Hellions #3: Nothing People

[superboyprime]

Comments

[arilou_skiff]

Yah, this is bad. Of all the takes they could have had on Maddie, this is the least interesting.

[gnarll]

Don't worry. It gets worse. Much worse.

[alliterator]

I actually think this is a pretty fascinating take on Maddie. Because, well, she's obviously a psychopath, but she's also not wrong. Scott did leave her, Greycrow did shoot her in the head and steal her baby, these were things that twisted her up and changed her into the Goblin Queen.

And now Greycrow and Sinister are both in Krakoa, but Maddie? Nope. She wasn't invited. And, as we see in the next issue, she isn't even allowed to be resurrected, because she is only thought of as a clone of Jean Grey.

[mastermahan]

Yep, the Quiet Council literally declares that Maddie isn't a person. Their justification that clones don't get resurrections is clearly nonsense - the two dead Stepford Cuckoos got to come back, and they're Emma's clones.

Poor Maddie. She's mandated to be a monster so Cyclops is retroactively justified for abandoning his wife and baby. Now she isn't even considered a person.

[deh_tommy]

Was the issue that she was a clone, or was the issue that she was a psychic echo and considered “less” than a clone? Because either Krakoa’s prejudiced against clones or they used that as an excuse to not bother resurrecting her (which, considering the kind of people they have on their island already, why?).

Awfully convenient that Laura Kinney’s stuck in a time bubble, huh? What’s Gabby up to these days?

[mastermahan]

We don't see the actual debate, but Cyclops and the data page (probably written by Beast) say the issue is specifically that she's a clone. It's ambiguous whether that was the real reason. I could see Krakoa developing a bias against clones - their resurrection system is based on cloning people and insisting they're still the same person, so clones who are very clearly their own person would cause some cognitive discomfort. On the other hand, we've never seen any sign of that, and the Cuckoos precedent says Maddie should have gotten rezzed.

For his part, Cyclops won't even answer when Alex asks him if he wanted Madelyne to be rezzed.

Gabby's on the island. She was last seen in Blob's bar, watching Logan and Daken play a family-friend game of "Spin the Bottle and Stab Yourself in the Brain With Your Own Claws".

[gnarll]

Well, I'm not seeing Stryfe around, and hes probably far more in need of some quality family time than Cable. Josephs not there either, and he was an active X-man.

[icon_uk]

IIRC Laura isn't a clone any more, the Adamantium Agenda thing revealed that she was Wolverine's daughter, but the woman who raised her was also genetically her mother, so she had two parents.

I can't recall if Gabby is a clone of Laura, or in the same boat as Laura.

[mastermahan]

Gabby is still a clone of Laura, yes. She's not the clone of a clone anymore, but still a clone.

Laura may not be Logan's clone anymore, but Gabby's existence could potentially be used to block Laura's resurrection if the Quiet Council wanted to be assholes about it. The rule is basically "no more than one of someone", and if Maddie doesn't count as a separate person, someone could argue that they already have a version of Laura.

(Although Xavier didn't seem to think that was a problem when he dispatched Laura to the Vault).

This is all stuff I'd like to see examined more closely.

[gnarll]

Well, I think S'yms mind control and spells was what twisted her into the Goblyn Queen. She had years of being perfectly ok before that and in fact doing a lot of work on the X-mens missions in Australia.

Which is another thing with X-men: Mind control excuses pretty much everything with other people. Maddie, who was a drinking buddy, housemate, work colleague etc for years is considered unredeemable though.

I don't really see her as a psychopath, more like shes just given up on morals. She is kind of what Mastermind tried to make Jean Grey into.

[akodo_aoshi]

It's not just Maddy.

Remember how the X-men treated Scott for killing Xavier in self-defence while under the influence of a cosmic entity?

[deh_tommy]

To be fair, almost everyone in-universe loathed Cyclops for killing Professor X even though he was under the influence of the Phoenix.

[scorntx]

When Cyclops does it, it's wrong and despicable and entirely unforgivable forever and ever and ever.

When literally anyone else does it, even if it's for the exact same reasons, it's fine.

[mastermahan]

Unless "it" is abandoning your wife and newborn baby, that is. In that case, everyone will just pretend it didn't happen.

Most everyone was pretty nonplussed about Cyclops cheating on his second wife too.

[scorntx]

And yet the woman who convinced Scott to cheat on said wife, and the person who caused the trauma that helped lead to that marriage breaking down in the first place are both part of Krakoa's ruling council.

Hmm.

[mastermahan]

If the intention of Krakoa is to show how quickly an attempted utopia can break down into corrupt elitism, it's working well.

(I'm not saying Cyclops's post-Phoenix vilification was fair, mind. Everyone gets possessed now and then. Xavier wasn't blamed for murdering the Avengers and Fantastic Four.)

[mastermahan]

I wonder if the various X-types blamed Cyclops because it saved them from examining their own complicity.

After all, if Cyclops was under the influence of a dangerously unstable cosmic entity, they're the idiots who followed a group they knew had pieces of a dangerously unstable cosmic entity inside them.

[sabertoothlotus]

Personally, I feel like Scott has an entire lifetime of trauma that he spends every waking second trying to repress. And his time with the X-Men has only made that harder due to continuous added trauma.

He just hasn't been the same since he died the (first?) time, merging with Apocalypse to save Cable. I think spending time like that would mess anyone up, and probably left him vulnerable to being manipulated by Emma, and then dealing with Jean dying (again!)...

The man needs some serious professional help. But nobody ever seems to notice that he does, and just ignores his pain and keeps asking him to lead them. And he does, because he feels responsible and that nobody else could possibly do the job.

The tragedy of Scott Summers isn't that terrible things keep happening to him, but that he feels like he has to deal with them alone despite being surrounded by friends and family who would be happy to help if he asked. But he doesn't, so they assume he's fine and continue piling their own problems and responsibilities on him, and he. just. keeps. taking it.

[gnarll]

Well it was Professor X. Everyone thinks of him as a saint, and hes probably left psychic commands in them to hate any person that kills him.

[icon_uk]

This point came up after Doug came back and, under Selene's control, nearly killed Magma.

Sam wanted Doug on his team and Emma objected, but Scott pointed out that: "If we're going to start cutting X-Men who've attacked other members against their will, we're not going to have anyone left!"

[zachbeacon]

So what's the deal with Alex these days? He doesn't really seem like himself even before Maddie put the whammy on him (at least that's what I assume is happening here). Is he still "inverted" because of Axis or something?

Honestly, given his history, he's one of the few mutants that I'd expect to tell the Krakoans to get lost and leave him alone.

[scorntx]

No, the inversion was undone back in X-Men: Blue.
(Think he whined about it. The usual "but you don't understand, I liked being evil! How can I go back" stuff.)

The rest is just... well, some of it might be Alex in his natural state.

... he does seem particularly easy to mind whammy, though, even for an X-Man.
(maybe that's why Sinister never seems so fussed about him?)

[zachbeacon]

"(Think he whined about it. The usual "but you don't understand, I liked being evil! How can I go back" stuff.)"

I mean maybe its a Kylo Ren thing where he's always secretly WANTED to be evil but his heart wasn't in it? That'd explain a lot of his history.

Its certainly a Kylo Ren thing here in that he's whiney, prone to tantrums, and easy to manipulate.

(I kinda hate this theory because that means the AoA Alex is probably the most self-actualized version of himself. Well, maybe the Alex from Mutant X; at least he got Maddie and had a son before he got blown up and replaced with 616 Alex)

[icon_uk]

That's not even Kylo Ren, that's standard Claremont thought process for at least two random characters every month of his entire run:

"Oh the temptation to let my inhibitions run loose and do all the dark stuff I've always yearned to do"

Rinse and repeat

[scorntx]

Funny how those dark things often seem to involve heavy gay subtext...

Up until Hickman's run started, a key contender for the X-Men's greatest enemy would probably have been their serious need to get some action.
(... 'course, now they all seem to be getting it, and it doesn't seem to have helped them, so so much for that idea.)

[mistersandman]

I think this has been a part of Alex's character since he stepped through the Siege Perilous... and became a Genoshan Magistrate.

[gnarll]

Alex missed the undoing, as I remember.