So here's what I've always find weird: according to Joe Quesada, the "Decimation" event was designed to reduce the number of mutant characters in the Marvel Universe, which he felt had gotten out of hand after forty years of publishing. This happened in 2005/2006.
But in New X-Men vol.01:no.115, published just four years earlier (August 2001), Cassandra Nova's Wild Sentinels slaughtered over 16,000,000 Mutants on Genosha. This was more than half of the world's Mutant population at the time.
Yeah I mean honestly at the time mutants were less than a fraction of a percent of the world population so that excuse always seemed like an after the fact explanation.
I'd imagine they came up with this new storyline and then the reducing the cluttered number of mutants explanation after the fact.
The numbers are pretty bad around the whole thing. Even if you are generous and allow for for extra survivors of the Decimation, the number of mutants that retained their powers is no more than 0.01-0.02% (based on an overestimation of mutants keeping their powers from published numbers (400), the stated remaining mutant population before Decimation as "millions" (2 million), and the percentage that lost their powers in Decimation (originally published as "90%", later amended to "over 99%"). So given the pre-Genosha genocide, worldwide populations of mutants was at least 18,000,000 (there were probably nonmutants in Genosha, but we don't have any numbers for them), but probably not much more than that. I suspect the New X-Men writers pulled the 16 million number out of their desire to have it parallel the Holocaust in magnitude, but it'd be nice if that was actually dealt with somewhere. If 90% of a population with worldwide impact, that populated an actual nation just disappeared with physical evidence of their remains that still needed to be buried (remember Necrosha?), it would have an impact beyond being the hook for a book, and it just seems sloppy and lazy to handwave the repercussions of that away. Like, the Holocaust has social, political, and personal ramifications today. How fucked up is the Marvel Universe that this is a metaplot point that impacted lots of future stories and no one cares?
But, in fairness, almost no one in Genosha was a character anyone had ever heard of.
Quesada wasn't talking about the mutant population as a whole needing to be reduced, he was talking about mutants as neamed, usable characters in the MU.
I sort of liked the explanation offered in the Quasar title in the 80's/90's which introduced the character of "Origin" a cosmic entity who basically caused superbeings to be motivated to use their abilities, arranging the sequence of causality which would lead to people gaining powers (like Spider-Man) or be motivated to become a hero/villain (like the X-Men).
She was getting on in years in her then current incarnation, and tended to default to mutants because it was easier and less work for her! :)
"Quesada wasn't talking about the mutant population as a whole needing to be reduced, he was talking about mutants as neamed, usable characters in the MU."
Which always bugged me, to be honest. If you have a problem with writers using an easy, in-universe origin for characters power sets, tell them that they're to try and incorporate more science and/or magic origins for a while. Don't punish, encourage!
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scans_daily2018-09-01 02:21 am
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But in New X-Men vol.01:no.115, published just four years earlier (August 2001), Cassandra Nova's Wild Sentinels slaughtered over 16,000,000 Mutants on Genosha. This was more than half of the world's Mutant population at the time.
So they'd already had a big culling.
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I'd imagine they came up with this new storyline and then the reducing the cluttered number of mutants explanation after the fact.
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Quesada wasn't talking about the mutant population as a whole needing to be reduced, he was talking about mutants as neamed, usable characters in the MU.
I sort of liked the explanation offered in the Quasar title in the 80's/90's which introduced the character of "Origin" a cosmic entity who basically caused superbeings to be motivated to use their abilities, arranging the sequence of causality which would lead to people gaining powers (like Spider-Man) or be motivated to become a hero/villain (like the X-Men).
She was getting on in years in her then current incarnation, and tended to default to mutants because it was easier and less work for her! :)
no subject
Which always bugged me, to be honest. If you have a problem with writers using an easy, in-universe origin for characters power sets, tell them that they're to try and incorporate more science and/or magic origins for a while. Don't punish, encourage!
no subject