X-Men #16

[lordultimus]

Comments

[icon_uk]

I assume it's an election for the two seats on the Quiet Council rather than for the X-Men.

Have to say, this is a welcome development and should be entertaining to read.

[beyondthefringe]

Actually, I read that as a vote for who was going to be on the X-Men...

And quite honestly, I'd LOVE to see an X-Men team decided by vote.

I'd also love to see an X-Men team determined by social media polling. We'd either end up with something truly classic, or something truly fucked-up and random, as the mutant equivalent of Boaty McBoatface (Eye-Scream, the guy who can turn himself into ice cream?) gets elected...

[icon_uk]

If you thought the Legion electing it's leader by reader vote was odd, you ain't seen nothing yet!

[agharta75]

I WANT BOATY MCBOATFACE ON THE X-MEN.

That is all.

[lordultimus]

Read the last page a bit more closely; it's supposed to be for the X-Men.

That said, I'm reading it as the House of Representatives to the Quiet Council's Senate, and in any case we're getting actual voice to the people of Krakoa to challenge Krakoa's actual shadiness, so I wholeheartedly approve.

[icon_uk]

Ah, that makes sense in it's way, but if the X-Men are to be an administrative function, it would require a very different set of skills than it would for an active "mission team".

[lordultimus]

Think also a "Knights of the Round Table" sort of thing tossed into it.

[agharta75]

With ham and jam and spam a lot?

[deh_tommy]

No, those are human constructs. Camelot is “rightfully” Krakoan land, and thus everyone must use Karakoram-grown X-Ham, X-Jam and X-Ham, far superior and totally different to the human variety.

[deh_tommy]

Hopefully! That’s about bloody time.

[zachbeacon]

Since voting is less about who is qualified and more about having a recognizable name I have to wonder, who is the most popular mutant among other mutants?

I have to figure a lot of the obvious names are out since a lot of them are on the Council and I don't love the idea of Wolverine being an X-Man while running the mutant CIA.

I have to figure most mutants love Hope but she's too important to have on the front lines.

Everyone loves Cannonball but he's off-world.

Cable isn't the man he used to be.

Marvel seems determined to downplay Madrox these days.

Will it be an in-universe celebrity like Dazzler?

Will Mandrill lock in the female vote?

Will Beak's power of friendship earn him a spot?

Will Iceman not winning finally cause him to grow up and take things more seriously? (No, of course not)

Will Kid Omega cheat?

Will there be "Scarlett Witch" protest votes?

This could be fun to see.

Wild speculation: This is Moonstar's time to shine. Her qualifications are obvious (to the point where she really should have been one of Scott's captains). She gets along well with mutants of her own generation and trained some of the younger ones. Plus Hickman is obviously a New Mutants fan.

[mastermahan]

Wild speculation: This is Moonstar's time to shine. Her qualifications are obvious (to the point where she really should have been one of Scott's captains). She gets along well with mutants of her own generation and trained some of the younger ones. Plus Hickman is obviously a New Mutants fan.

Of all the New Mutants to make a captain, Illyana was an odd choice. Sure, she's a badass, but generally not the most responsible mutant around. At least Gorgon had leadership experience. Yes, it was with murder cults and neo-Nazis, but it still counts.

[zachbeacon]

Yeah, I like Illyana but Scott was the only remotely trustworthy captain (and frankly he was slumming it and should have been on the Council from the beginning). I think the job would have also been a better fit for characters like Wolverine and Storm but they went in different directions with them.

[donnblake]

Hey, Illyana ran her own hell dimension for a little while before it was subsumed by a techno-organic virus. I mean, I never got the impression that there was a lot of day-to-day administration involved, but if the X-men need someone to lounge on a throne and sentence their foes to the Dungeon of Torments, she's aces.

[kid_a_aslan]

Limbo doesn't "exsist" now?

[donnblake]

Honestly, I've lost track. I don't really know what Illyana's deal is between Inferno, where she pretty decisively lost control of her dimension and it invaded New York and she wound up getting replaced by her uncorrupted small child self, and then, like, a couple years back she was running around with a super skipmy costume and goat legs, and I think she was fairly evil then.

[gnarll]

Best combination of deep magical knowledge base and party affiliations to Xaviers side I expect.

Someone needed to have magical knowledge, unless they wanted to leave that to Selene and Apocalypse unsupervised.

As a bonus shes a combat build and anyone powerful enogh to make Dormammu beg is powerful enough to get respect from the unaffiliated magic users on Krakoa.

[mastermahan]

I'm not saying she's not extremely useful. She absolutely is. Great in a fight, has an extremely useful power, and you're right, one of the few non-evil mutants to know anything about magic.

It's just that being a captain was described as being a coordination position.

[bruinsfan]

If we except the cult leaders that are already on the council, I'd think it would be either Alison Blaire or Lila Cheney. I believe the latter had a more successful singing career and was more famous to the general populace, but the former might have more cachet with mutants specifically.

[scorntx]

Pretty sure Lila's busy being with SWORD.

[themajesticmoose]

I'm curious to see whose going to end up on the team!

I'm hoping they won't just go with obvious "Big name" choices and I'm hoping we are going to see some canon LGBTQ characters joining the team here

[tcampbell1000]

"KRAKOA FOREV-- Appropriation? What're you talking about"

[mindsweeper]

If you’re referring to Scott’s pose on the election page, that’s an old panel from Bendis’ ANXM. He made the X with his arms post-AVX. It existed well before the BP movie.

[tcampbell1000]

I was, but I also wasn't being too serious.

[kid_a_aslan]

Wasn't Hickman once rumoured to be a LoSH writer?
LoSH once known for yearly leader elections.

[reveen]

Oh, wow. Young people with superpowers want to go out and use said superpowers to do shit instead of sit around a table in their full-ass costumes like a bunch of dorks?

Shocked Pikachu face.

[lordultimus]

Are Scott and Jean really "young people" anymore? I thought they were like thirty now, or something.

Then again, I guess they should be the same age as Spider-Man, so... whatever.

[shakalooloo]

Well, Jean's gone back to wearing her favourite teenage ensemble for some reason - mid-life crisis?

[mastermahan]

She's calling herself Marvel Girl again too. There's been speculation online she was de-aged by resurrction, but for now it's just kind of inexplicable.

[owlbrigade1]

They are all whatever age Xavier's self image of them is, is that not it? It certainly explains why everyone is so constantly OOC all the time. We're seeing Xavier's version of them all the time.

[scorntx]

Prreetty sure the explanation the comics have given is Charles uses Cerebro to take copies of everyone's mind.
Then if they die, the Five create a genetic copy, using Proteus and Elixir to grow the copy body to the appropriate age, at which point the mind backup is transplanted into them.

Which is a shame, because otherwise that'd be a eerily good explanation for the New Mutants under Hickman's pen.
"Let's see... Illyana is... er... oh, I used to know this... ah, she's bisexual and violently clingy about her coffee. Roberto... damn, knew I should've written these down somewhere... oh, heck, I'll just wing it. Roberto's a Scottish miner's son! Anyone complains, I'll mindwipe them!"

[alliterator]

Let's see... Illyana is... er... oh, I used to know this... ah, she's bisexual and violently clingy about her coffee.

I mean, yeah, I can see that. Sure, she has other stuff going on, too, but "bisexual and caffeine-addicted" is a great starting point.

I'm pretty sure Matthew Rosenberg also had her in love with cake.

[chalicother]

Are Scott and Jean really "young people" anymore? I thought they were like thirty now, or something.

Youth is relative. This coming from a guy who is 29 and had people call me young. Also compared to Xavier and Magneto, they are young people in terms of their relation.

[silverhammerman]

A lot of people have been waiting, some of them impatiently, for the other shoe to drop with regard to dissension in the Krakoan ranks, so I imagine this could be somewhat satisfying for them. Not all of them, because I know that some people just really hate the whole Krakoa setup, but this still does feel like moving the greater arc of this era forward.

I'm also interested by the new Arakko setup, staying separate from Krakoa and generally holding to an isolationist survival-of-the-fittest philosophy. In a lot of ways the Arakkii mutants seem like the worst case scenario for humans, so that could be an interesting wrinkle to Krakoa's new image for mutantkind.

[mastermahan]

Arrako feels like it came straight from Hickman's original Eternals pitch. A forgotten offshoot from Eternal society is a very Eternals idea, since A) They have a long history, and B) They already have one of those. The mutant groups that make up Krakoan society, meanwhile, have been around less than a generation, so instead a second mutant society forming on the same living island and organizing their leadership the same way feels like an odd synchronicity.

(Although we did see Moira with the First Horsemen in one of her previous lives, so presumably she knew all about Arrako.)