Things I Think About #18

Someday, I'll learn to trust my instincts. I mean, I should have figured that out by now. Back in high school they always told us that on a multiple-choice test, if you aren't sure, go with your first instinct, doubting yourself wouldn't get do you much good. So what does that have to do with today's post?

Chuck Austen.

There's an interview on the Comic Book Resources website with Mr. Austen. I've known about it for a few days, and carefully ignored it. My mind kept telling me, "It'll just make you mad. He'll say something unkind about Stacy X, and you'll be pissed off for a week." Today, I stopped listening and went ahead and read it.

It was much worse than if he'd insulted Stacy. At least then I would have just been angry with him, which is a familiar feeling to me when it comes to ol' Chucky. It's worse because he actually came off as sympathetic, which I'm sure was part of the design of the interview. I mean the number of times the fact he has a wife and kids was brought up, and that his wife told him to stop reading all the insults on the Internet, clearly meant to pull on the heart strings.

And damned if it didn't work. A little.

I still don't believe his "everyone wants to be with someone, for one reason or another" explains Stacy's behavior, but I do understand to a certain extent, what he was going for.

I do have to give him credit for being aware of his rep with the fans, and joking about it. The part where he talks about how he and Geoff Johns most definitely aren't friends, and that Geoff hates him, was at least a little amusing.

See, this is the danger of the blogosphereI would have never known about this otherwise. And now I feel sympathy for my sworn enemy (one of them anyway). Sigh. Ruined a perfectly good Sunday.

Requiem for a Fallen Character

I mentioned last week that I saw a favorite character of mine in Generation M #2. Stacy X showed up, having lost her powers, and was now just another aging(?) 'lady of the evening'. I've had a hard time figuring out what I wanted to post about related to her, and who I'm mad at. It's not Paul Jenkins, though I wish he would have picked a different mutant, and just left me wondering about her. But I had pretty much figured Stacy wasn't one of the few who got to retain her powers (Iceman probably stole her spot. Worthless bastard). I'm not mad at Bendis, or even Quesada, well I am, but not for this. No, it's Chuck Austen who decided Stacy wasn't good enough to be on a book he was writing, and dumped her so he could write "Paige Guthrie and Archangel are in luvvvvv", without Stacy's interest in Archangel to get in the way. Before you suggest I'm being bitter, or paranoid, Chamber was still interested in Paige and he vanished at roughly the same time as Stacy, so take from that what you will.

But this isn't about how much Chuck Austen sucks, or how badly I want to him smack him in the face with a tire iron. Repeatedly. It's about Stacy.

She showed up in Uncanny X-Men #399, courtesy of Joe Casey, as one of the ladies at the X-Ranch, a brothel owned in part by Archangel's company. This apparently not being an example of human/mutant equality, the team goes to shut it down, and instead fails to stop the Church of Humanity from destroying it and killing everyone but Stacy. They described her power as 'phermone control', I thought of it as 'control over biochemical processes', just sounds more scientific. Make you vomit, make you pass out, susceptible to suggestion, and so on. A little limited by her need to make physical contact, but at least she wasn't another telepath. With nowhere to go she sticks with the team, and experiences the problems you would expect having to adjust to a life where you may get boulders thrown at your jet by the Juggernaut fairly often. It isn't clear how much she bought into Xavier's ideas, and she was still 'working', while she was on the X-Men. Wolverine seemed to want to help her, Nightcrawler seemed to grow used to her, and she had a few nice conversations with the nurse, Annie. On the flip side, Iceman disliked her, she chewed out Paige Guthrie, after sensing her interest in Archangel, and in general had trouble fitting in, though Chuck Austen portraying her as a complete slut might have something to do with that. Thanks Chuck, you miserable. . .

I'm probably in the minority, but I thought she had lots of potential. I could have seen her developing something gradually with Nightcrawler (that whole clergy thing never fit with him. He's too much of a swashbuckler to take a vow of celibacy). Logan could have helped her fit in. Or maybe, she never buys into the philosophy. She just stays because she does have some friends, some connections here. Or hell, maybe down the line she leaves anyway, but the way it happened, so forced, so arbitrary, just, ugh. I could see her leaving because she gets that humans will only accept mutants when it's convenient for them, when mutants can be useful, in Stacy's case, providing pleasure. But at the very least, she would have made a bigger deal out of it than just leaving a videotape for Archangel. She had a theatrical streak to her, which is part of why I think she and Kurt could have gotten along well.

Stacy, I hope things turn around for you somewhere down the line. I would have liked for you to have gotten better than this. Hopefully your appearence in X3 will turn out all right.