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In which all the heroes fight each other, a lot.
X-PLAINED:
- Teenage Iron Man
- Onslaught thus far
- What Onslaught wants
- Uncanny X-Men #335
- X-Men Unlimited #11
- Avengers #401
- The rebirth of Apocalypse
- The Apocalocophagous
- The Age of Wonders
- X-Man vs. Professor X
- Nate Grey-sitting
- Humanity’s Last Stand
- Simon Trask
- Bastion
- Rogue and Joseph
- Avengers fashion
- Assumptions
- Other characters who could merge Onslaught-style
- Origins of the Angry Claremontean Narrator
NEXT EPISODE: Yes, still Onslaught.
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Yes, Thor did indeed wear that outfit. Around Thor #502 and onwards for a while. The topless outfit was just before that.
Last time Xavier went evil, he’s all “Imma wear a cape! Cape’s are evil.”
This time? “Imma go for ‘Magneto, but if he were a Gundam.'”
The interesting (to me) thing about the way Waid writes Avengers #401 is that it’s an issue about Wanda and Pietro’s relationship to Magneto that has nothing to do with him being their father. They mention their parentage almost as a throwaway and Wanda focuses instead on how abusive he was as their boss in the Brotherhood. I think that like Claremont and others, Waid is at the very least indifferent to the retcon that made the twins Magneto’s children.
Waid is a very Silver Age-oriented writer even though he doesn’t write in imitation of the Silver Age, which is why he was such an odd choice for a Harras-era X-Men comic.
I know that I give Scott Lobdell a hard time over and over again for his representation of accents, but —“vuiry”?
Also, while my Portuguese is very, very limited (corrections welcomed), my understanding is that “Droga!” means “Damn!” So Roberto is *unhappy* that the X-Men are alive? That’s cold.
I was however quite amused by how Domino’s ridiculous X-Force posturing (“to whoever we’re doing it”) was met with, “Basically, stay here and keep an eye on Nate Grey while the grown-ups are out” from Cyclops.
Thinking of alternate story solutions to Onslaught. The Joseph plot gave me an idea: I could imagine a solution where Joseph absorbs Magneto’s memories and personalities to destroy him. Joseph would sacrifice his innocence for the greater good. I think the main downside is they haven’t had enough time to develop him properly to have the right impact.
I was only following the books here and there at this point, but this is sort what I expected Marvel was going for. It’s essentially a riff on the Star Trek III plot: Xavier in the McCoy role, being driven crazy by two sets of memories inside him, and Joseph as the empty-vessel Spock that provides a resolution.
It seemed like the only decent reason for Joseph’s existence (and really still does.) At the end of the day you wind up with a 20-something Magneto that still remembers the 1930s, solving a longtime headache for the . So I was sort of surprised to learn that the Magneto-memory angle only came later.
Also, I’m taking it as read that Magneto cloned himself by magnetism. I don’t want to hear otherwise.
I found the “Phase” and “Impact” labels worse than useless. Due to matters outside of my control I didn’t actually read Onslaught until about three months after it had finished. Since I was only buying X-titles at the time I only bought those. Onslaught: X-Men told me helpfully where to go next but I was unaware that the story would continue on into Avengers #401 and Fantastic Four #415. So I had to track those down before continuing the story. Then when I had those, I found out about the smaller cross overs within the larger one so I had to track down The Incredible Hulk issues. Once I knew that was going to be a factor I just tracked down every comic with the Onslaught label on the cover to make sure I had all the story. Which means I ended up buying The Punisher, Green Goblin, etc.