Essential The Official Comic Book Discussion Thread [Support @Neuromancer’s book!]
- Thread starter MenacingMonk
- Start date
all this talk makes me wanna go back and read Freedom Force stories to see if they talked about their public perception.
I don't remember it being bad, but I could be wrong.
Remember Freedom Force? That time Valarie Cooper convinced Mystique and her version of The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants to be government agents?
Mystique
Destiny
Blob
Pyro
Spiral
Avalanche
Stonewall
Super Sabre
Crimson Commando
I don't remember it being bad, but I could be wrong.
Remember Freedom Force? That time Valarie Cooper convinced Mystique and her version of The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants to be government agents?
Mystique
Destiny
Blob
Pyro
Spiral
Avalanche
Stonewall
Super Sabre
Crimson Commando
OG Cyclops and Kamala working together on some boss shyt in Champions.
Thats cool how he retained all young Cyclops memories.
I mean of course he would, its the fukkin X-Men. Theres HAS to be some wacky shyt thrown in the mix.
:marvelruss:
And that Dead Man Logan joint with the cannibals mackin on his live flesh was...
Thats cool how he retained all young Cyclops memories.
I mean of course he would, its the fukkin X-Men. Theres HAS to be some wacky shyt thrown in the mix.
:marvelruss:
And that Dead Man Logan joint with the cannibals mackin on his live flesh was...
I have had an idea of a Freedom Force/Thunderbolts type book where Val Cooper comes back on the scene to put together a US government backed group now that The Avengers are basically telling world governments to kick rocks.
It would be a mix of reformed villains, heroes with a history of working for the government and couple member from the old Freedom Force.
The gimmick would be they'd all be using codenames based on the classic Timely/Marvel characters and the big twist would be that Mystique has been impersonating Val Cooper the entire time.
the fukkery.... you'd never see Val and Mystique in the same room, the reveal doesn't come til issue 6, the team doesn't find out til they're in waaay too deep. Then they never trust each other when Mystique isn't around....
Imagine Moonstone trying to figure out who is and isn't mystique. Imagine Henry Gyrich being a nervous wreck.
Yeah just the fukkery of Mystique having the team pulling jobs that fit her needs and having a couple of the members trying to figure out just what the hell is "Val Cooper" up to would be fun.
MenacingMonk
Tranquilo
DCeased 4 
MenacingMonk
Tranquilo
Right after I read DCeased 4 I read Batman 76. 
The nerve of King to make Cap Atom a jobber to his pet project creation.
The nerve of King to make Cap Atom a jobber to his pet project creation.
Yo who put me on to the Spider-Man comic tracking him through the decades? I need to give out a rep for that.
Da Rhythm Rebel
All Star
This ninja Hickman..
The HoX 2 revelation is...stunning to say the least
The HoX 2 revelation is...stunning to say the least
goddamn, Hickman. 
but he's gonna catch backlash in a day or two when fans start saying he did for Moira and X-Men continuity what Dr. Manhattan did with Superman and DC/Superman's continuity.My only questions....
What happened that sixth life? It's obviously redacted. There's a blank space for it on the timeline sheet.
What are those dashes in the 5th, 9th, and 10th timelines? Are those spots where she faked her death and is somehow.... still alive?
The 5th Moira... The 9th Moira....
*insert Doctor Who theme here*
edit: never mind. This is the 10th Moira. The dashes lead to House of X 2 in the reading order list.
What are those dashes in the 5th, 9th, and 10th timelines? Are those spots where she faked her death and is somehow.... still alive?
The 5th Moira... The 9th Moira....
*insert Doctor Who theme here*
edit: never mind. This is the 10th Moira. The dashes lead to House of X 2 in the reading order list.
Hey, man. Hickman did the impossible twice in one book. One, the stuff in the issue itself....
Two is drop a Marvel book that was better than Immortal Hulk on the same day.
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Jmare007
pico pal q lee
TrueEpic08
Dum Shiny
So...House of X #2...
Jesus CHRIST, what a terrible piece of writing we've been served by Hickman here.
I'm not even kidding when I say that this might legitimately be the most damaging X-Men comic since at least Avengers vs. X-Men #11-12, maybe even House of M #6-7.
Let me count the ways:
-Making Moira a mutant does serious damage to the comic's underpinning concept of human-mutant relations, since they've made one of Charles's closest human allies into just another mutant. Furthermore, how then does she deal with the Legacy Virus? If you remember, the major reason Moira was able to synthesize a Legacy Virus cure was because she (a human) got infected with it (a nice little metaphor in and of itself for the necessity of harmonious human-mutant relations no matter how difficult). Now, I completely understand where Hickman got the idea to make her a mutant; in fact, it makes a startling amount of sense based on previous continuity. But this is one example of many in this issue alone of Hickman not being able to see the forest for the trees.
-The comic makes Moira, Charles, and maybe even Magneto and Apocalypse look like complete idiots. Without spoiling too much, Destiny outright tells Moira at one point that she's a self-centered idiot scientist that doesn't consider the consequences of her actions, tells her (in her own elliptical Destiny-esque way) what those consequences are, and then "sends" Moira on her way. What does she then do? Spend accumulate lifetimes of scientific and political knowledge, and then puts almost none of the political knowledge to effective use. Destiny literally hands her the point, and she fukks it up completely. And because she's relaying this knowledge to the mutant leaders of the issue (more on this in a minute), she makes THEM look like idiots, because they can't parse through what she's telling them and figure out a better way.
fukk it...
Unless this is meant to be a dig at how utterly stupid scientific types tend to be sometimes when they try to transpose that knowledge to the political arena (thanks for exemplifying this for us Ben Carson/Neil DeGrasse Tyson/Elon Musk/Whatever Silicon Valley jackass as thrown in their hat today), I can't see how this is supposed to do any good to Moira's character.
-The comic makes Moira look like an ineffectual lemming. Any female comic reader extolling the virtues of this comic as a piece of feminist-adjacent writing is hilarious to me, since Moira spends the ENTIRE issue putting her fate in the hands of men who end up failing at doing anything of real worth with her accumulated knowledge. Yeah, real strong character as opposed to the one who directed Excalibur's operations off Muir Isle in the 80s-90s.
-Gotta spoiler this whole thing:
All of this bullshyt mainly because he has to service his X/10 numerology concept, to the detriment of everything else around it.
None of that even touches the character writing. That all sucks too. A bunch of ciphers by which he mediates his precious ideas, like basically every other Hickman-written comic.
fukk this trash. The more I think about it the angrier I get. AND I didn't even get to every gripe I had with it.
I wish I could burn every issue of this comic from existence.
Edit: Actually, one more thought:
Jesus CHRIST, what a terrible piece of writing we've been served by Hickman here.
I'm not even kidding when I say that this might legitimately be the most damaging X-Men comic since at least Avengers vs. X-Men #11-12, maybe even House of M #6-7.
Let me count the ways:
-Making Moira a mutant does serious damage to the comic's underpinning concept of human-mutant relations, since they've made one of Charles's closest human allies into just another mutant. Furthermore, how then does she deal with the Legacy Virus? If you remember, the major reason Moira was able to synthesize a Legacy Virus cure was because she (a human) got infected with it (a nice little metaphor in and of itself for the necessity of harmonious human-mutant relations no matter how difficult). Now, I completely understand where Hickman got the idea to make her a mutant; in fact, it makes a startling amount of sense based on previous continuity. But this is one example of many in this issue alone of Hickman not being able to see the forest for the trees.
-The comic makes Moira, Charles, and maybe even Magneto and Apocalypse look like complete idiots. Without spoiling too much, Destiny outright tells Moira at one point that she's a self-centered idiot scientist that doesn't consider the consequences of her actions, tells her (in her own elliptical Destiny-esque way) what those consequences are, and then "sends" Moira on her way. What does she then do? Spend accumulate lifetimes of scientific and political knowledge, and then puts almost none of the political knowledge to effective use. Destiny literally hands her the point, and she fukks it up completely. And because she's relaying this knowledge to the mutant leaders of the issue (more on this in a minute), she makes THEM look like idiots, because they can't parse through what she's telling them and figure out a better way.
fukk it...
How do you live 9 lifetimes, 5 of which trended toward mutant separatism and 8 of which ended in Sentinels killing everyone, and not understand that a delicate political approach, as opposed to explicit strongman politics, may be needed? 
How does Charles literally read her mind, gain knowledge of all her lifetimes and how separatism doesn't work, and then STILL perpetuate a soft separatism? 
This shouldn't be surprising, actually, since the politics of Hickman's comics have been thoughtlessly moronic at best.
How does Charles literally read her mind, gain knowledge of all her lifetimes and how separatism doesn't work, and then STILL perpetuate a soft separatism? This shouldn't be surprising, actually, since the politics of Hickman's comics have been thoughtlessly moronic at best.Unless this is meant to be a dig at how utterly stupid scientific types tend to be sometimes when they try to transpose that knowledge to the political arena (thanks for exemplifying this for us Ben Carson/Neil DeGrasse Tyson/Elon Musk/Whatever Silicon Valley jackass as thrown in their hat today), I can't see how this is supposed to do any good to Moira's character.
-The comic makes Moira look like an ineffectual lemming. Any female comic reader extolling the virtues of this comic as a piece of feminist-adjacent writing is hilarious to me, since Moira spends the ENTIRE issue putting her fate in the hands of men who end up failing at doing anything of real worth with her accumulated knowledge. Yeah, real strong character as opposed to the one who directed Excalibur's operations off Muir Isle in the 80s-90s.
And what's so bad about the whole reincarnation plot is that it's actually a pretty great idea. I love the concept of a mutant reincarnate directing mutant history across the generations. Sure, it's just another iteration of Apocalypse, but there's certainly room to do something different with it. Instead, Hickman makes Moira into a follower for most of her lives, saves her actual agency for a burst of absolutely pointless shock value violence (the only politics other than explicit scientism that Hickman really knows), AND fukks up the concept of reincarnation in the process. I'd go on more about this one, but this is long enough as is. I'll just say that, although he stated repeatedly that this isn't a time travel plot, Hickman's actually made something quite a bit worse than that here.
-Gotta spoiler this whole thing:
Going off the last point, this fake reincarnation/actual time loop plot that Hickman himself fukks up in roughly three pages creates so many more holes for fukkery and nonsense in the X-Men line. Too many timelines/versions of the main timeline/what-the-fukk-ever for editors not to exploit with a bunch of useless landfill miniseries. Wasn't he the one going on about the X-Men's continuity not making sense, then he pulls THIS garbage? And people had the temerity to say I was exaggerating about Hickman being an arrogant jackass. I guarantee that this is going to either be ignored or retconned within 5 years of Hickman leaving the franchise, because it causes way, way too many problems for anyone who wants to do anything effective with the X-Men mythos. Despite how Morrison-influenced this whole run seems to be, Hickman doesn't seem to have learned the knack for simplicity that made New X-Men's major concepts work AT ALL.
All of this bullshyt mainly because he has to service his X/10 numerology concept, to the detriment of everything else around it.
None of that even touches the character writing. That all sucks too. A bunch of ciphers by which he mediates his precious ideas, like basically every other Hickman-written comic.
fukk this trash. The more I think about it the angrier I get. AND I didn't even get to every gripe I had with it.
I wish I could burn every issue of this comic from existence.
Edit: Actually, one more thought:
I might cut this comic a little more slack if it turns out that that Moira's multiple lives are actually a meditation on the ineffectiveness of multiple timelines/continuities/retconning in general, because that's actually a legitimately brilliant idea. Thing is, I've seen that sort of metacommentary on reading/writing/publishing comics done much better elsewhere (so many of Grant Morrison's works, for one. And Alan Moore's Supreme is basically all about this).
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