Laura and Julian, and choices

[salinea]

Our new X-23 story arc opened with Julian and Logan talking about why Julian decided to go to Westminster. It was very awkward and hostile. Then.















Then Gambit arrives and Julian and him exchange pleasantries. (and by pleasantries I mean threats.)
Laura goes to babysit Val & Franklin and there is much cuteness (some of which has already been posted), then suddenly dragon from another dimension who grabs the kid! And Julian which was trying to call Laura & walking toward where they were jumps in the middle of the scene and then they big light explosion and then.



Yup, they're not in Kansas anymore.







I am very much fchoizefhziufhznffhniuxhzaduihauzdbxuycbgef love all this angst XD

Comments

[icon_uk]

That's a desperately bland and inexpressive face they've given Laura here. I know she's the stoic type, but this looks more like a bad botox job.

Also not impressed how Julian has his metal-gauntlet hands in some pictures (even when his powers, the only thing which should be keeping them in place, are apparently damped), and actual hands in others

[long_silence]

Well he said dampened, not gone. Laura still seems to have enhanced senses (she can smell jealousy and tell he's lying).

[icon_uk]

True, though dampened usually means "unusable" in such instances, and it still doesn't explain where his new non-mechanical hands spring from in that second last panel.

[batman]

There's been some conflating between AoX Hellion and 616 Hellion in that AoX Hellion literally has no arms past a few inches past his shoulder, where 616 Hellion is missing his hands, wrists and part of his forearms. In Tales of the Reconstruction they're clearly fitting prosthetics onto his arms to operate in the same way that Karma operates her leg, but then AoX and the amount of promotion that got (with Hellion manipulating his hands telekinetically) meant that artists conflated the two versions. 616 Hellion should have prosthetics fitted to his arms that operate mechanically, and are from his forearms down, but sometimes artists ... forget.

I can't explain the hand thing, that's just embarrassing.

[long_silence]

He didn't want the hands that the Science Club provided him in Fables of Reconstruction. He blew up Kavita Rao's lab when she tried to fit them onto him. He was just walking around with metal stubs where his wrists use to be until Age of X.

I don't think that artists have conflated the two or are forgetting, I think it's been established that he kept the Age of X hands. He just seems to have lost more of his arms in order to better accommodate them.

[mrosa]

It's horrible, isn't it? It's like she's the fucking Terminator! Wait, no, even Arnie stretched his facial muscles sometimes in the movies.

[v_various]

And today Laura will be played by that same actress who played Bella Swan.

[introverted_excavator]

I've been saying this for weeks, thank you!

[crabby_lioness]

And the really horrible part is how pretty the art is aside from the lack of expressions. So close to perfect and yet.....

[long_silence]

Does Laura have a cold? Her nose is all red.

[nezchan]

She's had a bit much of the special eggnog.

[rordulum]

"I did some bad things after you left.... I was being written by a guy who clearly never read New X-Men, and had no idea who I was as a character."

I liked this issue. X-23 has been one of the few enjoyable Marvel titles of late (which is obviously why they're cancelling it), all the way through. But I love Hellion, so it's nice to see him appearing, and even nicer to see a writer who has the first clue about who he is writing him.

The art feels like a poor man's Mike Choi, though.

[salinea]

I go back and forth or whether not I dislike what Carey did with him. On the one hand, yes, that was taking Julian to characterisation that we hadn't seen him previously, otoh, after hosing his hands, it's not entirely unbelieveable to have him react with a lot of anger and all.

But yeah, I love how he's being written here. Rather break my heart.


Haha, I don't mind the art, but apparently I'm the only one!

[rordulum]

Well, I don't think 'poor man's Mike Choi's a total condemnation. This art is still better than a lot of the stuff offered up by comic books these days. But it's not amazing.

My beef starts with Hellion losing his hands in the first place. I know Kyle and Yost wrote that, but I guess it came out of the whole X-office talking about getting some sort of emotional resonance from that crappy zombie 'event'. Even more annoying that Elixir, who can seemingly cure any injury (including regrowing David's heart from nothing) was conveniently not around to fix him.

Everything since then just transformed him from an essentially heroic, brave and loyal guy, who did have arrogance and entitlement issues, into another depressed teen, bent on lashing out at everyone. And that included trying to kill someone who was a teammate.

[nyadnar17]

I am actually really enjoying watching comic writers taking a real shot at dealing with PTSD, depression, and anger issues. I know many people who are actually dealing with/have dealt with them and its refreshing to see a writer at least attempt to address them.

Whatever happen to the psychiatrist the X-men hired to help the kids?

[batman]

Yeah, I actually don't mind it here. It's being handled terribly in other comics, where he's just being portrayed as OMG POTENTIAL VILLAIN, whereas here it's being explicitly pointed out that he's not evil, he's depressed. The traits he has, bravery, loyalty and heroism are still present and they actually get shown in this issue (in fact, it's more impressive given how depressed the kid is meant to be that he is getting out, doing things, rescuing people), but that he's just being overwhelmed at the moment.

That said, in other series it's terrible. :(

[rordulum]

I actually felt a tiny little thrill, when he turned up and confronted the dragon, in this issue, with no hesitation. It reminded me of how he took on Nimrod, and kept going back to hit him again, just to keep his friends safe.

That's Hellion, for me. Not the guy who tried to kill Karima.

[batman]

Yes! I have been waiting for him to be like that for ages. He's dumb and stupid and prone to saying really arrogant stuff, but when the chips are down he'll throw himself in harm's way to save people. I mean, he's a mutant, in New York City, openly using his powers post "every country has Sentinels and are intent on using them". That takes a lot of courage.

The guy who tried to kill Karima just ... doesn't seem like him to me.

[long_silence]

The last psychiatrist that I recall the X-men hiring to help the kids specifically was Sean Garrison. And I think he was forgotten after his daughter Wallflower was killed.

[jlbarnett]

plus he was evil

[long_silence]

That too. He was still a pretty good therapist for Wither tho. He got through to Kevin in a way that Dani never did (of course Kevin still ended up becoming the evil sex slave to a millenia old psychic mutant vampire...)

[salinea]

Poor Kevin :(

[remial]

what happened to Julian that he has metal hands?

[salinea]

At some point most of Utopia was stuck in an alternate reality because Legion, Age of X, in which Julian had those hands. When they came back to their usual reality, Julian kept the hands, as well as the knowledge from that self of how to use TK on a fine level to use them.

[auggie18]

I think a Sentinel cut them off back when Hope was coming back from the future. His hands and Karma's leg.

[long_silence]

Nimrod Sentinels (which were pathetically weaker than the real thing) blew up Julian's hands.

Cameron Hodge impaled Karma's leg.

[rordulum]

Wuh? Cameron Hodge? Did they really bring him back? Didn't he die about twenty years ago?

[long_silence]

At the beginning of the last volume of X-Force, the Purifiers brought him back along with a bunch of other Anti-mutant villains (Bolivar Trask, Graydon Creed, William Stryker) using Technarch technology.

I think they're all dead again now.

[okkult3000]

Per his deal with N'astrih, Hodge is immortal. An immortal head, but immortal none the less. All deaths are temporary.

[icon_uk]

Though I think the M-Tech Warlock series dealt with that by having Warlock drain all the lifeglow from Hodges head, so he was technically not dead, just converted into another form of energy.

[q99]

He was techno-virus reanimated and basically a puppet of Bastion.

[mullon]

Call me when Laura's back to having subtext with Jubilee. At least the melodrama will be balanced out with fun.

[jlbarnett]

anything that would lead to more Jubes would make me happy

[salinea]

she's kicking sentinel ass on X-Men. I might post that as well.

[brilliantnova]

Please do :)

[salinea]

There was fun. Babysitting fun and fighting dragons. I only posted the melodrama though, because that's what I love. :p

[brilliantnova]

This shojo... i just dont.....lol even........This I cant handle all this romance and angst.What kind of Twilig...

[salinea]

I LOVE SHOUJO SHUT YOU MOUTH ITS WAY BETTER THAN TWILIGHT THIS IS CLAMP & KAORI YUKI QUALITY SHOUJO!

But here, I posted the shounen stuff for you, pffff :F

[brilliantnova]

And I like a good angst /romance read. But Its really laying it on thick between the biggest spoiled brat cynic whom I love ( Julian ) and Laura.......then again it was like this in New X-Men a few years ago. just not this bad. Geese get a room( Julian and Laura) ROFLMAO

[rainspirit]

Oh god, your hipster mermaid gif is killing me

[lbd_nytetrayn]

I still can't believe that came out of Wolverine...

[pallas_athena]

"You are not... seeing... me. You are not looking at me."

Oh yeah? Then why, in every damn panel, are *her* eyes staring unfocusedly out front? There's no sense of her looking at him, or at anything; no sign of intelligent life is allowed to differentiate the bland, slack-lipped traceface. The artist is drawing her as an object, not a character.

Not that Hellion fares much better-- he's only got one expression, that of crinkle-browed wrathful tension; but at least he's got one.

[eyz]

Awww.. Laura! <3
(<3 her story and <3 her)

[salinea]

I KNOW RITE

[greenmask]

Love.. this.. so.. much..

Delicious teenaged heart angst

[salinea]

I'm so glad I'm not the only one loving the fuck out of the shoujo angst ♥

[greenmask]

So sparkly.. but so tortured.. but so sparkly!!