Things I Think About #19

You know what I would have liked to have seen in House of M? Instead of just widespread loss of mutants, a widespread loss of telepaths, primarily the more powerful ones.

But, how would that work with the Scarlet Witch, you say? I say, why does it have to be her behind it at all? How about Jamie Braddock, Junior, the brother of Psylocke and Captain Britain? He can warp reality, and the X-books have been hinting at something big coming up with him anyway, so why not move it up a bit? He could be trying to make a perfect world by, I don't know, altering the reality within people's minds, altering their perceptions, and thus that alters reality (mind over matter I suppose). Telepaths could either be extraordinarily sensitive to it causing their minds to collapse from seeing all these different minds perceiving a "perfect" reality, or they could be a threat to the plan, by using their abilities to reassert the "true" reality in people's minds. Though I would have to demand that he wear some freaking pants, please! Sorry ladies.

For that matter, what about The Sentry? It's already been established that he has psychic abilities powerful enough to make the entire world forget about him, and to a certain extent seems to be able to alter the way things are to suit what he believes them to be. Hell, use him for that, it'd make him a lot more interesting than he is currently. Oh, I'm sorry, I guess that would be The Void, that would do something like that. Whatever, six of one, half-dozen of the other.

I know that they did this in Earth X, where the Skull's telepathic abilities manifested, and at that moment, every telepath died. I'm not suggesting that, but I think on a lesser scale it would work in a situation where there was a reason for it (namely, telepaths interfering with some crazy/evil person's plan to make the world the way they want it, as opposed to Wanda just concluding mutants are the problem with everything, so she wipes them out, except for the ones Dr. Strange protected, and oh yeah, a few others for some reason or the other), that many of the more powerful telepaths would be removed from the board, so to speak.

The way I figure it, the top-level ones probably have their minds in other peoples' minds pretty much constantly. Just a little bit, and they probably aren't even aware of it. The more powerful the mind, the more minds they're in. It just a unconscious relaxation, letting their minds flow a bit. So if the reality altering occurred quickly, which would be prudent, a telepath could be subjected to multiple realities before they knew what was going on, doing severe damage to their sanity. That leaves them as less of an immediate threat, but a prudent evildoer would still eliminate them, just so they don't pull themselves together and mess things up later. Man, that sounded a lot better when I thought it up. Irregardless. . .

Granted I'm biased, as I'm just really sick of telepaths, and the idea of them bothers me, but I still think that done right (and isn't that always the caveat?), it would be much better than what actually took place. Honestly, the number of telepaths in the Marvel Universe is pretty ridiculous, especially in relation to overall numbers of mutants. It seems like you wouldn't be able to walk down the street there without bumping into one. And there doesn't seem to be any real reason genetically why that's how it is, which could be due to the lack of clarity when it comes to what's behind the X-gene and how powers are transmitted to children (discussed in earlier posts here and here) . And in nature, there are occasional catastrophes, that cause extinctions specific to certain types of organisms, while sparing others. For example, if a meteor hits a planet, and throws lots of dust in the air, competitive advantage goes to beings lower to the ground, where there's less soot, and more clean air. Likewise, if someone is altering the perceptions of every person on the planet, with the alteration perhaps changing from person to person, it's probably better to not have part of your mind in other people's minds.

Of course it would never happen. Too many telepaths are high-profile in Marvel, and like I mentioned a few days ago, Cable is one of Avi Arad's favorite characters, while also being possibly the most powerful telepath actually moving around right now, given Jean Grey seems to be incapacitated - not dead! never dead! - at the moment, and Xavier's nowhere to be seen. For the record, I devised a potential way for Cable to dodge it, one I think could be exclusive to Cable, and would work with the current plot of his book, so I have that base covered.

Oh yeah, and afterwards, there actually would be fewer mutant books like Joey Q said there would be, instead of just fewer mutants.

What can I say? I like to play "What If?".

On Marvel's Mutants and Biology, Part 2

There are two problems for me when talking about inheritance. One, genetics is not my field of study. Two, I don't have a real good idea if the secret behind mutants has been throughly revealed. As far as I can remember, there is this one gene, with two possible alleles. Get one allele, you're Homo sapiens. Get the other, congratulations, you're Homo superior! You now have a lifetime of hatred, fear, mistrust, and attempts on your life to look forward to! So based on that assumption, I'm trying to figure out whether mutants should have powers similar to, or vastly different from their siblings, and/or parents. I mean, I don't know that it's ever been discussed why one mutant gets skin that sheds every four hours, while another gets enough telekinetic power to lift a mountain, as well as an annoying inability to stay dead.

I mentioned the Guthrie's in the previous post, so let's take a look at them. Their mother is apparently human. Their father, who knows? Prior to joking about Apocalypse, I suggested it might be Mimic, except I find out today he wasn't a mutant. Len suggested tampering by Mr. Sinister, and that they could become his new Marauders. Whatever the case, look at these powers.

Sam can form a "blast field" around himself and others, rendering himself invulnerable, as well as allowing him to fly.

Paige can change the composition of her skin to steel, rubber, rock, etc.

Jeremy has wings like Archangel's, a healing factor, and hypersonic vocal cords that make him a really good singer.

Little Guthrie (Josh?) can shoot beams from his eyes, which can burn things. I mean, what's the common denominator here, people?

Compare that to the Greys. Jean is a telepath/telekinetic. Her daughter Rachel? Telepath/telekinetic. Her son, Nathan? Telepath/telekinetic. Meanwhile, neither of them seems to have inherited their father's powers. Maybe that has something to do with being time-displaced?

Magneto has one daughter that had his powers. Another one could run real fast, a third could alter probabilities, and the fourth, who is dead, was human. Their mother was human. I just don't get how it works.

I suppose ultimately, that the best explanation would be that the key to mutation doesn't lie on just one gene. That it actually involves several different genes, like eye color, perhaps one that determines whether you are a mutant, and activates the ones that determine your powers.

It's just somehow, it all seems meesed up. I mean I know siblings can be very different or similar to each other, likewise between parents and children. For whatever reason, mutation just seems like it would be something that would stay fairly similar within a family line.

Am I just overthinking this?

On Marvel's Mutants and Biology

I'm a biology major, which is probably the only reason this occurs to me.

Apocalypse vs. Dracula. That's what put me on this path. I haven't seen a very positive response to it out here in the blogosphere, but Len at the store seems pretty excited for it. We were discussing Apocalypse on Friday and how Len feels Marvel just doesn't quite get what they claim Apocalypse's motivation is: Survival of the fittest. Len argued that Apocalypse wouldn't just kill a bunch of humans, he would use them, draw the bio-energy from the bodies, Matrix-style, so that they could be of some use to those more deserving of life than themselves.

Len discussed how Marvel understands the idea enough to use it as an excuse for a lot of mutant battles, supposedly to determine who is more "fit", but that up until now they had missed the other aspect of fitness: reproduction. Like one of my professors says, "The only things in life that matter are food and sex. You eat the food to get big and strong and get all the babes and have lots of copulations." Sadly, he's not the oddest person in our biology department. But he's right, producing offspring shows how viable your genetics are for the population, because obviously you survived long enough to reproduce, which other individuals can't say, for whatever reason (illness, sterility, death, unimpressive secondary sexual characteristics).

The reason this came up is because apparently we'll be meeting Apocalypse's offspring in this story. Len's theory is that Dracula is killing them, and Apocalypse is perhaps none too pleased with that. Which makes sense; Dracula is disrupting Apocalypse's propagation of his DNA. Plus, if he's strong enough to kill those 'children' (who knows how old they are), then he might be a challenge to Apocalypse's plans, so it might just be time to deal with that.

But still Marvel comes up short. Supposedly, they said that the first born is the one closest to Apocalypse, and therefore the most fit. This had me and Len, who's also in the bio department, both slapping our foreheads saying, "No, it doesn't work like that". The discussion of the children lead to my joke that they're the Gutherie family, which has at least four mutants, all of which have wildly different powers, and have no father in sight, at least none I've ever seen. But that's a discussion for. . . later today, I think.

DC doesn't seem to have an analogue for this, except maybe Ra's, but he seems less about survival of the fittest, and more just about reversing overpopulation. I figure it's because in DC, most powers seem to come from being an alien, or being involved in some sort of magic/accident/experiment. Maybe, I'm wrong, but 'mutants' seem much more rare at DC. Well, maybe they aren't more rare in DC after House of M, but prior to that, when mutants were following biological protocol and outcompeting normal humans, thus leading to their continual increase in numbers, to the point they had devloped their own subculture. Oh yeah, one more thing.

Who the hell told Disney they could make a sequel to Bambi?

What Is The Appeal?

I tell you, to this day I can't figure out why exactly I was excited by Joe Casey's Uncanny X-Men. I mean, I know why I had zero interest in Morrison's X-Men. It was a team with Emma Frost, Scott Summers, and Jean Grey, one of whom shouldn't be a hero, and the other two I'm sick to death of. But Casey's team, for some odd reason, worked.

Archangel: I've haven't really liked him since he went back to the birdy wings. I'm sorry, but those metal wings were frickin' awesome. And he was periodically psychotic, and throwing blades out of the wings, cool! Without them, I thought he'd be kind of lame. But he took over, became the leader. He was kind of bossy, but that was made sense, most of the other people on this team are stubborn, and not big on following commands, so you need someone to rein them in.

Iceman: He became the Guy Gardner of the team, the character I could hate without reservation (though I've never read anything with Gardner in it long enough to hate him). He was a smug, arrogant jerk, who gave the newbie on the team a bunch crap, and even talked crap towards his friends. Still, he was always there in a fight, even when Black Tom impales him with a tree branch (though that's from the Adequate Chuck Austen period, before he started to suck).

Wolverine: On certain occasions, I need a character that likes to maim other sentient beings. Plus, he likes to give whoever is running the team a lot of static. Down with authority! Kalinara's glaring at me right now, while holding a Cyclops poster.

Nightcrawler: I remember when Bendis started New Avengers, he said Spider-Man and Wolverine were one of the great unintentional comedy teams in comics. I wouldn't know, they haven't spent more than five pages together in the entire book so far! Besides, Nightcrawler and Wolverine form a great 'buddy cop' tandem. "Come on Logan, I'm tired of having to teleport you away from the cops for killing people whenever we go out drinking." Come on Elf, lighten up a little." Hmm, I don't think I've quite captured the essence. Whatever. Teleporting is cool. So is speaking German. Plus, he tries to be funny without being good at it. And while not a religious person myself, I always found Kurt's faith to be kind of an interesting facet, and while I didn't think he would really try to enter the clergy - he's too much of a swashbuckler to take a vow of celibacy, like Hal Jordan, except not eternally concussed - I thought it made things kind of interesting until Horrible Chuck Austen decided Kurt was being mentally manipulated the whole time. Cripes.

Chamber: I knew nothing about him. Still don't know much other than he's British, telepathic, ran with Generation X, and can fire energy blasts. I'll be straightforward: I HATE telepaths. For some reason, the whole idea of people being able to get in someone's head bothers me. Actually I know the reason, I wouldn't want people being able to get inside my mind, how rude. And I wouldn't believe them if they said they would never do that to me. But one whose ability is basically just developed to the point of communication, like Chamber's, plus he has a different cool power, plus he didn't want to join the team initially, and never seemed totally onboard with it, though that may be because he was gone so frequently.

Stacy X: Some people hate her. I'm not one of them. Before Austen turned her into Super-Slut, I thought she was progressing nicely, maybe making a few friends, or at least people who trusted her (Logan, Chamber, Nightcrawler). Then Horrible Chuck Austen. . . well, I've said it all before. People didn't like a character who's an 'escort'? Fine, it's called "character development". Watch the character "develop" over time into someone who maybe isn't quite as rude, but still independent, and has friends, and isn't hitting on every person in the Mansion (which was Austen's fault, God I HATE CHUCK AUSTEN!).

The thing I notice is the symmetry. You have two old-school X-Men (Archangel, Iceman), two 2nd-generationers (Wolverine, Nightcrawler), and two relative newbies (Chamber, Stacy).

I think what made the team work was a bunch of them didn't like each other. Drake hated Stacy. Stacy hated Drake. Archangel had never liked Logan. Logan has never gotten along with a person who called themselves his "leader". Chamber really wished he could still be with his pop star girlfriend. Kurt's supposed to be the leader, but he didn't really want the responsibility. If you throw in the Juggernaut or Northstar as the 7th member (all good teams just seem to have seven members, don't they?), that's a team full of abrasive personalities. But they come from enough walks of life, with enough different powers, that they could have been in any number of different stories.

Sadly, Casey didn't last. Nothing good ever does. But, we'll always have those ten issues or so.

Things I Think About #12

When did Terra come back? Or is it a different person? I remember she was in that "Titans of Tomorrow" story, but I just figured it was a different person. But then there she was again, in Infinite Crisis #4, right alongside Kalinara's favorite Sand, sticking it to Whiny-Brat Superboy, I mean Superboy-Prime. If it is the same Terra that teamed with Deathstroke, why bring her back? To me, she had one of those deaths that made sense.

It just occurred to me this morning, Tim Drake is now officially an orphan. His stepmother was in a mental health facility/clinic in Bludhaven. And we all just watched Bludhaven go *POOF*, in a cloud of green smoke (ew). So, she's dead. Man, they really are trying to turn Tim into Batman. Crap. Well, under no circumstances should Tim live with Bats, not unless Batman gets a massive personality adjustment. Back when he was escaping from giant typewriters, and making goofy comments, he was at least somewhat ok to be a parent-type. If that happened now? Well it would be a miracle if Dick Grayson didn't turn into the Punisher. Hey, I think I just figured out where Miller's going with his All-Star Batman and Robin. Which is fine. Anything that keeps him away from characters and books I care about is ok.

Besides, I don't think Selina would want Tim around the mansion much.

Major question for the day, connected to the Terra question: What character's death - that has been undone - do you feel shouldn't have been undone and why? In other words, why did the death 'work'? Can be a hero, villain, normal person. Could be a nice/heroic death, depressing, traitorous, whatever.

For me, Colossus. Now I like the big Russian. I mean, he's not one of my favorite characters, but I like him alright. But his death seemed appropriate. Here he was, with a chance to end the Legacy Virus forever. An opportunity to destroy the thing that had killed his little sister, the only family he had left I think, and had done the same to who knows how many others. And all he had to do was give his own life. He didn't have to fight, and at heart, I don't think of Colossus as a fighter. Sure, if punches need to be thrown, he'll do it, but he's a farmer and an artist. And this death just required him to inject the vaccine, and activate his power. That's it, and he ensures no one loses their little sister again. And I'll be honest: I think Peter had been on kind of a downward spiral since her death, maybe since before that, since he had to kill Proteus. Sure, he wasn't hanging with Magneto anymore, which he had done after her funeral, but you wonder if someone ever recovers from that entirely. When you've saved the world - several times - it can't be easy, accepting that you can't save people most important to you. So he might have been looking for a way to leave.

There was an issue of Wolverine, #176, where Logan was right on the border of life and death and he runs into a bunch of old enemies. Colossus shows up to give him a hand, and tells Logan to tell the others 'I'm with my little snowflake. I am happy.' It was a little sad, but I thought it made sense. Obviously, Joss Whedon disagreed.

Then again, Whedon never did know when to leave a character dead.

So, who is it for you?

Friday Comic Discussion

Yeah, I know I should be working on my "Best of" posts, I swear I'll have another tomorrow. Just got a lot of comics to go through. But, I spent about three fun hours today, talking comics and the like, I wanted to share some of the ideas/questions with you. Plus, I need to do something relaxing, Ninja Gaiden is kicking my butt. Stupid infrequent save points.

In the Inferno storyline, Limbo starts bleeding into the Earth plane. Demons walk the Earth. Where was Doctor Strange?

Nate Summers (Cable) was going to be a sacrifice to permanently merge Limbo and Earth. This seems to give him some sort of mystical connection, why has that never been explored in all the hundreds of books dealing with Cable?

Why do all the X-Men (except Shadowcat) just seem to accept Emma Frost as co-leader of the Institute?

Why would Scott Summers start cheating on Jean with Emma, other than because God of All Comics, Grant Morrison, decided he should? Hell, I don't even like Cyclops, but I respect him enough to know that infidelity isn't his style, other than that time with Psylocke, which was purely physical, and they never actually did anything.

Did Joe Casey leave Uncanny X-Men because he couldn't handle being second fiddle to Morrison's X-Men?

Was the Spider-Man versus Firelord story (Amazing Spider-Man 269-270) a good story or not?

Would it be a good idea to make all of Marvel's 'Malice' characters the same? So instead of Sue Richards developing an alternate personality called Malice from the manipulations of Psycho-Man, it was the result of the same Malice that possessed Polaris.

Was Doctor Strangefate of the Amalgam Universe the most powerful hero of all time?

Why is Wolverine, a character with 12-inch blades that cut anything jutting from his hands, a hero? Shouldn't he be a villain?

Could Doctor Strange beat Zatanna (Clearly this was a Doctor Strange kind of day)?

How funny would it be if Dr. Fate's helmet landed on the kid that picked up the Blue Beetle scarab?

Exactly what kind of lighting is necessary for Tim Sale's art to look good (Prompted by complaints about a Batman figure meant to mimic Sale's art in Batman: The Long Halloween)?

Why hasn't Cable at least offered Wolverine a job in his group, as his personal assassin?

When is Thor coming back?

Why can't Iron Fist join Luke Cage on the New Avengers?

How does the yellow sun reacting with his Kryptonian physiology give Superman four different kinds of super-vision?

At what point did the German word 'uber', which frequently means 'about' (though it can also mean 'above' or 'over') become American slang for, well whatever the hell it means in slang?

Is the word "forte" supposed to be pronounced with the 'e' or not? Hey, we're a highly educational bunch here at Marvels and Legends.

If you have answers to any of these, or just general feedback, well you know how to comment. I'd appreciate any insight you can bring.
The Master of the Mystic Arts thanks you!

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.