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

[shadur]

Ah, from back when Sally Floyd still convincingly portrayed a competent reporter.

[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'm with proteus, but then I was also anti-HEAT.

Not every story has to end with a happy ending. And sometimes good guys do bad things and aren't looked at so kindly anymore. It happens in real life. Why shouldn't it happen to superhumans with the powers of gods?

And aaron has a point with the Hal Jordan reference(which inspired me bringing up HEAT). This is similar. An iconic member of a super team goes crazy and uses near-omnipotent power levels to try to put things the way they believe they should be, killing many innocents in the process.

And for a while I was pretty resentful that DC let Geoff Johns undo that, partially because I really liked their response to the situation that "We reserve the right to tell a story without a happy ending," and partially because I had grown attached to Kyle Rayner as he was introduced shortly after I started reading DC comics.

But then I really started to appreciate what Johns did with his Hal Jordan return, planting seeds for his epic stories. By redefining Parralax he not only absolved Hal of his blame for his actions but he also set up the Sinestro Corps war and the War of Light that led to Blackest Night. By bringing back the Lost Lanterns, he took away the deaths that Hal was responsible for, with Kiliwog already having been brought back.

And the stories that came after were REALLY good. There wouldn't have been a big-budget Green Lantern movie, regardless of how it turned out, if Geoff Johns hadn't have been writing some of the most entertaining Green Lantern stories ever since bringing back Hal.


But Heinberg's not doing that with Wanda. He hasn't absolved her of guilt in her actions. She went crazy from the stress of what she went through. She killed people with her insanity. And her response to that was first to recreate the world to suit what she thought her father wanted, then to kill even more people, then to shut herself down so she didn't have to face what she did, and now her response has been to mess with time and individually repower each of the people she's robbed of the life they knew.

So far it feels like the point of Children's Crusade has been to undo Avengers Disassembled and now House of M. These were major stories that were told for a reason and unless there are actual plans to set up major stories with a redeemed Wanda, rather than just redeeming her because she's a hero and shouldn't be crazy, it just seems kinda insulting to do this.

But then the story's only about 2/3 over, so there's still time for some twists and turns in the next 2 years it takes to finish the story, so maybe I'll be proven wrong and this doesn't really bring back Scott Lang, a number of depowered mutants, and hero Wanda

[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.

[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)

[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.

[cypherfdp]

Hey now, it's not her fault Cap is TOTALLY UNREASONABLE. How dare he not poke her back on Facebook!

[icon_uk]

Interestingly, what appeals to you about the returned Hal and Corps is what has really put me off the concept. Everything they do now seems based around the sodding "emotional (conveniently tied to human visual) spectrum", and exacerbated (at least) by the Guardians being complete and utter arseholes.

Sure they were distant in the past, but they were also realtively unused and worked fine like that. Now the Corps is too busy fighting whatever rainbow of fruit lantern is currently causing trouble to actually do much else. If we HAD to have the Corp back (and I'm unconvinced we do) I liked the notion that the Corps were like Sherrifs, each responsible for the many and varied problems of their sector, crossing into each others territory when required or in hot pursuit. The notion of them having two per sectors was a good one as it allows for buddy/cop movie feel to it, as well as allowing dialogue to replace monologue.

Problems so large they require the ENTIRE Corps are either so large they need a deus ex machina to sort them out, plus leaving the rest of their sector unprotected from whatever is coming up next.

The stories are epic, but they don't all need to be SO COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY EPIC ALL THE TIME!!

[blackruzsa]

Okay, so one sec before I continue, unless he wasn't able to start swimming upward, how come he drowned in ten feet of water? I can swim in twelve without any apparatus, and get back up before I lose breath.
OR WAS IT BECAUSE he has no lungs at all? (because then I'd understand it, damn)

I don't blame Wanda for this, honestly, in the first few scans, the writers had this annoying habit of killing kids off every issue, one or a dozen at a time, and I hated that so much you don't even know.

More importantly, I think I'm beginning to understand more why they said that Wanda's "no more mutants" bid as "genocide", though you can't pin the horrors all on one person. There were a lot of people who were equally to blame for this catastrophe besides Wanda.

It's like saying Hitler was the only one who enacted all the horrors of the Naziregime when you know there were millions more behind that, soldiers and authorities and the more violent supporters, some of them almost equally to blame even if they're not named.

[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]

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

[crabby_lioness]

I loved Sally's series. I loved seeing how average mutants were affected.

[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.

[mullon]

Abe no!

[icon_uk]

Okay, so one sec before I continue, unless he wasn't able to start swimming upward, how come he drowned in ten feet of water? I can swim in twelve without any apparatus, and get back up before I lose breath.
OR WAS IT BECAUSE he has no lungs at all? (because then I'd understand it, damn

Might not be as simple as that, the removal of his mutant physiology might well have been complete agony for him as his entire breathing system was undone whilst he was submerged,. There's a good likelihood he was in no state to try and surface or stop himself trying to breath in an environment he now couldn't cope with.

[pyrotwilight]

Well, he did likely have all that water in his body that was no longer being supported as it was with his mutancy. So he might've simply been unable to bring himself with it weighing him down depending on how his powers actually worked.

[shadowpsykie]

tthe thing is, she did the things she did because no body helped her. I honestly like the way she put it in Chidren's Crusade. Instead of trying to help her, the Avengers basically came to her and said, You are Wrong, you can't do this, now, kill your children. so she made THEM face THIER worse moments.

they could have tried talking to her. she was mentally ill (and i cringe at that. because honestly that just sucked. she's powerful, so must be crazy!) and instead of trying to help her, they assemble both the x-men and the avengers (essentially two armies) without trying to explain things, even to pietro. Of COURSE he thought they were going to kill her! no one gave him any reason not to think so. those who question killing her never said "no we won't kill her," they said "But we can't kill her can we?" even Cap didn't know what to say, Cap of ALL people should have said "LIsten! Wanda is an Avenger, we are here to make sure she is okay, NO ONE is killing ANYONE."

Now what Pietro did was wrong, he manipulated his fragile sister into making things even worse. what Wanda needed was HELP and support. No one even stopped to consider, "My god, the absolute HELL this woman has gone through!"

i'm not absolving her, at some point she also needs to take ownership of her actions, because yes, her actions had HORRIBLE consiquences.

honestly, I hope it turns out Mephisto messed with her because that whole thing was crap. it had potential but the story was handeled badly.

[auggie18]

I actually think craziness at her level of power in that series makes a ton of sense. Imagine a world in which every fleeting thought of your has the potiential to, at any moment, become reality. Imagine how scary it would be to be unable to sleep for fear of your nightmares turning real. (And, honestly, that's kinda what I thought had happened in Disassembled for a while.) Slowly, you'd start changing thing, little things, without realizing it at first. As you become aware of this, you start using the power more and more, trying to fix things. But that doesn't change the fact every negative thought is still there, every nasty little what-if you ever daydreamed in a sullen moment, just waiting for you to lose your temper or let your concentration slip...

[shadowpsykie]

which is why i think some one should have tried helping her before judging her. not one person (that i can remember) even entertained the thought of helping her for more than a minute before backing away, almsot like the writers were saying, lets have some one defend her, then have some one say "lets kill her" louder...

none of this would have happend if they had tried helping her, or in the very least they would have been more prepared.