X-Men Gold #3

[lordultimus]

Comments

[nyadnar17]

Why not just end her right there? Like just force her to confess or rifle through her mind and find the evidence trail to give to the police?

Seriously is anyone else tired of X-men villains just being well dressed, rich white people?

Also in the year 2017 false flag operations are depressing common enough to be very believable.....alright that is nitpicking. I just hate the whole "villains main protection is the heroes morals setup". Especially considering this is the X-men we are talking about. They have a billion and one ways to ruin this woman physically, psychically, financially, or socially.

[razsolo]

Literally my first thought was "why doesn't Rachel make her confess?"

Excalibur era Rachel definitely would have done it :p

[thehood]

The writer is a lawyer, he probably knows it wouldn't fly in court.

I mean, a forced confession probably would not stick.

[michaelsaint]

Yeah but they could have rifled through her mind to help them find evidence to convict her with like paper trails, or other witnesses/co-conspirators.

I also am tired of rich white people being the X-men's only villains.

[thehood]

Again, i'm not entirely sure any evidence gained that way can be used.

And Rich white folk aren't the X-Men's only villains.

[nyadnar17]

"Anonymous" tips work all the time. I mean the entire last American election cycle was dominated by WikiLeaks, "anonymous" sources, etc. Just reading her mind to find out all her banking info, and contacts used in setting this then releasing that info on the web/Wikileaks/handing it to SHIELD would ruin this woman's life.

What villains besides Mr. Sinister? I am genuinely curious to know who is left after the Cyclops era. It seems to me all the non-Rich White X-villains are dead or reformed.

[thehood]

Apocalypse reformed?

[long_silence]

He's currently dead and his clone is a student of the X-men

[featheredserpent]

right, there's also Rich Blue People.

[michaelsaint]

I am struggling to think of an X-men villain who is a person of color or hasn't at one point in their history been loaded with cash. Callisto?

Either way the list is very, very short. Especially when you consider how long the X-men have been around and how many different series they have had.

[thehood]

Apocalypse isn't white or rich, neither is Magneto.

Sabretooth is white, but he's not rich, neither is Sauron. Not to mention all the alien X-Men villains. I don't think it's as excessive as you make it out to be.

[nyadnar17]

Apocalypse is dead AND reformed.
Sabretooth is currently reformed.
Magneto is currently reformed.

Sauron is a good pick though. Still a bad guy and has honest to goodness super powers.

[randyripoff]

Moses Magnum perhaps? Not strictly an X-villain but he does fit that profile.

[akodo_rokku]

Who needs an admissible confession? Just remove her ability to lie and let that slowly destroy her life when she can no longer say anything but her bigoted truths. She doesn't need to go to jail, she just needs to be neutralized as a threat.

[mastermahan]

Why *aren't* the X-Men scanning her mind, exactly? They only found out it was her by reading one villain's mind, so they don't seem to have any moral objections.

Even if this somehow can't lead the X-Men to legally admissible evidence, it would let them find out her evil plans and aid them at defeating her in the court of public opinion.

[goattoucher]

The question, however, is how anyone proves that her confession was coerced? That, after she turns over all evidence and explains her role, why anyone would suspect she was being manipulated, when the facts of her guilt were laid out before them? -Especially- when part of her plan was the psychic manipulation of mutants to act in her political interests.

And, if you -did- suspect coercion, how do you prove it? You can't negate testimony, much less physical evidence, without proving that it was fruit of the metaphorical poisonous tree. And, given that telepathic manipulation is untraceable, except to other psychics...

This is why Babylon 5 had the Psi-Corps.

[long_silence]

I think SHIELD used to have a Psi-Ops division. Though Captain Hydra probably disbanded them to help Faustus take over.

Honestly if just saying "a psychic made me do it" was enough to get you out of a signed confession and nullify any evidence then every convict with a plea bargain would be using that defense.

Although that could explain the revolving door of supervillain prisons

[thehood]

Though like Persona 5 showed, just using your powers to make someone confess to a crime isn't always enough to get them locked up.

[thehood]

There have been stories that dealt with evidence gained via super powers not being admissible in court.

[burkeonthesly]

Much as I hate to say it, I think as soon as someone's confession includes "and I had a mutant, for which I have loudly and publicly declared my hatred, psychically manipulate people into doing stuff for me," people are going to want to check whether there was any psychic manipulation of that person going on. Maybe they figure the villain who got taken down is trying to play off a patsy as the real mastermind to get a reduction of their own sentence, but either way it means people sniffing around whatever psychic trail tampering with her brain like that would leave.

[icon_uk]

So you remove her memory of them manipulating her. Unethical, oh yes, but hard to disporve.

Also how many mutant telepaths (the MU has very few telepaths and all of them are mutants I think) are going to go out of their way to leap to the defence of an virulently anti-mutant bigot.

[bruinsfan]

If a telepath compels someone to make it, would anyone be able to prove that it's a forced confession? Hell, I know Jean Grey was good enough at it that the person in question wouldn't realize the confession wasn't of their own free will.

[balbanes]

Yeah, I was right there with you.

In particular, I'm not liking how Old Man Logan is being characterized as "Wolverine with white hair." OML saw his friends and X-family slaughtered by a villain uprising (most of which was done by him while under mind/illusion control), then lived through a post-villain hellscape that eventually took the lives of his new family. Doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who will let a mind-control-using villain live to plot against his back.

[commodus]

See, this is strange, because I never thought the X-Men had a strict "no kill" rule - especially as they're a fringe group essentially fighting against both radicals in their own community and very real government oppression.
It doesn't feel right to just have them leave this monster alive, as she's swearing revenge, and maintains all the power to make their lives difficult.

[thehood]

Depends on the X-Men, bit not all of them are ok with killing. Besides, just killing her at that moment would cause far more problems for them.

[goattoucher]

We have seen Jean Grey and Emma Frost telepathically program flunkies to vomit or soil themselves in certain situations as punishment for crossing them. They can manipulate jobbers for petty reasons, but they can't make a politician stop her anti-mutant pogrom?

[vspope]

When someone who's aghast at Emma's (lack of) ethics and believes in Xavier's ways is in charge, probably not. That's Kitty's whole message so far in this series -- they're going back to being the good guys.

So her threat here is real -- we're better than you but we don't HAVE to be -- but I'd wager Kitty would think that responding to "mutants are dangerous monsters" by rewriting Nance's brain would somewhat prove her point for her.

[featheredserpent]

Gee, it's too bad they don't have some sort of secret "X-Force" which works behind the scenes to take care of such unpleasant business.

[wizardru]

The X-Men were actually one of the first (possible THE first) to throw the traditional superhero code against killing; most of the ANAD team killed with reckless abandon by the time of Genosha. I remember vividly the first time Wolverine killed a dude (off-panel) to the horror of Nightcrawler (and ME). By the time of X-tinction Agenda, they were in full 'war against our race' mode and killing Genoshans when needed (though not really kill-happy).

But it depends on the era and the X-Man. Kurt has always maintained such a rule and Kitty generally does, as well. Peter is a pragmatist who will kill to protect others (Proteus), while Storm shuns it if she can (but will straight murder a dude if the gauntlet is thrown down). Wolverine? Stabbies gotta stab.

Overall, though? The X-Men recognize that to be heroes (and not have mankind utterly terrified of them), they need to tow a higher line.

[shadowpsykie]

hmmm so they have taken a bit of Scott's hardline stance on mutant defense.... I hope someone starts passing out Cyclops was Right shirts. I always felt the x-men should be less pacifist, and more proactive, yet less "radical" than magneto. this is nice...

also... is it weird that I kinda like that the villain is a straight up hate monger? thought again this makes it hard for us to believe other heroes wouldn't get involved... or at least fuckin stand up to bigots like them publicly.

[theflames]

I think that balance you're describing was shown Morrison's run, at the start, they were very pragmatic, you could sense they were tired of pretending that the high ground was the be all and end all, but they only went so far.

They read like the Black Panthers instead of saints, which I respected and loved. So yeah, back to something like that!

[starwolf_oakley]

This is remarkably similar to a lot of Kingpin and Lex Luthor stories. "You can't prove any of this, so just go away."

[nyadnar17]

Except the crux of those stories is finding where the proof is. The X-men can literally just lift the proof right out of her head.

[spider_man6]

Interesting ending. Though, does anyone feel that Lydia Nance being secretly a villain takes away from her promise as a normal, non-villain antagonist?

[burkeonthesly]

It does, yeah. Monolithic evil makes the world smaller.

[akodo_rokku]

Hoo boy, this comic is hackneyed so far.

[burkeonthesly]

"Who do you think you are, after all?"
"I'm Kitty Pryde. I've been dealing with this exact brand of shit since you were young."

[theflames]

'You weren't even subtle'

They've always been called the Brotherhood of evil Mutants though, right? Sometimes they drop the 'evil' but it was there originally. That's on them tbh

[philippos42]

I'm just glad Mesmero's alive.