Immortal X-Men #12 - "The Idiot"

[laughing_tree]

At the most, Krakoa has gray elements. When Jon made this stuff, he wanted people to talk about it. When I was writing Judgment Day, I wanted people to have takes. I didn't want everyone to go, "Yeah, I completely agree with the guy with the thumb." I want to hear people go, "Bullshit, that guy should have passed" or "She should have failed" because that's the point. The point is to be an active reader and question. -- Kieron Gillen

Comments

[blues32]

Piotr is the reader right now, begging for the other characters to show an ounce of sense.

[alliterator]

The other characters *are* showing sense, they just don't know that Piotr's been compromised. They are also all tied up with their own issues, unable to view the bigger picture of what's happening. It's a tragedy -- a literal tragedy -- that Orchis and Mikhail have set up to bring down Krakoa.

[blues32]

This coming IMMEDIATELY after the whole "Sins of Sinister" thing should be ringing all sorts of bells. Mystique killing Destiny should also be looked into as someone trying to interfere with the counsel. She'd never do that.

[alliterator]

I mean, it's Mystique. She doesn't have a lot of people thinking "oh, she would *never* kill anyone, especially Destiny." Maybe Rogue would think that, but the other Council members? Probably not.

And as for this coming right after SOS, that's why half the Council isn't there. Shaw, Selene, and Colossus are taking advantage of their absence.

[blues32]

They'd think that the only person Mystique would never kill is Destiny. She already lost her once, after all.

[cainofdreaming]

She was willing to let the multiverse die when it was revealed that Destiny set up Wolverine to be resurrected instead of herself at the end of Wolverines.

Yeah, this is one scenario that reeks like the fish stall in the village of indomitable Gauls.

[justsotired]

When all of Krakoa's plot twists depend on the Idiot Ball trope in order to work, you're on a rickety foundation.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotBall

[alliterator]

The Idiot Ball is when someone acts like an idiot in order for the plot to advance.

Nobody here is acting like an idiot, though. Even the title of the issue is a reference to a Russian novel where people *think* the main character is an idiot, but he isn't.

[jlbarnett]

what makes you say they aren't acting like idiots. Having all these suspicions and doing nothing about them is pretty idiotic to me

[alliterator]

Suspicions about what? This is literally the first time that Kate and the other Council members have seen that Colossus isn't on their side. Should they get a telepath to go through his head to see if he's brainwashed? Because they already did that in X-Force and came up with nothing.

[aperturedreams]

I can almost buy that the Quiet Council is too preoccupied to notice Colossus acting strange, but the way the votes just were invalidated and the remaining ones fell into Colossus' lap after Sins of Sinister just made their government feel poorly thought out.

[alliterator]

This is the first time Colossus has acted out if character for them. Kate is literally flabbergasted when it happens.

And yes, their government *is* poorly thought out. It was only supposed to be a temporary solution, but they never ended up changing things until it was too late.

[phantomfo]

Like Colossus would be the first high-profile Krakoan to do shady things that seem out of character.

[scorntx]

"Everyone else was doing it. I didn't want to be left out..."

[giraffesforever]

With a respectful nod to Banshee, has any X-person been more consistently tortured by writers than Colossus?

Grow up in Siberia
Brother dies in space
Sister kidnapped
Get brainwashed by Arcade
Sister gets kidnapped by demons
Lose control of powers
Get total amnesia from Siege Perilous
Get possessed by Shadow King
Girlfriend's son isn't his
Brother not dead, watch brother kill himself
Parents murdered by government
Sister dies of plague
Brother not dead, brother kills himself again
Lose control of powers
Kill self
Get revived in medical torture chamber
Sister not dead, is a demon now
Get possessed by Cyttorak
Get possessed by Phoenix
Lose control of powers
Get possessed by Writer, made to murder lover

There's also a bunch of "had to kill someone or lost control and killed someone and now is deeply torn about it" sprinkled in there and a half dozen "cannot be with love due to duty or shitty circumstance".

[starwolf_oakley]

Girlfriend's son isn't his

Huh?
Details, please. Do you mean Nereel from the Savage Land? She had a son named Peter, and we were supposed to wonder.

[giraffesforever]

Well, I was sure there was a story (roughly Muir Island Saga era) where he's back in the Savage Land and the kid is someone else's and he's sad about it, but the various wiki say I've utterly imagined this, so I'm gonna bow to the internet's collective knowledge. I was a pretty literal-minded kid, so if the story was presented with any degree of hinting and suggestion I probably missed it.

[scorntx]

There was a long-running thing in the Claremont years how Piotr had a kid with someone in the Savage Land, who she'd named Peter which I'm not sure went anywhere in particular, and most writers post-Claremont seem to not care about / remember.
Maybe that?

[giraffesforever]

Yeah, I was thinking of Nereel. For some reason I thought that on the final visit it was revealed that the kid wasn't Peter's and he was sad because he liked the kid. This apparently never happened, but it sounds like the kid's parentage was hidden from Colossus (how??? the lady you boned last year has a kid now named after you!), so maybe I confused Colossus not knowing the kid was his with the kid actually not being his.

[sabertoothlotus]

So Mother Righteous is secretly Zatanna, now?

[blues32]

No, no, it's COMPLETELY different. See, the sentence is backwards. Not the words. So she's NOTHING like Zatanna. On an unrelated note, do you think she'd look good in a top hat?

[sabertoothlotus]

Who DOESN'T look good in a top hat?

[blues32]

I'm not seeing any justification for WHY they should be telling the world about Krakoa's "sins". At least none that outweigh the damage it would do, particularly with ORCHIS out there.

[shakalooloo]

The thought would be it's best to get ahead of potential fallout - if it gets later revealed as something they hid, it'll look bad, like when the secret of mutant resurrection and the Eternal rando-death-cost came to light.

Honesty is the best policy!

[alliterator]

It's Shaw and Selene working for Orchis and Colossus being controlled, so the justification from them is all lies anyway.

[blues32]

What is it with Shaw and doing things that are extremely against his own interests? Funding Sentinel creation? Sure, why not? What could go wrong? Work with a group seeking to basically exterminate mutants? Sure!

[donnblake]

Hmm, it's almost as if a self-appointing council with unlimited authority and zero accountability was a bad idea.

(Fortunately I live in a robust democracy, where it would be *impossible* for a small contingent of fanatics, parasites, and Russian agents to seize sweeping powers. Aha-heh-heh, hrrm.)