Why they should let Wolverine kill the Scarlet Witch.

[proteus_lives]

Greetings True Believers!

I have a response to Avengers: Children's Crusade #6 which came out today.

You'll want to check out Colonel Green's post if you haven't been following the series.

Enjoy!



CG's post.
http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/3091755.html?#cutid1

Well, Wanda. What about these folks?

Scans are from New X-Men and Decimation: Generation M.













Is Wanda going to wiggle her nose and bring them back? Is Iron Lad going to pop into the time-stream and bring them back?

Somehow I doubt it.

Let Logan gut her or put her in a little power-controlling box where she can re-power mutants one by one. Other then that, she never gets to use her powers again.

But that's not going to happen. I know and understand why but I wanted to voice a feeling that came up after reading CC #6 today.

Comments

[aaron_bourque]

Yeah, and Hal Jordan should go to intergalactic prison, too.

[proteus_lives]

Word.

[aaron_bourque]

The real problem, of course, is with bad writers using short-sighted plots without thinking through the consequences. So when, say, Tony Stark imposes Machiavellian, fascist laws on people, or Cassandra Cain becomes a murderous dragon lady despite her fundamental characterization, or Scarlet Witch was actually crazy and instead of needing care and help, is just dangerous and needs to be shunned, or Hal Jordan isn't "relevant," so we need to not just clean the slate but also break the guy for all future generations, so we'll destroy everything that made Hal's stories good or interesting, and also he must be a psychopathic freak (who also would benefit from care or help), or any other damn time they make a decades-old hero act stupidly villainous (particularly for what ends up as minor shock value) or actually have him become a villain, they've failed to think it through, so later they have to jump through hoops to get him to be a freakin' HERO again, and rarely do they have the intelligence, talent, or foresight to make it good, often because they brush off responsibility somehow (oh, Tony's been mindwiped! Cassie was drugged! Hal was under the influence of a prehistoric and mythic space bug of FEAR! Wanda was crazy! etc., etc.)

And then there are the cases with, like, Emma Frost or Talia. They've always been in somewhat of a grey area, but need to be tucked into a specific bin for a specific story, and either they were a poor fit for that bin to begin with, or the writer just has a terrible grasp of what made them interesting and special to begin with. Thus we're left with, with the former, Emma psychically seducing a married man, and in the former, another dragon lady evil mommy. Then, either it becomes the status quo and everyone has to be constantly reminded of this is failure characterization, or it's ignored by every other writer (for whatever reason, perhaps there's editorial compartmentalization) and so we start forgetting the terribleness between appearances until the writer picks the character up again and we're slammed face-first into it.

Hmm, both cases by Grant Morrison, huh? But he's not the only offender.

Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; or they leave it "quote, unquote" ambiguous, like with returned Jason Todd, and don't know what to do with the character anymore, so he ends up floundering between over-the-top-even-for-comics cartoonish supervillainy and ineffective "anti-hero" status that isn't what fans of anti-heroes actually want, and even then annoys those who are willing to look past that when he goes all "kill 'em all" again.

[paultmd]

I don't like Tony's "mindwipe" being used in this context. People thought they were going to use that to shirk responsibility when it was first revealed, but they didn't actually go that route.

They made a point to have him say that he'd probably do the exact same thing if he had to do it all over again. He just didn't remember having actually done them. He had to sell Luke Cage Avengers Mansion just to get him to stay on a team. The major consequence of the mindwipe is that it adds tension in his relationships with Pepper and Maria because he doesn't remember being with them while on the run, while they still do.

[icon_uk]

So despite the deaths, and Clor, and the enforced registration, and "cape killers", he still hasn't even learned?

That's sort of depressing.

[paultmd]

Don't forget that Tony fought the Registration in DC until it became the law. The Amazing Spider-Man arc leading up to Civil War was one of the few times JMS wrote Tony sympathetically in regards to the SRA, even if he did destroy some of that by having him set up an attack by Titanium Man.

When he assumed control of SHIELD he did so because he knew that it would be better if he were in charge than somebody less sympathetic towards superheroes(and was proven right when Norman Osborn took over). When he did try to apprehend heroes it was often justified as an alternative to having Osborn's Thunderbolts going after them, which would be more likely to end in someone's death.

I don't think he'd do Clor again and without Criti Noll's influence it would likely never come to be, but he had a reason for doing what he did during Civil War and the Initiative.

I actually like that he stands by his actions despite not being able to remember them. It shows some commitment to his characterization that they wouldn't just give up on it because some people didn't like it. Not everybody agrees.

Look at the US government(and assumedly the government of any country with elected officials). People with drastically-different views get elected to the same governing body, honestly believing they're right despite somebody with the exact same qualifications believing the exact opposite on the other side of the aisle. It doesn't mean one side is evil or even wrong. It just means they believe otherwise.

[icon_uk]

IIRC didn't Tony also arrange for the murder of Atlantean ambassadors to suit his political agenda?

Tony's taking over SHIELD, and making himself the only person with ALL the information was such an inept move it was almost breathtaking in it's stupidity. Everything depended on him being the only person EVER being in that role, when anyone with even a naive grasp of politics should have seen how weak a position that was, the ULTIMATE single point failure than any good organisation tries to avoid.

And as noted in the past, I'd have respect for Tony if after having his revelation about the inevtitibilty of superhuman-war several years previously (Retconned into some point during Iron Man #150 I think, when Doom and Stark visit Camelot in the past) had done ANYTHING to mitigate the event occurring. Setting up training academies for young superhumans (Cap would have been RIGHT behind that as a concept), a la Xavier, or moving for voluntary registration as a concept, to test the waters. Instead he does sweet FA for years, and then uses a national tragedy to advance his plan in an atmosphere of paranoid hysteria.

[paultmd]

Yeah, I don't think anybody really liked that story. Hasn't Marvel poked fun at Sally's talking down to Captain America since then and refused to acknowledge that Tony ran Norman like an RC Green Goblin to kill an Atlantean? That was awful. That was a Max Lord becomes a robot moment. That said, even Sally Floyd recognized the noble intent in trying to use it to unite the superhumans.

And honestly, after Fury ran SHIELD for what was basically a lifetime post until he waged his own secret war and had to retire, something Tony never imagined himself doing, he really had no reason to expect he'd ever be removed from the position.

Again, Stark didn't use Stamford to further his own agenda. He was anti-SRA until it was actually put into law. He fought it until it was too late to do anything about it. At that point he realized the futility of fighting it and knew the alternative was to be feared by the people he tried to protect and hunted by the people he claimed to stand for, which was exactly what happened to Captain America's team.

[arilou_skiff]

My image of Tony has always been that he's... Modernity, in a nutshell. In all it's pro's and cons. That means he's got a bit of an utopian streak, as well as a sense of social engineering. It's not enough for Tony to patch up the world, he wants to fix it. If needs be design a new and tear the old one down.

And that's arrogance of course, he keeps underestimating the human factor, and he keeps overestimating his own capabilities. (and I think he realizes these are his flaws) yet he can't stop trying: Because the world is broken, and he can't just patch it up and leave it to some vague hope that people will realize this.

I think in some sense there's a fundamental difference with Cap here: Cap was given his powers. Tony built his own. There is a certain kind of arrogance in this, that's so emblematic of the modern world.

I fully expect Tony that when this crashed down he'll just go "Oh well, that didn't work. Let's take a look at this, see what went wrong and try again." The notion of *not* trying to fix whatever he feels is wrong with the world would just never crop into his head. Not since he built that suit IN A CAVE, WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS:

[icon_uk]

Now, until CW, I'd never have thought of Tony as remotely a social engineer, he was an engineer all right, but he built the machines and that was really it. He then sold them on to others.

He'd use HIS personal tech as HE saw fit (I must post that issue from the first Armour Wars when Tony goes after the wrong person because he thinks they're using his tech, his arrogance is appalling)

Of course, as you say, when he became a social engineer he was completely crap at it.

[darkblade]

Tony was the one who authorized Osborn's Thunderbolts. If he didn't want them going after otherwise good heroes with murderous glee then he shouldn't have started injecting nanites into dangerous criminals and then putting them in place to hunt down heroes with murderous glee.

[aaron_bourque]

he had to do it all over again

Which is as much crap as it was the first time around. Tony did those things because of other choices he and others had made. He's not the same person, because of the mindwipe, who was in the position to make those choices, perform those actions. If he said he would, then the writer failed to take into account the implications of the mindwipe, also. As I said, short-sighted plots without thinking through the consequences.

A mindwiped Tony could have been a great opportunity to rebuild Iron Man, to rebrand him. Heck, even post-Civil War Tony would have been interesting, a former alcoholic indulging in different self destructive behavior, and either slowly realizing it, or failing to and falling into a downward spiral while claiming to still be doing it for the greater good. Instead, they mindwipe him so that he's not the same guy, but they then make the point that he is the same guy. The mindwipe handwaves his terribleness during Civil War, the "I'd do it all again," shows that not only has Tony not learned anything, and also has no immediate guilt over it, but the writers haven't, either.

[paultmd]

But if they had tried to use the mindwipe it wouldn't have made him a different guy. It just would have been a guy that didn't really understand why everybody hated him. Realistically, there'd be a number of characters that wouldn't believe his amnesia if he used it as a reason to be absolved of responsibility for his actions. Luke Cage and the New Avengers still would have been set up by him with a ruse leading them to believe Steve Rogers was still alive. People would still have lost their loved ones in the Skrull attack, made more effective by him spreading Starktech throughout the world.

For him to say "Hey, I don't remember that - why would I ever do that?" would be a cheap copout and would be handled that way by any other writer touching on the subject.

For him to say "Hey, I don't remember that, but the fact that I did it means I'd probably do it again - it sounds like something I'd do," shows that he's not trying to make excuses for his actions, especially when the excuse really has nothing to do with the action, coming after the fact. That shows more character and is more honest to the character he'd been established to be over the past few years.

[icon_uk]

Emma's seduction of Scott was far from being one sided, they had already gone to some lengths to point out that Scott and Jean were drifting apart as her growing Phoenix-ness meant she was becoming distanced from him.

That's not absolving either side, but it wasn't an "Evil Emma" situation per se. (Though there are other examples that could be cited, that poor Hellfire Club guard that Emma and Selene both tried to seduce, and whose head literally exploded as a result)

[auggie18]

I think that that was pretty straight up an Evil Emma situation. Taking advantage of the fact that a man you like and his wife are drifting apart as an opportunity to sleep with him isn't really a morally gray area. Even given the fact that Scott was, to degree, reciprocating the affection doesn't change the fact that, when the chips were down, she tried to sleep with him while he was married, without his wife's knowledge or consent. Just because he said no doesn't change that.

[turtlefu]

You know, I'm really sick of a culture that we live in where the mistress is blamed for the affair. It takes TWO PEOPLE to cheat. Men are not weakling, they do not lose control of their bodies when around sexy women. Scott had a relationship with Emma out of his OWN VOLITION. She didn't trick him, she didn't use her mind powers on him.
If a husband has it in him to cheat in the first place, what makes you think that he would not eventually cheat anyways?

I'm just really sick of people blaming the women when marriages go bad.

[auggie18]

I wasn't talking about the psychic affair. I was talking about the real life attempt by Emma to sleep with Scott in Toyko. She tried to sleep with him on the physical plane and he said no.


The man definitely shares equal blame for the psychic affair, yeah. There's no disputing that. Scott cheated on Jean. Arguably, he's in a worse position because he directly betrayed someone he loved. I was arguing that Emma's attempt to sleep with him was definitely not a morally reprehensible act, not matter how much he and his wife were drifting. I wasn't trying absolve Scott of his guilt, I was attempting to implicate Emma for hers.

[biod]

What made it a lot worse from Emma's side of the affair was that she was supposed to be helping Scott FIX his marriage and then took advantage of her position, her powers, and Scott's doubt and vulnarability (though he is still partially to blame). Why is she still practicing psychiatry again?

[icon_uk]

IIRC the married Jean also made a pass at Wolverine (within sight of Scott) in an attempt to make Scott jealous because Jean knew they were drifting apart. Logan sensed this and turned her down.

[tsunamiwombat]

Exactly why they needed couples therapy conducted by someone who wasn't a supervillain.

[aaron_bourque]

it wasn't an "Evil Emma" situation

I agree, she wasn't "evil," but the writers were trying to shoe-horn her into a position that she shouldn't have had to fill.

[proteus_lives]

Very motto.

But I don't think Emma counts as "grey". In her HFC days, she was out-right evil.

[aaron_bourque]

Except, of course, for when she was actually being a teacher. Sure, she was teaching her wards . . . (I can't believe I'm using this) "Slytherin"-values, but she did seem to actively care for them.

[darkblade]

Or alternative he could have stayed dead. I'd be okay with that too.

[sun_man]

he should