Legion of X #1-2 - "Do What Thou Wilt"

[laughing_tree]

The Marvel Universe has this densely packed, beautiful (and beautifully volatile) population of superhumans, out in the open, all in one place, it needs peacekeepers, sure… but it’s a mistake to think of them as simply cops. You don’t get far in Krakoa if the limit of your imagination is beating people up or reaching for a gun. Mutant civilization needs those who think differently. -- Si Spurrier

Comments

[iamrman]

I got excited when they said horned god of mischief, but It's probably not who I think. :(

[mastermahan]

It might be. Teshup is an actual god, so presumably this god of mischief is also drawn from mythology.

Hiding on Krakoa doesn't seem like Loki's style, though.

[dianakingston]

I had high hopes for this one, but the X-office really needs to get the memo that Arakko is not, in itself, an interesting concept. Ora Serrata rambling on for pages and pages about the intricate details of her monotonous culture isn't any better here than when Storm does it in X-Men Red, especially when it *still* boils down to iterations of "We are Arakko, we fight or we die". An island of Poochies isn't really something that merits the pseudo-mythical language that tends to be used to describe it.

[morallyambiguousscience]

I think part of the problem is while there's ton of visual variety with Arrako and it's citizens, they're all fundamentally the same generic warrior cult member character.

From the one whose power is she always wins to the silent one who married Doug to this torso on an eyeball, there is no difference in personality, and it infuriates mes.

[deh_tommy]

Huh, not exactly what I was expecting after Way of X but I’m a sucker for a good police procedural. I wasn’t too sure of it at first, but seeing it in the context of the story here, I’m growing fond of Nightcrawlers’s Ezio makeover.

And yay, ForgetMeNot! Glad to see he’s doing alright.

[mastermahan]

Hopefully it will fill the mutant mystery gap left by X-Factor.

And yay, ForgetMeNot! Glad to see he’s doing alright.

Is he a new character or something?

[morallyambiguousscience]

Nobody is beyond redemption, not even this mutant who murdered his human wife.

Like I should be happy more characters are objecting to how fucked up the pit is, but augh. Maybe it's me, I don't feel like this bit with them denying extradition then exempting him from even Krakoa's garbage justice system until they "know the full story". I get it isn't supposed to and I'm being unfair, but it kinda seems to me like Krakoa's new "peacekeepers" are doing what cops always do, cover for domestic abusers.

[dianakingston]

It's like they're writing scenarios for a society that's *way* more clearly depicted and advanced than Krakoa actually is. A "Krakoan Cops" story is for when readers actually understand how Krakoa works and what mutant laws mean, and we're still at the stage where things are being arbitrarily added and subtracted based on how important the character is. Sabertooth went on a killing spree and got sent to the pit, but Selene was just killed and stuck in the queue for what she did. Vulcan blew up the Summers House, he just got booted to Arakko.

On top of all that, the whole point of "Murder No Man" is presumably to try and keep the peace with humanity - but to then blatantly show that a mutant murderer is *explicitly* above human law? How does that not play directly into anti-mutant sentiment?

[wizardru]

I see your point, but it's in many ways a question of how you want to read it. I was just listening to the Cerebro podcast where Gerry Duggan points this specific idea out. People bring their own interpretations to the material which aren't unreasonable, but may or may not be what the creators intend. If Krakoa is, in some ways, a variant take on Israel and Zionism, then I can see how this plays differently.

If you change the details here from for example to feature extradition to South Africa during Apartheid, then you can see why Kurt might want to wait until they have all the details. Can a mutant get a fair investigation and criminal justice in a country where the government sanctions robots designed to hunt, trap or kill his brethren? Can he expect full honesty from a country that recently allowed people to be kidnapped off of a reservation by law enforcement to be taken away for experimentation?

The issues are complex and I think the intention is that you DO ask those kind of questions...and that the characters within the stories are themselves trying to work them out.

Xabi's power seems more like a living nightmare than anything else. How does he function at all (and how do some characters manage to remember him and others don't?)

[donnblake]

I don't know- the idea that perhaps there should be some level of investigation before the summary judgement and eternal living immurement doesn't seem wildly out of line.

[sadoeuphemist]

Why is everyone assuming this guy is guilty? He was accused of killing his wife, that doesn't mean he did it. It's not 'exempting someone from the justice system' to determine guilt before punishing anyone.

And second, all of this 'hey we just want to help you out, hear your side of the story, cooperate and we'll go easy on you' is generic cop-speak to try and weasel a confession out of the suspect, it's not like it's legally binding!

[thezmage]

I mean it does, just a little bit, remind me of the CHOP/CHAZ area in Seattle where it took them almost a week to go from "no cops" to murdering innocent black kids and covering up who did it.

[blues32]

Okay...so why is Ruth talking like this again? I thought she was cured when she got the full scope of her powers back from her brother.

[nyadnar17]

Theft is not illegal? Come again?

Also am I missing something or is a society that views crime/rejection of social morals to be 100% a mental health issue utterly terrifying? Like if crime is a disease than you won't even be released until you are "cured". Haven't we had cultures like that, periods of time where that viewpoint was in vouge? Didn't it always lead to horror and abuse?

[donnblake]

Sebastian Shaw pitched that respect for private property should be a pillar of Krakoan society way back at the beginning, and he was shot down. Without a principle of private property, theft would seem to be impossible. So if Gambit's taking stuff that other people are using, that makes him an asshole, but not a criminal.

[blues32]

On Krakoa. Because Krakoa is paradise and apparently paradise means not owning anything.

[mastermahan]

Ironically, this issue represents a massive leap forward in terms of making Krakoa sane. A data page presents Kurt's broad reinterpretations of the Three Laws, which come down to:

Make More Mutants just means the Five should resurrect people, because compulsory reproduction is obviously wrong.*

Murder No Man means anyone that doesn't have resurrection.

Respect This Sacred Land means respect other mutant's consent and freedom of choice.

On one hand, that means rape is finally illegal on Krakoa. On the other hand, that still leaves gaps big enough to drive a sword-shaped space station through.

*Which raises the question of why this needed to be a law.

[starwolf_oakley]

Simon Spurrier is having the X-Men (in this book, at least) lean into the "mutant police" aspect. Which isn't a new thing. It started with the Morrison era with District X, then Bishop and Sage investigating Emma Frost's "murder."
The Claremont/Davis UNCANNY run also had the XSE as the "mutant police."

This is a little like Alan Moore's TOP TEN, which in turn was kind of like "Hill Street Blues." Which I am not as familiar with as I should be.

[dianakingston]

The main difference is that with District X, the XSE and so on, the laws those mutants were enforcing were still recognizably consistent with the rest of the world. Krakoan laws are different; shouldn't the policing aspect be different too?

[thezmage]

The line about Xavier getting outvoted was savage, but doesn't that clash with what we saw in earlier issues? Charlie welcomed him back personally and all.

[arilou_skiff]

There's a difference between welcoming him back and making him a cop.

[giraffesforever]

So far I'm liking this. I like that the book is apparently (hopefully?) going to be interrogating what the three laws mean. It's overdue, and one would hope for the creation of clarity and nuance in their application rather than their current seeming arbitrariness. Also seems like we might get some overdue revision of punishments on Krakoa.

I'm happy that Nightcrawler seems recognizable as a character to me, and I'd add Legion to that as well. I know characters evolve and don't have to (can't?) stay the way I was introduced to them, but with so many changes that feel drastic and unpleasant to me, I'm enjoying feeling like this is what "my" Kurt would be doing.

[morallyambiguousscience]

I don't like how at this stage there's a lot of sanding off Krakoa's rougher edges to make it a more permanent status quo without actually confronting how wrong those rough edges were, and that they were the natural result of this cultlike ethnostate and not just weird lapses of sanity.

[onsokumaru]

It's nice that there are still writers wanting to use the NXM who are not Laura or Quentin.
Bringing back Blindfold, using Pixie and maybe a little bit of Dust: I'm thankful for that. But I will remain bitter until Santo, the real Santo, is alive again.

[super_fly]

"There’s no greys, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is."

"It’s a lot more complicated than that -"

"No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts."

Just came to mind seeing Marinette's line about evil.

[blues32]

How does David look at that and say, "Yeah, I want that future." If I had to guess, he's got both a spirit of vengeance in him and the Phoenix Force. Doesn't he have enough voices in his head? Does he really need one screaming "VENGEANCE FOR THE INNOCENT! PUNISH THE GUILTY!" all the time?