If you start arguing "why is this character doing this and not another" is like saying "Why in New York does Spider-man have to stop this villain and not Daredevil, Luke Cage or another of the literally hundreds of heroes of the city"?.
If you start arguing "why is this character doing this and not another" is like saying "Why in New York does Spider-man have to stop this villain and not Daredevil, Luke Cage or another of the literally hundreds of heroes of the city"?.
It depends. When X-Men Gold started I was demanding to know why Illyana was leaving the team the exact moment her best friend was joining it. It wasn't a powers thing. It was questioning why she wasn't with her brother and Kitty, the two people she loves most. When it came to the suicide mission in House of X, I had no such questions because even though it would have made sense for Xavier and Magneto to send someone who could cast cloaking spells and teleport interstellar distances on that mission, it wouldn't have fit with the story they were trying to tell.
Regarding the mission in HoX, one has to keep in mind they were in an urgent one, so who knows how long Cyclops had to recruit people. But yeah, it was obvious Hickman wanted everyone to die.
Yeah, they had dozens of better options. Beast or Sage or Forge could do some math in their heads, point Havok or Cyclops in the right direction and just blow Orchis out of space from Earth, if they really wanted. It's not like either of them have a real limit on how much zap they can throw... Use Exodus as the teleporter, and have him deliver a strike team of Magneto, Proteus and Vulcan, or something. Bam, station destroyed! Ilyanna steps to the station and opens a portal to hell and floods it with demons. Warlock touches it, infests it with TOvirus and takes it over. Scanner flies over all intangible at light speed and fries everyone's brains, *and* all the machines!
Really, there's just far too many options!
And the question is, was it *Hickman* that wanted everyone to die, or was it Moira, or Xavier, who needed them to get resurrection protocolled so that their minds would get reset to the new 'get onboard with Krakoa' paradigm? Let's just cherry pick a strike team of mutants who'd be most likely to have ethical qualms about what we're doing, are best positioned to motivate others to question what we're doing, etc. and just rewrite their brains.
Last edited by Sutekh; 12-02-2020 at 02:30 PM.
the space station wasnt massive. We saw small quarters and even if we hadnt, the X-men didnt know what the layout of the thing was before they went out there. He seemed like a poor choice as his strength is recon and large open spaces to be the most effective. Being on a space station works against him, especially since they anticipated that it would be heavily guarded. He and Husk as choices for that mission always seemed puzzling. Polaris would have made more sense and we knew she was available. Even on that mission, it didnt make sense to send Kurt in first for recon (especially since he was not stealthy and alerted Orchis to their presence) when they had Jean whom could have scanned the station and allowed them to get in without the unneesary casualties and damages caused. The issues were a fun read but there were choices made that didnt make sense for the characters
Why do people still feel this? All those characters were already on board for Krakoa. Had they not been, they wouldnt have been there. There wasnt an in story reason for why the charaters had to die. This was merely a plot point for Hickman to explain the resurrection process in a dramatic way and it fufilled that purpose. If Xavier wanted to rewrite their brains, he doesnt need to kill them and go through this unnecesarily complicated process of resurrecting them to do so. We've seen him wipe away memories and brainwash people and its of little effort to him
Last edited by Havok83; 12-02-2020 at 02:48 PM.
I had mixed feelings about X of Swords. I mostly agreed with the takes on here and elsewhere that the tonal shifts and pacing throughout did not make it a particularly enthralling read. Frustrating at times. And the world building here is admirable, but it really gets dull if it's mostly the data pages that fill you in.
Much like Tini's Excalibur, there were multiple points during the event where it felt like we'd missed key scenes, dialogue or other plot points page to page or issue to issue. Very..odd story-telling. I do look forward to a reread though. The high points were really high.
I’m not going to argue the size of the station with you, all I will say is go back and look at the list of how many people it housed, and then look at the scale of Wolverine v Mothermold and then realize the station was large enough to hold Mothermold. Massive is the correct term. Again, it wasn’t a stealth mission as the X-Men were seen coming before they landed. Kurt didn’t alert anyone to anything as they knew they were coming. Kurt doing recon does makes sense because Jean and Monet were running comms to earth for the mission, she was teaming with M during recon to hold open comms. Even at the end of the mission it is explicitly stated that Jean can barely keep the link by herself so there is no logical way to say she could do that and scan the station to find the releases for Mothermold. Let’s not forget that Orchis blew up the X-Men’s ship so they have to breach and odds are there will be some casualties because they then need to find a way off the station. Saying Polaris should have replaced Angel is a valid argument, but it’s pointless because she would’ve been dead before the action anyway just like Angel was.
If even Jean and Monet together, the two most powerful members on the team and some of the most powerful X-men, couldn't prevent the team from all dying then Polaris thrown in the mix isn't going to make much difference. The goal of the mission wasn't stealth, it was to stop the mother mold from coming online, which they succeeded. The mission was high risk and they all knew there was a strong possibility of dying when they agreed. They were facing an entire army of nimrods and sentinels, quite literally David against Goliath. Lorna on the team wouldn't have changed the outcome, she would have been just another dead body.
My theory/headcanon is that they wanted some high profile X-Men to die to showcase the resurrection protocols.
I'm all for Solem being a thorn in Logan's side but I'd like more explanation of his actual mutation, if he was born in adamantium skin then his inner cells must have some sort of longevity ability, maybe not regenerative (explains why he was impressed by Logan being unkillable) but he must have some superpower to go along with the skin.Or maybe his skin could mimick the texture and strength of any surface but he chose to permanently copy adamantium.Or maybe he was augmented in crooked market for a price...Intriguing character regardless