more precautions. Couldn’t the guy who made the freaky friday-gizmo also make a power dampener to nullify not!Emma’s telepathic abilities? Or did Emma count on her victim being so utterly incapacitated by her mind-powers that they’d be driven mad? (This would actually tie in with some of Emma’s later-revealed history: when her powers first emerged, she also got locked away in a padded room because of her madness.)

Emma is not wrong, by the way: Storm can’t get a handle on Emma’s powers. What follows is possibly the sweetest moment in an arc filled with sweet moments:

This arc isn’t drawn by any of the regulars - not Byrne, not Cockrum - but Josef Rubinstein brings his own kind of panache to the pages. I love the way he draws women’s faces: in a story that’s all about women, their faces are actually distinguishable. Kudoz.

Emma, meanwhile, coordinates with Sebastian Shaw to execute the second part of their two-pronged attack on the X-Men. They both laugh evilly in their phones while the mansion is attacked by Sentinels! These androids take out Cyclops and Xavier with some sleeping gas and knock out Nightcrawler, but the rest of the X-Men manage to trounce these robots. Then ‘Storm’ appears! She zaps the rest of the X-Men (and Amanda Sefton), successfully finishing their master-plan.

It’s not entirely clear what the Hellfire Club wants with the X-Men this time, but I’m assuming it’s more experimentation to improve the sentinels? Eh, doesn’t matter! Nefarious Hellfire Club is nefarious.

The real Storm, meanwhile, comes to claim Kitty, forgetting that she looks like the one and only Emma Frost. Kitty spooks and Storm accidentally reaches out, knocking her out telepathically. Whoops! Storm takes Kitty and flees in a car, while Emma gives chase. (How dare Ororo run off with her body, which is absolutely the kind of hypocritical hilariousness we all love Emma for.)

Kitty awakens and jumps from the car, causing Storm to swerve and...

JETSTREAM!? Speaking of which, where are the Hellions in all of this?

Kitty sees that an unconscious ‘Emma’ is about to burn to a tender and moist little crisp and she is faced with the hero’s dilemma: would you save a villain that would never save you?

Emma, meanwhile, has realized the downside to body-swapping: somebody else gets to run around with your body too. Shaw, of all people, talks her down from her anger.

You can’t just introduce a persona exchange gun to the plot WITHOUT EXPLAINING WHERE THE FUCK YOU GOT IT FROM.

My favorite detail is that Emma keeps calling Kitty brat, like she’s some sort of Pokémon-villain.

Kitty, meanwhile, has saved ‘Emma’ and tied her up with a special knot. Storm tries to convince Kitty, going for the “ask me something only Storm would know”, but Kitty’s all: “Duh, you’re a telepath.” Ororo insists, but the thing that clinches it is when she breaks free of her ties without breaking a sweat. That knot was taught to Kitty by Ororo and she’d be the only one who knew how to break out of it.

Storm and Kitty recruit Stevie Hunter to come pick them up and during the ride, Storm-being-angry-mother!Storm convinces Kitty more than anything else:

After all, Storm was voted most likely to say: “If you don’t stop this nonsense immediately, I will turn this Blackbird around, so help me God!”

Ororo and Kitty sneak inside. Ororo even uses Emma’s telepathy to help her pick a lock after phasing through a door. (Kind of funny: Kitty’s still such a neophyte that she can’t even phase with anyone else yet.) Emma, meanwhile, taunts the captured X-Men, presenting herself as the new white queen:

Anybody feel the inclination to point out that the Hellfire Club did this exact same thing last year, except then they tried it with a redhead?

I secretly suspect that the Hellfire Club’s plots always revolve around seducing X-Men to their side and dressing them up in sexy lingerie. (Which: fair.) There’s also a subplot where the guys Wolverine cut apart last year want to exact revenge on him for being made bionic, but eh. We’ll start paying attention to them when they become actual Reavers.

Kitty phases through the locks of the X-Men, freeing them, and a kerfuffle ensues. Emma starts using Storm’s powers, but they grow out of control. Colossus tosses Shaw out of the window - which should just be company policy, really: all Shaws should be defenestrated - where he’s promptly hit by a rogue thunderbolt.

When he doesn’t get up, Emma starts to lose it. The weather goes wild. Storm intervenes, using her telepathic power to help calm down Emma (and the raging storm), but she also manages to get a hold of the swap-gun. There’s a zap, and with a satisfied sigh, the status-quo is restored again.

My favorite implication is that, apparently, Emma decides which school Kitty attends and not her parents.

While this little arc is neither the most iconic nor the most profound of 1981 -- those would be Days of Future Past and I, Magneto, respectively -- I still love this for a couple of reasons.

As a lover of Freaky Friday, 17 Again and the new Jumanji-film, I just have a soft spot for body swap plots. (Hi Psylocke!)

It focuses on the Xavier Institute as a school, planting seeds for the upcoming New Mutants.

It is very female-driven without beating you over the head with it. (Looking at you, Birds of Prey.)

It has three definitive main characters, who all get fleshed out in fun and interesting ways. It starts the trend of robbing Ororo of some of her powers and tossing her into against-the-odds circumstances, only for her to come out on top.

It solidifies the Storm/Kitty mother/daughter (or older/younger sibling) dynamic. Kitty is a believable teenager when it comes to Storm - clever and kind, but also looking for answers and prone to rash decisions - and I love how much they care for each other.

Jean/Storm-friendship-callback, yay!

Emma gets fleshed out as a villain. Resourceful and petty, powerful and vain. It’s no wonder she’s one of the break-out antagonists of the X-Men, because, like Magneto, Claremont is not afraid of giving her depth. Arguably, she is the most three-dimensional of the Hellfire Club at this point.

Yay! And fuck completely sensible plots, if you don’t know what to do with your plot, just introduce a random persona exchange gun. Let’s use it on Xavier and Legion in Way of X next!

#x-men abridged #abridged x-men #x-men #storm #professor x #kitty pryde #uncanny x-men #emma frost #cyclops #nightcrawler #stevie hunter #colossus #sebastian shaw

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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What’s Happening With Marvel’s X-Men?

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This article contains spoilers for recent Marvel X-Men stories.

A long time ago, back at the beginning of the interminable, endless month of March that the pandemic has trapped us in, Marvel’s X-Men books were barrelling towards their first big post-Dawn of X crossover, X of Swords. And then the world stopped, and plans changed for the X-Men while everything was paused.

Now that we’re back, plans have changed, and books are coming fast and furious. So what’s going on with Marvel’s Merry Mutants? Which book did Storm get sick in? What book should you read for a good Laksa recipe? New Mutants, but we can answer all your other questions on what’s going on with the X-Men below.

While we won’t rehash the entire thing, House of X/Powers of X reset the entire X-Men line. Mutants can’t die anymore (or rather, if they do, they’re resurrected from clone bodies and emergency backup minds by The Five and Professor X). The X-Men, and all mutants alive, are now living on Krakoa, a living, mutant island in the Pacific that, at some point in the distant past, broke in half, sending one part of it to a dangerous, monster-infested realm with Apocalypse’s first Horsemen standing guard making sure it didn’t return.

Humans are back to hating and fearing mutants on a wide scale, but this time it’s mostly because the mutants are vehemently anti-capitalism, flooding markets with cheap, life-extending and health-improving drugs and vowing to take down the human world with economic weapons of their own making. This has the humans initiating some pretty intense Sentinel programs, particularly around the sun, where Nimrod – the adaptive Sentinel whose existence dooms mutantkind in one Powers of X future – was very nearly created.

And amidst all of that, Moira MacTaggert, the secret mutant mastermind with the power of Groundhog Lifeing (when she dies, her consciousness is immediately transported back to her prenatal self to be born again with all her old memories. She’s on life ten now, btw), is frantically trying to manipulate events so that mutants continue to exist in the long run as the next phase in human evolution, averting a future where man-machine hybrids (like Omega Sentinels and the Children of the Vault) develop while humans and mutants are busy fighting among themselves. She’s also not allowing Charles and Magneto to revive any mutants with precognitive powers, expecting them to see her plan and ruin Krakoan civilization.

X-Men

X-Men, by mastermind Jonathan Hickman with art mostly from Leinil Yu, is where big ideas are being seeded for later use.

This is where the story of Krakoa and its estranged, otherdimensional partner Arakko was further developed (following its introduction in Powers of X and setting up X of Swords, the first mutant crossover of the Dawn of X era). X-Men introduced Hordeculture (think the Golden Girls if they were also ecoterrorist botanists); reintroduced the Children of the Vault; showed how depowered mutants get in line to get their powers back; and saw Magneto and Apocalypse threaten humankind with the most terrible weapon of all: finance capitalism.

New Mutants

It also, just prior to the break, X-Men had a spiritual crossover with New Mutants, initially a split book by Hickman and Rod Reis on the space issues, and Ed Brisson, Flaviano, and Marco Failla on the Earth issues. Brisson, Flaviano and Failla’s story follows a group of Earthbound mutant kids (including Glob Herman and Boom Boom) as they track down stragglers to Krakoa, like Beak and Angel.

Hickman and Reis took the original New Mutants plus Chamber and Mondo into space to go pick up Cannonball (who was living on Chandi’lar with his wife, Smasher). On the way there, they stole a King Egg from the Starjammers and brought it back to Earth, where it turns out, we discover in X-Men, the King Egg is a bioweapon created by the Kree to control the Brood for an eventual war with the Shi’ar. Broo, the supersmart mutant Broodling from Wolverine and the X-Men, eats the egg and becomes the Brood King.

Excalibur

Excalibur is the shining star of the line so far. Tini Howard and Marcus To are growing the mythos of mutant magic with a very odd team that includes Betsy Braddock (now back in her original body and the new Captain Britain); Rogue and Gambit; Jubilee and her mysteriously dragonified son Shogo; new earth mage Rictor; and Apocalypse, who is clearly up to some stuff. Apocalypse picks a fight with Otherworld and places a newly resurrected but still batshit Jamie Braddock on the throne of the magical realm.

Excalibur was one of the first books to return from hiatus, and it came back with maybe the best single issue of the entire relaunch in issue #10. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Marauders

Marauders launched as the story about the Hellfire Trading Company, the corporate arm of Krakoa that distributes the miracle drugs around the world while also smuggling mutants in trouble home to Krakoa. But Gerry Duggan and Matteo Lolli’s book quickly turned into the mystery of Kitty Pryde – why she’s not able to use the Krakoan gates that allow instantaneous travel around the galaxy, and whether she can be resurrected by The Five. That story has just about come to a head, but it is worth noting that it still contains a great deal of Hellfire Trading Company intrigue between Emma Frost and Sebastian Shaw, and a lot of drunken pirate antics. The resurrected original Pyro does get a tattoo of the Marauders skull on his face at one point. It’s fun.

X-Force

X-Force, by Ben Percy and Joshua Cassara, immediately killed Professor X. He was resurrected, of course, but it served as both a notice that everyone is fair game, and alongside Marauders, keeps some slight mystery to character death alive post-The Five’s perpetual resurrection machine. It’s also the story of the Krakoan CIA, so it sets up the global threats facing the mutant nation, and then sends Wolverine to get cut in half fighting them. Also, Forge creates a bio-mech loader suit and smashes the two halves of Logan back together at one point. If that’s something you find yourself chuckling at, this book is going to exceed expectations.

Fallen Angels

Fallen Angels focused mostly on resetting the current Psylocke’s status quo. Kwannon was brought back to life and placed in her old body shortly before the reboot (very quickly: Spiral switched Psylocke and Kwannon’s bodies, then before they could be reverted, Kwannon got the Legacy Virus and died, then when Betsy used a villain’s powers to recreate her old body and reinhabit it, Kwannon…uh…got better…). Here, she teamed with X-23 and Cable, with ops backup from Mister Sinister, to track down Apoth, a technological being selling cybernetic drugs to humans.

It’s mostly setup for Psylocke, X-23 (now Wolverine again, I think), and Sinister while adding another technological foe to the mix. It leads almost directly into Zeb Wells and Steven Segovia’s Hellions, a book about Sinister’s team of mutants who are all gleefully, unrepentantly screwed up and are currently on a mission cleaning up some old clones Sinister left lying around.

Cable, Wolverine, and More…

Cable, Wolverine and the Giant Size issues, are still mostly seeding future storylines. Cable, from Duggan and Phil Noto, has only had a couple of issues so far, but it’s brought the Galadorians (the Spaceknights minus ROM, who belongs to IDW now, I think) into mutant orbit and given Nathan a sword for the crossover.

Wolverine, by Percy, Adam Kubert and Victor Bogdanove, has Logan tracking down illicit Krakoan flower dealers, and also Omega Red works for Dracula now. And the Giant Size issues are mysteries piled on mysteries piled on incredible art. Hickman has scripted all three, and so far, Storm caught a technovirus from the Children of the Vault in the Jean Grey/Emma Frost issue (drawn by Russell Dauterman); we find out what’s up with Cypher’s techno-organic arm in the Nightcrawler issue (from Alan Davis); Magneto buys Emma an island from Namor with art from Ramon Perez; and we get actual backstory and incredible Rod Reis art in the Fantomex issue.

Empyre

The recently wrapped Empyre: X-Men’s opening scene is simultaneously one of the most important to the metanarrative of mutant struggle that’s been developing since the Professor’s “No More” scene in House of X #4 AND the best setup/punchline in any Dawn of X comic. It also starts to deliver on some of the rumored-but-never-announced X-Men ideas that were floated early after the reboot – Angel and M are two of the leads, playing out a little of the boardroom drama we hoped for after an X-Corporation book was rumored.

X-Factor

X-Factor, from Leah Williams and David Baldeon, more or less just launched. It’s about the team investigating and verifying mutant deaths, to put those lives into the queue for resurrection. This feels like the book set up to deliver on the weirdest promises of the relaunch, and the creative team are inventive, fun storytellers, so keep an eye on this. Williams has a very sharp ear for patter and knows her characters well – while it’s not an X-book, Amazing Mary Jane is a stunning accomplishment of delightful character work. Early X-Factor is more of the same, with more mutant high concept.

And all this is leading to X of Swords, the new X-writers room’s attempt to outdo X-Cutioner’s Song: a 22-part Tini Howard-led crossover where everyone swordfights over half of Krakoa. And still dangling in the ether, unannounced but long discussed, are Vita Ayala and Bernard Chang’s Children of the Atom, following a group of mutant teenagers who idolize the X-Men, and a Moira X book that’s expected to fill in some of the gaps in Moira’s many, many timelines.

The post What’s Happening With Marvel’s X-Men? appeared first on Den of Geek.

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bigskydreaming · 4 years

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All right, you have officially sold me on Bobby Drake. Where do I start reading?

Its a good question, lol! Honestly, it mostly just depends on how far back you want to go. I mean, he’s been around for sixty years, lol, so there’s a shit ton of appearances to wade through, and it depends on how familiar you are with the X-Men as a whole.

If you’re not familiar with the X-Men or Marvel in general, this is actually a really good time to jump in with reading the current books without much prior knowledge. Just last year the X-books underwent a huge status quo shakeup in the two limited series House of X and Powers of X, that pretty much like....transformed their entire place in the Marvel Universe as a whole and gave them a whole new playing field that was all pretty clearly laid out within just those two series. So its a really good starting point to kinda catch up quick to where things stand now and then just branch out from there to whatever catches your interest.

Bobby’s a main character in a book called Marauders currently, which is only on issue #6 or #7 right now, and the book is pretty central to the major happenings in the X-Men’s corner of the universe. Plus a lot of great characters in the rest of the cast - Storm, Bishop, Emma Frost, etc.

If you want to start from way far back and have a good long, consistent read, the original X-Factor (the first series, vol 1) is where I would go. I don’t think anyone really needs to read the original X-Men series from the 60s to get a handle on the characters or universe, and personally I’ve always found X-Factor a much better read using all the same characters except with the added bonus of no Xavier. As he is. The Worst.

Between the original X-Men run and X-Factor’s debut, Bobby, Angel and Beast popped up on various other superteams, like Bobby and Angel were on the Champions together for a bit, and then the three of them were on a team called the Defenders for a while...if you can find old Defenders issues online (this would have been back in the 70s/early 80s), they’re worth checking out just for Bobby’s brief romance with a shapeshifting character named Cloud who he first met as a woman but later shifted into a man. And while they decided to just be friends at that point, given that this was the era of the Comics Code when gay relationships were ‘frowned upon,’ this was the earliest and most blatant gay-coding of Bobby, literal decades before he was made canon gay in the comics. Plus, they’re just pretty fun stories and Bobby and Cloud were super cute together.

But yeah, then X-Factor ran for a number of years without interruption, staying consistent with the same core cast of just the original five X-Men and the supporting characters they introduced in that series, like Rictor (another future famous gay X-character, just a wee punk teenager at the time, lol). It was pretty fun overall, IMO, should give anyone new to the Marvel U a pretty solid grasp of all the major players in it, and its where a lot of big names like Apocalypse made their debut. And of course, I think Bobby was well written throughout it. X-Factor was also where a couple of the things I mentioned in that post happened, like the storyline where Loki kidnapped Bobby to use his powers to make his army.

After that.....basically, the original X-Men left that title to rejoin the X-Men when Marvel relaunched the X-Men line with a brand new X-Men #1 in the early 90s....and at the same time, they kept the already existing Uncanny X-Men title going, which was around #280 at that time.

Since they had such a huge cast of characters at that point, they split the X-Men into two fairly iconic lineups, the Blue and the Gold....the Blue team were the chronicled in the adjectiveless X-Men book, and featured Cyclops, Gambit, Psylocke, Beast, Wolverine, Rogue and others, while the Gold team were the main characters of the continuing Uncanny X-Men title from again, around #280 and onward. The Gold team was Bobby, Jean Grey, Colossus, Storm, Archangel, and then later Bishop as well, etc.

This era was where a lot of the best Bobby stories took place, IMO. Very early after the Gold team was formed, Bobby had a mishap with Mikhail Rasputin, the older brother of Colossus, whose powers shifted Bobby into his organic ice form for the very first time, where he became living ice that he could control and shapeshift and heal, rather than just cover himself with ice. This was the beginning of them exploring the versatility of Bobby’s powers and what eventually led to them making him an omega level mutant, though even back in X-Factor they’d established that he was far more powerful than anyone had realized before that.

Then Uncanny X-Men #311 continued this and launched one of the most pivotal periods in Bobby’s development. An accident led to a comatose Emma Frost’s mind jumping into Bobby’s body and taking control, and she used his body and powers to seek revenge for the deaths of her own students, and in the process pushed his powers even further than anyone had thought possible. This is where he came to realize he could literally teleport by melting into any body of water and recreating himself anywhere else connected to that body of water, like traveling from one end of a river to another, or even across oceans instantly....as well as proving to him that he could literally get holes blown in his ice form and just fill them up with new ice and transform back into his flesh and blood self, none the worse for wear.

This period also led to him showing up in Generation X a lot, where Emma became one of the teachers for that generation of young mutants, because during this time, Bobby and Emma like....clashed a lot, because Bobby had a lot of issues about her hijacking his body and then taking it on what was essentially a suicide run at the time, and was also resentful of her being instantly able to do things with his powers he hadn’t even conceived of with years of training with them, and Emma was....prickly at the best of times, back then even moreso than now, so she tended to taunt him with this and push his buttons by insinuating she knew more about him than he did himself, and she knew what really was holding him back all these years, etc, etc....but then they eventually formed a very unconventional but real rapport, and decades later, they still have this weird thing where they’d probably never admit to even liking each other, but they probably respect each other more than just about any other of their teammates combined. (Also, the Christian that Bobby is currently with in the comics is Emma’s older brother).

Back to Uncanny X-Men....to take his mind off of everything that the body-jacking by Emma had brought up for him, and because Rogue was having a lot of similar issues due to her new relationship with Gambit and the glimpse of various secrets of his that she’d gotten via her own powers....Bobby and Rogue decided to take a road trip together, that went on for about a dozen issues all in all, and are some of my all time favorite Bobby stories. This includes Uncanny #319, where they go visit Bobby’s parents together and Bobby tells off his dad in epic fashion (this was literally the first comic I ever read, and still one of my faves today, lol....also he made a giant ice palace off the coastline that was as big as a city and that has nothing to do with anything except for the fact that it was very pretty and very gay. Foreshadowing!)

Then there were a couple of big iconic crossover events that took over all the titles for awhile - the first was the alternate universe Age of Apocalypse event - and its worth tracking down and reading in its entirety, IMO. Definitely one of the most pivotal ‘events’ in Marvel history, but it was actually pretty good, too? LOL. And the Age of Apocalypse version of Bobby was pretty bad ass. (He returned in Rick Remender’s X-Force title about fifteen years later, but we don’t speak of Rick Remender or that return, for both are bad and wrong).

Then reality was restored, and the Onslaught crossover happened, and like.....really the only thing you need to know about that is its basically where the entire Marvel Universe teamed up to fight the evil brain baby slash hatechild of Professor X and Magneto. I’m just saying. Read it at your own peril. I’m not even saying its BAD, I’m just saying. Read it at your own peril.

Then in Uncanny X-Men #340.....that’s the issue where Bobby left the team for awhile to take care of his dad after he was almost killed at that hate rally I mentioned in one of my Bobby posts today, so I forget where the whole ‘going undercover in Graydon Creed’s campaign’ storyline started, but back up a bit from there and you’d be good to go. He and Sam (Cannonball) went undercover together and that was basically the start of the epic Bobby and Sam bromance slash subtextual romance that I still love to this day, too.

Then he was out of the books for awhile, off taking care of his dad, and didn’t really return until this big event called Operation: Zero Tolerance happened, wherein the government went after the X-Men directly and captured pretty much all their big guns, and Bobby came back to help and had to single-handedly rescue a bunch of random mutants from Sentinels and make an interim team with which to like, save the day themselves. O:ZT is actually a really good story for him, I really like how competent he was portrayed there, and also it was the introduction of Dr. CeCe Reyes, who is also a fave. She was also briefly a sorta/not sorta love interest for Bobby, that of course didn’t ultimately go anywhere. On account of, y’know. His Massive Gayness.

Then Bobby left the team again to go return to taking care of his dad, and also because certain writers hated him (though tbh, Bobby’s actually one of the longest running heroes in the Marvel U, as in....he’s spent the longest consecutive times active in various books/teams without taking breaks, compared to pretty much all other characters who aren’t Wolverine, Captain America or Spider-man. He was a constant presence in books pretty much from his creation up until the mid-90s, so like, he was due for some time-off. I GUESS. WHATEVER).

From this point, he didn’t return until a storyline called The Twelve. It was very bad, and very dumb, and you should not read it. Your brain cells will thank me later.

Then there was a miniseries called X-Men Forever - this you SHOULD read, as its where the term omega mutant was essentially coined for the first time in the way its been used ever since, and its where both Bobby and Jean found out they were omega level mutants for the first time. And Mystique and Toad and Juggernaut were also there because....idk, tbh. That was all very strange to me. But! Still! Worth a read!

Then came a veeeeery underrated Iceman solo miniseries of four issues, that is weird but also very worth tracking down as it was a great Bobby, very poignant and also kinda sad, but like. I’d highly recommend. Especially as it was pretty much the last good Bobby for awhile, with the exception of Joe Casey, who wrote a decent Bobby but a terrible Everyone Else.

Then we enter the Dark Ages of Bobby. Where everything is bad and all the writers are the worst.

First up is Chuck Austen. Bobby was a core member of his X-Men lineup, throughout his run. This is not a good reason to read Chuck Austen’s run. Do not read Chuck Austen’s run. You’re welcome.

Then there was Peter Milligan’s run. Peter Milligan’s run was not as bad as Austen’s run. This is not a good reason to read Peter Milligan’s run. Do not read Peter Milligan’s run. You’re welcome.

Then Mike Carey took over. You CAN read Mike Carey’s run. You probably even SHOULD read Mike Carey’s run. He is not perfect, but he liked Bobby and we like him for liking Bobby. His Bobby actually spoke in complete sentences and displayed more than one emotion per issue. And Supernovas is a pretty good arc and was actually where the Children of the Vault were first introduced, and they were just brought back in the most recent X-Men issue to be a recurring antagonist, so they’re like. Relevant and stuff.

And then there’s Messiah Complex, which is basically the Advent of Oh Hai, Everything’s About To Get Just Fucking AWFUL For Mutants From Here For the Next Ten Years Or So, and there’s like....blechness with Bobby and Mystique, which...I mean....all else aside, she’s Rogue’s MOM, but WHATEVER. Look, there were....plot reasons. Kinda. So. Whatever. Just blink rapidly and move on from that as quickly as you can.

You can pretty safely jump ship at that point, because Divided We Stand is No, Second Coming is Ugh, and Schism is Why. And also there’s Age of X in there somewhere, which is to be avoided because Age of X basically just wanted to be Age of Apocalypse and its not Age of Apocalypse. Just like Age of X-Man is similarly not Age of Apocalypse, and even Age of Apocalypse 2.0 is not Age of Apocalypse. Stop trying to be Age of Apocalypse, everybody. NONE OF YOU ARE AGE OF APOCALYPSE.

You may have one (1) year of Marjorie M. Liu writing Astonishing X-Men, as a treat. She wrote a great Bobby, this was where the whole ‘freezing the whole Earth, whoopsie’ thing happened, and it was a great and very underrated story.

Then post Schism there’s stuff like Wolverine and the X-Men, where Bobby’s a main character after being lured to take Logan’s side in the Schism instead of Scott’s, with the promise of Being Relevant. ‘Twas a lie. Bobby ‘twas there, but hardly relevant. And Jason Aaron is not as good a writer as advertised, since he’s mostly the one doing the advertising and like.....dude should not trust his own hype. There’s weird and whimsical, and then there’s just plain WEIRD, and most of Wolverine and the X-Men is the latter, claiming to be the former, and like. You can’t trust anyone these days.

Then comes the Era of Bendis. Die, Era of Bendis, Die.

Do not read the Era of Bendis. Do not speak of the Era of Bendis. If the Era of Bendis bursts into flames on the street next to you, look pointedly away, and trip anyone who runs up to try and douse the Era of Bendis with a bucket of water.

Just trust me. The Bendis, and then the Hopeless (that’s the name of the actual writer who took over on All New X-Men, but it pretty well sums up the feelings of Bobby fans on the matter too, ‘twas fate), and then the Bendis again....bad, bad, bad and also Superbad, but not the movie.

You will hear promises, siren songs, of a young, teenage time-displaced Bobby Drake having his first boyfriend, an Inhuman named Romeo. THIS IS A LIE. ITS A TRICK! A TRAP! DO NOT FALL FOR IT!

Basically everything is blah blah blahful for awhile....until the Bobby solo series by Sina Grace, which gets a bad rap, but I maintain its worth the read. Like, I’m not going to call it my favorite take on him or anything like that, but its still good fun and a vastly more competent and compelling Bobby than anything Bendis ever eked out.

And that basically catches us up to the present, where we’re at with Marauders.

So!

There you go! Umm....this was supposed to be just a brief list of arc titles to check out, but then I went and hyper-fixated like a BUFFOON, so....umm. Yeah! Have at it!

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kurtty-drabbles · 4 years

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You´re a witchy, Kitty au (part 15)

N/A: Ok, this au is getting to a close.

@djinmer4 @dannybagpipesarecalling @bamfoftheundead

If one has to pick a fan of weddings, for whatever reason, Doug Ramsey is your guy, but, for this one wedding (Wanda and Vision´s) his enthusiasm is none to be found and Dani Moonstar and Karma are noticing this.

"Doug, aren´t you happy about the wedding? Are you robocist?" Karma asked chuckle at this as memes are a new thing for her and she´s in love in using those memes in conversations.

"What? No, is not that...is the company that I´m forced to endure...Dani, I´m going with Miss Incest and Dr Rory as their fake son...Dani," now Doug pauses and looks around and hissed at Karma asking if they are truly alone.

"Aside from the millions of bacterias and organism involving Earth, sure, we´re alone in this room, your room, Doug" Karma stated crossing her arms amusing and Doug, getting used to Karma´s newfound sense of humour, just nods and confess something.

"Girls, are you sure the Hellfire´s organization is the right organization for us?" Doug asked and all eyes are on Dani, the Cheyenne should say that Hellfire is good for them and she can tell them the time Emma Frost saved her, yet, one case of good faith is not enough and Dani let it show in her features.

"And what other organization can we think of? X-men? Avengers?" Dani asked back and Karma speaks, as if she was waiting for this only ask to bring this piece of information, and take a piece of paper out of her pocket show to her friends what she is thinking.

"Excalibur?!"

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Margalia is not sure if Kitty´s blood, as she´s a bit older to be used as a sacrifice, will please her gods, but, if nothing else it will give great pleasure, in the end, that girl´s life and prove to her foster son that she knows better.

Amanda is not being subtle in sleeping around with this Dr Rory and Margalia does not care nor for Stefan´s pain who loved Amanda with all his heart and is nothing more but a number for his own sister. Margalia can admit that this is a terrible situation, but, she does not care enough to change.

"Amanda, bring me that girl alive, I need to kill Kitty Pryde and prove to everyone who is the superior one" Margalia doubts her own words. She does not feel as powerful as before and after the last encounter with Kurt, the sinking feeling that Hellfire may want to fire her is overwhelming.

"Mother!" Amanda kneels in front of Margalia as if speaking with a Queen, and well, Margalia was the Red Witch in a very long past. "I´ll not fail, I promise you"

"Good, now go and don´t make mistakes, Amanda...you too can be replaced"

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Kitty Pryde has 17 years old and has some problems with her own image as a woman. Wanda is incredibly beautiful, Jean is radiant and Ororo is impossible to look bad even if she tried and it makes Kitty wonder if people think she´s pretty too. Not in a cute way, if people would really want to date her.

"Hello, Kitty" Jean Grey speaks with a fond voice and sits next to the teen who is watching as Lorna and Pietro are helping in the wedding and how Scott and Pietro are sort getting along but won´t hesitate in the fight each other. "What´s in your mind?"

"You can read it" Kitty jokes knowing her defences are top-notch, but, this makes Jean arch an eyebrow at her own words and Kitty tries again. "Is stupid, really, really stupid" and hugs her legs as if this is the final proof of how stupid the issue is and Jean is not having it.

"It can´t be stupid or else our friendly witch wouldn´t be here like that"

"I...I´m ugly?" Kitty blurp out looking at the green eyes of Jean Grey who is not laughing but is somewhat relieved is nothing serious like Apocalypse or Magento...wanting to crash the wedding(Scott and Ororo were the ones to make sure Magneto won´t ever show up here and so far, the man, for all his flare, is not making himself know for his daughter´s wedding)

"No, you´re not ugly. I can tell how you've got the fluffiest hair ever, the kindest brown doe eyes and how you look amazing in blue, and I can tell how you look better than those teen models from those magazines, but, the problem here Kitty is how you see yourself? If you compare yourself to Wanda or any other women...you´ll be missing the chance to know how pretty you´re" Kitty Pryde does not say anything, is thinking and Jean will never know what she´s thinking, but not speaking.

Her eyes narrow for a moment as a playful smile borns in her face. "Are you crushing on someone?"

"Maybe...but that´s a secret"

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Kurt Szardos look at the couples at the wedding. Logan found a new love interest that for once is reciprocating his attention. And his eyes travel to Kitty who is now passionately talking with Yana and other people of her age about something and Kurt wants to know what she´s talking about, but, will he look like a creep?

Kitty meets his eyes and a shy smile forms in her pretty face as she waves at him calling his name as she´s talking about something he´ll like and Kurt does not think twice as he goes to her ignoring Logan´s suspicious looks who is quickly replaced as his date is back talking happily about the last wedding he appears. "Hercules, the greek gods marry a lot?" "Logan...we love marriage"

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Amanda Szardos aka Amanda Stefson is holding the arm of Dr Rory as the receptionist let the great Dr Rory, one that helped Tony Stark in the past, arrive in the party. Tony Stark is really weak to her spells and as far Tony is concern Dr Rory was always married and with a son.

Yet, Ororo Monroe was looking at the boy for a moment, and even though she has no idea who is the blonde woman, she knows the boy and has a bad feeling about this.

"It won´t be an X-men wedding without problems" Ororo and she mentions Psylocke to come closer. "Betsy, do you remember that boy I told you about? the one we try to help named Doug Ramsey?"

Betsy looks as she drinks her wine and nods nicely. "I know his parents...Ororo, we have troubles"

"His parents hate us?"

"No, those aren´t his parents"

#Kitty Pryde #wizard kurt szardos #Kurtty yet #always anti amanda #always anti Margalia #Ororo and Psylocke are not buying your shit #New Mutants in the Excalibur

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franzbiblio · 5 years

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Where in the comics are Professor X and Magneto?

So it occurs to me that those not up-to-date with comics might be interested in a "where are they now?" for Professor X and Magneto, especially if you might be interested in jumping into the breach with this new launch of House of X/Power of X making it a bit easier than usual to jump into the insanity that is comics in general and X-Men comics in particular.

The short answer is that there isn't really a status quo established for this particular era of X-Men as of yet and as for Magneto and Charles Xavier's potential place in the coming status quo, I can't even really predict, which is both exciting and terrifying if I'm being honest.

Magneto:

I will start with Magneto who is a little more complicated to explain how he got where he is, but I do at least have a vague notion of the general trajectory we might be seeing from him in the next several months:

Until recently Magneto has spent most of his time running about being an anti-hero type from leading a distinctly shady team of the X-men in Uncanny X-Men (2016) #1-19, until Psylocke (Betsy Braddock) decided that he had been too shady and stabbed him and apparently killed him.

This being comics means that he got better immediately, but decided to not make this fact known and instead served as the secret mentor for the teenage time-displaced original five X-men in the pages of X-Men: Blue (2017) #1-28, that is until during the arc during issues #23-28 (collected in the X-Men trade titled Cry Havok) when Magneto is shown disillusioned with trying to be hero because his teenaged wards had run off into space (let the record show this is not the first time that Magneto has been driven back to villainy because his wards have a predilection for running off to space without so much as leaving a note) during a huge international crisis leaving Magneto to pick up the pieces in the only way he knows: being shady. This is then exacerbated when at the end of the arc Magneto is forced to kill brainwashed mutants he was attempting to save, fleeing to the future (there was a time machine in the basement… let’s not go into it) where he learned that him being an asshole is the only way the future will be saved, he then returns to the present seeking revenge on Emma Frost who was complicit in the whole brainwashing mutants thing. The original five X-Men freshly back from space objected to this whole killing Emma Frost thing and Magneto and the original five make their formal break in X-Men: Blue (2017) #31.

We are then shown Magneto fully returning to villainy with the destruction of a research facility, killing all the scientists inside, but because this is Magneto there are sympathetic "trying to prevent the future destruction of mutantkind" motivations behind this, but still kind of a dick move. He is then shown with a new Brotherhood of Mutants on a new Asteroid M (you know the secret asteroid base he has because he is not a dramatic bitch at all) setting him up clearly as a future threat for the X-Men.

Then Uncanny X-Men relaunched with an event called X-Men Disassembled that spanned Uncanny X-Men (2018) #1-10 where Magneto appeared as the brainwashed, bearded minion of Jean Grey's sort of alternate universe son who is now a reality warping messiah figure, Nate Grey AKA X-Man. While Magneto shakes off the brainwashing in Uncanny X-Men #10, joining the X-Men in attacking said reality warping messiah, he, along with every other mutant present, end up sucked into some kind of pocket dimension/alternate universe (it's a little unclear at the moment what exactly it is) and the results of this is being explored in the crossover event Age of X-Man. Magneto specifically is a principal character in the Marvelous X-Men (2019) #1-5 miniseries, which depicts Magneto as a part of the X-Men team in this alternate universe utopia with no memories of the regular universe. He has a half cape with a fluff and is pretty dapper, so I'm a fan. The last few issues have shown him along with the rest of the cast beginning to have flashbacks of the other universe and begin to doubt the Utopia.

This miniseries will be running until sometime in June where we can only assume that all the mutants currently trapped in the pocket dimension will return to the regular universe with their restored memories. It's impossible to know what the exact fallout of this will be.

It seems unlikely to me that Magneto would go back to being an ally of the X-Men after all the build-up to making him a proper "villain" again. They released a whole series dedicated to X-Men "villains" one-shots called X-Men: Black and there was a Magneto issue and the cover of Uncanny X-Men #13 that came out in March sorted Magneto along with other X-Men villains like Sinister, Apocalypse, and Cassandra Nova.

Most likely Magneto coming out of Age of X-Man will go back to being a “villain”, though whether future writers will necessarily follow-up on the story threads that were left dangling by the end of X-Men: Blue, I can only speculate.

For Charles Xavier:

So, Charles is a little easier to explain insofar as he was dead for a lot of the past decade of comics.

For those unaware during the Avengers v. X-Men crossover event back in 2012, Charles Xavier died at the hands of one of his oldest students and son-guy-figure, Scott Summers, in Scott's defense he was possessed by the phoenix force at the time and felt really, really bad about it after (like not bad enough to stop being part of the rad mutant rebelz, but you know, bad).

From thereon Charles would only appear in a limited capacity as some kind of ghost or psychic shadow or whatever you want to call it. Most prominently Red Skull would grave rob his brain and use it to manipulate the world in Uncanny Avengers (2012) eventually leading to the crossover event AXIS.

He'd also pop up as a spirit in heaven alongside Kurt Wagner in Amazing X-Men (2013) #2 and #5 and Charles's son David Haller would spend the majority of X-Men Legacy (2012) fighting against a malicious psychic entity that looked like Charles Xavier but is actually more of a manifestation of David's hatred... or something (the actual details are kept purposely vague).

It's not until Astonishing X-Men (2017) does the actual Charles Xavier appear and even then it's ambiguous until basically the end of the series whether it is really Charles Xavier back (it... mostly is) but in #7 he rejects being called Professor X, saying it doesn't feel right (I mean he's thirty, has hair and is drawn by Phil Noto, it makes a person feel different) and instead adopted the moniker X. At the end of the arc in Astonishing X-Men (2017) #12, Charles forgoes returning to the X-Men, claiming that Kitty was doing fine without him and then wipes everyone's mind who had been involved in the matter except Psylocke (Betsy Braddock), asking her to keep an eye on him and stop him if he's being too shady (sound familiar?) and then just vaguely refers to his "new dream".

Our next and as of writing last time seeing resurrected Charles is in Astonishing X-Men (2017) Annual #1 written by Matthew Rosenberg. It's a standalone story where the four of five original X-Men (Scott wasn't there because he was busy being dead or effectively dead at the time, I mean he was a student of Charles Xavier, he learned from the best) meet up and have a bitchfest about their fucked up lives. This is interrupted by Charles just strolling in, not explaining how he got back, stealing their wine and sort of apologizing for involving them in traumatizing superhero shenanigans.

He then promptly takes them out for some family bonding through more traumatic superhero shenanigans that ends with a warehouse full of people dead. It's capped off with Charles mind-wiping them, but they then get to have a do-over reunion dinner where they show that they can appreciate what they've accomplished instead of dwelling on missed opportunities, which I interpret as Charles's messed up apology to them, which is kind of sweet while being really messed up. Which I think is kind of what this take on Xavier is going for. He was trapped in the astral plane with the Shadow King for effectively centuries so I guess strange coping mechanisms are to be expected.

So with Cyclops back from the dead in Uncanny X-Men (2019) #11, it seems that some kind of reunion between the two is inevitable and it's more of a question of when, under what circumstances and will Scott get to remember it even happened after? With Legion (David Haller) being a part of how Nate Grey was able to suck everyone into Age of X-Man, I wouldn't be surprised if Xavier plays some key role in getting the X-Men back from the Age of X-Men. I really doubt that Xavier will blame Cyclops for the whole killing him dead with cosmic fire thing, but other than that I can't say.

The Charles Xavier we are getting is definitely a darker take on the character who is more comfortable with taking extreme measures, but how exactly this plays into what his "new dream" is remains to be seen. I definitely don't want Xavier to get too much exposure, he really works best right now as an enigma doing his own thing, with the Astonishing X-Men Annual playing this up to good effect with Charles being used sparingly but completely stealing the scene when he does appear. Since Rosenburg that wrote the Annual and is now writing Uncanny X-Men I'm feeling slightly optimistic, though I can't help but be worried that since things established in Astonishing (like Warren being in control of his Archangel persona) was ignored by later writers.

In a previous X-Men Monday on Adventures in Poor Taste (http://www.adventuresinpoortaste.com/2019/03/04/x-men-monday-featuring-jordan-d-white-2-nightcrawlers-soul-sacrificial-goats-and-weezer/) senior editor in charge of the X-Men line at Marvel, Jordan White mentioned that Professor X will be back and play an important role in the future of the line and included an image of X, but absolutely no more context on what his role might be. So at least he doesn't seem lost in limbo.

In the back of my head I can't help but vaguely hope that since this Xavier is darker and seems to be cleaning up loose ends in secret that might threaten his students that we could see him joining up in some capacity with newly villainous Magneto since we've had Magneto join Xavier's side several times but never seen the reverse. That could at least be novel, but at the same time I can't really see Charles fighting against his old students even if he thought it was in their best interest as we saw in his emotional breakdown during Avengers v. X-Men.

From what we’ve seen of the promo materials from House of X/Powers of X, I kind of doubt that direction, Hickman has been making vague references to X trying to take the X-Men in a new direction, I guess that “new dream” vaguely referred to at the end of Astonishing.

All of this being a long-winded 1.5k way to say: we'll have to wait and see.

#x-men #professor x #magneto #x-men comics

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marvelverse2096 · 5 years

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⊗ X-Men Yellow and Blue.

During the Original Foundation of the Xavier Institute for Gifted Youngsters, it was never actually the intention to found a “Superhero Team”. Non-Mutant Superheroes had existed in some form for a while, after all - everyone knew who Captain America was, but it was not the intention of Charles Xavier to make his Students into Soldiers. But around this time there was something of a boom in the Superhero population resulting in the foundation of the Avengers and Fantastic Four, and shortly after - the X-Men. While it would surprise most people, knowing what they do about the various heroes that have called themselves X-Men over the years - it was actually the somewhat reserved Scott Summers’ idea to found a Superhero Team to show the world that Mutants could be a force for good. It worked, to an extent - but biased news-media outlets always found a way to spin the stories to make the X-Men themselves look bad, and for a while the team operated mostly in secret. The X-Men have had a variety of members and the size of the group has fluctuated quite wildly overtime, from as low as Five to as high as Twenty. While the X-Men started with a legacy as a Typical Superhero Team that tended to operate reactively, their efforts are now significantly more organised and directed than they were in the beginning. The X-Men are now split into two Teams with two different focuses, pairing mutants with complimentary powers that can operate under different conditions. These teams are X-Men Yellow, and X-Men Blue.

⊗ Yellow Team:

⊗ (Wolverine is the current mission leader of the X-Men’s Yellow Team, often reporting for active duty more than the other ‘Senior Staff’ at the Xavier Institute.) X-Men Yellow is a team made up of Mutants with particularly strong powers - Pyro/Cryo/Telekinesis, Super Strength, Alternate Forms, the ability to Generate Explosions and other powersets in that vein. The Yellow Team are present for missions that don’t require any kind of stealth and predominantly deal with Search and Rescue or disaster relief. The X-Men as a whole are no longer typically Crime Fighters, as that only seemed to cause them more trouble in attempting to advance mutant rights. However, for crimes or activities that are specifically Anti-Mutant, the X-Men’s Yellow team are likely to intervene and put a stop to it. As a natural result of their activities, the Yellow team is one of the most Public faces of the Xavier Institute. This can be something of a double edged sword - it’s hard to miss all the good they do and it’s pretty much impossible to ignore it, but the result is that a lot of very powerful mutants get put in the public eye in quite a big way. That tends to make a lot of people nervous, despite what those mutants are doing with their powers. ⊗ X-Men Yellow’s Roster consists of: Wolverine, Gambit, Colossus, Storm, Jean Grey, Ice-Man, Angel, Havok, Jubilee, Armor, Magik, Prodigy and Triage.

⊗ Blue Team

⊗ (Cyclops is the current Team Leader of the X-Men’s Blue Team. He was the leader of the original X-Men and has served in some manner of leadership role ever since, though he’s less present in the field than he used to be.)

X-Men Blue is made up of Mutants with more subtle powers - or ones that provide them with some level of enhanced intuition or stealth capabilities. The Blue Team engage in less public missions, predominantly filling an investigative role in trying to uncover anti-mutant misdeeds happening behind closed doors. The Blue team are often responsible for things like Sabotage on the attempted creation and development of Sentinels, disruption of “Purifier” Domestic Terrorist operations, and the Rescue of unlawfully detained and captured Mutants. The Blue team do have something of a Public Presence, but it’s a lot less pronounced than the Yellow’s. The Blue Team usually only appears in the public to provide evidence against someone’s criminal, anti-mutant activities, which oddly makes them a little less mistrusted than the Yellow team. Even the Daily Bugle, a Paper reknowned for being skeptical of the good intentions of Superpowered individuals, regularly cites, publishes and even praises things brought to light by the X-Men’s Blue Team.

⊗ X-Men Blue’s Roster consists of:

Cyclops, X-23, Nightcrawler, Kitty Pryde, Rogue, Psylocke, Rachel Grey, Emma Frost, Blink and Dust.

⊗ Command Team

It should be noted that there is technically a third team - the command team that operates from within, or rather underneath, the Xavier Institute itself. Within this space a small team of operators monitor information coming in to keep the teams updated and guide them to where they need to go. Though this team is less rigid - “Monitor Duty” is taken by various members of both or neither teams, and is sometimes used as a means of punishing infractions, a temporary suspension of active duty. It is sometimes, however much the younger X-Men insist to the contrary, actually meant as an important phase of training. Kitty and Prodigy in particular are often given this role to train them in leadership... and perhaps unsurprisingly, the two of them actually enjoy it - something other members of the teams repeatedly tease them for.

⊗ The X-Force

The X-Force was an experimental initiative run for a while by Wolverine after the Assassination of Charles Xavier, unofficially authorised by the founding X-Men to find and ‘Eliminate’ his killer. After fulfilling that the X-Force was to be disbanded, but both Wolverine and Cyclops saw the... necessity for a team that could do things that the X-Men couldn’t. This team brought in Mutants from outside of the X-Men to distance itself from the Institute and all it did publicly for the good of all Mutants - but it was understood by Wolverine that this also meant that the Institute could publicly disavow them if needed. For a while, The X-Force performed targeted, quite strikes against government facilities and even performed assassinations on key anti-mutant higher ups within the government - those trying to reinstate registration or the Sentinel Programme. But it wasn’t long before this team was entirely disbanded. The last dubious act of this team was performed by Emma Frost, who erased all memory of the X-Force from each of it’s members minds, save those of Wolverine and Cyclops. The three of them agreed to take the Secret to their graves.

⊗

The X-Force consisted of Wolverine, X-23, Mystique, Domino, and Deadpool - with Cyclops performing all Monitor Duties himself.

#X-men #Marvel #AU #Marvel 2096 #Fanart

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banjodanger · 4 years

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Days Of Future Past(2014)-Fox Gets It Right, Briefly

I’m going to warn you right away, I’m biased. Going into this project, this was my pick for the best X-Men movie. And I don’t think I’m alone. This movie has a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, only surpassed by Logan. It was the first X-Men movie ever to be nominated for an Academy Award, and even though that was for visual effects, this is the seventh movie in the franchise. Usually when a franchise hits number seven it’s not even released in theaters. Be happy if it gets included in some nebulous “Complete Collection.”

If you want a reason why I consider this my favorite, here’s a good question. How many major franchise releases basically come out and admit they majorly fucked up? Make no mistake, that’s exactly why they made this movie. Time travel and retcons are a staple of comic books, but for X-Men stories the Fox movies are more or less straightforward. Sure, they can’t decide how many Emma Frosts they have, but compare those to the absolute insanity of the comics. Go ahead and dive into Jean Grey’s resurrections and stop whenever you feel a tension headache coming on. The next person you meet in an X-Men comic could be the character’s father and first born child.

So make no mistake, this movie exists because Origins was shit and First Class got all the good attention. That’s what happens when you cast Michael Fassbender in your movies, though. Shit, I sat through Snowman for him and they didn’t even film all of that movie.

If there’s a failure I can think of concerning this movie, it’s that this is it. They reset the time line, left the door open for a bunch of great films...only to do what? The Deadpool movies were great and Logan was the perfect send off for a character that had come to define the movies as a whole, but Apocalypse was forgettable and Dark Phoenix is memorable for how much money it lost, while New Mutants is notable for a three year wait only to be released during a global pandemic. You may or may not have heard about it, depending on your news sources. Of the six movies released after this one, only two involve the X-Men as a team.

Ok, you know it’s not a Fox X-Men movie if there’s not something problematic to discuss. This movie isn’t an exception, although the big problem with this movie is it just highlights something that has been there all along, namely that these movies are terrible with their female characters. Days of Future Past, the comic story, features Kitty Pryde as a main character in the narrative and it’s also one of her defining narratives. She’s been a main character in the X-Men since her debut, over thirty years old at the time of the film. X3 used her as a femme fatale character to drive a wedge between Rogue and Bobby, something that shows a gross and fundamental misunderstanding of the character’s role in comics. And it’s not just Kitty, either. Storm, Jean Grey, Psylocke, and Rogue are all featured prominently in these movies and somehow all misused. Did you know Psylocke is supposed to be in X3? No, and why should you? She’s never referred to as such and has three lines.

Look, Wolverine is a wildly popular character. He’s a flagship character for the entire Marvel line, of course he was going to have a starring role. Not only that, but they lucked out again by getting Hugh Jackman, a man whose muscles ripple with his own charisma. But through all of these movies it feels like they focused on him at the detriment of everyone else. Maybe that’s why the main X-Men movies feel so lost after this. His appearance in Apocalypse is a repeat of something we’ve seen in three other movies, except for a new, more comics accurate hat.

Despite all that, if I had to pick a top X-Men movie, I think this one would be it. DOFP to me has always felt like one that delivered the feel of an X-Men comic book the best, Quicksilver’s scene in this is one of the best of the whole series. Seeing the original cast and younger cast in the same movie is a fun thrill, and accurate considering that the X-Men treat time the same way some people treat speed limits, only acknowledging them when put under scrutiny.

One final note, there are two versions of this movie. The theatrical version, and then a separate cut which restores scenes of Rogue. I’m going to watch both, but I’ll only be doing movie notes for the theatrical version.

Budget: 200 Million(estimated, a lot of studios are refusing to release definite numbers on their large properties.)

First Weekend: 90 Million

USA Gross: 233 Million

Movie notes will be up soon. It is spooky season, and so it has been dictated that I must base my personality around that until November.

#x men movies #x men films #x men dofp #dofp #days of future past #Fox #foxmovies #x men #x men universe

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sebastianshaw · 7 years

Note

9, 12, 33.

9: What power do you wish you had?Reality warping. I could just make myself and my life be exactly how I want to be, and fix lots of other problems in the world too. And if I wanted any other powers, like flight or time-relapse, I could just change reality so I had those.12: What character do you dislike the most?I really, really hate Sabretooth. He’s one of the few characters that I just full-stop won’t even RP with, and I frankly can barely read anything with him in it. 33: Which character deserves more attention than they get?So many! Probably more than I know! These are a few of my own underrated faves though (and it’s a very biased list, I RP as several of these characters)Fabian Cortez - Fabian was a major villain during the first half of the 90s, and remained an important character in relation to Quicksilver and Magneto even after he lost his “major villain” status overall. He’s the asshole that manipulated the retired Magneto back into villainy for his own ends before then killing him off so he could use his image as a martyr to lead a cult, and he also was a constant thorn in the side of Quicksilver, even kidnapping his daughter during the Blood Ties event. He’s very devious, very competent, and very…hilarious? The guy is definitely intelligent and dangerous, but he’s also RIDICULOUS. Like he’s the thirstiest fucker alive, he does shit like lying to birds and wrapping his cape around himself when he’s scared, he’s a huge diva, he’s just super duper awful with no redeeming qualities whatsoever and he’s so much fun to read. Add that to being a part of some major stories and connected to such popular characters (Magneto and Quicksilver, plus Apocalypse in the cartoon series) and I think more people should be aware of this guy.Madelyne Pryor- She’s not what I’d call unknown, but I’d like to see a bigger tumblr fandom for her. Most of tumblr is only familiar with the movies, but Maddy’s tragedy and pathos and spiral downwards are all super compelling and something I think a lot of people would find engaging. Claudette St. Croix- There’s a lot of demand on tumblr for autistic representation. Claudette is the only canonically autistic mutant in the X-Men series. What’s more, she’s also female and POC, and I’ve never seen someone with autism in media before who wasn’t white and male. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have much of a character/personality, and her “autism” was written as just being completely non-verbal (not that there’s anything wrong with that, some autistic people are, but she never really communicates in any way and we never see her thoughts either, so her personality never gets shown) and staring at nothing, but I feel like if a new writer picked her back up and expanded on her with care and accuracy, she could become a really good character, both in terms of autistic representation and in general. Haven- Haven was a seven-issue X-Factor villain in the 90s and she’s unique for being the kindest, most benevolent “villain” that any X-Men team ever faced. Her story and design are very interesting and unusual, and also stuff that happened to her is actually pretty relevant to things going on now (government team gets sent after a brown woman with a funny religion because well she MUST be a terrorist, and of course they turn out to be right so that makes it okay they opened fire on her immediately before even telling her she was under arrest)Shinobi Shaw- Sebastian’s illegitimate son, and a barrel of laughs. Exploits include trying to drunkenly seduce a yakuza boss and the X-men bursting in on him TWICE while he’s in the bath. He’s not competent or threatening at all, but his flamboyancy and stupidity are just wonderful to read. He also has some unexpected pathos due to his abuse by Shaw, and the glimpses we get of what’s going on under his shallow stupid playboy surface are really profoundly painful. Also, he’s very openly bisexual. Like, blatantly. It’s not GOOD bisexual representation, as it’s used to play up how decadent he is and relies on some nasty stereotypes of bisexuals as sex-crazed hedonists who are probably evil, but, well, it was the 90s. The Hellions - These were a team of young mutants being trained by Emma Frost in the 80s while she was still with the Hellfire Club, but most of them weren’t evil. They were just kids that she got to before Xavier. They were really great, engaging characters with lots of potential, and it was a shame they were killed off. There was surprising complexity and depth to them, and there was surely even more going on we weren’t aware of because they weren’t the focal characters. Between this and their connection to a majorly popular canon like Emma, I think more people should know about them.Zaladane- Given how popular Magneto’s family is, how much fanart I see of them, I think more people should know Zaladane/ Zala Dane. She’s a sorceress from the Savage Land who claimed to be the long lost sister of Lorna Dane aka Polaris, and she used a machine to steal her powers. Lorna dismissed her claims, but Moira MacTaggert confirmed that the machine could only have been used to transfer powers between genetic relatives. Zala then later used the same machine on Magneto to add his powers to what she already took from Lorna. Meaning, she must be related to BOTH of them. The math kinda does itself—she’s got to be Magneto’s daughter. Later changes to continuity makes that impossible, however, but who knows, maybe she came from an alternate universe or something and that’s why Lorna didn’t know about her, how she wound up in the Savage Land, etc. Zala’s admittedly not really noteworthy in her own right, but she intrigues me as a long-lost-Magneto-spawn, and given how much fandom loves the Magnet clan, I think she oughta get some attention.Selene- Like Maddy, she’s not what I’d call unknown, but there’s not a lot of love for her in the tumblr fandom. She’s not really a compelling character as a person, but she’s a lot of fun as a villain who just relishes in being evil. Her ridiculously overt predatory lesbianism is also downright hilarious in terms of how much Claremont was clearly enjoying writing her.Kwannon- Everything Psylocke is today is due to Kwannon. Psylocke was originally a white British woman, a model and not much of a fighter, but a body-swap with a Japanese ninja asassin named Kwannon turned her into the Psylocke we know today. Kwannon suffered tragically for this, and I think she ought to be remembered, especially by any fan of Psylocke. Moira MacTaggert - If you’re imagining a sexy young American CIA agent, stop it right now. I’m talking about comics Moira. Comics Moira is around Charle’s age, very Scottish, and she is actually DOCTOR MacTaggert, a world-renowned leading geneticist whose area of specialty is mutants. She’s badass, she’s smart, she calls Charles out on his shit when no one else does, she has dark issues of her own, and she goes after a kelpie with a giant gun. She’s a longtime ally of the X-Men and friend to mutantkind, she lives at the mansion and forms a relationship with each team member of the time, and even forms/leads her own team of X-Men on Muir Island (the site of her research center) when it appears the original team has been killed. Moira debuts at an early point in the comics, and is an important player in numerous stories for years to come up until her death at the hands of Mystique, but not before she discovered the cure to the Legacy Virus, saving the lives of countless mutants. Moira definitely needs more appreciation, and I’m not even a Moira fan. (I don’t dislike her, obviously, she’s just not an area of focus for me)Exodus- A super powerful mutant from the 11th century awoken by Magneto in modern era, Exodus was a Crusader during his own time and remains one today for Magneto’s cause. He’s so powerful, writers tend to just...ignore he exists, because he can do SO MUCH it’s hard to write him. But I really love his well-intentioned extremism, the fact he really means so well, is often noble, and his really unsubtle gay crush on Mags.And, of course, Sebastian Shaw here. He’s hardly a D-lister in the comics, but all fandom seems to be aware of is movie Shaw and it makes me sad :C

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lozco · 7 years

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X-Men Gold By Loz Cook

The Pitch

An Emma-led core team of four X-Men sponsored by Landau, Luckman & Lake, and a potentially revolving door of younger student X-men and guest stars.

An alt-universe where IvX happened years ago and ended with all Inhumans and X-men being banished off-world by the world’s main protector: The Sentry.

Former X-Force Villain, King Bedlam who wants to take over the world by introducing the sliver of the 616 Void, that Cyclops had locked away in his mind, into Sentry World’s Sentry.

After IvX, Emma needs a new direction. After everything that happened she needs a back to basics approach to her life. Get back to what she truly enjoys, teaching. Emma is contacted by several individuals.

First, Banshee who has made a deal with the extra-dimensional law firm Landau, Luckman & Lake for some alt-world tech that will help heal his body after the death Seed. He also needs Emma’s help healing his mind after such a horrific experience. The only way he gets the tech is if Emma agrees to work for LL&L, specifically Zoe Culloden for undisclosed reasons. With everything that happened with Cyclops, Emma decides this is as good an opportunity as any to reestablish the gold standard in mutant academics in the post IvX world. She knows the new X- academy/school has moved to New York, but after IvX wants a lower profile and prefers to work with a smaller number of students where she can do her best. Second, Artie and Leech. They are fed up with being treated like kids when they’ve been around for a long time and Artie needs some serious one-on-one tuition to finally develop. And Third, Magik drops off a young girl for Emma to tutor, Bo the young girl found on Monster Island. She doesn’t feel like she can invest herself in another young girl after Sapna’s fate. As part of Emma’s deal with Zoe, she offers positions to X-Men who she believes will aid her in her mission while helping her discover what Zoe is really up to. The team will move into L,L&L’s California High-rise which doubles as a gateway to the Alternate universe: Sentry World and will fulfill certain missions for Zoe.

The Cast

Emma Frost Last Pitch Week I stopped myself from using Emma in favor of Sage, but Death of X, and IvX has reminded me that Emma’s absence has indeed made my heart grow stronger. Emma should be at least a co lead of the flagship X book. Emma will be the Co-lead of this book. She’ll be the focus of LL&L’s attentions and specifically the mastermind (see below for his identity) behind this particular Alt-world office.

Banshee After being told by Beast that his recovery is going to be slow and possibly years in the healing, Banshee goes to the one person who may be able to help him: the Morrigan. The Morrigan, his daughter Siryn, points him in the direction of LL&L as a means to heal him with other world tech. He is told that if he can convince Emma Frost to front an affirmative action team for the firm, he will get his tech. He convinces Emma who after what happened to Cyclops cannot fathom losing Banshee again. She agrees to front the team as long as he joins her. His arc will focus on healing and reestablishing his relationships with Emma and Forge.

Psylocke Emma approaches Psylocke to be the muscle on her team, impressed with how Psylocke has handled herself pre- and during IvX. Psylocke in turn realizes that she needs a break from everything that has been going on recently in her life. Her battles with Magneto over that team broke down into violence and now she wants a change. She will develop a mentor-like relationship with Artie Maddicks.

Forge The big thing I enjoyed from Lemire’s Extraordinary run was Forge and Cerebra. These two were wonderful and I’m never going to be able to get over the fact that Forge taped Apocalypse’s mouth shut. Forge will continue to be the ultra competent backbone of the team while still trying to overcome past demons and mistakes. He will befriend KidW one of the Alt-world techies at LL&L, who is an alternate version of WizKid.

Leech and Artie Maddicks Leech and Artie have been Marvels eternal moppets for too long. I enjoyed them in FF but feel they have way too much potential for me to ignore them longer. For the purposes of this pitch, I made them teenagers and will develop their characters beyond anything that has happened to them in the past 10 years if not longer. We’ll have a bit of separation of the two also. Emma will take Leech under her wing giving him a level of control of his powers and an ability to direct it, while Artie will get a major power upgrade and will develop a friendship with Psylocke.

Bo I loved Bo’s single appearance from Bendis’s Kitty and Magik adventure. I wanted to age her slightly (anything goes after Secret Wars right) and develop her character and power set. Her powers will be able to breach Emma’s diamond form which will be crucial later in the book. She will befriend the alt-world version of mutant Karasu Tengu.

Villains

King Bedlam – Bedlam was always one of my favorite X-Force villains and he has a natural protection against psychics which makes him a great foil for Emma as they have a history. He is the Mastermind behind everything that happens in this book. All the villains in this book originate from Sentry World and Bedlam is responsible for the Sentries breakdown. He wants to use the Void Sliver to introduce into the Sentry and discredit him, leaving Bedlam and his Hellions to take over as supposed “protectors” as new sentries of Sentry World and in turn rulers. Tarot – Wherever Bedlam goes; Tarot will not be far behind. Tarot will not be the subservient woman familiar with 616 readers. She will be a sadistic Queen to King Bedlam and will mess with Banshee as he tries to recover. She is Bedlams top assassin and lover, and She has quite an extensive trophy room filled with keepsakes from opponents she, Karasu and KidW have defeated. Karasu Tengu – In Sentry World, The Inhumans and Mutants came to blows much earlier in their history. The Sentry intervened and most of the Inhumans and X-Men were exiled. Karasu was one of the first mutants to take advantage in the new world all but devoid of Mutants and Inhumans, especially X-men. Karasu is an assassin of former X-men villains who might threaten the Hellions. At first she will be the benevolent Other world projects manager at L,L&L, but will eventually show her true colors. She befriends Bo and makes plans for an aggressive expansion of the trophy room she shares with Tarot to include Earth 616 items. KidW – Like Karasu, KidW (pronounced Kih-dub-yah) is nothing like his 616 counterpart. He is an assassin who has infiltrated L, L&L like the other Hellions and works as tech support. He befriends Forge and the two work on several projects to help L, L&L with their Sentry “Problem.” He has been slowly transforming the Gateway high-rise in to a maze of traps should the occasion become necessary. The Void – The sliver of the Void will reject and destroy Sentry and will look for a new host. King Bedlam will become that host and he will threaten the destruction of the whole world and possibly the 616 world in turn due to the Gateway.

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First Year Summary

Issue 1: It Starts

Emma-Centric issue. We’re introduced to the status quo pretty quickly. Emma’s team is already established and is already living and working out of the L, L&L Gateway High rise in L.A. The Gateway has two halves. Earth 616 half and Sentry World Half.

Emma Mentors Leech. She feels the Void cry out. The X-Men investigate Cyclops Grave and battle a mysterious assailant, Tarot, who manages to contain and evade them all.

Scott’s head is missing from his grave. Emma is obviously enraged and vows to find the culprit.

Issue 2: Human

Banshee Issue. Banshee is having a healing session with Emma. Along with his technology he is starting to feel like himself. He recalls how his daughter got him here after being told his health would be a long time coming.

Emma is called to a medical facility on Sentry world. Banshee, Psylocke and Bo accompany her. We realize that The Sentry is not feeling his usual Self and feels like a part of his mind is missing. This can’t be a coincidence. The only difference in this world is, this Sentry never had the Void and was free to be the protector the world needed. Zoe questions Emma about the remains of the Sentry in 616.

While in Sentry World they battle members of the Purity group. While fighting, Bo attacks and Emma and Banshee are rendered unconscious. Emma is in her diamond form at the time. Psylocke defeats the remaining Purity Members and Bo.

Issue 3: Butterfly

Psylocke Issue. Psylocke realizes each purity member was a psychic black hole. She thinks that their attacker at Cyclops grave was similar. She is fixated on the notion of psionic black holes and people stuck in systems of thought and action, unable to change who they are. Can she choose the way of peaceful warrior as opposed to her recent violent streak?

Forge has been doing some research on Sentry world’s Inhuman/Mutant crisis. One of Zoe’s tech Support, a teen named KidW tells him all about how most of the Inhumans and Mutants were forcibly removed off-world after their war.

Psylocke researches Sentry World, and Artie goes with her. They investigate Purity and are attacked by King Bedlam who disrupts their minds and Psylocke’s telepathy has no effect on him. She sends a telepathic message to Emma, but is not sure if it was received.

Issue 4: Hard Equation

Forge Issue. Cerebra alerts Forge that something is wrong on Sentry World and the source of the disturbance is from Psylocke’s last known coordinates. Secretly KidW uploads a virus into Cerebra. She is unable to speak or relay information. Forge get’s Kids help trying to figure out what it is, and Kid says they just have to figure out the equation that fixes it.

Emma and Banshee train with Leech on Directional Power nullification. Power nullification is just one aspect of his powers and is able to negate specific aspects of others abilities making others stronger. He turns off Emma’s Telepathy, making her diamond form harder, heavier, and stronger. He then leeches the diamond boosting her telepathy. Emma hears Psylocke’s butterfly S.O.S.

Forge recalls a time when he’d felt like he had a virus himself. When he had a ghost box and the fate of the world was in his hands only for it to be taken from him. How he had been abandoned, but then he’d heard a small voice, and it had been a tiny program named Cerebra.

Issue 5: There is a Drum

Emma, Banshee, and Leech race to the L,L&L lab where Forge is trying to fix Cerebra. Forge can’t quite fix cerebra but can use her teleport function. Forge stays behind to fix Cerebra. Emma orders Bo to stay behind. She is too untested.

Emma, Banshee, and Leech battle King Bedlam and Tarot. However they are Sentry World’s Bedlam and Tarot.

Tarot Attacks Banshee and Leech Emma Fights Bedlam. Both Tarot and Bedlam have tarot cards tattooed across their backs and can manifest multiple abilities.

Artie awakens and binds and muzzles Tarot. Banshee Strikes out at Bedlam disrupting Bedlam’s tarot and his psychic static. Emma orders him to tell her where Scott’s head is. She can feel the psychic drum of the Void sliver in her mind, even through her Diamond form.

Forge Bo and Karasu Tengu, another LL&L employee, arrive as backup, but Psylocke realizes Karasu has possessed Bo and Bo attacks. This time Emma is protected in her Diamond form and Banshee has evaded the attack. Everyone else is unconscious. Bedlam escapes with Tarot and Scott’s head as Emma Knocks Bo unconscious.

Banshee and Emma give chase. Psylocke, in Astral form, battles Karasu to protect the fallen X-Men.

Issue 6: The Longest Memory

Each member of the x-men are stuck in a telepathic nightmare influenced by a past traumatic memory from their past. Forge is detonating a nuclear bomb attached to a ghost box. Bo is being abandoned again on monster island. Leech is a living taxidermised exhibit in his dad lab. Leech is stuck in a loop being shot to death next to Annalee his Morlock mother.

Finally Psylocke succumbs and is instantly stuck in a nightmare where she has killed all the X-men and is living in a dystopian future, Old Woman Betsy style.

Issue 7: All Bets are Off

Bedlam and Tarot race towards the medical center housing The Sentry. Banshee fights Tarot as Emma chases Bedlam to The Sentry’s hospital room.

Emma is about to defeat Bedlam when The Sentry and Zoe Culloden burst in separating them. Emma tries to reason with The Sentry, but he seems confused and gradually he starts speaking with the crazed mannerisms as Bedlams victims. Zoe meanwhile picks up the container that Bedlam was carrying Cyclops head in. She holds it close to her chest. She is under Bedlams control.

Emma warns The Sentry, but he blasts an energy beam at Zoe disintegrating her and Scott’s head releasing the Void sliver. The Void corrupts the Sentry and the whole floor erupts in a fiery blast.

Issue 8: Real Later Starters

Leech and Artie break free of Karasu’s telepathy and together sever her connection with everyone. An odd side-effect of Karasu’s mental tampering has awakened Artie’s ability to speak.

Karasu escapes. The team rushes to catch up with Emma and Banshee and the team battle a contaminated and extremely unstable Sentry. Finally Artie manifests a containment unit that puts the Sentry in a coma. Emma Speaks to the Sentry telepathically and he pleads with her that she must protect Sentry World while he is incapacitated and holding the influence of the Void at Bay.

Things go wrong when the Sentry suffers a void induced stroke/heart attack and promptly dies in the containment unit. Emma tries to hang onto the psionic trace of the Void sliver which has definitely not died with the Sentry, but loses all trace of it.

Issue 9: History Boys

The team have to deal with the responsibility of protecting Sentry World now their main protector is gone. Back in his lab, Forge notices newly installed Ghost box tech. The Gateway on the Sentry World Side is built with the same tech.

Emma and Banshee are interrupted by a couple of LL&Ls lawyers, come to talk about the new status quo. It seems that the sentry’s last act was to telepathically make Emma’s promotion binding.

Forge has a flashback to his Karasu nightmare when doors start sliding, and walls start moving. KidW appears and attacks Forge.

Other doors open from other locations in Sentry World directly into the Gateway. The Void has taken on a new host, King Bedlam, and he’s bought Tarot and Karasu with him.

The last three issues will feature some revelations and lessons learned for all characters plus some V.S battles:

Psylocke and Artie v.s Karasu

Forge/Cerebra and Leech v.s KidW

Banshee and Bo v.s Tarot

Emma v.s Bedlam/Void

Emma becomes host to a sliver of the Sentry left behind when he died and uses this power to help each individual on the team.

Banshee has called in Siryn/The Morrigan who saves Pyslocke.

Morrigan v.s Karasu, one crow deity versus another.

Bedlam/Void v.s Everyone. Bedlam activates a Ghost box in the centre of the Gateway base threatening to destroy Sentry World.

A weary Psylocke wakens and with the focused totality of her psionic powers in knife form to bedlams head, Gives bedlam a taste of his own medicine. This gives Emma the opportunity to finally destroy the Void sliver.

Emma is now responsible for Sentry World. She rallies the team to be this world’s protectors. Leech, and Artie become fully fledged members of the team. Siryn sticks around to spend time with her father. Forge rebuilds the Gateway. Banshee and Psylocke agree to stay.

Going forward, X-Men Gold would deal with threats the Sentry hadn’t taken care of, and also the possible return of Sentry World’s X-Men or Inhumans. More Followers of King Bedlam would also show up to cause trouble.

As we mentioned yesterday, you could win a prize for commenting. In conjunction with MahMuseComics.com, and The All New Wednesday Warriors, comic store Dr. Volts is sponsoring pitch week and is giving away one X-men themed prize to one random commenter each day. So, enter the discussion, ask the pitchers questions, engage them in conversation about the pitch and you could win. Hope you enjoyed X-Men Gold. Tune in tomorrow for X-Men: Armored CompleX.

X-Men Gold logo designed by the talented Jerrod Pittman.

X-Men Gold X-Men Gold By Loz Cook The Pitch An Emma-led core team of four X-Men sponsored by Landau, Luckman & Lake, and a potentially revolving door of younger student X-men and guest stars.

#Banshee #Emma Frost #Featured #Forge #King Bedlam #Landau Luckman & Lake #Pitch Week2 #Psylocke #Tarot #X-Men #X-Men Gold

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thecorteztwins · 7 years

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@survival-cfthe-fittest Did you want a healthy dose of Farouk this morning? OF COURSE YOU DID! HERE’S A HEAPING HELPING OF HIS GROSSNESS AND HIS HISTORY WITH PSYLOCKE

X-MEN (second series) #77: PSI-WAR PART ONE

Storm gets a message from her Kenyan foster mother, Ainet, and she and the other X-men teleport via some new abilities of Psylocke (Psylocke could teleport through shadows at this time due to...I think her experience with the Crimson Dawn, which is what gave her the red tattoo over her eyes for awhile) to her homeland. Turns out Ainet summoned her to introduce her to a god who is controlling Ainet and the villagers...and the god wants to marry Storm. It seems to be the spider trickster figure, Anansi (spelled as Ananasi in this comic) and he refers to Storm as a "delicious bride" so honestly you already know where this is going. Oh yeah, and he also wants to absorb her power, just as he claims to have absorbed the souls of her people.

Then he sucks out the souls of the X-men around Storm, and they're inside him now, his to play with.

He torments Sam/Cannonball with his dead father saying he's ashamed, but since Marrow, Maggot, and Dr. Cecilia Reyes are relatively new, he goes a different route with them. He tells that they're in a place where truth can be seen, and masks are stripped away. He makes Marrow's horrible bone protrusions vanish, and Maggot's slugs go away, and says he's giving them this gift because "you three have not yet been tainted by the X-men's lies" and then shows them a feral, animalistic Wolverine, who is chained up growling on the floor, and says that he's showing them the X-Men as they really are "without their righteous lies and pretty costumes. I give Xavier's dream and show you it's a nightmare...if you'll listen. So...shall we begin the dishing?"

Basically, he makes them think he's freed them from the nasty, painful parts of their mutation, presents himself as a truth-teller, and makes it seem like it's the X-Men who are not to be trusted. Since these three are newbies, and may not even really want to be there (idk about Maggot but Reyes always wanted to stay out of mutant business, and Marrow doesn't seem to like the X-Men at all despite being one of them) he knows they're most inclined to listen. And, of course, neither they or the readers know he's the Shadow King at this point.

Meanwhile in the real world, Storm is cradling Ainet and saying how she's going to make Ananasi pay, Ananasi starts to taunt her but then is ripped down the middle from within by Psylocke, who comes out of him.

"Has anyone ever told you people how difficult you make baroque posturing?" he complains, as Psylocke quips "Sigh...a typical man...splitting on you the moment you choose to assert yourself. Story of my life."

She explains to Storm that they're not dealing with a spider god, they're dealing with a telepath, and one "of the highest order". Ananasi, however, insists he is a god, and Storm asks Psylocke who he really is, but Psylocke says she can't tell, she can't breach his psychic defenses.

Ananasi changes tactics, telling Storm to be careful keeping counsel with this one (Psylocke) and then taunting Psylocke about how she's been transformed and posessed and reborn so many times she can't tell fantasy from reality.

In other words, he's caught in a lie he knows Psylocke can see through, so he's trying to make both Storm and Psylocke doubt Psylocke's sanity and/capabilities.

"You're everyone's plaything. A mismatched freak. A broken toy who isn't even sure if she exists."

Psylocke retorts coldly that she knows he's frightened of what she can do. I'm betting she's right. She tells Storm to take her hand, and they journey inside him, on his section of the astral turf where Storm's people and the X-Men are imprisoned, while he yells NO! YOU LITTLE WITCH! YOU'LL RUIN EVERYTHING!

Storm gets referred to as his bride once again because gross, and he and Psylocke start to do battle on the astral plane, "Ananasi" belittling Psylocke the entire time. Storm cries out to Psylocke that "Betsy! This is a trap! It's not me he wants! It's--"

And then she's silenced but I think it's pretty obvious it's gotta be Psylocke he was really after all along. He's always had a very strong interest in Storm, since his first appearance, so I have no doubt he wants Storm too, but Betsy is his main target here. We just have to find out why.

He keeps taunting her, insulting her, messing with her head, hitting all her insecurities, until she lashes out at him with all her power.

Which, it turns out, was EXACTLY WHAT HE WANTED HER TO DO

She falls "mind first" into a trap. We don't know the details yet but Ananasi reveals himself as LOL THE SHADOW KING ALL ALONG!

The psychic backlash of whatever he does to Betsy is SO HUGE that it cleaves through the entire psionic plain, and actually affects people in the real world---worldwide. Normal people experience things like headaches and deja vu, whereas telepaths lose their telepathy (which would apply in other comics, and span several issues) This extends not just to people like Emma Frost, but also people like Spider-Man (with his intuitive "spider sense") So it's not just mutants who are effected, but everybody with even the slightest psionic abilities.

X-MEN (second series) #78: PSI WAR PART TWO

The next issue opens with society in chaos. There's car crashes, there's a dude in a pink apron chasing another guy in an art museum, a guy who thinks he's Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, people choking each other, others laughing maniacially, and from the astral plane, the Shadow King relishes it all.

"Rain anguish and chaos on your fellow man! Flood the earth in misery, that your master may drink his fill! That the Shadow King may rule a world of madness! Ah...all that delicious suffering...glorious, don't you think?"

Betsy, whose form on the psychic plane is a melted, multi-faced mess of herself, can only gurgle in reply. The Shadow King says she's embarrassing him with such praise, and says he couldn't have done it without her, adding that he can only imagine the torment she must be in. He explains that thanks to her, any possible opposition to him has been rendered impotent (meaning, all the other psychics are depowered).

He then tells us how after his "humiliating" defeat on Muir Island, he went into a sort of "hibernation" during which he was "hiding from your cursed mentor, Xavier, in wretched host bodies as my strength returned." Finally, when Onslaught happened, "the dissolution of Xavier's mind and power left the psionic plane without its preminent guardian. Only he could have sensed my subtle machinations. With him gone, I could make my move."

Thus he subjugated Storm's people and used Ainet to bring him "new X-Men to tempt, old X-Men to torture, and one foolhardy telepath to trick."

He says he'd stay and watch Psylocke crumble to dust but "I have some X-Men to corrupt. Even god needs apostles."

As he departs, Psylocke's twisted form calcifies, screams, and shatters.

Shadow King returns to the new X-men--Maggot, Marrow, and Cecilia Reyes---and Marrow's bone spikes return, as painful as they ever were, and he reveals his real self. He tells them he can sense the pain they're in and that he would like to see it abolished, and that he can help them as easily as he temporarily did Marrow...if they will turn their backs on the X-Men and pledge themselves to him.

Cecilia says that the X-men are "a royal pain at times" but that they are "good people"

The Shadow King challenges that, pointing out lots of ways they've wronged the three of them...and seems to be tickling Cecilia under the chin with some kind of feathery thing? Dammit Shadow King, can you NOT make this pervy?

"The X-Men offer you nothing but more pain...more lies...whereas I can turn dreams into reality!"

He tells Cecilia, a doctor, how with his help she could go back to saving lives, how he could put the knowledge of the best surgeons in her head. How Maggot could control his slugs and become the hero he wants to be. How Marrow could walk among the surface people, be pretty, be loved, be touched without pain, be looked at without pity or revulsion.

And these poor people, they seem to be enticed. Not agreeing, but tempted for sure.

"A surgeon...I've never dreamed..." "No more pain..." "Could it be true...an oke like me...a real hero?"

But then Cecilia asks what's going to happen to the X-men. The Shadow King doesn't answer, just says they wouldn't show HER the same concern. She still wants to know. He tells her that he's going to try to help them overcome their own trials and tribulations.

LOLOLOLOL

Cut to Sam/Cannonball, who is being berated by the seeming ghost of his dead father, as the Shadow King tells them he's getting "quality time bonding with his deceased father"

Wolverine, tormented on a chain like a beast ("Stripped of his bestial nature, one layer at a time, until we find the man inside")

Storm being swarmed by skeletons covering her ("My lovely wind goddess, I'm already helping her with a crippling case of claustrophobia. She's making wonderful progress.")

UR A DICK, FAROUK

Meanwhile, the broken shards of Betsy Braddock have come together to form her once more...but not as she was. She's a being of solid darkness in the shape of a woman, wondering why she isn't dead as she should be. She realizes it's due to the arcane energies of the Crimson Dawn saving her life. I do not totally know what the deal with the Crimson Dawn is, but as mentioned earlier, it is responsible for her shadow-porting abilities and her red face mark. I don't know the whole story but I think she died and Archangel used the Crimson Dawn to bring her back to life, in exchange for some of his own soul. Don't quote me on this. But yeah, she should have died from what the Shadow King did, but the Crimson Dawn is magical so it saved her.

Ainet, still trapped in the astral plane, appears and begs Psylocke to "stop the beast". Together, they go to find Storm in the "prison" that the Shadow King has her in, "a perpetual nightmare" that is "her private version of Hell"

Meanwhile, the Shadow King is delighting in infecting people all over the world, feeding more chaos and suffering, and gloating about how he can now "Defile any mind'

DEFILE ANY MIND

HE HAD TO SAY IT LIKE THAT

As for Storm, yeah, still buried in skeletons, paralyzed by her deepest fears. A child Storm is there too, telling them how this punishment for bad things she did.

But Psylocke and Ainet help her work through this and it's awesome.

But the Shadow King is being gross again, talking to Maggot, Marrow, and Cecilia, saying that "So? Are we ready to make a deal? Talent? Fame? Beauty? All can be yours if you say the magic words..."Hurt Me Daddy." All together now.."

AND THEN PSYLOCKE SHOWS UP TO KICK HIS ASS

WHICH, NOT A MOMENT TOO SOON

HURT ME DADDY

I CAN'T EVEN ' WHO WROTE THIS

I DON'T THINK IT WAS CLAREMONT, THE DIALOGUE STYLE IS DIFFERENT

SO I CAN'T EVEN BLAME HIM FOR THIS KINKY SHIT

Naturally, the Shadow King has to voice his surprise at Betsy's return and her new look by creepy-touching her face and telling her how "ravishing" she looks like this CAN WE PLEASE GET RID OF HIM FOREVER

Psylocke thinks that his touch feels like maggots crawling through her skin. I think that's very mean to maggots.

Shadow King says "I haven't been this surprised since I underestimated a certain balding American" and HE TOUCHES HER CHEST

NOPE NOPE NOPE

NOT OKAY

BAD TOUCH

WE NEED AN ADULT

He then offers her the chance to rule by his side as his queen. Because if you can't kill her, fuck her, I guess.

While they have this lovely chat, Storm frees Maggot, Marrow, and Cecilia. Shadow King talks about how Psylocke is going to BEG him for the power she so DESIRES and how he is going to "devour every mind on earth at once!"

Figures. He gets all this power and he just wants to eat.

The X-men's souls are now out of him and back in the real world, but he's still got the real prize, that he's going to get into "the collective subconscious of humanity" and "all the delicious suffering of humanity, one morsel at a time!"

He seems to frame things in terms of food/eating a lot, which I guess makes sense.

AND THEN PSYLOCKE HAS TO SAY *THIS* LINE: "He's...he's doing it...touching them all...EVERYWHERE!"

there is no way this phrasing is not meant to be deliberately suggestive ew ew ewww

And she thinks about how the sensation of it is "intoxicating. Saints protect me...I want it!"

ALL ABOARD THE TRAIN TO NOPESVILLE!!

"But more to the point...so does the Shadow King...at any cost. His thirst for power is so great...his lust so consuming...that he's getting lost in the rapture of it all...stretching himself to the limits, and BEYOND."

And that stretching lets Psylocke get a little sneaky psychic blow in, right at the Shadow King's personal nexus. And so her "subtle attack begins the block the Shadow King's far flung talons from the locus of their power" and his influence on people fades, restoring sanity to the world.

The Shadow King howls that this cannot be, that Betsy is nothing, and Betsy returns that "You are one mind! One consumed with greed, conceit, and pride! And one mind can't possibly poison millions without leaving itself open to attack!"

In other words, he got too greedy, opened himself up to much trying to get to others, and didn't think to close even a little to avoid any attacks getting in, because hey, Betsy, is nothing, what can she do against him, right?

The Shadow King, yelling it's not supposed to end this way, is then imprisoned in Betsy's mind. He points out that she's just one mind too, so the moment she uses her telepathy for anything other than containing him, he'll break free. Thus begins the era of Psylocke being just a telekinetic and not a telepath. Or did she not have telekinesis either at this stage? Her powers change around a lot after the Kwannon thing due to various events like this, so it's hard to keep track. But yeah, Betsy's head was his prison for a long time after this, up until she died in X-treme, freeing him to come after Rogue, and you know how THAT went---he just ended up imprisoned with her instead!

#shadow king

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First New Marvel X-Men Crossover Revealed

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Marvel announced the first major crossover of Jonathan Hickman’s Dawn of X era of X-Men. X of Swords will tie all the X-titles together in a ’90s throwback, 15-part crossover touching every single book in the line.

“One of the cool things we are able to do now, because we’ve established the X-line and really know where we’re going, is that we’re able to try some different things out,” Hickman said in a statement. “X of Swords will be an old school crossover that meanders through the entire line. It’s almost like chapters of a story.”

Hickman, you’ll recall, reinvigorated the X-Men line with House of X and Powers of X. And like Powers of X, X of Swords is using the Roman numeral X as a sort of low-nerdy double entendre. Where Powers of X examined four time periods of exponential scales, X of Swords heavily implies a focus on the mystical (the Ten of Swords is a not great tarot card – it depicts a man lying face down on the ground with ten swords in his back), and the promotional artwork seems to hint at that being the case.

As he did for HoX/PoX, Mark Brooks drew a pretty interesting promotional piece for X of Swords. Take a look, but be warned: Past the picture, there will be spoilers for most Dawn of X comics, as we try and look at who’s on the piece, and almost as importantly, what swords they’re holding.

Starting in the top left corner and moving clockwise:

Eye Boy, created for Jason Aaron’s underrated Wolverine and the X-Men and slated to appear as part of Leah Williams’ and David Baldeon’s X-Factor. That book has Trevor as a part of the team that investigates mutant deaths so the resurrection protocols can be initiated. He’s wielding some kind of eye sword.

Gorgon, the ex-Hand leader who once killed, resurrected and brainwashed Wolverine into being a Hand agent. Since joining the mutants on Krakoa, Gorgon was personally recommended by Logan to be one of the four Great Captains of Krakoa, responsible for the protection of the mutant ruling council when they leave the island. He’s holding the Godkiller sword that he’s carried since he was in Hickman’s Secret Warriors. The blade was created for Zeus but lost, and eventually made its way into Gorgon’s hands.

Next to him is John Greycrow, formerly one of Sinister’s Marauders, and slated to be a member of Hellions, an upcoming book from Zeb Wells and Stephen Segovia. Greycrow is a master marksman who honed his talents in war (originally World War II, but Marvel Time means his service dates have been moved up to Symkaria or something) and has technology powers. He’s carrying some kind of technological gunsword.

Below and to the right is Brian Braddock, formerly Captain Britain but now titleless (I believe) after ceding the Amulet of Right to his sister Betsy in Tini Howard and Marcus To’s magnificent Excalibur. He’s holding the Sword of Might, one of the two artifacts offered to potential Captains Britain. When captured and corrupted in Otherworld by Morgan Le Fay, Brian gave up the Amulet of Right to Betsy to help her stop Le Fay’s attack. He’s currently suffering through a crisis of confidence now that he’s left with only the sword. It also feels important that he’s textually not a mutant.

Below Captain Britain is Psylocke. This will stop being confusing in a couple of months – Kwannon (the woman who was body-swapped with Elizabeth Braddock back in the late ‘80s, then died of the Legacy Virus in Betsy’s old body) was resurrected during Wolverine’s return before HoXPoX. She was most recently in Fallen Angels running down ex-family and trying to kill Apoth, a self-aware AI drug dealer. Psylocke is carrying a fairly standard-looking sword.

Above him is Rachel Grey, another member of X-Factor, carrying the Blade of the Phoenix, the Shi’ar sword used by the Death Commandos to wipe out her bloodline on Earth.

Below her is Charles Xavier, carrying the sword Magneto made for him out of the broken shards of the Cerebro helmet he was wearing when he was shot in the head in the pages of X-Force.

Next to him is Cable carrying a sword I recognize but can’t name at the moment. Cable is set to appear in his own book, from Gerry Duggan and Phil Noto, but has spent much of Dawn of X on family vacations with Cyclops, Jean Grey, Rachel Grey, his uncle Gabe, his dad’s boyfriend Wolverine, his dad’s other wife Emma Frost, and their island home’s estranged sister.

Above Cable is Doug Ramsey, Cypher. Doug was most recently running around Shi’ar territory trying to get to Chandilar to visit with Cannonball in Hickman and Rod Reis’ New Mutants. He’s back on Earth and back to functioning as Krakoa’s voice now. The sword he’s carrying looks like it’s a techno-organic extension of his arm, but it could also be his best friend, Warlock the Technarch, hiding from Cyclops. Confused? Go read X-Men #7.

Next to Cable and Cypher is Betsy Braddock, the newest Captain Britain. She is attacking with her telekinetic sword that’s a manifestation of her powers, and she’s dressed in her snazzy new Captain Britain uniform designed by To for Excalibur.

Next to Betsy is a yet-unnamed sidekick to Angel who’s set to appear in Vita Ayala and Bernard Chang’s Children of the Atom, starting in April.

Comics

X-Men: Who are the Children of the Vault?

By Jim Dandy

Movies

Marvel Movies Release Schedule: Complete MCU Phase 4 Timeline

By Mike Cecchini

Down and to his right is Domino, sporting a fancy wooden stabbing sleeve crafted by Forge to heal the parts of her that were skinned by the Reavers to allow them to pass undetected through Krakoa’s defenses in early X-Force.

Below her is Cyclops with a laser sword. You don’t need much more than that.

In the bottom right corner is Armor, Hisako Ichiki. She debuted in Joss Whedon and John Cassaday’s Astonishing X-Men, and has been a leader of that era of students since. She’s currently spreading the good word about Krakoa to mutants around the world in the pages of New Mutants.

To the left is Wolverine carrying the Muramasa blade. This sword cuts through anything and disrupts healing factors – it’s one of the few things that could potentially hurt Wolverine enough to kill him.

Next to Logan is Magik, Ilyanna Rasputin, carrying her Soulsword. More on this in a second, but Magik has most recently been in space with Cypher and the rest of the New Mutants, in her case trying to make out with all of the Shi’ar Death Commandos.

To Magik’s side is Storm carrying some kind of long lightning kunai.This is one of my favorite sentences of all time.

Below Storm is Nightcrawler, the first Pope of a new mutant religion (again, read X-Men #7, it’s bonkers) carrying a fancy looking rapier. Nightcrawler has always been modeled (and modeled himself) after Errol Flynn, and the rapier is a big part of that.

Next to Nightcrawler is Storm’s Marauders teammate Iceman, ready for some Stabbing…and…Chill…? I’m sorry, once I thought of it I had to type it.

And finally, above Iceman is Apocalypse, the man who ended the Bronze Age. Apocalypse is pictured here holding one of the jagged scimitars he was last seen carrying in a flashback told by Cypher about Krakoa’s ancient history. Krakoa was once Okkara, one big island, until an invasion from another plane forced Apocalypse to sacrifice his first Horsemen to seal off that invasion, and half of Okkara. Arrako, the sealed off sister island to Krakoa, reappeared in X-Men #2, and with it the daughter of one of the Horsemen.

This was one of the most exciting dangling ideas from House of X and Powers of X. The fact that Dawn of X has been just as casually stuffed with new concepts and deep examinations of the changes wrought by Krakoa and the Five’s resurrection abilities, while also making time for fun superhero punch ups and picking up ideas that have been left on the ground by the introductory series is what’s making the X-Men line so exciting right now.

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X of Swords kicks off in July.

The post First New Marvel X-Men Crossover Revealed appeared first on Den of Geek.

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aion-rsa · 7 years

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X-POSITION – ResurrXion Revealed With the X-Editors: Part 1

The X-Line is getting a major overhaul this spring, as Marvel launches a whole new crop of comics. The initiative, titled ResurrXion, will see the arrival of new flagship series like “X-Men Gold” and “X-Men Blue” as well as team books like “Generation X” and “Weapon X.” Additionally, a trio of characters will get their own ongoings: “Iceman,” “Jean Grey” and “Cable.” On top of all that, “All-New Wolverine” and “Old Man Logan” will continue slashing their way through villains with new storyarcs and — in “Old Man Logan’s” case — a new creative team.

This week in X-POSITION, the X-Men editors Mark Paniccia, Daniel Ketchum, Christina Harrington and Chris Robinson answer your questions about “X-Men Gold,” “Generation X” and “Jean Grey”!

CBR News: Welcome back to X-POSITION, X-Editors! It’s been a while and we’re glad to have you back. First up, we’ll start with a question about the “Uncanny” cast from Weslley.

While I’m excited about ResurrXion, I am disappointed that Psylocke and Archangel are nowhere to be seen after all the amazing character development both got in Cullen Bunn’s “Uncanny X-Men.” Will we see them anytime soon?

Mark Paniccia: First, let’s give Cullen a round of applause for the work he (props to editor Daniel Ketchum as well) put into the series and the craft he invested in these characters. Second, Psylocke and Archangel are very popular but we need just one more e-mail asking for their return before we can seriously consider anything. 😉

Christina Harrington: These are two of my favorite characters, especially after Cullen’s run on “Uncanny.” And after that great character development, I don’t think Archangel or Psylocke will stay off the table for long…

Daniel Ketchum: We have received so many e-mails and tweets about Psylocke and Archangel! Fear not: there is a concrete plan in place for the pair. You’ll hear about it very soon…

Next up, Ben has a Q about the larger mutant metaphor.

Will the X-Men still retain their civil rights roots? As a longtime X-Men fan, I think that the team’s best stories (“God Loves, Man Kills,” “Days of Future Past,” Grant Morrison’s “New X-Men”) aren’t really about big superhero brawls, but sociopolitical ideas involving race, religion, and sexuality… I just hope that even if they do go more “classic” superhero, that the message behind them won’t be lost. Will that thought continue, and which books is it most evident in?

Paniccia: Those ideas were baked into the X-Men’s DNA from the very beginning, Ben. They’re what make them the most relatable characters in the history of comics and we would never abandon that core concept. We do want to lean into the superhero of it all, the unique power sets, the big battles, the action…all those things that make comics exciting and fun.

Harrington: It’s the most X-Men thing of all, to me, to have these characters dive into contemporary issues and really explore them — with a more fantastical framing, of course. So of course those elements are going to be involved in these new stories — they wouldn’t be X-Men stories to me without them. I think you’re going to find stories of this type across the line — alongside some more traditional super hero tales, of course. We can do allegory…but we have to also do punching.

This time around, Anduinel gets the honor of asking this question.

Now that there are squads of students specifically training to be X-Men over in “Gen X,” what are the odds of getting “New X-Men” relaunch down the line? Between the Kyle/Yost run, the Utopia era, “Second Coming,” and “Schism,” those kids have got to be the most over-qualified student class in X-Men history by this point (and possibly the most disillusioned with the X-Men’s methods).

Chris Robinson: You’re gonna see every era of “X-Kids” revisited in the pages of “Gen X.” From Glob Herman to Hellion to Pixie all the way back to original “New Mutants” cast members.

Ketchum: Chances of a “New X-Men” relaunch are slim, but as Chris mentioned, those characters haven’t been forgotten and will be turning up regularly in the “X-Men” titles already on the slate. Surge and Nezhno make appearances as soon as “X-Men Prime.” The Stepford Cuckoos, Pixie and Graymalkin will show up in “Generation X.” And Anole, Rockslide and Armor turn up in the first arc of “X-Men Gold.” While they may not have a title of their own, they are still very much part of the fabric of the X-Universe.

Paniccia: And speaking of “Generation X” we have a little something special planned in “X-Men Blue.” It’s gonna be really freakin’ cool!

Let’s move on to the “X-Men Gold” portion of this week’s X-PO, with a question from Bernie.

Will Nightcrawler finally be a significant character and not just a fill-in one? Will he go back to his true, lovable, swashbuckling self we love him for?

Robinson: Yes!

Ketchum: “X-Men Gold”!

Paniccia: One of my favorite X-Men!!!

Maestroneto has a major question about one character’s costume.

Jokes about fashion sense aside, will Kitty ever get a unique costume again that isn’t based on a training suit? The last time was in the mid-’90s and I’m disappointed that her Excalibur-inspired costume from “GotG” didn’t make it to ResurrXion. Since Guggenheim’s pitch is that Kitty is all grown up, it’s a little bit weird that she looks about ready to join the New Mutants.

Ketchum: Is there really anything wrong with taking the Steve Jobs approach after years of wearing every color and accouterment under the sun?

“Uncanny X-Men” #149 interior art by Dave Cockrum, Josef Rubinstein and Don Warfield

Truth be told, we didn’t reinvent the wheel with Kitty for “X-Men Gold,” because that classic X-Men uniform really said it all: This is a return to form. Kitty is the quintessential X-Man, the student who rose through the ranks and has stared down every evil, and yet is perhaps still the most stalwart believer in Xavier’s dream. Could the Xavier School’s finest student really wear anything else?

Not to mention, remember when Kitty first tried to take on an individual costume, but Xavier made her change back to the training uniform because a unique look had to be “earned”? I LOVE the idea that Kitty took that restriction and then turned the rules on their head…and now owns that training uniform look. That’s a great message in itself, I think…

Paniccia: I echo Daniel’s sentiment. And [“X-Men Gold” writer Marc] Guggenheim’s vision for Kitty (both as a character and stylistically) comes from the heart. Which is, in my humble opinion, where the best X-Men stories come from.

And here’s a question from Purplevit about everyone’s favorite Ragin’ Cajun…

Gambit wasn’t a part of any ongoing for years and appeared only as guest star. Can we expect Gambit to join any teams in 2017?

Robinson: I think you’re gonna wanna see the cover to “X-Men Gold” #4, Purp…

Paniccia: And there’s some place else he could be popping in the summer. Shhhhh.

Now we’re in the “Generation X” portion of this week’s Q&A, with a question from madroxdupe.

Any plans for a reunion of sorts? I grew up on this book, and I have to say, I’m disappointed it’s not like the New Mutants relaunch from several years ago with the OG members coming back.

Paniccia: I’ll let Daniel speak to that but Christina Strain is writing an X-Book!!!!!!!!!!!! She is one of my favorite people in comics!

Ketchum: “Generation X” was actually the first series I followed from issue #1, so it holds a special place for me as well, madroxdupe! And you better believe that writer Christina Strain and I have talked about how important it is that this book be both the story of a new generation of mutants as well as the return of the original cast. Issue #1 actually opens on Jubilee and Chamber, and the reunions continue from there…

And here’s a question from The Big G about the student body.

We know “Gen X” will showcase the “Oddballs” of the X-Students, but how much spotlight will the students actually training to be X-Men get?

Ketchum: Did Anduinel put you up to asking this question, Big G? Ha.

“Generation X” writer Christina Strain and I were actually just on the phone yesterday talking about how 20 pages per issue just aren’t enough. We would love to give lots of screentime to all of the kids! But with a main cast of relatively new characters who have stories of their own to be told, we probably won’t be able to devote too much time to those students we’re already pretty well-acquainted with. But we promise to do our best to not let them languish in the gutters!

Paniccia: Have I mentioned that Christina Strain is one of my favorite people in comics.

And we close this week with a question focusing on “Jean Grey” from Chandler.

I really miss Emma Frost. Specifically, I miss the interactions between young Jean and Emma…even the Cuckoos. I believe Emma was able to push Jean to try new things making her more than she had ever been before, with exception of the Phoenix Force. Are there any plans to have Jean interact with a Emma or the Cuckoos?

Ketchum: Has everyone read the end of “Inhumans vs. X-Men”? Without giving anything away, that series leaves Emma in a very different place than she’s been for the past few years. Needless to say, there are big plans for Emma. I wouldn’t rule out a run-in between Emma and Jean, but Emma has some bigger fish to fry in the immediate future…

Paniccia: Emma has such a rich history with the X-Men that it’s hard to imagine a world without her. There is something sizzling in the kitchen. You’ll hear about it soon.

Special thanks to Mark Paniccia, Daniel Ketchum, Chris Robinson and Christina Harrington for taking on this qeek’s questions! This two-part X-PO will conclude next week with more ResurrXion talk.

The post X-POSITION – ResurrXion Revealed With the X-Editors: Part 1 appeared first on CBR.com.

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aion-rsa · 7 years

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Best Of The Worst: The 16 Baddest Supervillain Teams

Thanks to everyone’s favorite pointy-eared Dark Knight Detective, we all know that criminals are “a superstitious, cowardly lot.” That goes double for super-criminals. Perhaps that’s why the bad guys tend to congregate in groups, despite a distinct inability to set their egos aside long enough to function as actual teams. With the advent of films like “Suicide Squad” and the formation of a new live-action Legion of Doom in the CW’s “Legends of Tomorrow,” supervillains are more popular than ever.

RELATED: Evil Geniuses: The 15 Smartest Supervillains In Comics

Considering this newfound mainstream popularity, we thought it was the perfect time to run down a list of the most notorious villain crews around. These malcontents and ne’er-do-wells are the baddest of the bad, the most evil bastards in all of comicdom. Singly, they may be easy pickings… but together? Together, they’re the most vile, dangerous beings in all of comics. We bet being bad never felt so good…

SPOILER ALERT! Spoilers ahead for numerous stories published by DC and Marvel Comics.

LEGION OF DOOM

Arguably one of the most notorious team on our list, the Legion of Doom’s evil tendrils have woven their way into mainstream popular culture thanks to its origins as the villainous foil of the animated Super Friends. Debuting in the first episode of the classic “Challenge of the Super Friends” cartoon in 1978, the group’s roster featured some of DC Comics’ greatest villains, including Lex Luthor, Captain Cold, Gorilla Grodd, Solomon Grundy, the Cheetah and Giganta. Operating out of their iconic Hall of Doom, this powerful assemblage of super-criminals was tailor-made to go toe-to-toe with the mighty Super Friends.

Although there have been many stand-ins in the comics over the years, a true Legion of Doom wasn’t seen in print until Paul Dini and Alex Ross’ critically-acclaimed “Justice.” Still, there’s no denying the impact the Legion has had on fans and creators alike, inspiring countless cultural references and lending its name to the popular wrestling tag team, the Road Warriors. Currently, the L.O.D. are making life hell for the CW’s Legends of Tomorrow, as the Reverse-Flash, Captain Cold, Damien Darhk and Malcom Merlyn pool their talents and resources in an effort to change history for their own nefarious ends.

HORSEMEN OF APOCALYPSE

Famine, War, Pestilence and Death — in one incarnation or another, the Horsemen of the ancient mutant powerhouse known as Apocalypse have plagued the X-Men and the rest of humanity for decades. Created by Louise and Walter Simonson during their seminal run on “X-Factor,” Apocalypse’s biblically-inspired henchmen are perhaps most notorious for turning a despondent Warren Worthington heel, after he was stripped of his wings by the Marauders during the classic “Fall of the Mutants” storyline. Preying upon our basest fears, the Horsemen fomented widespread catastrophic change on a global scale, while using one of the X-Men’s own against them.

Despite several iterations of the Horsemen appearing in print and on film over the years, what makes this cadre of villains so dangerously effective isn’t simply their raw power and tenacity, both of which are admittedly substantial. Rather, their true strength lies in Apocalypse’s ability to subvert and manipulate the values of his enemies. Several X-Men, including Wolverine, Colossus, Sunfire and Psylocke, have served as Horsemen, making it all the more difficult for their teammates to thwart Apocalypse’s evil machinations.

FATAL FIVE

Hailing from the 31st century, our next entry owes their formation to their arch-enemies, the Legion of the Super-Heroes, who needed their help to defeat the Sun-Eater, a super-weapon designed to consume entire galaxies. The original line-up included the cyborg Tharok, Validus, Mano, the Persuader and the Emerald Empress. After helping the Legion defeat the Sun-Eater, the Fatal Five received pardons for their past crimes. However, true to their villainous natures, they refused the amnesty and immediately set about conquering the worlds they had just helped save. Despite their small numbers, the Fatal Five are massively powerful, capable of destruction on a planetary scale and taking on the Legion’s vast numbers on numerous occasions.

As perennial adversaries of the Legion, their origins have suffered from perpetual reboots and roster changes. Although they have remained on the down-low in recent years — while DC figures out what to do with the Legion — one member is set to make a major splash post-Rebirth in “Justice League vs. Suicide Squad”. Recruited by Maxwell Lord as a member of his team of spoilers, the seemingly time-displaced Emerald Empress agrees to help the master manipulator, in exchange for helping her search for “the Legionnaire.”

LEGION OF SUPER-VILLAINS

Originally appearing as futuristic foes of Superman, recruited by Lex Luthor to fight the Man of Steel in the present, the Legion of Super-Villains’ history is just as confusing and convoluted as their heroic counterparts, the Legion of Super-Heroes. Built around a core of super-criminal analogues of the Legion’s founding members, Cosmic King, Lightning Lord and Saturn Queen fought their heroic counterparts on several occasions, surrounding themselves with a diverse mix of superhuman and alien criminals, many of whom were failed Legion candidates.

With numbers and resources that rival the Legion’s, the LOSV infamously conquered Princess Projectra’s home world Orando and moved it into an alternate dimension to act as their base of operations. The campaign was notable for the death of popular Legionnaire, Karate Kid, who was killed by LOSV leader Nemesis Kid. More recently, it was revealed during the events of Final Crisis that Superboy-Prime inspired their creation much as Superman did for the Legion. The group’s current status is unknown in the post-Rebirth DCU, but with the Emerald Empress and a woman who appears to be Saturn Girl seemingly stranded in the present, we suspect it won’t be long until both Legions return to mainstream continuity.

FRIGHTFUL FOUR

The Frightful Four trace their origins back to 1965’s classic “Fantastic Four” #36, when the Wizard, Sandman, Paste-Pot Pete and Madam Medusa joined forces to fight Marvel’s first family — this was after a history of individual losses to the FF’s youngest member, the Human Torch. Over the years, the group has appeared in numerous configurations to plague the Fantastic Four, always under the Wizard’s leadership. Past members have included some true powerhouses, including Titania, Blastaar and Hydro Man.

Although his intellect doesn’t approach Reed Richards’ level of super-genius, the Wizard and his revolving cast of super-criminals managed to leverage their intimate knowledge of their arch-nemeses on several occasions, to strike the FF where it really hurts. This is perhaps best illustrated by the recruitment of Ben Grimm’s one-time flame and former FF member, She-Thing, into their ranks. Most recently, the Frightful Four were seen helping Reed Richards defeat the Quiet Man, who wanted to stage a global invasion by the monsters of Counter-Earth to set himself up as the world’s greatest hero.

THE CABAL

Born in the aftermath of “Secret Invasion,” the Cabal was originally Norman Osborn’s response to the existence of the Illuminati, a secret alliance of the Marvel Universe’s most influential heroes. Throughout Osborn’s “Dark Reign,” Doctor Doom, Loki, Namor the Sub-Mariner (playing both sides against the middle), Emma Frost and the Hood worked behind the scenes to promote their own hidden agendas. The Cabal was doomed to fail almost from the start, with multiple side deals and secret alliances forged between several members behind Osborn’s back. After Osborn’s siege of Asgard came to its gruesome conclusion, the Cabal disbanded.

When mysterious parallel universe incursions began to threaten Marvel’s prime 616 universe, Namor recruited a new, far more dangerous and unpredictable members to the group, including the Mad Titan Thanos, Maximus the Mad and former herald of Galactus, Terrax… who is also mad. Although they were successful in destroying many worlds in a last-ditch effort to save their own, Namor eventually betrayed his Cabal after months of sustained genocide. You know, because having two guys on your team who describe themselves as “mad” wasn’t an indication that maybe this was a bad idea. Karma’s a hell of a thing, though and Namor himself was betrayed for his murderous ways by the Illuminati, who left him to perish on a dying earth.

THE HELLFIRE CLUB

Perennial foes of the X-Men, who infamously sought to recruit Jean Grey into their ranks in their first appearance in 1980’s “Uncanny X-Men” #129, the Hellfire Club’s origins reach back to 18th-century England. The secret society has counted among its numbers some of the most influential and wealthiest families in the Marvel Universe. The Worthingtons, the Starks and the Braddocks have all held positions within the organization’s numerous global branches, even if they’ve remained remarkably ignorant of its clandestine activities.

The Hellfire Club’s Inner Circle includes some of the world’s most powerful mutants and funnels its vast resources into manipulating world events in their favor. Structured along the lines of traditional chess pieces, the Inner Circle’s roster has changed over the years as incessant internecine fighting has provoked numerous changes in leadership. Notable members include Magneto, Emma Frost, the mutant vampire Selene and Sebastian Shaw, who recently regained control of the Inner Circle, after deposing 12-year-old Black King Kade Kilgore. Facing the threat of extinction thanks to the Inhuman’s poisonous Terrigen Cloud, Shaw quickly aligned the Club with Magneto’s X-Men squad, welcoming the master of magnetism and Monet St. Croix into his Inner Circle.

SINISTER SIX

Much like the Flash’s Rogues, the Sinister Six is a group of blue collar superhuman mercenaries whose primary motivation is chasing down the next big score, while attempting to stay off the radar of their shared foe, Spider-Man. Originally recruited by Doctor Octopus as a means of taking out the wall-crawler using their combined might, the first incarnation of the group also included Kraven the Hunter, the Vulture, Mysterio, Electro and Sandman. However, none of the villains wanted to defer the honor of slaying the Spider to the others, so it was agreed they would face their enemy in succession. How this constitutes working as a team is beyond us, but the plot predictably failed. And we thought Doc Ock was some kind of super-genius.

Since that inauspicious debut, there have been numerous incarnations of the team, the most memorable in recent years starring in their own ongoing series, “Superior Foes of Spider-Man.” Although they only had five members, team leader Boomerang insisted on using the Sinister Six moniker. His criminal logic, while somewhat facile, is infallible, citing that there’s no better deal than calling themselves a six-piece and only splitting the loot five ways. Maybe they should have made the Living Brain leader…

SECRET SIX

Created by Gail Simone and Dale Eaglesham, the modern villainous incarnation of the Secret Six first appeared during “Villains United” as a carefully selected group of super-criminals recruited to undermine the agenda of the recently reformed Secret Society of Super Villains. Reporting to the mysterious Mockingbird (who turned out to be Lex Luthor), the Six eventually came under the leadership of Catman, after several battles with the Society. They remained together as a band of high-priced mercenaries, with something of a revolving roster, taking on a variety of jobs that pitted them against heroes such as the Birds of Prey and Wonder Woman, but rarely saw them actually paid for their efforts.

Recent addition Bane subsequently took over leadership of the group, but only led them on one ill-fated mission to Gotham City to murder several members of the Batman Family, which ultimately ended with their incarceration. The team’s latest revival, under the leadership of the ever-popular dreamboat Catman, has them working for a new Mockingbird, who was quickly revealed to be none other than the enigmatic Riddler.

THE ROGUES

Every superhero worth their salt has a stable of worthy supervillains capable of testing their resolve and pushing the limits of their abilities. Few, though, have banded together in the same way as the Rogues, a collection of working class villains dedicated to making life hell for the Flash. Led by the criminal mastermind Captain Cold, at one time or another, the Rogues have counted among their ranks virtually every major Flash villain. Outside of terrorizing the Flash, their prime motivation is cold, hard cash. They aren’t without their morals, however, typically refusing to kill unless absolutely necessary.

It came as something of shock, then, when the Rogues became inadvertently responsible for the death of the then-newest Flash, Bart Allen. Duped by Kid Zoom into murdering Bart, the Rogues hunted down and killed the evil speedster upon escaping the prison planet Salvation. During the “Forever Evil” storyline, they stood by their moral code, refusing to murder the citizens of Central City on the orders of the Crime Syndicate. Although they have yet to make a substantial appearance post-Rebirth, they were briefly seen considering leaving Central City, after a horde of new speedsters took to the streets.

SECRET SOCIETY OF SUPER VILLAINS

Originally created as an evil counterpart to the Justice League of America by legendary writer and editor, Gerry Conway, the Secret Society of Super Villains (SSOSV) debuted in their own ongoing series in 1976. Recruited by Darkseid to act as his agents on Earth, the group turned on the evil New God, citing his past efforts to enslave the planet. The series, although short-lived, featured an eclectic group of second-string villains battling the DCU’s ultimate villain, while pursuing their own criminal endeavors.

Although there have been several incarnations over the years, including Libra’s Society during Grant Morrison’s “Final Crisis” event, it is perhaps their most recent, post-New 52 iteration that truly showcases the depths of the organization’s evil. Gathered by the mysterious Outsider as an army for Earth 3’s invading Crime Syndicate, this version of the SSOSV included virtually every supervillain in the DC Universe, as the Syndicate tried to change the world into a haven for super-criminality. Ultimately vanquished thanks to the heroic efforts of Lex Luthor and his Injustice League, the vast network of villains predictably scattered in the wake of the Crime Syndicate’s defeat.

BROTHERHOOD OF (EVIL) MUTANTS

First appearing in the classic “Uncanny X-Men” #4 as a band of mutant terrorists under the leadership of Magneto, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants’ agenda is nothing less than securing global dominance for the mutant race. Representing the flip side of Charles Xavier’s dream of living in harmony with the rest of humanity, the Brotherhood believes the mutant race is — and always has been — at war with regular human folk. Over the course of the organization’s long history, several incarnations have emerged, each with its own agenda. The most notable of these is Magneto’s prototypical configuration, which included future Avengers Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, and the classic line-up of the Blob, Pyro and Avalanche, under Mystique’s leadership.

In recent years, as the mutant race has come under attack from all quarters, the Brotherhood’s methods have become increasingly violent and unpredictable. Case in point: In an effort to create a new mutant utopia, Mystique’s most recent version of the Brotherhood conquered the island nation of Madripoor, using the Mutant Growth Hormone to transform the populace into a violent, hedonistic horde of over-powered miscreants. Not exactly our vision of a utopia, but what do we know? Maybe mutants dig that kind of thing?

CRIME SYNDICATE OF AMERICA

If DC’s “Forever Evil” storyline taught us anything, it’s that the Crime Syndicate of America are quite possibly the Justice League’s most feared adversaries — not counting Darkseid, of course. Created by legendary creators Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky way back in 1964’s “Justice League of America” #29, the CSA originally hailed from Earth 3, a parallel world where every aspect of society was reversed. Here, Superman’s villainous analogue is the evil Ultraman, while Wonder Woman and Batman are represented by the evil Superwoman and Owlman, respectively. Other members include a sadistic version of the Flash named Johnny Quick and Power Ring, Green Lantern’s nefarious, weak-kneed stand-in.

Although there have been a few different versions of the team over the years, depending on which version of DC continuity we’re talking about, it is the most recent incarnation that nearly succeeded in killing the Justice League and remaking the world in their evil image. This more bloodthirsty Syndicate employed widespread catastrophic violence to throw the world into chaos, even moving the moon into alignment with the sun to create a perpetual twilight world more conducive to Ultraman’s powers.

DARKSEID’S ELITE

Less a supervillain team and more an ultra-powerful arsenal of Fourth World WMDs at Darkseid’s disposal, the Elite are his chosen band of warriors and sycophants dedicated to his agenda of multi-versal conquest. Boasting some of the most accomplished soldiers, torturers and tacticians in DC’s multiverse, Darkseid’s Elite have waged war across multiple dimensions on their master’s behalf, most often against members of the New Gods of New Genesis and the Justice League. Counting among their numbers the animalistic Kalibak, the super-assassin Kanto, master strategist Steppenwolf and insufferable mouthpiece Glorious Godfrey, the Elite use their uniquely-suited abilities to prime targeted worlds for Darkseid’s dominion.

During the New 52 reboot, Darkseid engaged them in a war on two fronts, tasking Steppenwolf with an invasion of Earth 2 (where he managed to kill that world’s Wonder Woman, Superman and Batman), while battling the League and the Anti-Monitor himself on Prime Earth. Although both conflicts ultimately ended in Darkseid’s defeat, he is the darkest part of the cosmic balance between good and evil, and as such, is destined to return for his prophesied final battle versus his son, Orion. We can only assume his pantheon of dark gods will be on hand to pave the way.

MASTERS OF EVIL

Over the years, there have been almost as many versions of the Masters of Evil as there have been of their sworn enemies, the Avengers — and that’s saying something. The original Masters were recruited by Baron Zemo to help him exact revenge on his recently resurrected foe, Captain America, in the now-classic “Avengers” #6. Although Zemo’s influence over the group would eventually shift to other criminal masterminds, including Ultron, Egghead and most notably his son Helmut, it was daddy dearest Heinrich who got the ball rolling. Under the second Baron Zemo’s command, the Masters of Evil would arguably know their greatest success, with dozens of the Marvel Universe’s most dangerous villains storming Avengers Mansion, nearly overrunning the heroes with their sheer numbers.

Although ultimately defeated, the younger Zemo would take a more subtle approach during his next outing, assembling a versatile team of villains, who masqueraded as the heroic Thunderbolts. Later still, after a number of pretenders, including Justine Hammer and Max Fury attempted to organize new versions of the Masters, Zemo returned to once again take the reins of the team his father founded in the pages of “Avengers Undercover,” hoping to reconstitute a team worthy of his evil legacy.

SUICIDE SQUAD

Without a doubt, our final entry is the most popular crew of villains around. Thanks to the commercial success of a blockbuster movie, featuring a star-making turn for Margot Robbie as the delightfully mad Harley Quinn, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone on the planet who hasn’t heard of the Suicide Squad — and yes that includes your mom. Just ask her. A clandestine group forced into working for the United States government under the direction of tough-as-nails Amanda Waller, the Squad’s popularity has only grown since John Ostrander and Luke McDonnell reimagined the classic military unit led by Rick Flag, as comics’ supervillain version of the Dirty Dozen.

Although there has been a tendency in the past to recast villains like Captain Boomerang and Deadshot as antiheroes, it’s the team’s conflicting personal agendas and the constant threat of death on the job that keeps fans coming back for more mayhem. More than any other team on our list, the Suicide Squad taps into our fascination with the psychology of evil and how we can use it against our enemies. Fighting fire with fire may not always be the best strategy, but where the Squad is concerned, it’s definitely the most rewarding.

Don’t think these teams are all that bad? Let us know who you think is worse in the Comments!

The post Best Of The Worst: The 16 Baddest Supervillain Teams appeared first on CBR.com.

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