Thoughts on RessurXion

[Tycon]

Oh. Completely forgot about Cerebra, who was conveniently both created by Forge and acted with the functionality of Cerebro while Xavier was dead.



Cerebra was an A.I. containing the information and functionality of the original mutant detector system Cerebro created by Forge, who put her inside a Sentinel body for her protection.

[JKtheMac]

Thoughts about the process:

-When Vulcan went crazy Xavier did not have his powers so that would explain that he is now an ally of Krakoa.
-All the x-kids who died between House of M and that Xavier regained his powers must have their memories reset before House of M.

Presumably Cerebro has been operational independently of Xavier.

Oh. Completely forgot about Cerebra, who was conveniently both created by Forge and acted with the functionality of Cerebro while Xavier was dead.

And that’s one way that it has been.

[Ravage]

Actually joined up here just to discuss this point, because it's going to be a bit of an issue for me, going forward.

The simple fact is, at least based upon the evidence we have seen, the original characters are dead and gone. In the Marvel Universe it has long been established that there is an afterlife, and that when a character dies, their soul travels to another place, whether it be "heaven", "hell", Valhalla or wherever else. Everything that makes that person who they are continues to exist, outside of their physical form. And sometimes they return, in newly created bodies. Take what happened with Nightcrawler in recent years, or going back much further, Warlock, Gamora and Pip returning from inside the Soul Gem and recreating their physical forms at the start of Infinity Gauntlet. This demonstrates a clear continuation of their individual existences, going between the physical and the spiritual, then back again. It's always happened that way, in the MU.

That, therefore, creates a problem with this method of resurrection, because as far as I'm aware, there is no point in the process that involves collecting the souls of the recreated mutants from whatever afterlife they happen to be in. Take Sunspot, as a recent example. He died at the end of the X-Men War of the Realms mini, and his spirit or soul was seen alongside other fallen warriors, suggesting that he was heading to Valhalla. He even spoke with Dani after his death. Who he was continued to exist. Now, we know that Sunspot is alive again in the next New Mutants run, but unless there is some currently unknown process that has retrieved Roberto from Valhalla, then the original version is still there, partying with the Valkyries. Meaning that the Sunspot we'll be reading about from here on is a copy. A perfect copy, perhaps, and just as real, but still a copy. As such, that will be true for every other dead mutant that has return, be that Wolverine, Cyclops, Havok, Jean or anyone else. These are copies and the originals are now dead.

The truth is that if these really were the original characters, there would be no need to artificially back up their personalities and memories, because people of the MU don't forget who they are in the afterlife. Kurt never forgot his life and came back just fine. It would be a simple matter of putting the soul back in a newly created body and job done. No need for a complicated process of copying their minds and memories. The only reason to duplicate something is if you need to make a copy. Which is what these new versions are.

So the issue I mentioned earlier for me is, put simply, do I care about following the adventures of these copies, when I know the charcters I actually care about are gone, albeit happily existing in the MU afterlife. The answer right now is that I don't know that I do. No offence to this new copy of Wolverine, but he's not the Logan I've always read about. Marvel have been taking this direction with a lot of their characters in recent years. We still don't know which version of Steve Rogers is to be considered the original anymore. Black Widow is basically now a copy in the same way as the X-Men are, and even Tony Stark might be nothing but a digital alternative to the true version. I guess I'm just not certain that I want to be reading about copies of all my favourite characters, and it's frustrating that the situation has gotten so bad that I'm starting to not care about reading the comics at all, when the MCU is giving us a much better alternative. Anyway, time will tell.

[ThePhoenix]

Actually joined up here just to discuss this point, because it's going to be a bit of an issue for me, going forward.

The simple fact is, at least based upon the evidence we have seen, the original characters are dead and gone. In the Marvel Universe it has long been established that there is an afterlife, and that when a character dies, their soul travels to another place, whether it be "heaven", "hell", Valhalla or wherever else. Everything that makes that person who they are continues to exist, outside of their physical form. And sometimes they return, in newly created bodies. Take what happened with Nightcrawler in recent years, or going back much further, Warlock, Gamora and Pip returning from inside the Soul Gem and recreating their physical forms at the start of Infinity Gauntlet. This demonstrates a clear continuation of their individual existences, going between the physical and the spiritual, then back again. It's always happened that way, in the MU.

That, therefore, creates a problem with this method of resurrection, because as far as I'm aware, there is no point in the process that involves collecting the souls of the recreated mutants from whatever afterlife they happen to be in. Take Sunspot, as a recent example. He died at the end of the X-Men War of the Realms mini, and his spirit or soul was seen alongside other fallen warriors, suggesting that he was heading to Valhalla. He even spoke with Dani after his death. Who he was continued to exist. Now, we know that Sunspot is alive again in the next New Mutants run, but unless there is some currently unknown process that has retrieved Roberto from Valhalla, then the original version is still there, partying with the Valkyries. Meaning that the Sunspot we'll be reading about from here on is a copy. A perfect copy, perhaps, and just as real, but still a copy. As such, that will be true for every other dead mutant that has return, be that Wolverine, Cyclops, Havok, Jean or anyone else. These are copies and the originals are now dead.

The truth is that if these really were the original characters, there would be no need to artificially back up their personalities and memories, because people of the MU don't forget who they are in the afterlife. Kurt never forgot his life and came back just fine. It would be a simple matter of putting the soul back in a newly created body and job done. No need for a complicated process of copying their minds and memories. The only reason to duplicate something is if you need to make a copy. Which is what these new versions are.

So the issue I mentioned earlier for me is, put simply, do I care about following the adventures of these copies, when I know the charcters I actually care about are gone, albeit happily existing in the MU afterlife. The answer right now is that I don't know that I do. No offence to this new copy of Wolverine, but he's not the Logan I've always read about. Marvel have been taking this direction with a lot of their characters in recent years. We still don't know which version of Steve Rogers is to be considered the original anymore. Black Widow is basically now a copy in the same way as the X-Men are, and even Tony Stark might be nothing but a digital alternative to the true version. I guess I'm just not certain that I want to be reading about copies of all my favourite characters, and it's frustrating that the situation has gotten so bad that I'm starting to not care about reading the comics at all, when the MCU is giving us a much better alternative. Anyway, time will tell.

However Marvel have shown us that the rules for the afterlife don't work as we always think.

Recent example? Ben Reily! He came back by cloning process. He is a clone of a clone. But Death itself said that the clone has the original's soul. So this seems to that Afterlife doesn't work like we always assume.

[Glio]

Presumably Cerebro has been operational independently of Xavier.



And that’s one way that it has been.

How? We know that Xavier cannot be disturbed for three days in a row to make annual saves. You clearly need an operator

[Ravage]

However Marvel have shown us that the rules for the afterlife don't work as we always think.

Recent example? Ben Reily! He came back by cloning process. He is a clone of a clone. But Death itself said that the clone has the original's soul. So this seems to that Afterlife doesn't work like we always assume.

Which is exactly why I didn't use Ben as an example above, despite him being an obvious option. Yep, his body was cloned, but there was no mention of his mind previously having been backed up and copied for years before, and Death's involvement clearly suggested a more metaphysical or supernatural reasoning behind Ben still being the original version in a new body. That's totally fine and I accepted that immediately. I'm hoping Hickman either writes something into his story akin to this being the case for the X-Men too, so we know 100% that it's still the original versions reincarnated, or we have a future story where the originals actually do get brought back to life and want to know why they've been replaced. Either option is fine by me.

[ThePhoenix]

Which is exactly why I didn't use Ben as an example above, despite him being an obvious option. Yep, his body was cloned, but there was no mention of his mind previously having been backed up and copied for years before, and Death's involvement clearly suggested a more metaphysical or supernatural reasoning behind Ben still being the original version in a new body. That's totally fine and I accepted that immediately. I'm hoping Hickman either writes something into his story akin to this being the case for the X-Men too, so we know 100% that it's still the original versions reincarnated, or we have a future story where the originals actually do get brought back to life and want to know why they've been replaced. Either option is fine by me.

Hickman used the word anima which means essense and soul. I understand what you mean but his version could still work

[Ravage]

Hickman used the word anima which means essense and soul. I understand what you mean but his version could still work

But again, the evidence of the process suggests otherwise. If the original soul, or original entity, was being restored to physical form, they'd be bringing all their personality and memories along for the ride. No need to have a back up saved as a reboot, if you like? The easiest thing would have been to have Dani Moonstar be one of the five, and act as a conduit to the afterlife, summoning back the souls of the lost X-Men to be restored into new bodies the others were creating. Why not have just done that, you know?

[JKtheMac]

Actually joined up here just to discuss this point, because it's going to be a bit of an issue for me, going forward.

That does make a pleasant change from most who have the number one against their posts. Welcome. Now I am going to disagree in that same spirit of expression.

The simple fact is, at least based upon the evidence we have seen, the original characters are dead and gone. In the Marvel Universe it has long been established that there is an afterlife, and that when a character dies, their soul travels to another place, whether it be "heaven", "hell", Valhalla or wherever else. Everything that makes that person who they are continues to exist, outside of their physical form. And sometimes they return, in newly created bodies. Take what happened with Nightcrawler in recent years, or going back much further, Warlock, Gamora and Pip returning from inside the Soul Gem and recreating their physical forms at the start of Infinity Gauntlet. This demonstrates a clear continuation of their individual existences, going between the physical and the spiritual, then back again. It's always happened that way, in the MU.

Marvel, also has a long history of approaching such intangibles in multiple and varied ways. We have magic and materialism existing side by side. We have deities and mythological realms coexisting in a world where there are still atheists. The sheer multiplicity of the views and perspectives is part of the mix. This isn’t a real place.

Now it is mostly an American phenomenon and as such it does tend to support or at least not directly contradict the freedom to express a religious perspective. Those that don’t believe in a god sometimes have a hard time with that, just as those that do believe in one might have a hard time with stories that go further towards a more secular materialistic approach to the soul.

That, therefore, creates a problem with this method of resurrection, because as far as I'm aware, there is no point in the process that involves collecting the souls of the recreated mutants from whatever afterlife they happen to be in.

Insofar as this description of the process doesn’t go out of its way to talk about an afterlife then yes. But you can read it as doing so if you want to. The description uses the word soul quite liberally and makes a point of highlighting the problem of creating inadvertent duplicates. So somewhere in that reality warping mixture of the five mutants responsible for readying the body there may indeed be a part that changes reality such that the soul is warped back into the body. That is all a matter of interpretation and Hickman appears to be leaving that element there on purpose.

One might argue that he doesn’t explicitly support a Christian perspective of the soul, but why should he? I don’t know what he believes personally by I suspect he doesn’t believe in one. Does he need to dot the i's and cross the t's of a religion he doesn’t proscribe to? Not all religions believe in that kind of soul, let alone every reader of a Marvel book. Instead he uses language like soul and reality warping to throw a veil over the exact process.

The truth is that if these really were the original characters, there would be no need to artificially back up their personalities and memories, because people of the MU don't forget who they are in the afterlife.

This version of resurrection, almost certainly stolen from the far future of a previous life of Moira, doesn’t rely on an afterlife. That doesn’t make it any less valid as a philosophical perspective. The souls are retrieved via a method of capturing their essential nature. Soul as the sum of our experience. It simply defines the soul in a different manner. These notions of what the soul is coexist in our world, and they now appear to in the Marvel Universe. I wouldn’t expect any higher being to walk onstage and declare it right or wrong.

So the issue I mentioned earlier for me is, put simply, do I care about following the adventures of these copies, when I know the charcters I actually care about are gone, albeit happily existing in the MU afterlife. The answer right now is that I don't know that I do.

That is entirely your choice. As a counterpoint I thought retrieving Kurt from the edge of heaven was rather trite and overly religious, ironically from a writer often accused (unfairly IMO) of being an atheist who preaches his non-belief in his Thor books. But I wouldn’t suddenly stop identifying with that character just because his resurrection went against my personal non-belief in heaven.

[NewMutant]

I can't remember if I posted in this or not. Iceman and Generation X were fantastic. Old Man Logan was decent. Gold was generic but readable. And I didn't support anything with the b0re5. Weapon X looked like an interesting Wolverines (underrated) and X-Force hybrid but between Greg Land art, the Hulkverine tie in, etc I just never picked it up.

[powerpax]

Oh. Completely forgot about Cerebra, who was conveniently both created by Forge and acted with the functionality of Cerebro while Xavier was dead.

I didn't know WTF that thing was when I skimmed a bunch of Extraordinary a few weeks ago. Is it me or was Forge's entire purpose in the book to be the whining ex? What was the point of that?

[Glio]

I didn't know WTF that thing was when I skimmed a bunch of Extraordinary a few weeks ago. Is it me or was Forge's entire purpose in the book to be the whining ex? What was the point of that?

With Beast in Uncanny Inhumans the X-Men needed Forge.

Mutants need more geniuses, like the Avengers.

[powerpax]

Poor Forge. I still like him.

[JKtheMac]

Poor Forge. I still like him.

He was effortlessly cool in that first story. Which reminds me. As many have highlighted the power neutralising gun from that first appearance as possibly important, that may also suggest the retcon scene of Xavier and Forge was before that 1984 story.

[WebLurker]

It seems pretty clear from the text that the body would be reset as close to the most iconic version for the soul, in order for the reunification to be completed with minimal stress. So everyone will be almost exactly the same physically except where interesting stories can be had.

Wolverine will have his adamantium, cyclops will have his neural condition replicated, etc. etc.

But where would the new adamantium come from? You can't clone metal and it sounds like it would be quite tricky to give each clone body a new set.

Actually joined up here just to discuss this point, because it's going to be a bit of an issue for me, going forward.

The simple fact is, at least based upon the evidence we have seen, the original characters are dead and gone. In the Marvel Universe it has long been established that there is an afterlife, and that when a character dies, their soul travels to another place, whether it be "heaven", "hell", Valhalla or wherever else. Everything that makes that person who they are continues to exist, outside of their physical form. And sometimes they return, in newly created bodies. Take what happened with Nightcrawler in recent years, or going back much further, Warlock, Gamora and Pip returning from inside the Soul Gem and recreating their physical forms at the start of Infinity Gauntlet. This demonstrates a clear continuation of their individual existences, going between the physical and the spiritual, then back again. It's always happened that way, in the MU.

That, therefore, creates a problem with this method of resurrection, because as far as I'm aware, there is no point in the process that involves collecting the souls of the recreated mutants from whatever afterlife they happen to be in. Take Sunspot, as a recent example. He died at the end of the X-Men War of the Realms mini, and his spirit or soul was seen alongside other fallen warriors, suggesting that he was heading to Valhalla. He even spoke with Dani after his death. Who he was continued to exist. Now, we know that Sunspot is alive again in the next New Mutants run, but unless there is some currently unknown process that has retrieved Roberto from Valhalla, then the original version is still there, partying with the Valkyries. Meaning that the Sunspot we'll be reading about from here on is a copy. A perfect copy, perhaps, and just as real, but still a copy. As such, that will be true for every other dead mutant that has return, be that Wolverine, Cyclops, Havok, Jean or anyone else. These are copies and the originals are now dead.

The truth is that if these really were the original characters, there would be no need to artificially back up their personalities and memories, because people of the MU don't forget who they are in the afterlife. Kurt never forgot his life and came back just fine. It would be a simple matter of putting the soul back in a newly created body and job done. No need for a complicated process of copying their minds and memories. The only reason to duplicate something is if you need to make a copy. Which is what these new versions are.

So the issue I mentioned earlier for me is, put simply, do I care about following the adventures of these copies, when I know the charcters I actually care about are gone, albeit happily existing in the MU afterlife. The answer right now is that I don't know that I do. No offence to this new copy of Wolverine, but he's not the Logan I've always read about. Marvel have been taking this direction with a lot of their characters in recent years. We still don't know which version of Steve Rogers is to be considered the original anymore. Black Widow is basically now a copy in the same way as the X-Men are, and even Tony Stark might be nothing but a digital alternative to the true version. I guess I'm just not certain that I want to be reading about copies of all my favourite characters, and it's frustrating that the situation has gotten so bad that I'm starting to not care about reading the comics at all, when the MCU is giving us a much better alternative. Anyway, time will tell.

I'd generally agree with you in regards to it all being "copies." That said, I think that the authors are just following their own rules, which may or may not mesh with the rules of previous stories; by the standards of this story, the characters are not copies, despite previous stories saying otherwise. Annoying, but comics have always had these discrepancies from writer to writer. Not sure what you can do with that, but there it is.