X-Treme X-Men #2

[iamrman]

The X-Men job to the new villain to show how much of a threat he is.

Vargas is so cool not even Betsy and the focused totality of her psychic powers could stop him.

Comments

[scorntx]

...
Well, at least he's got a goal.
It's not a sensible goal, or a practical goal, and requires a total lack of understanding of how evolution works (it's not like freaking Digimon).
But it is a goal. Barely.
And it's not "enslave people" like so many Claremont villains have (including two he will introduce later on in this very series).
So, uh, there's that?

He's still utterly generic in every other respect.
Him and his even more generic ninja minions.

If his goal is to kill all Mutants, why does he just leave them alive?
"Are we going to kill all these X-Men now?"
"No, my generic minions. Let us return to our lair and practice our evil laughs."

[donnblake]

Look, if we're going to start discounting X-men villains on the basis of their lacking an understanding of evolution, the line starts way before Vargas.

That said, Vargas's whole deal is going to get more needlessly complicated, eventually involving Rogue, Destiny's diaries, and, it's briefly implied, maybe a connection to Cassandra Nova. I think the closest we come to an explanation is in X-men: The End.

[scorntx]

Don't recall X-Men: The End giving an explanation for what Vargas' whole deal was...

[obsidianwolf]

You know Vargas seems like he was meant to tie into the idea that the x-line was toying around with at the time that Mutants might not actually be the next lifeform to inherit the Earth but just one possibility. Some like Morrison in bad his future did a good job with it. Others had interesting ideas but really flubbed the execution (Austin with that idea about like powered mutants banding together but instead of using something actually threatening like say a bunch of Magneto Lite, or Evil Xavier's went with parrot werewolves) and Claremont with Vargas as not human but human and a mutant predator just really phoned it in.

[beyondthefringe]

Instead....
now we ask "Vargas who???"
I mean seriously, clunk.

[iamrman]

Not all X-villains can be bangers. For every Juggernaut and Sinister there is an Empyrean and Mammomax.

[beyondthefringe]

Mammomax is awesome and deserves another shot at the A-list.

[donnblake]

It's been a while, so I may be conflating actual depiction with fan theorizing, but I believe he showed up acting as Rogue and Gambit's butler, which was taken in some circles as more or less confirming the theory that he was originally a manifestation of the Xavier Protocols... somehow.

[scorntx]

He showed up as the head of the X.S.E., with his generic ninja minions acting as Rogue and Gambit's nannies before they got killed.
No mention of the Xavier Protocols.

[zylly]

As I recall, Claremont basically intended to bring back Betsy almost immediately, but Joe Q had just instituted a temporary “dead is dead” editorial policy, so he ended up shooting himself in the foot.

[scorntx]

Yep, Joe Q's "dead is dead" policy.
Which lasted until someone realised that that particular horse had long since gotten out, moved to the big city, raised a whole family of horses and died peacefully of old age.

Turned out her brother Jamie resurrected her to stab an evil Phoenix counterpart.
(but for some reason she was still in Kwannon's body? wtf jamie.)

[zylly]

It almost makes me wonder what kind of editorial ships passed in the night to have that happen, of if it literally happened before the next issue was written and Joe was just that resolute about it.

[nyadnar17]

Didn't Storm kill a double digit number of this dudes wives/concubines with a knife in this run?

[donnblake]

You may be thinking of Khan, the interdimensional conqueror from a little later in the series.

[remial]

what the hell is up with Psylocke's face?

[mastermahan]

There was a plotline where Betsy's life was saved by ninja healing magic, the Crimson Dawn, and it gave her a dopey face tattoo and eventually shadow teleportation powers while maybe slowly turning her evil.

Then she died here. And it was never mentioned again.

[scorntx]

Oh, another Claremont "slowly turned to evil plot", eh? Well-*checks*
Huh. Not one of Claremont's.
Goodness.

[full_metal_ox]

I’m an old enough fart to be distracted by the historical baggage of certain of the character names: you mean Vargas wasn’t evaluating Betsy as the ideal glamour pinup model?

And the name Thaïs seems to have taken a surprise turn at Albuquerque.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

So... what makes these guys so much better than humans, yet not mutants (aside from maybe being human, which mutants are not, because it's cheaper for Marvel that way).

[obsidianwolf]

It was all vague I recall the prevailing view at the time was that Vargas was like a super charged Captain America but natural. STronger, faster, better in all areas than a human could ever be and that his twins were lesser versions of the same thing.

But we never got much of an explanation.and exactly where folks got the Natural super charged Captain America thing from is up in the air. Maybe interviews or just fanwank.