Cyclops' plan?

[salinea]

2 pages from Uncanny X-Men #11 & 3 pages from AvsX #3



HEY I MADE THAT JOKE. SORT OF.



There's your "solid, unqualified win", Cap.



Here Tony makes one of those "you're starting to sound like me" speech that Magneto has been giving Scott a lot lately.











Scott plays dirty.

I like it.

Comments

[atom_punk]

Okay that open letter is clearly intended to raise public sympathy for the X-men using lies of omission. Makes sense since that is the point of the letter and strategically it's probably a smart move but it still makes me angry that Cyclops chose such a low move. Fighting dirty indeed.

The letter leaves out 2 important details:
1) There is no mention of the Phoenix or that it has recently been observed to be a possible cause for several planets getting destroyed and that the anonymous "girl" is most likely the host for this entity.

The Avengers aren't trying to take Hope into custody for being a mutant it's because she could become host to a potentially hostile cosmic being.

2) There is no mention of Cyclops' intent to harness the Phoenix to make more mutants.

Regardless of how badly the Avengers have responded to the threat of the Phoenix, this "Letter to Humanity" is a lie.

And it especially disgusts me the moral high ground the letter is taking considering that Cyclops has done his share of shady dealings. You need only look to his side to see Magneto who I'm fairly certain has never been held accountable by trial or imprisoned for attacking humanity.

I think I can't read or enjoy X-men books (at least not about the main group on Utopia) because as I've become more aware of the real-life global situation, the X-men seem more unlikable. There are people, in the real world and Marvel world both, being oppressed and subjugated and they don't have a self-sustaining island fortress or god-like superpowers but the X-men are consistently written as being underdogs and it feels hollow to me.

I liked it when it was just a school. A school for kids with superpowers but still a school, where saving the world was an extracurricular activity.

Now the flagship X-men title is about being a country and politics and whatnot.

I dunno. Just IMHO

[damar148]

Heavily agreeing, always hated the 'just a little girl' moral defense that's used often by 'heroes' to justify endangering everyone and leaving out the context of the little girl in question being extremely dangerous.

I cannot see how we're suppose to sympathize with the X-Men here.

[icon_uk]

Because the Avengers have ignored the advice of the only people on Earth who HAVE dealt with the Phoenix, in one case one of them was a host for the Phoenix for years and was a much admired hero for it.

Cap and Iron Man's plan seems to be based on pretty much total ignorance of the Phoenix.

[atom_punk]

Counter question: while it's true that the Avengers are acting rather blindly here with regards to the Phoenix, do the X-men actually have a better understanding of it?

I ask because my Marvel trivia is rather weak and I don't know if the X-men ever had a means of defeating the Phoenix beyond perhaps killing the host.

I've been told by people on scans_daily that in the past the Phoenix wasn't a hostile entity (barring of course Dark Phoenix) but from the way this crossover was set up it seems something has changed and the Phoenix is now apparently destroying planets.

From our perspective as readers we know this change is likely for whatever contrived plot-driving reason the editors and writers needed, but in-universe it seems like something has changed about the Phoenix so for all they know the X-men's knowledge may no longer hold true.

[salinea]

Oh, they've both been very foolish and hasty in drawing conclusions and attacking the other team when they should have gathered data for best understanding.

[cainofdreaming]

You need only look to his side to see Magneto who I'm fairly certain has never been held accountable by trial or imprisoned for attacking humanity.

Magneto actually had a trial, and was found not guilty. He did use his helmet to influence the mind of the supreme judge in his grand jury (if any of those terms are correct...), but none of the others seemed surprised about the ruling so they might have found him not guilty anyway. At least it made Magneto himself wonder.

Though since he went back to his old ways between that time and the present it's a bit moot. He's got new crimes on his record.

[atom_punk]

Magneto had a trial once? Really? I honestly did not know that. May I ask what issue and series this trial was in?

I'm always interested in what happens after a supervillain is arrested. Like what kind of evidence is presented, what kind of witnesses do you call (since superheroes typically can't testify), etc.

But like you said, it's a moot point since he committed new crimes after the trial so he's still a criminal.

[salinea]

The first of Magneto's trial is UXM #200, the second is Avengers vs X-Men #4 (lol).

[cainofdreaming]

The one I referred to happened in the X-Men vs. Avengers mini. Issue #4 to be precise. I didn't remember the other one at the time I posted but having checked that was before this in the X-Men #200 (vol 1), but that was interrupted when the Strucker twins attacked.

[salinea]

oh, yeah, it's definitely a low blow, and a very dishonest one.

Magneto was put on trial at least twice that I've read, by the way. But Cyke's team definite has its share of former and areyousureyoureformer villains.

I like that we have the school aspect of X-Men in W&tXM and the politics and trying to form a nation in UXM. I find both those aspects interesting and relevant to the themes of X-Men. YMMV.

[nefrekeptah]

I liked it when it was just a school. A school for kids with superpowers but still a school, where saving the world was an extracurricular activity.

We've got Wolverine and the X-men for that. And to be honest? The X-men as an honest-to-gosh school is still a pretty new concept, not introduced until the movie came out.

[atom_punk]

Fair enough. I honestly know X-men mainly from the 90's animated series and X-men Evolution so my familiarity with their history is limited.

Personally I want to see how mutant kids actually learn to control their powers and learn to deal with prejudice and fear and cope with their own status as mutants.

In the case of the X-men at least, I'm interested in a more personal level as opposed to large-scale international conflicts. So I guess the school concept has more appeal to me.

[brooms]

Personally I want to see how mutant kids actually learn to control their powers and learn to deal with prejudice and fear and cope with their own status as mutants.

generation x - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X_%28comics%29 - was apparently very good at dealing with this, or so i've heard.

[yvonmukluk.livejournal.com]

This this this. Probably why I went with team Wolvie.

I have a follow-up question: if they plan to use Hope to Make More Mutants, what necessitates her being on the planet when the Phoenix Force finally reaches her? Couldn't she be taken someplace safe offworld, united with the PF, and then if she doesn't go Dark Phoenix, bring her back to do it.

It'd be like Dr. Insano moving in next door to me, and saying he's found a way to cure a terminal disease he's suffering from, only it turns out there's a chance that it'll kill me, my family, and everyone else in the neighbourhood, if not the town. I'd sympathise, but really it's not something I'd want happening.

Besides, Mutants can have kids, they just wouldn't be mutants anymore. It comes off to me as Cyclops willing to risk killing everyone on the planet so he won't have to suffer the ignominy of having a powerless child. This brainbug about humans and mutants being different species is stupid-it was propaganda made up by Magneto, as I recall. They've unfortunately become an evolutionary dead end.

Wasn't it X-Men forever that revealed that mutants in that universe were fated to die out naturally, and would never supplant humanity? Pretty sure Xavier knew and decided to form the X-Men anyway, to help them work together and help out humanity anyway. But instead, Scott seems to have decided to go into full defensive mode. Which is fine, but now he's willing to drag down the rest of the planet to try and save a handful of people.

There's nothing wrong with trying to find a way to stop mutantkind dying out, but when you put the rest of the planet on the line, I'm not backing you.

I hope that Scott and the Brotherhood get called on this. i wouldn't be surprised if this leads to a whole new anti-mutant backlash. Unfortunately, it'll hurt the Westchester students who had nothing to do with it, not to mention any new mutants.

[abriel]

he's willing to drag down the rest of the planet to try and save a handful of people


And that is, bottom line, the main problem I have with Scott as he has been for the past decade right there. He just doesn't seem to care. The X-Men used to be about acknowledging they were part of the world, not apart from it, and while they might have seemed sometimes to be off in their own little world they still reached out and helped others, even when the others hated them.

Now? He's all "mutants mutants mutants" and damn everyone else.

This is why I just can't sympathize with the X-Men, and the Utopia crowd in particular. Heck for that matter I was even rooting for the Dark Avengers during the Utopia miniseries because the whole setting up an isolationist island fortress thing left a horrible taste in my mouth, and it still does.

[quatoria]

I'm not sure I'm willing to judge someone for worrying primarily about his minority, when there's millions upon millions of people ready to wipe them out - or do nothing, or cheer, when others do the work of genocide for them. The common mass of humanity in Marvel books has proven themselves to be pretty fucking terrible people, and I can pretty easily understand why Scott would make mutants his focus, instead of the wider world.

If he doesn't put the mutants first, who, exactly, will? Who else is actively looking out for their interests and trying to protect and save them? Serious question, there.

[salinea]

Motto.

[brooms]

iawtc

[schala_kid]

Thank you, just thank you.

And like I mentioned before, the PF is destroying other planets while it is on its way to Earth so there's no fucking way any of the other heroes are going to just let it come.

Also chances are it might just posses Hope and kill the fuck out of everyone else.

[abriel]

Word. To all of this.

[silverzeo]

Would it even really work? I know Marvel's citizens are as fickle as the wind, but are you saying that this letter would ACTUALLY cause people to stop hating on mutants. I mean, I know most people stop thinking Micheal Jackson was a child molester AFTER he died (as well as ending a one note joke that had WAY too much time on TV and movies); but are you saying after ALL the crazy crazy crazy nucking fut stuff that has been done with ANY mutant connection; this one letter would get people on their side? That's like trying to make a world a better place by giving out hundred dollars to random people in the street!

[salinea]

I don't think it would make them not hate mutants anymore. However it might make them hate the Avengers more than they hate the mutants. The Avengers currently do have a very good standing in the press, in large part thanks to Norman Osborn and Wonder Man. Adding this on top of everything... well, generally speaking people may not like *insert minority* but still be very happy to use them as a pretext to hate on other people.

[silverzeo]

Also, doesn't help when you consider that the letter is signed "Cyclops", a mythoical monster, rather than his real, I mean; "mutant slave name", Scott Summers...