X-Men Forever #5

[queenursula.insanejournal.com]

Comments

[timemonkey.insanejournal.com]

Yes it was. Going public would have brought trouble on them but it would have also shown they have nothing to hide. Look at Northstar and Aurora, both have clear physical mutations and no one hunted them down to kill them. Usually the hunting is done by crazy fanatics or thsoe with the ability to find mutants by scanning for DNA, hiding their identities did nothing but make everyone suscpicious of them/

[timemonkey.insanejournal.com]

So, is this an alternate universe or something?

[xdoop.insanejournal.com]

Yes.

[timemonkey.insanejournal.com]

Thanks. I'm glad, cause I was all 'what the hell is this crap?". Art's not bad though.

[goldenbrowngod.insanejournal.com]

thanks.

know I wonder why Grummett decided to go with cute versions of Rogue and Nightcrawler and not say Gambit

[timemonkey.insanejournal.com]

Not that the training seems to help much. How many of the X-Men, or X-related teams, haven't died at least once?

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

To be fair, they live in Canada, and I hear that things there are different to in the USA.

[jlbarnett.insanejournal.com]

I was more talking about the ones who's powers would blow themselves up

[timemonkey.insanejournal.com]

Which is exactly why they should have done s, to improve things. If you're always hiding then you remain the thing of rumour andf gossip and scare tactics. Giving mutants a face would have gone much farther to help the cause than anything they did otherwise.


Of course the fact that they filled the team with criminals, thieves and murderers that never paid for their crimes doesn't help with the trust.

[timemonkey.insanejournal.com]

Which would be who? People tend to be immune to their own powers. Those that aren't either die when their powers manifest, nothing training could do to help there, or learn to dela with it, training or not. The X-Men don't really offer much in the way of anything outside combat training, something useless to what most mutants would want. When they coem across mutants with powers they can't just swiych of they just slap a limiting device on them and leave them alone. Rogue could have been helped years ago, it's been long established that her problem is entirely mental and lack of practice but they never make more than a passing effort to actually help.

[erlgirl_9.insanejournal.com]

Wow, I really like this.

Finally, X-teams and Xavier that I don't hate on sight. I'm sick of all the backstabbing bullshit about Charles being an asshole. Sure, it's all plot-twisty and dark-frosted, but it really doesn't make for a good or enjoyable story. It's just kind of bleh.

The art here is really nice, I find.

[bj_l.insanejournal.com]

'Cause Gambit was skeezy and ugly when he first appeared, I'm guessing.

And at this time Rogue would be, what 21 at most (being 17 when she first joined the X-Men)?

[midnightvoyager.insanejournal.com]

I think I can see where he's coming from. It's... hard to tell people that they're going to die. And if he could have fixed the problem before it became a massive problem, a group of youngish people would never have to know that they were going to die.

Not the BEST reasoning, but it's at least understandable in a human way.

[ashtoreth.insanejournal.com]

Forever until they die, I guess!

[ashtoreth.insanejournal.com]

It's awesome and trainwreck both. I find the trainwreck part forgivable because, to me, this is the X-men. The 616 team I haven't found in character for years.

[ashtoreth.insanejournal.com]

Whats this about a feline shifter concept?

[kitty_tc_69.insanejournal.com]

When Cockrum originally designed the character that was to become Storm, she was going to be a catwoman something like the later Catseye. That's when he was sketching them intending them to be Legion characters before he jumped to Marvel. When they ended up being dug out and turned into X-Men, her concept changed.

[kitty_tc_69.insanejournal.com]

That's a total retcon... when Rogue was first introduced as a Dazzler villain, she was middle aged. In fact, when they were on the team together Dazzler used to tease her about her age. She got youth-ified when Jim Lee started drawing her all sexy, and her popularity subsequently took off, and they quietly just never mentioned again that Rogue was ever an older woman.

[kitty_tc_69.insanejournal.com]

You have so nailed it. As far as I'm concerned, they stopped being the X-men when Claremont left. No one else has come close to understanding the characters.

[foxhack.insanejournal.com]

Is that why she's had those creepy eyes for like, ever?

[bj_l.insanejournal.com]

I'd like to see some scans of this, since she first appeared when she took Ms. Marvel's powers, as far as I know.

And she was stated to be seventeen long before Jim Lee joined the X-Men, back in the early days of JRJr.

[foxhack.insanejournal.com]

So wait, if Claremont had stayed on the book, then ... this would've happened? o_O

[kitty_tc_69.insanejournal.com]

You're gonna make me dig out my Dazzler books, aren't you? Cuz she was in them, she attacked Alison on a bus if I recall correctly.

Let me find the issue and reread it and I'll tell you more.

Yes, I have a nearly complete run of Dazzler's solo book. You may commence with the teasing.

[kitty_tc_69.insanejournal.com]

Ok, found them... the ones I have, anyhow. Near as I can piece together from the editor's notes and letter pages, Rogue came into the title as a Dazzler villain in #22, and the ones I have with her in it are #'s 27 and 28, both released 1983.

I mostly skimmed over them, but I could not find a reference to Rogue's age. However, you are correct that these appearances take place after she steals Ms Marvel's powers as she references having them in the issues I have.

And while I couldn't find a text reference, the art definitely doesn't portray a young woman, let alone a teenager. The famous Rogue "skunk stripe" isn't a skunk stripe at all, it's white hair extending from her temples a la Hal Jordan or Reed Richards. A clear mark of an older woman, greying temples.

I unfortunately do not have the Uncanny issues where Alison teases her about being old, but I remember them clearly. There was a definite shift in how she was drawn to make her young and hot and that's when her popularity took off. It's a definite retcon.

Does anyone have those issues of Uncanny and can scan examples of her age being mentioned? I'd appreciate seeing it.

[bj_l.insanejournal.com]

Oh, please do. You're like a creature of myth.

But I stand by my belief that Rogue did not appear before Avengers Annual 10 (she was meant to appear in something before that but it was cancelled or postponed), and that she was seventeen when she joined the X-Men (in the 170's I think).