Dear X-Men: Second Coming...

Fuck you.

That is all.

lulz

What was the last good X-whatever (not counting X-Factor because it's been pretty great for years)? 1986?

Change What to When and that date makes sense. Unless they had an event called 1986, which wouldn't surprise me.

Astonishing with Whedon was the last good X-whatever imo.

I disliked that - just not a fan of Whedon's style of writing, in comics or his many shows. I guess Grant's run started well but then it got bad/screwy. I'm not a huge X-fan in general; Inferno made me ignore the property for over a decade.

Mutant Massacre 4eva

The writing/plot in Second Coming has been pretty decent actually, I'm just pissed with it.

What part of it? I haven't been following.

Well, if you don't actually care about spoilers... they are fucking hardcore with some of the characters:

- Cameron Hodge attacked Karma and basically ripped off one of her legs.
- Baddies shot a missile at a jeep carrying Wolverine, X-23 and Ariel (remember her? Fallen Angels?) and blew it up. Ariel didn't make it.
- X-Factor was set up by Absorbing Man and Titania to walk into a trap where it's pretty well telegraphed that they know what is up and likely have taken precautions, but their first entry in the story ends with Jamie, Longshot and... shit now I'm not sure because I don't have the book in front of me, but I think Darwin? taking about a bazillion sniper bullets to the face.
- (this is what prompted the "Fuck you") Rogue and Nightcrawler were ambushed by Bastion while taking Hope back to Utopia. Rogue and Bastion fought; Bastion won. B was about to kill Hope when Nightcrawler ported himself so that the arm Bastion had extended to grab Hope was STICKING THROUGH HIS CHEST and, with his dying breath, ported her and half of Bastion's body to Utopia.

Okay, killing Nightcrawler is some serious bullshit. Easily my favorite of the core "New X-Men" - I even bought his solo series and about 40 issues of Excalibur. Fuck that shit.

I KNOW

That's some Geoff Johns shit. Fuck them all.

I forgot to mention that Bastion survived getting half of his body ripped off, btw.

OTOH, Cameron Hodge did not survive a massively pissed-off Warlock.

between all the carnage here and all of the Siege-related carnage I'm reading in Thunderbolts (lol USAgent, hope you weren't a lefty!) I'm surprised the Marvel Universe is still standing

most recent Second Coming issue was Kurt's funeral, filled mostly with teary testimonials punctuated with several people (most notably Beast and Wolverine) going "fuck you forever, Scott Summers", which is a sentiment I've been heartily behind since the beginnings of X-Factor

is Ellis' astonishing x-men run any good?

It's decent. Nothing mindblowing.

surprisingly, I find the best X-related books are X-Factor and New Mutants with honorable mention to the Pixie miniseries

Dan, FU, Scott Summers is my default stance from around that same era. I guess this makes me glad Beast is going to be a Secret Avenger. Maybe we can get the Champions back together too - I'd love for Herc to resurrect and hang with that crew if Pak is writing it.

Ellis on Astonishing gets an incomplete - BIanchi couldn't do the art fast enough or well enough. I don't know if it was even finished - I gave up trying to follow it.

xposts

Ellis's work is not horrible, but it's mostly REALLY BIG THINGS happening all the time, where the things are sci-fi gobbledegook. You can describe the plots with

[Menacing concept] [technological hack] shows up from [another dimension / space] and the X-Men must fight it while Hank McCoy or some other smart guy comes up with a hack to stop the problem.

menacing concepts:
return of the brood
other-dimensional pseudo-mutants

technological hacks:
making everything a sentinel
boxes that transport things between dimensions

They're planning a Dazzler (mini?)series which I am unreasonably interested in.

X-Factor rules - once Peter David got a hold of Madrox in that mini it's been one of the best things going. Plus, he tries as much as possible to do his own thing, and when the book does get pulled into the rest of the X-shit is the only time it falters.

The Pixie miniseries kind of highlights how awesome some of the new characters are. Pixie herself has always been pretty great and I'd liked Armor for a while but I was kind of agnostic on Blindfold and Mercury and sort of had no time for X-23 until that miniseries.

I'll have to check it out. I don't know any of them - were they part of that Generation X thing?

Well, Armor was in Ellis' Astonishing, but I don't know any of their stores.

Much later; most of the Gen X kids are either dead, depowered or adults now (like M in X-Factor). They all are from the second wave of kid mutants, when Xavier's was a huge fully-functioning school with a bazillion mutants in it.

Pixie is basically nu-Majik, only Welsh and way way happier. Blindfold is nu-Destiny. X-23 is nu-Wolverine. Armor is... well she basically has this armor-like force field that is mostly impervious and greatly increases her strength, so she's kind of a cross between Colossus and Skids. Mercury is basically made up of mercury (no surprise there). The miniseries revolves around a kidnap plot intended to lure Pixie's mother into a trap, but most of the action revolves around hallucinations the girls have thanks to the bad guys grossly abusing Pixie's hallucinogenic powers to keep them all under control, allowing the writer to explore the girls' core personalities in a surreal context where they don't have powers. It's kind of cool even if it doesn't really start making a ton of sense until issue #3.

Thanks for the recap. Sounds good, especially as I don't have any baggage because of how other's have written the characters.

I'm not sure if these epic crossovers are supposed to spur sales by getting people to buy them all, or if they're supposed to get people interested in the different books in the crossovers, but I know they really screw with your reading of a series. I've been reading a lot of comics through Marvel's digital comics thing on their website, and I've had to skip the token crossover book occasionally because it's just incoherent when read in the scope of one series.

Armor was introduced in Whedon's X-Men, I think?

Ellis' & Bianchi's X-Men was just horrible. First of all, Bianchi is an awful comic book artist who has no idea how to make the story flow from one panel to another. His action scenes especially are almost impossible to follow. I guess the point of his art is to look at the pretty individual panels, but unlike in Shining Knight, with X-Men even that didn't work, because his art looked rushed and unfinished. I guess Ellis' story had some interesting things in it, though his plotting was kinda awkwardly paced too... But the worst thing with the script was, Ellis was willing to completely screw up the characterization for no good reason at all. I thought X-Men (except Wolverine) weren't supposed to kill anyone unless there was absolutely no other option. However, Ellis shows the X-Men killing not only in battle, but also slaying villains who'd they'd already defeated and who no longer pose any threat to them. And by the end of the "Ghost Boxes" arc, Beast and Agent Brand fire a huuuge laser beam via a dimensional portal into an alternate Earth, potentially killing thousands or even millions because they assume (but don't know for sure) that this alternate Earth populated by evil mutants! And this whole change in X-Men's ethics is dealt with just one speech by Cyclops, who basically just says "times have become tougher, so we need to change too", and everyone seems to be fine with that. Ironically, the only person who mildy protests this policy change is Storm, even though in the classic Claremont issue where she duels with Callisto, she is shown to be the only X-Man capable of killing in cold blood in order to save a team mate.

I dunno what's happened with the series ever since, I was so disappointed that I stopped reading it after the Ghost Boxes story.

The Brood storyline was better/more coherent.

I realize I'm pretty much a sucker for whatever character is the stand-in for Wolverine's sidekick (ie Kitty, Jubilee) but both Armor and Pixie fill this role so well with such distinct personalities (Armor being much more cynical/snarky and Pixie being so "omg wau" perky and happy).

That X-factor cliff hanger seems likely to be a fake out.

Yeah, I completely expect it to be, but considering what's happening in the other books...

It's obv a fakeout. Maddrox had dude pick up the money instead of Rictor because he can get psychic imprints off stuff, so clearly they were already suspicious of him. Once they read the psychic imprint they'd know where the money really came from and be able to set up the fakeout.

Armor is... well she basically has this armor-like force field that is mostly impervious and greatly increases her strength, so she's kind of a cross between Colossus and Skids Jubilee and Shade the Changing Man.

http://www.hembeck.com/Images/Covers/GCDcovers/ShadeThe%20ChangingMan1.jpg

Dear ppl reviewing X-Men: Second Coming:

We return to the action with Cyclops and Domino talking, Scott is updating her on the losses. The real losses. Domino instantly understands what is going on, taking out the teleporters. Vanisher over hears this and starts to panic. Screw you guys, he’s outta here. She catches him though but can’t stop him from porting to his sorority house…brothel…well same thing, in Portugal. There Steven Lang is waiting for him, having already killed his pledges he tells Vanisher goodbye.

I didn’t like this. Not one bit. Why? Because I actually found Vanisher interesting. I found him fun and entertaining. His addiction to hookers and sense of humor was relatable to me. Now he’s dead. I’d trade 5 Nightcrawlers for 1 Vanisher any day.

Fuck you.

That is all.

I was really looking forward to Xenogenesis cause I sincerely like Ellis (mostly b/c of Transmet) and tho his Astonishing X-Men was a tremendous disappointment, I kept kinda hoping that it was totally the fault of the artist. And the Xenogenesis previews I had seen were really pretty. Except the first issue is kinda all kinds of racist and ignorant. At one point in the issue Wolverine goes through a list of African countries and names all the huge crimes and problems those countries have (AIDs, genocides, repressing press, etc, etc), and Storm says, "Wolverine is very wise." UGH.

What the hell are you talking about?

Idk, Wolverine is this guy who has been hunted by the US government, experimented on by a paramilitary corporate organization in Canada, and acc to Brian Vaughan, lived through nuclear weapons being dropped on Hiroshima. But he has a special disdain for the crimes of Africa, including a segment where he explains to us how Nelson Mandela is a terrorist. If that wasn't out of character enough, half the characters quote verbosely (including quotation marks) to prove their point, including Wolverine quoting Mandela 'admitting' that he was a terrorist. It's exposition, and kinda offensive exposition. The whole thing is a super mess.

At one point Scott Summers calls Africa a country, and Storm is like, "Africa is a continent, dude," and Scott tells her he knows, but he's gonna need her special help as a liaison to the country since she's black and the rest of them are white. It's just totally wacky. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I'm gonna assume you haven't read the issue yet?

I read the issue and I think you are being massively oversensitive. If you read Wolverine's disdain as "special" or missed the fact that her husband T'Challa specifically alerted Storm to the problem and asked her to bring the X-Men in on it, giving Scott another reason to ask her to act as liason other than just her being black (or did you forget she is African royalty?)...

Also, Beast was the character who said "Africa isn't a country" but it was in an extreme closeup and he's dark so I can see where confusion might have come up.

Right, but Scott then pseudo-apologizes to Storm on the next page specifically for calling it a country.

wrt her being African royalty, the issue explicitly lampshades that (all that awkward dialogue -- 'also your mom is a princess and your dad is an african american photographer...'). my problem was less explicit racism and more how uncomfortable and stilted and unconscious the whole thing felt. like Ellis wanted to write about race, and couldn't figure out how to do it in an intelligent, normal human being way.

i was also a little confused about Beast being one of two White Americans. He's a blue American if anything.

Also! I don't know if Wolverine's disdain was super special, but it seemed totally out of place for him to go on about the history of various African countries for two pages. the part where he's like: "Rwanda to the west, genocide, corruptions, journalists being disappeared. Burundi to the southwest. Civil war, child soldiers, one of the poorest countries on earth. Uganda to the north. A million and a half people are refugees in their own country. The army abducts little girls for 'wives.' Tanzania to the east. Massive drugs gateway. one in ten people have HIV. All that on either side and Mbangawi's even got a to deal with pirates on lake victoria. Mbangawi is like craphouse central." This is a ton of exposition to explain how shitty Africa is. First of all -- it makes it sound like it's all one big country, as though these places are just towns away from one another. Second of all, Africa is a huge place, and there's good and bad stuff there just like there's good or bad stuff anywhere. I'd be really put off if they were going to New York and just rattled through the crime statistics in the city and totally ignored that it's a vibrant city where a lot of people live. And why does Wolverine have a special interest in this anyway besides the fact that Ellis apparently needed someone to mention all the bad stuff in Africa and Wolverine seemed like an okay fit. I don't think I'm being overly sensitive about this. Like, what does the comic gain from Wolverine trashing on Nelson Mandela?

In other, shorter tldl words: It's very Heart of Darkness'esque, and that annoys me. Also, Transmet never had writing this shitty.

yeah it did

hank mccoy was a white dude, im guessing hes still white under the fur

Transmet had a lot of preachy preaching too, but the plus side was that it was created by Ellis, so it was easier to accept Spider Jerusalem as the writer proxy (though he was still irritating as hell as a character). I haven't read the latest Astonishing X-Men, but it was already obvious in the previous issues that Ellis doesn't really know how to write these characters. Like I said above, it was pretty jarring to see the X-Men suddenly kill without remorse and Beast have no problems with being responsible for mass murder... Compared to Ellis, Whedon was much better at breathing new life into the characters while still keeping their core qualities intact. I don't think Ellis is a bad writer, but clearly he should stick to writing characters he has created himself.

wow, yeah, btw Xenogenesis is kind of a shitty, awful comic on every level. Insultingly bad.

I'm not saying that Xenogenesis is anyone's definition of a great comic book but the problem lies in Ellis's continuing fascination with telling a story veeeeeeeery slooooooooowly way moreso than it lies with any political stances put forward in the book, which read to me more as an attempt to make the story less about OMG MUTANT SCAVENGER HUNT and more about an attempt to make the X-Men deal with a more complicated political situation than they usually encounter.

total aside/back on-topic comment: Hellbound seems incredibly promising!

I'm envious of your interest in the new characters and the revitalized New Mutants characters, Dan. At this point, I think I'm going to have to completely stop reading X-Men stuff for a while again because it all seems so mediocre. I think the best writing is probably coming from Hellbound / New Mutants in general, although I really like Matt Fraction's stuff, but that's getting fractured (heh) by all this crossover mumbo jumbo.

I think I'm just realizing that I really only like good stretches of a single comic with a good creative team and don't care about the rest. Second Coming is supposed to kind of be for the X-books what Siege was, in that it resets half the status quo and takes things back to before the "no more mutants" crap, right? I really feel like the best thing coming out of it is the X-Factor in the future stuff.

Generally speaking, with the X-Men I am almost always more interested in the newer characters. There are certain stalwarts who will always be favorites (RIP Kurt) but so many of them have been in the same stories for so many years that I always find it fun and refreshing to read about new personalities; when those new personalities actually click, it's even better.

I thought it was really a shame that M was really the only character introduced via Generation X that's had any longevity (although she is awesome); I see tons of potential in almost every single one of the junior X-Men they currently have in rotation and I hope some of them stick around for a long time (Armor and Pixie appear to be creative favorites so I'm not too concerned there, but I really really hope Blindfold continues to be a perplexing, enigmatic cypher).

So far behind on X-Men atm. Did this thing ever end properly? Have they cured the extinction problem yet?

Hope exhibited powers that may or may not have been the Phoenix, and killed all the bad guys. Then "Five lights" (which is the name of the next arc) appeared on Cerebra, the implication being that Hope has restarted the mutant gene. Everybody congratulated Cyclops on his flawless leadership.

It ended pretty crappily IMO

Yeah, all I was really asking for was that Decimation would get undone (finally) so I'm satisfied on those terms, but it would have been nicer if that seemed to have more to do with the story itself, which was primarily a "mutants' last stand" against insurmountable odds type deal. Reasonably well done, maybe let down a bit by the art from issue to issue. The Nightcrawler thing was unforgivably dopey though.

They killed Cable too but at least that made sense.

Oh and most of the old school X-Men now hate Scott

Forgot to add that Wolverine appears to be committed to being a secret genocidal maniac, like a shadowy Magneto