Week of 2/1/2017:
In which Gambit guest-stars; Cyclops introspects; Old Man Logan goes full Brood Saga; and you should totally come see us at Emerald City Comic Con!
REVIEWED:
*Pick of the Week (13:08)
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On the digital code thing, I get it. There are a lot of people who sell codes for 50 cents, which doesn’t help retailers or Marvel. On the other hand, the new digital codes are functionally useless as long as they’re offering something on Marvel Unlimited.
With All-New X-Men, I thought this issue was very much a setup for X-Men Blue – particularly all the interactions with Magneto. I kind of like thinking Emma kind of fills the place of Marvel Editorial. Young Scott can think old Scott did nothing wrong, but other people have “written him” in a way that causes people in the story to hate him and his younger version. Or maybe I’m just reading too much into it.
Yay! So stoked for Gambit’s official debut….episode.
Also, X-23 passed under my radar until a few years ago, as well, when I heard Gambit was basically a co-star. Definitely check out Liu’s run on Astonishing X-Men – she gets a real good handle on Gambit there (plus she gives him cats, which he names after Disney cats). Hard to say whether I like her or Mike Carey’s take on him better. They both have done a lot to help rehabilitate him in recent years.
One thing you didn’t touch on in your review of All New X-men was Tyke (young Scott) suddenly thinking it was ok for mutants to die while he “oh so nobly” looked for a third option to the Peanut Cloud…
I loved both Classic and Post-Apoc Scott and while both of them would have looked for a third option neither one of them would have been ok with people dying while they looked for a third option. Stop people from dying first then look for a third option!
I read the story and ended up feeling that Scott was advocating mutants just give up and either move or get ready to die.
Not to mention the wonderful words:
“Pre-emptive Inhuman Genocide”
Seriously? Destroying a Peanut Cloud does not count as Genocide in any way.
Marvel changing the digital copy system is really frigging stupid. It strikes me as Marvel getting pissy about people sharing digital codes, which strikes me as missing the fact that some people picked up some books solely because of getting digital codes from others. I know I only picked up Vision because I’d read it digitally. Also: All-New Wolverine. If I hadn’t read the first two issues digitally, I wouldn’t be buying that book now. So, yeah, changing the digital code system angers me.
ANXMMU was really good. Lots of fun. Laura and Gambit are really fun together. She brings out the best in him. More accurately, I think she suppresses the worst in him. He can’t be sleazy. And Laura’s evolution does make their interactions really neat.
ANXM was . . . OK. There was some fairly good Scott stuff, with his self-doubts, but at the same time, his soul-searching about whether stopping the murder-cloud is right is off. (Also, can we get some Inhuman soul-searching about whether cool powers are actually more important people not frigging dying?) I did like seeing Mosaic, though. I’m enjoying that title.
Old Man Logan was great. That twist at the end completely sold me on the arc. And, of course, Sorrentino/Maiolo.
More and more Inhumans shilling as the event goes on. Have a feeling I’m really gonna end up hating where this story goes.
I liked the part where they visually compared Cyclops to Hitler. Because THAT seemed appropriate.
I’m starting to have a feeling that the whole Marvel universe has turned racist toward mutants, only now it’s modern racism. Instead of rallying against and bullying mutants through angry mob and sentinels and concentration camps, now the attacks disguise themselves behind the higher moral ground face. They try to make the mutants look like villains and it works so good that not only known heroes accept this schema without being aware of their racist origin, mutants themselves start to question their own legitimacy, their own right to live.
This has been bugging me for a while and I guess here is as good a place to vent as any… Whose great idea was it to make Alpha Flight into outer space heroes? What logic puts Sasquatch, Aurora, and Puck into dogfighting spaceships where their unique powers are useless (or in Sasquatch’s case, a liability due to the extra mass) and they could just as easily be replaced by an extra from Star Wars?
This makes as much sense as when comic book characters have their own vehicles in a toy line (https://www.bigbadtoystore.com/images/products/out/large/MAI10081.jpg), except without the marketing motive.