Mother's Day: Mystique and Rogue

[flint_marko]

Rogue has been infected with the Strain 88 Virus, which enhanced her powers so that she instantly kills whoever she touches and is causing her immune system to collapse. Meanwhile, the X-Men and Sinister's Marauders are fighting over the first mutant baby that has been born since Wanda's decimation.

This is from New X-Men #46, by Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost, and Humberto Ramos, and X-Men #207, by Mike Carey and Chris Bachalo.

Comments

[burkeonthesly]

So, in that second panel where she's stroking Rogue's cheek, Mystique is wearing actual gloves for a change, instead of shapeshifting to look like she's wearing gloves?

[flint_marko]

She's capable of synthesizing external objects with her powers, so maybe the glove touching Rogue's skin didn't count as skin-to-skin contact.

[icon_uk]

How on earth is glass, which is silicon treated to extraordinary heat, easy to synthesize for a carbon based life form?

[crinos]

Maybe she just makes the frames and not the lenses.

[icon_uk]

Then she wouldn't specifically refer to glass as a material.

[zachbeacon]

Comic book logic?

Actually. .. if she can make glass (and the frames imply she can make metal and/or plastic), what else can she make? I'm assuming she can't create diamonds because then she wouldn't need to resort to some of the things she does to finance her various agendas.

[silicondream]

Especially compared to fingernails, which all of us flatscans can already synthesize, albeit slowly?

There are quite a few life forms on Earth that make organic glass--grasses, diatoms, glass sponges--but they have to pull the silicon out of the nearby soil or water. If Mystique doesn't, her powers would have to include internal transmutation of elements.

Let's not even ask about Durlans.

[long_silence]

Maybe it's alchemically simpler? In a "there's only two periodic table elements involved in its creation" kind of way versus the keratin in fingernails which is a protein made up of more complicated macromolecules

[icon_uk]

If Mysique is capable of alchemy, that's one heck of a secondary mutation!

[burkeonthesly]

I can accept that. Thanks!

[starwolf_oakley]

Nice continuity nods to the deaths of Destiny and Moria MacTaggart.

Destiny was killed by Legion while the Reavers were attacking Muir Isle. Exactly why Legion did it, I don't think we ever learned.

[flint_marko]

I believe he was possessed by the Shadow King.

[obsidianwolf]

IIRC there have been several explanations. At the time they implied it was the Jack personality simply doing it cause he could planning to blame the reavers.

Then it was implied the shadow king was behind it. Then in X-men forever it was implied he sensed Destiny having a vision about the age of apocalypse and that it was his fault so that's why he killed her.

[starwolf_oakley]

Mystique somehow found out Legion killed Destiny in the lead-up to AGE OF APOCALYPSE. Exactly how Mystique found out, I don't think we were ever told.

Uh, which X-Men Forever? There have been 2 or 3 such series.

[obsidianwolf]

The one with Prosh and the minds of several x characters jumping through time. During one of the time jumps Mysitque in her past selves body was told by legion why he killed Destiny and he asked her to kill him. She didn't cause she didn't want to change history.

It was one of the dangling plot threads that mini resolved such as how it was the time travelling mystique that assasinated Graydon Creed using her past self's body. which is how past mystique could truly say she hadn't been the one to kill him and didn't know who did.

[icon_uk]

Destiny's diaries and the like are notionally cute plot points, but given her power was to see POSSIBLE near-future events, her writing things down with 100% accuracy for years in the future never worked for me.

[obsidianwolf]

I actually liked the diaries when they first appeared in x-treme x-men(They were IMO one of the better plot lines in that mess of a series). Since it was heavily implied that she made them when her power first manifested and it was stronger. In fact the act of writing the diaries was implied to have burnt them out leaving her with the limited ability she showed afterwards. Then the whole arc ended with Rogue realizing that the diaries were a trap if you followed their visions and prophecies then they would inevitably come true.

Which made Mystique and Destiny using them to try to fix the future a tragedy that turned Mystique into a monster and Destiny into a wanna be martyr who would let herself die simply because she thought it was necessary.

That should have been the end of the dairies but instead they keep showing up somehow always relevant to the future while ignoring the big emotional climax where Rogue realized the futility of following them.

[starwolf_oakley]

Yes, it was almost a joke. Here's something I posted about that:

I wonder if any of Destiny's letters/tapes/etc. are found by people she never knew, but still knew those people wound find that letter/tape/etc. And given "timeline fragility," she might not know when or what else would be going on at the time.

"Hello, I'm Irene Adler. No relation, wink wink. I knew you would find this even though we've never met. Now, due to the fragility of the timelines, there are a few things that MIGHT be going on, even though I KNEW you would find this. So, here are some things you MIGHT need to do to save the X-Men and the world. Or kill them and save the world. If *you're* confused, think how *I* feel!"

[locuatico]

I don't really like how they frame her using the baby as "paying a price" when the baby is completely fine (and some of the dialogue suggest Raven knew the baby would be fine).
Her obsession with following Destiny's predictions to the letter to the point of keep on manipulating everyone? that could be a better reason to be angry with her

[akodo_rokku]

With Raven's history and how Destiny's Diaries have been notoriously tricky it's far more likely Raven just didn't *care* what happened to baby Hope.

[locuatico]

I guess. but the way they speak of "there was a price" so ominous like that when... there wasn't... throws me off.

[ozaline]

I guess the "price" was that she realized she was capable of infanticide? I mean she had trouble killing a little mutant kid who was turned into a Sentinel controller.

[liliaeth]

I kind of find that hard to believe considering what she did to Nightcrawler when he was a mere baby. She had no idea he'd end up surviving.

[fra080389]

Baby Quire?