X-Factor #7: Scientia Vincere Tenebras

[superboyprime]

"Jean-Paul is canonically anti-establishment and proud of his identity as a gay mutant, so coming out of AOXM would have very clear implications on his emotional state. He’s angry and traumatized and has always been an agitator who pushes against the establishment. Asks a lot of questions. Instigates. So tracking down missing mutants is a righteous and natural fit for him, now." - Leah Williams

Comments

[coldfury]

This is kind of highlighting the problem with the resurrections system of Krakoa, storytelling wise. If writers have this tool, they're going to use it. Which suddenly means that characters that used to be super tough adventurers who always scraped by the nick of the teeth just suddenly die all the time.

We already saw it with the main X-Men team biting it in space, but now we're seeing it play out over and over again in this book with multiple deaths as part of the ongoing story.

I like the fact that they found a way to mine old characters for new stories without increasingly ridiculous excuses... but by leaving the mechanism open like this they've really made their characters weaker by default.

[themajesticmoose]

I disagree. I love the whole resurrection concept and I think it's a brilliant and interesting idea that's also finally freed the X-books from the endless dreary depressing nonsense of "Mutantkind is on the edge of extinction!" that we've had to put up with ever since that absolute garbage Bendis wrote in House of M.

And I don't think it robs the stories of drama. The characters still don't want to die and death still brings with it the threat of pain, trauma etc. All that's changed is that if they do they can be brought back. And that's always been true in superhero comics honestly

Let's face it, apart from Uncle Ben has ANYONE stayed dead in comic books?

[mindsweeper]

I agree. Hickman wanted resurrection to change the pattern and force writers to think differently. I think that’s happened, for the most part. Percy is still old school destructive but I find that the rest of the books are better for resurrection.

[themajesticmoose]

Percy is just a genuinely terrible writer, which is probably why X-force and Wolverine are the only two books of the new X-line up that I've genuinely hated and that I'm not buying. Every single page of Wolverine and X-force is just Percy going "Look how edgy I am everybody!" like an even less talented knock off of Frank Miller

[deh_tommy]

I’m not inherently against the idea of resurrection, but I am annoyed at how callously everyone dies ever since the Rosenberg run.

[themajesticmoose]

See I hated Rosenberg's absolute garbage run but I don't see the whole resurrection thing as having anything to do with that crap. In fact I see it as a direct response to it. Rosenberg's depressing badly written OOC crapfest was characterised by him just killing off yet more characters every issue in stupid pointless ways

Hickman however corrected this garbage by introducing a system by which every pointless death was undone. All the miserable grimdark crap of Rosenberg's run was erased, much as his pathetic and nauseating characterisations of many of the characters he tried to ruin in his run were ignored/erased as well

[phantomfo]

Except for the precogs. :(

[beyondthefringe]

This is one occasion on which I agree with you. Rosenberg's run was easily one of my least favorite runs of any X-related series ever, and that includes the Chuck Austen years. Anything which reversed that had to be an improvement on sheer principle, and it's a nice bonus that the resurrection protocols have given us back so many other wonderful toys that were broken and discarded over the years.

Hopefully, by the time Hickman's done and the resurrection protocols are inevitably broken, we'll be left with a full roster of revived and repowered characters and editorial will keep subsequent writers from being too bloodthirsty.

[laughing_tree]

I think it's pretty clear that Rosenberg killed so many characters -because- he knew about the upcoming ressurections-for-all.

[themajesticmoose]

I wouldn't give him that much credit personally given what garbage his writing was in general even beyond the pointless deaths

[laughing_tree]

No, he's outright confirmed it. And Dani Moonstar has a line in his last issue about how she mystically senses those who died will somehow return.

[themajesticmoose]

Did not know that. Though it still doesn't make anything about his run good.

[themajesticmoose]

I mean I'm hoping this new status quo sticks around for good long after Hickman is gone. The X-books are finally interesting again and I don't want things to revert to the Xavier School and them wasting their time "Protecting a world that hates and fears them" and all of that nonsense. I want the new, more interesting and more fun set up we've got going here to persist and for them to keep doing new and cool things with it

And yeah I genuinely hated every single thing about Rosenberg's run from the way he wrote the characters to the moronic plot to the depressing misery fest that was every issues indidividual story. It's so good to see mutantkind standing up for themselves and getting what they're owed in this new status quo especially after that nonsense where the X-men were cowering in a basement and acting as lapdogs for a bunch of human losers like the AVENGERS of all people (God I hate the Avengers)

[deh_tommy]

Meh, there was a lot wrong with the book but I think that last point is more of a personal issue than one with the book.

[agharta75]

Hasn't Uncle Ben been back a few times (as a robot, an alternate universe version, The Chameleon, etc)?

[lucean]

By the way, have they established that Quicksilver is faster than Northstar is that my memory being faulty?

[mindsweeper]

Someone probably did that because one is an Avenger and the other is a minor Mutant. However, from the start of Alpha Flight, Northstar and Aurora were ridiculously fast when they wanted to be. Not DC speedster fast but quite zippy.

Of course, since Quicksilver isn’t a Mutant, so he wouldn’t factor into the conversation of fastest Mutant alive.

[sabertoothlotus]

it's also been retconned that Pietro and Wanda are NOT mutants, so the title "fastest mutant" exempts Quicksilver from the running, so to speak.

[lucean]

I completely forgot about that idiotic retcon, probably as I unconciously I keep waiting for them to unretcon it

[bruinsfan]

Quicksilver's never seemed all that fast in the stories I've seen. From what I remember it took him like a week to run from central Asia to New York once, when he would have gotten to help faster if he'd just lowered himself to buying a plane ticket. Speedsters are comparatively thin on the ground at Marvel, and Aurora and Northstar are the only ones I recall having powers that most of the DC superheroes wouldn't snicker at.

[scorntx]

That was the past.
As recently as 2010 Pietro could go from Generic Mid-Eastern Europe to Oklahoma in a matter of minutes.

[cainofdreaming]

Was that during the Slorenia/Ultron story? I kinda remember him running over the Atlantic in that.

[scorntx]

Nah, the Siege Thunderbolts tie-in.
Amadeus calls Pietro who is somewhere in Transia, and he immediately zips over to Asgard.

[fra080389]

Why the Morrigan was trying to hurt Daken specifically?

[themajesticmoose]

He was investigatin what was going on with Siryn and found out the Morrigan was posessing her so she wanted to silence him.

Also she is a jerk :(

[themajesticmoose]

Another great issue of the book that's joined Marauders and SWORD as one of my favourites of the X-books. I loved the David and Tommy goodness in this issue and I hope we get to see more of this.

Loved that little moment with Lorna and Rachel too. And Northstar still settling into the role of team leader and getting used to being in charge has been good fun.

Also I am enjoying Daken and Aurora so far. It's nice to see Daken actually happy here

[zachbeacon]

While it's nice to finally see them acknowledge some of the X-Factor Investigations stuff, it's still weird that Jamie is here. He earned that retirement. Heck, most writers use him as nothing more than an expendable body to throw at a problem and the Five have made it so that that's true for every mutant.

(Has Layla been seen since HOX/POX?)

Also it seems like this story is implying that Theresa is possessed by the the Morrigan instead of someone who assumed the mantle of the Morrigan. I understand why a writer would do that if the end goal is to bring back 90s Siryn but that isn't what happened.

Speaking of weird writer decisions; I still think Northstar as team leader is a terrible idea.

[cainofdreaming]

Her knowing stuff might fall under the no precogs rule, so she's probably not allowed on the island.

[zachbeacon]

Well separating Raven from her precog wife doesn't seem to be going very well. I'm not sure it's wise to also tick off the one man army.

Layla isn't actually a precog. She only "knew stuff" up to a point thanks to some time travel shenanigans. Her actual power is raising the dead which seems like a huge time saver. She needs to have the body so it doesn't completely eliminate the need for the Five and they come back without souls but there has to be someone on the island who can fix that particular bug.

[deh_tommy]

Pfft, push comes to shove they can always blackmail her with resurrection the way they did with Mystique.

[zachbeacon]

Which "her" are you referring to? Pretty sure Jamie's pronouns are he/them* and Raven seems ready to burn the island to the ground. Honestly this is one of those times where I think Mystique would be totally justified too.

*As in "oh my god, they're so many of them."

[deh_tommy]

Sorry, her as in Layla. I meant to say “blackmail him [as in Jamie] with her [Layla’s] resurrection”.

And before you say “she’s not dead”: she’s a relatively obscure X-man. Chances are she died offscreen because Gyrich sneezed one of those mutie-vaccines on her or Onslaught banished her to cyberspace or something.

[zachbeacon]

I mean, Marvel has done worse to characters who faded from the spotlight.

[laughing_tree]

When did Havok and Siryn become friends? Were they on a team together?

[zachbeacon]

They were in X-Factor Investigations together for just over a year ... though, comic time being what it is, that was probably only a week or two.

[lieut_kettch]

Okay, how is Tommy able to get to Krakoa? Is he still a mutant even if his mom isn't anymore?

[themajesticmoose]

No, but humans are allowed on Krakoa with a mutants permission. Northstar's husband is human and living with him on Krakoa. Jubilee's baby is human. Brian Braddock has visited a few times now

Humans aren't blanket-banned from Krakoa, there's just a vetting system to keep out the trash and only allow the good ones in. Which is a very smart idea

[chalicother]

I mean he could still be.

Wanda no longer being a mutant, doesn't mean she can't give birth to mutants.

[thumbs13]

He hasn't been retconned to be a human yet, and the last ruling on the twins had them be called mutants.

[bruinsfan]

It's also possible that if his abilities stem from that 1/6 of Mephisto he was originally made of, Tommy reads to any detection tech/powers as whatever he believes himself to be.