Wolverine and The X-Men #16

[brerrabbit]

Comments

[nyadnar17]

I can't think of a single interesting or redeeming feature of this version of the Hellfire club except for the descendant of Frankenstein.

I honestly don't know whats suppose to be interesting, compelling, or threatening about them

[zachbeacon]

I really wish Kid Frankenstein could be untangled from the rest of them. A kid mad scientist is such a fun villain concept.

Elmyra from Tiny Toons? Not so much.

I did enjoy their Evil Jean Grey School (maybe not crazy about some of the execution but I love the concept).

[shakalooloo]

The series did end with Frankenstein abandoning the team and going off on his own with Toad serving as his Igor, but that thread never got developed afterwards.

[tcampbell1000]

I will say I respect the profiteering hustle on display here. But for the most part they're the worst kind of "brilliant" comics characters, the kind that are almost never actually shown outthinking anyone or executing the parts of their plans that require cleverness. We just sort of skip over those parts and assume them, just like we assume the Hellfire Kids are so smart they just know the heroes won't do anything too effective to stop them.

The real problem with them is that they were largely redundant. Wolverine's school was held together with spit and bailing wire as it was; it didn't need a recurring villain to threaten it, so the Hellkids spent nearly as much time spinning their wheels as the Jean Grey School staff, only without the elder X-Men's past record of impressive achievements to fall back on.

[lucean]

Whenever I read something where Aaron has written Cyclops, I'm deeply confused that he has stated in interviews that doesn't seem to get why people think he dislikes Scott.

[deh_tommy]

To be fair, just because the characters might dislike Cyclops doesn’t mean the writer does, too.

[tcampbell1000]

I'm not seeing the unlikability here. All he does in this particular issue is object to killing children and put some inarguably bad guys in jail.

In the larger AvX context, I thought and still think that Cyclops was in the wrong pretty much from the start, but I do feel I understand why he did what he did. I had no problem sympathizing, any more than I do with Krakoanism (which seems more defensible but with some obvious flaws). And so I never stopped liking him. YMMV, but maybe that's the metric Aaron's applying.

[scorntx]

...
I suppose it is at least to Aaron's credit that he seems to excel at writing smug assholes you want to beat to death with a shovel.

(Except for the annoying fact they never seem to receive any shovel-based comeuppance, and just continue to smugly smug along being smug.)

... actually, asking as someone not familiar with the greater body of Aaron's work, but... he does write villains who are not either annoyingly smug or who don't constantly talk about how EVIL they are, right?

[shakalooloo]

'Scalped' is really good. I guess Aaron thinks that characters in a superhero universe need to be more over-the-top, and writes them as such.

[agent8]

well I'll say one thing for Kade, he's no coward and he practices good leadership. He gave permission for his troops to retreat from a situation where they couldn't win and yet stayed to face the danger himself. Gotta respect that.

[bruinsfan]

I wasn't reading the book during this run. Did Aaron give a reason why Ilyanna didn't just burn all the little Hellfire Playground psychopaths into ash (having a considerable amount of firsthand experience regarding evil children and none of the pesky mercy that would prevent her from acting on it) while Scott and Emma debated what to do about them, or was it just a plot contrivance that she didn't?

[gnarll]

I don't actually remember Illyana doing anything horrible while Phoenix-possessed. Maybe capturing Carol?

Could be she was more knowledgeable about possession and more able to shield itself from the effects, I guess. or just that the possession didn't affect her decision making process much. Her morality seems to be prosthetic and based on "What would my friends approve of me doing?".

Can't corrupt a sense of decency and restraint that isn't there, like a heart hidden in a ducks egg and buried on the island of friendship.

[magnetoisright]

This story would have been much more enjoyable if the Phoenix powered heroes had just slaughtered every last one of these worthless brats and everyone who worked for them

It's not even really murder the way I see it. More like spring cleaning on the human species. Or weeding a garden