UNCANNY X-MEN #325: I hate Marrow

[starwolf_oakley]

There are two X-Men I hate. Marrow and Quentin Quire. Oddly enough, they both have pink hair and they both liked killing random humans for... reasons. And then they both joined the X-Men for... reasons.





The X-Men and Gene Nation fight.





"Storm didn't lead to Morlocks to kill all humans. Then the Marauders, who were mutants, came and killed us. Let's punish Storm by killing all humans!"



Storm draws first blood on Marrow and actually licks the blade. And there's all the "THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT" even though it is Marrow and the Gene Nation who are killing people. And random people, too.







Marrow survived this. She had a second heart because comics.



I still don't know why they let her into the X-Men after OPERATION: ZERO TOLERANCE. She also showed up in the recent X-FORCE series. They shouldn't just make a villain an X-Man simply because she has an "edge look" or "cool powers."

Comments

[q99]

Yea, it kinda comes across like later Marrow was a different character who didn't have such a blatantly evil past.

Also Storm is badass.

[cainofdreaming]

Except when she went back to her old habits, like with the second Gene Nation in Weapon X.

[crinos]

Yeah, and of course when they put her on the X-men she suddenly became a lot prettier.

Heck, at one point she got put in some device which changed her powers and made her beautiful. Because heaven forbid we have a female hero who isn't conventionally attractive.

[matrix_dragon]

I kinda rolled my eyes when it first happened, but it did give Marrow a few interesting story moments. Such as when she forced her bones to recede under her skin completely and tried for a day passing as a normal human, even getting to flirt with a guy that thought she was cute... only for it to go wrong when bones emerged in front of him.

Marrow during her X-men period was something of a broken jerk, but with something of a heart remaining and showing up more and more. By the end of it, I liked to believe she'd at least be able to live a life without being a ball of hate and murder. And then the next time we saw her, she was pretty much a murder machine. Shame.

[mrstatham]

That is partly thanks to Frank Tieri who can't write anything but 'cool' crime characters. Subsequent writers - like whoever wrote the Generation M miniseries which initially featured Sally Floyd (before she got flanderised into an idiot lecturing Captain America about his country because he didn't know about NASCAR) had her back to looking after mutants on the street in more of a Callisto-type role. And her role in the current/recent X-Force book has her personality explained as being more of a cover for some messed up stuff.

So.. Yeah. I just tend to ignore Tieri's crappy Weapon X series.

[flint_marko]

[icon_uk]

Everything else to on one side, that's an amazing icon! :)

[beyondthefringe]

That art.
Colossus in the first panel. Just... wow.

[sagrada]

He looks just like his namesake. Colossus here could easily span a mere harbor strait.

[mrstatham]

Eh. I like her. She's got more of a reason for villainy than Grant Morrison's attempt at pretending he knows how to write young characters, and the X-Men have a history of taking people like her on. Magneto's done worse - even removing the nonsense surrounding Xorn - and the X-Men are usually quick to accept him.

[md84]

It's a bit of a running gag that the X-men recruit former villains. Emma Frost, Mystique, Quentin, Marrow, Empath, Magneto, Sabretooth, etc.

[mrstatham]

Pretty much, which is why I can't let the fact she used to be a villain single Marrow out as a bad character. She's had some bad stories, sure, but so have all the others in that list. I'm not even sure Quentin Quire has ever had a good story, but.. Well, I entirely loathe him.

[ablackraptor]

Isn't that just true for superhero teams (at least in Marvel) in general though? I mean, the Avengers have Hawkeye, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Black Widow, Swordsman, and a good few others too.

[jekylls_salvation]

Grant Morrison's young characters strongly remind me of highschool. So I'm inclined to think he does. Could just be that you went to school in a different kind of place.

[tugrul]

Everyone in the big city hates bicyclists. Even in the Netherlands.

[squirle]

Huh? Never heard that one before, and I'm from the Netherlands. But pretty much none of my friends have cars, and we all hate the guys who attempt to drive cards through the inner cities.

[tugrul]

Sorry, meant the racing cyclists. :)

[icon_uk]

Hate is a strong word to use about any character, not one I can often muster myself, if I dislike them that much it tends to breed apathy.

As other's have noted, the X-Men have members with a higher bodycount than Marrow, and shadier pasts.

A survivor of the Mutant Massacre blaming Storm for not protecting them when she WAS their leader, but left them behind because it wasn't convenient for her to spend much time with them, actually makes some sense. AFAIK, no one, mutant or otherwise, was brought to justice for the mass murder of the Morlocks; most of the Marauders (or clones of them or whatever) are still around I think, and Mr Sinister has never paid a price for hiring/forming the Marauders either. That sort of thing breeds intense resentment , and it being against their absentee leader seems reasonable.

Storm did offer the Morlocks a place at the Xaviers Academy, but they chose to stay in the home they had made for themselves, in the only place they knew where they weren't going to be persecuted. Storm's mission along with the X-Men to make humans see them as less of a threat didn't do much good.

Not excusing her persecuting innocent humans, but her reasoning is no worse than many.

[silverhammerman]

The current Magneto series had the title character repeatedly hunting down and killing Sinister's various Marauder clone stockpiles, before modifying the final (at least until someone ignores that plot point) batch to be his expendable foot soldiers as a final atonement.

[icon_uk]

Interesting that that's finally being addressed... a mere 30 YEARS after the fact, but still...

[tigerkaya]

Actually Gambit was the one that formed The Marauders.

[icon_uk]

At the behest of Mr Sinister though, no?

Which is why, when Betsy scanned Sabretooth's mind during the Massacre, she saw his memories of Mr Sinister, not Gambit (Who wouldn't be introduced for another couple of years at least)

[reveen]

Honestly, I imagine myself in the shoes of a mutant who has to deal with the fucking Marvel universe, and I have a hard time convincing myself that I wouldn't flip out and start killing people.

[md84]

The really awful part is that the entire conflict was something that was hardwired into humanity by outside parties: Sublime and the Celestials. Sublime "infected" baseline humans with a hatred for mutants, and the Celestials seeded a superiority complex in mutantkind. Xavier's mission to bring about peace was doomed before he even started.

[tigerkaya]

That is the dumbest retcons I have ever heard. Thank god the X-men are being taken out of The MU let the X-men keep B.S. excuse for mutant hatred.

[squirle]

I've always liked Marrow, but I got into the X-Men in the period she was on the team. I didn't read these stories until years later.

[jekylls_salvation]

Remember Maggot and Cecilia Reyes? I hope they found lives away from X-stuff.

[burkeonthesly]

If I'm remembering right, I think the justification for putting Marrow on the team was basically Storm going, "you think I failed you? Fine. Come with me, be an X-Man, and see what I was doing for you all that time. And learn to not be a mass-murderer while you're at it." But I could be wrong.

[cypherfdp]

She's playable in Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and that's all I know about Marrow.