X-Men Legacy #268

[stolisomancer]

Due to a quirk of scheduling, the first comic to deal with the fallout from the last issue of Avengers vs. X-Men is X-Men: Legacy. It picks up after the Phoenix Five have come back to Earth and begun what a character refers to as "outlawing war": rogue states are dismantled and trouble spots are forcibly pacified.

One of those spots is the African country of Narobia. (I originally thought they'd misspelled Nairobi, or made up an African country out of whole cloth to avoid issues, but Narobia is apparently a pre-existing fictional state in the Marvel Universe, dating all the way back to Jack Kirby's Jungle Action books in 1977.) Cyclops swept through the place and forcibly disarmed a lot of the country's warring factions, but he missed some. The X-Men promptly dispatch Frenzy to bat clean-up.

In the spirit of fairness, I should offer a trigger warning for both child and spousal abuse.


This issue is essentially an origin story for Frenzy, with flashbacks to her childhood colored in dull red.

Upon landing in Narobia, she finds a small village where one of the local men is beating his thirteen-year-old wife.




The girl's name is Angelique. After Frenzy breaks the guy's arms, Angelique leads her into the forest and to the militia group Frenzy's there to take out. They talk a bit on their way through the jungle, and Frenzy ends up discussing her childhood with Angelique, which is a simple but pretty jarring story that I won't spoil here.

After Frenzy's taken out the militia camp, the Cuckoos move in to institute stage two of the plan:




This was a pretty solid issue. I'm not crazy about David Baldeon's art, but he's a great storyteller and there's a real sense of motion and action to his panels, and Christos Gage did his usual good job of handling a potentially delicate issue. If you've liked Frenzy in Legacy so far, I'd recommend picking this one up.

Comments

[salinea]

Yes, this was good. Good to see Gage's his top on this title, especially since I'd found previous issues a bit mediocre since the very first one.

[protogarrett]

You know, I wondered how Frenzy was going to be handled and I love how they are developing her. She's got a set of morals, still has a bad streak and dislikes humans, but has tasted what it's like to be a hero and respected for the right reasons and is striving for that again. I just hope this doesn't turn sour. (Like that team with Mystique, Sabretooth, L. Mastermind, and Omega Sentinel that you KNEW was just going to go all fucked up for Rogue.)

[shadowpsykie]

whats interesting is that this is a great story... but i don't think it NEEDED this event... for this to happen....

*sigh* i don't know... see i love cyclops... especially since whedon's run where he was a competent AND capable leader... now... i don't know..

i don't see ANY of the x-men coming out of this not as villains....

i don't know... unless there is some explaination later... i'm just sooo tired of the x-men... not matter what they do... becoming the villains....

[salinea]

I hear you. I like Cyke the most I've ever liked him currently -- but I don't see him and a lot of X-Men coming out from this as anything but a villain (and not unlikely - dead) which as a whole I'm very much not fond for the X-Men.

[greenmask]

Hey Frenzy, let's be friends

[icon_uk]

I love the "Teach me... I DARE you" line, and her expression.

Not a fan of her costume though.

[tsunamiwombat]

Not a fan of the costume either, the bracers are a bit chunky?

I do like the haircut though, and I usually don't like that style.

[amaresu]

I think Frenzy's becoming my new favorite in Legacy. I'm gonna have to poke around and see what else she's been in.

I really liked this issue because it's essentially two women bonding over terrible experiences and the younger one learning you can move beyond them.

[tsunamiwombat]

What I dislike about this is, while it does call attention to a serious issue, it calls attention to it in a haphazard overly simplified slapdash way.

If you take away the guns, they'll fight with knives.

If you depose a warlord, another will take their place.

If you slaughter the militia's you leave thousands of widows and orphans that will starve.

If you slaughter the militia's, you slaughter thousands of orphans because ALOT of the soldiers ARE CHILDREN

You come in, wreck shit up, and leave a power vaccuume. Nothing Cyclops has done fixes anything. It makes it worse. A friend looked at this and said "and then the entire village was slaughtered after they left", a chilling an probably accurate assessment. Playing god doesn't work. This isn't like having comics about Superman punching out Hitler - apples to oranges problem.

Comics should touch these issues. Comics should discuss these issues. But comics shouldn't produce simplistic feel good drek where a few superheroes can fix everything in a situation where everything is broken.

[salinea]

Frenzy made this commentary, mostly.

[sianmink]

T I A

[stolisomancer]

Fourth scan, first panel, Frenzy's dialogue.

[starwolf_oakley]

The 1989 Marvel series "Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja" is about how every nuclear weapon on Earth was rendered insert by a superhuman... which led to World War III with conventional weapons. Larry Hama wrote it.

[long_silence]

I thought that was why the Cuckoos were going to brainwash everyone in the country into playing nice.

[espanolbot]

They could take the New Frontier Wonder Woman solution, train the survivors to fight and hide in the bush so that when the next lot come they'll be able to defend themselves.

[icon_uk]

Yeah, the original "Squadron Supreme" covered much of the same ground and many of the same resulting issues.

[starwolf_oakley]

I remember Frenzy from X-FACTOR #2, when she was working for Apocalypse (who showed up a few issues later). Of course, this was when Apocalypse was an "ordinary" mutant criminal mastermind instead of a major near-immortal force with access to technology he stole from the Celestials.

Frenzy also was an Acolyte for a while, and was mind-controlled by Jean Grey into joining the X-Men for the (last?) pre-Grant Morrison X0Men story "Eve of Destruction."

[starwolf_oakley]

Whoops! Frenzy's first appearance was X-FACTOR #4.

[seisachtheia]

There's something really kind of strange about debating whether or not to wipe people's memories (or to what extent to do so) while the people are standing there. Surely that's something they're going to have an opinion about- it's the kind of conversation you'd definitely butt into. Maybe it's supposed to be a language difference thing? In any case, the speech about memories and life might have carried more meaning coming from one of the townspeople.

[espanolbot]

Ah, it's an X-Men comic, it's not like humans are people in them or anything. For that to be true they'd have to be mutants.

[auggie18]

They probably can't speak english.


These are respectively some of the mutants who normally couldn't care less about humans. Frenzy used to kill 'em for funsies. This is probably a step in a better direction for them. (Again, not killing humans for funsies.)

[md84]

"Screw them. They're not gods. We can make our own decisions. So can they."

And with that line I've become a fan of this character I've never seen until now. It's somehow more poignant coming from a former villain (then again, it seems like half of the X-men are former villains these days).

[stolisomancer]

One of the things I'm actually very interested in about modern Marvel is that the line between "hero" and "villain" has become somewhat gray. The X-Men recruit most of their opposition, Daredevil's enemies are mostly fairly sympathetic, a lot of the villains have retired or reformed, and a lot of what's left are simple powered mercenaries.

[lieut_kettch]

Miniskirts and mary janes in the bush? I think the Cuckoos would be wearing matching safari outfits for that little jaunt.

[kraesil]

Sigh. Same feeling I get with all comics like this.

Mix of happy and unhappy due to this part being good, entire thing as a whole bad.