the truly freaky dreams of Madelyne Pryor

[nonners]

Five scans from Uncanny X-Men #233. Big scans.


























In conclusion: Scott, you're a dick.




Suggested Tags: char: goblin queen/madelyne pryor, char: cyclops/scott summers, char: marvel girl/phoenix/jean grey, creator: chris claremont. There's no Gateway tag, so I guess he's out of luck.

Comments

[bj_l]

I'm doing a big X-Verse read through at the moment and am just about at this point.

And I reallly feel for Maddy. She got screwed over so badly.

[proteus_lives]

Motto.

[arilou_skiff]

Ah, freaky dreams.

One of the things comics does best.

[kainnived.livejournal.com]

Why do we still call he Madelyne Pryor? She married Scott, she IS Nathan's mom, can't we just call her Madelyne Summers? Seems to me that would at least recognise that she wasn't some damn throw away love intrest/clone/demonic goblin queen.

Also yes, Scott's a dick.

[nothingbutcake]

Not every woman changes her surname when she marries.

[joasakura]

this is true. I didn't and it STILL causes much consternation amongst my inlaws at the holidays "Who do we address the damn cards to?"


:T

[saralakali]

I was lucky enough to have a cousin that lived with his girlfriend for decades without marrying her. I asked my relatives how they adressed cards to that couple, and then to please offer me the same courtesy.

I've given up on my inlaws. I just never sent them cards. After a couple of years, they returned the favor. Problem solved.

[jetwolf]

Personally, I just let the inlaws address them to Mr.-and-Mrs.-Our-Son's-Last-Name. They never gave me crap about why I didn't want to change my name, though they don't really understand it. They accept that it's a personal choice and nothing against them, which is enough for me as far as they're concerned. If his mom wants to just address stuff that way, what the hell. It obviously makes her happy and doesn't affect my decision at all, so why not?

Relating back to the scans in question, I haven't read this issue (or era) in a ages. I'm again struck by how heart-wrenching this scene is. All these years on and still my dislike of Cyclops burns.

[joasakura]

on the scans, you're right. I think this is the scene that cemented my dislike of Scott years ago.

:nods;

[cleome45]

[raises hand]

[corrinal]

Wasn't there a retcon which said that Scott's abandonment of Maddy and the baby was due to Mr. Sinister's brain washing or something?

But, yeah, that action is what sent the character on a downhill slide from which he still hasn't recovered.

[auggie18]

Poor Maddie, she didn't deserve half the things that happened to her. The only reason she went evil was because of a bad decision she made in a dream/it was the only way Scott/Jean could be even sorta feasible without making him look like a jerk. And it didn't work.

[sir_mikael]

You should never make deals in dreams in the marvel universe.
Cus it always turns out you're talking to demons in Limbo, Mephisto (like Marlo Jones did) or Nightmare or something.

[halloweenjack]

Decisions made in dreams really shouldn't count when you're awake, anyway. Otherwise I would have been suspended numerous times from junior high school for coming to the cafeteria without my clothes on.

[sir_mikael]

Yes well, try responding with that when you toil away in some sort of Hellish realm.
" But can't you see, It shouldn't count! You tricked me!"
" So sue me. Now shut it and keep digging through those entrails."

[cainofdreaming]

Why would anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the dimensional physics sleep at all in the Marvel universe? You've got about 50% of a chance of landing in a dimension where its lord is nigh-omnipotent and spends his time torturing all visitors in the most frightful ways imaginable.

Heck, I'd live on codeine.

[brandiweed.livejournal.com]

Don't you mean cocaine? Codeine's an opiate and has sedative qualities.

[cleome45]

Coedine gave me some damn freakish dreams when I needed it post-surgery.

(Those lucky Canucks can get it over the counter. Soooo unfair. :p )

[cainofdreaming]

Hum, weird. Just went with what some of the guys back when I was in the army used to keep awake - caffeine and codeine tablets. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong, or just heard wrong then... Should've just wikied first.

[sir_mikael]

True true.

One, two, Freddy's Nightmare's coming for you.
Three, four, better lock your doors.
Five, six, get a crucifix.
Seven, eigth, better stay up late.
Nine, ten, never sleep again.

There really should be a bunch of mad scientist villains who's motivation for being crazy is that they just couldn't take falling asleep again and face Nightmare so they invented stuff to keep them awake yet perfectly... well insane.

And I bet Reed Richards sleeps under some big tinfoil hat screen that functions as some kind of shield or deflects Nightmare.

[jaybee3]

This was why I always thought Jean should have stayed after the Phoenix, her return and Scott's running back to her set the stage for his tool-ishness that lasted a generation and made a lot of readers dislike him. It didn't help that to justify the Scott/Jean thing they had to make Madelyne not only evil but (someone correct me on this) not even really human but a clone all along.

[lamashtar]

Eh, Maddie always had the wierd clues that said something was off about her. The uncanny resemblance, her desire to not talk about the past, her airplane accident at the exact moment Phoenix committed suicide...Mastermind took advantage of those things, but they were there before he started messing with Scott's mind. Is being a clone really that different from being a 'shard' like Hope?

[cygna_hime]

Is being a clone really that different from being a 'shard' like Hope?

YES. Because clones exist in real life, and there is a word (okay, phrase) for them. It is "monozygotic twins". Sorry, but it really gets on my nerves when people treat "clone" like another word for "carbon copy", when that's not how genes/cloning/people work.

If Maddie and Jean were twins separated at birth, and Scott behaved the way he did, would anyone attempt to claim that he was in any way exculpated because Maddie was "just" Jean's second-born twin? Of course not! But that's what cloning is.

Sometimes I feel that anyone writing SF needs to get hit with a large stick labeled "CLONING DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY". It would have a nail in it.

[auggie18]

That's really why the clone explanation didn't work. Maddie was really more like Jean's twin. With no memories. She wasn't identical to Jean (at first any way, I remember it being a thing that they just looked a lot alike), she had different interests, friends, a job.

Clones are people too and the fact that she was created to be a brood-mare doesn't make how Scott treated her any less awful.

[lamashtar]

I'd be completely happy with a Nastirh-has-been-possessing-her-and-Maddie-is-fixed story.

[sir_mikael]

This is a cool/poignant/surreal sequence I've never seen before! It's actually an interesting character/story point that Maddies insecurities turned out to be true, which there's no denying.

Maddie remains one of my favourite characters, even as Goblyn Queen. Hell holds no wrath like that of a woman scorned. And it's not like that's all that was fucked up in her life.

I'd really like to read a graphic novel or a novel expanding what we already knew happened but even more from her POV. Decent into madness can be fun to read about and even moreso if it's justified.

[auggie18]

I would buy that SO HARD. Unless it was drawn by current Land. If it was old, not tracing Land, yeah, but not current Land.

[bj_l]

What does Land have to do with anything?

[auggie18]

There are very few artists who would could stop me from buying a book. Land is one of them. He was also on Maddie's latest storyline, Sisterhood.

[bj_l]

Ah okay. I was thinking maybe you thought Land was reponsible for the scans. It's all good.

[phosfate]

Grblx.

[leorising]

Theirs was a future of infinite possibilities.

Everyone knows that, in the Marvelverse, this is the worst possible curse. D:

Haven't those people ever heard of knocking on wood?

[halialkers]

I sympathized with Madeline Pryor.

And frankly, this is the X-Men One More Day. Scott Summers doing this pretty much made him less a Real Hero than a Designated Hero. Emphasis on the Designated.

[philippos42]

Yeah. And it was never fixed, because in the end he was just one of many. Fans could still read it for other characters. But to this day, I loathe Scott/Jean centered stories--& they were actually a cute couple pre-Claremont!

[mullon]

You never sen any diaper-wearing white guys in prophetic dreams.

[lissa_quon]

Awesome sequence. Poor Madelyne, I never read all of the fuckery that happened to her but I still find her sympathetic.

Though could someone enlighten me as to who this Gateway guy is? He seems rather interesting.

[nonners]

He's an aboriginal mutant who hangs out on the top of a cliff in Australia. When the X-Men "died", they used him to get around and continue hero-ing. I believe he worked for the Reavers before the X-Men met him? Not totally sure about that.

[cainofdreaming]

He 'worked' for them, in exchange for them not messing up his sacred grounds and causing mucho bad karma for the dead ancestors. So, it was more like blackmail.

[proteus_lives]

I love this era of X-Men.