What do you think of Hickmans X-Men so far, still Interested or Not ??

[Houseofhick]

You know how some insects can inject something into you where you don't feel the sting or them sucking your blood? I wonder if Krakoa does the same thing. It drains peoples live energy and gives them the subliminal message "Krakoa is a great place to live! You love everything about the place! Nothing wrong every happens here!"



I'm willing to accept that for the purpose of a particular story, when a character dies, they're dead. It's going to mean something and everyone is going to treat it like a big deal, even if later it gets changed.

What they're doing right now though doesn't even give you that. "Death" has basically just become a penalty box. You died? Well, you just have to sit the rest of this mission out and we'll fix you later.

Everyone will have their own opinion on this but DPS was the one story they never should of changed. When Jean came back, you just knew no one would ever stay dead in the world of comics. I would rather know they will be back than be told it wasn't really Magneto who had his head cut off.

[king of hybrids]

I have always felt uncomfortable with Magneto being one of the X-Men so didn't have an opinion either way.

Magneto at least has 30+ years of going back and forth, Apocalypse was a genocidal mad man with a pop-culture approach to eugenics up until right before HoXPoX, and is now considered the X-Men’s eccentric uncle whose genocidal actions across millennia are right and proper

[sunofdarkchild]

Everyone will have their own opinion on this but DPS was the one story they never should of changed. When Jean came back, you just knew no one would ever stay dead in the world of comics. I would rather know they will be back than be told it wasn't really Magneto who had his head cut off.

I agree 100%. Before Jean, when a character died they stayed dead. Gwen Stacey stayed dead. Captain Marvel stayed dead. Norman Osborn stayed dead. Thunderbird stayed dead. Jean's return not only messed up DPS by making it not about Jean and turned Cyclops into a man who ran out on his wife and newborn baby, but it was a turning point for the entire industry in making death into a revolving door. So much of what has gone wrong in comics for the last 25 years I blame on the decision to bring Jean back.

[Rang10]

I agree 100%. Before Jean, when a character died they stayed dead. Gwen Stacey stayed dead. Captain Marvel stayed dead. Norman Osborn stayed dead. Thunderbird stayed dead. Jean's return not only messed up DPS by making it not about Jean and turned Cyclops into a man who ran out on his wife and newborn baby, but it was a turning point for the entire industry in making death into a revolving door. So much of what has gone wrong in comics for the last 25 years I blame on the decision to bring Jean back.

Of course it was all Jean's fault

not the cyclical nature of superhero comics.

[Grunty]

I'm willing to accept that for the purpose of a particular story, when a character dies, they're dead. It's going to mean something and everyone is going to treat it like a big deal, even if later it gets changed.

What they're doing right now though doesn't even give you that. "Death" has basically just become a penalty box. You died? Well, you just have to sit the rest of this mission out and we'll fix you later.

While i can understand where people are comming from when they point out that death has kind of become a joke among super hero characters anyway, simply for how often it's reversed or they come back from it, i argue it was still meant to be something serious in universe and something for a character to avoid by any means necessary, in order to maintain drama and tension.

Because even though it has been possible by various means for a long time, it shouldn't be easy or relied upon by characters, so that it feels like there are still stakes attached to their various daring fights and adventures.

Or to compare it to wrestling.
Almost everyone knows that the outcome of matches in showman wrestling are predeterminded and that the stories are fake (the athletic action and wear on the body is real though), so in theory storylines, dialoge and character interactions shouldn't matter.
But for most fans they absolutely do, because these people still like the idea of stories being part of some fictional universe in which these things are supposed to be real, so they still want those stories and characterizations to happen and have a level of quality.
Same goes for the fights themselves, where even when it's completely clear who is going to win or loss, the audience still want them to struggle for or against it, in order for the victories to feel "earned" or the defeats to have involved struggle

And i feel the same goes for death and resurrection in comics.

That there is an unwritten rule that even if characters had the means to cheat death, they shouldn't rely on it in order to maintain the tension of the story in universe. For which writers would then, if necessary, come up with various reasons.
Like clone decay, mind transfer issues, soul recovery problems, loss of identity, inviting super natural forces to posses someone and so on.

With the only characters who have an easy way to come back from the dead either suffering from it (the heroic kind ala Mister Immortal) or being villains for whom all the negative side effects don't matter anyway (or play into their character).

And here this rule is broken, with seemingly no consequences and writers have switched to abusing it, just because they can or have to. With the result being that where once characters had to struggle not to die, they just casualy dismiss the consequences and stakes become softer.

However i have to admit, that there is still some benefit of a doubt to give about it.
That it's likely there is going to be a bill comming for it eventualy. That there are downsides that will come to haunt and break the system appart and establish why it can never be relied upon again.

Way of X seems like it could lay the foundation to how will eventualy break appart for example.

But if it sticks i think it's setting a bad precedent and weakens characters and stories in the long run.

[sunofdarkchild]

Of course it was all Jean's fault

not the cyclical nature of superhero comics.

But as I pointed out, comics weren't cyclical before Jean came back. Characters stayed dead. Spider-Man graduated high-school and college. The original X-Men grew up and left for different teams or careers. Sue and Reed got married and had a kid and Vision and the Scarlett Witch got married. Villains who joined the Avengers or the X-Men like Hawkeye and Rogue stayed heroes. It was X-Factor that started the trend of things going back to the way they were before instead of moving forward, with the 05 reuniting and even bringing back the Scott-Jean-Warren love triangle. It was X-Factor that started the trend of comics having no respect for older stories, and it was X-Factor that started the trend of bringing dead characters back.

[Houseofhick]

Magneto at least has 30+ years of going back and forth, Apocalypse was a genocidal mad man with a pop-culture approach to eugenics up until right before HoXPoX, and is now considered the X-Men’s eccentric uncle whose genocidal actions across millennia are right and proper

When you go back and look at some of things Magneto as done or could of gone on to to if he hadn't of been stopped then you begin to question where you draw the line. You even begin to wonder where THEY draw the line when Sinister runs around with his own team.

[Sutekh]

Of course it was all Jean's fault

not the cyclical nature of superhero comics.

Jean's as much, or more, of a victim of the decision to bring her back as anyone. She had this EPIC heroic choice at the end of her life to sacrifice herself to save the people she loved, and it was taken away from her. Nope. Not her choice at all. Just something pretending to be her being all dramatic since death is utterly meaningless to it, and Jean's big heroic moment is now it's (kinda pointless and temporary) decision, while Jean was sleeping in a pod at the bottom of Jamaica Bay. She was utterly stripped of agency and turned into a passive victim of the Phoenix entity in *her own damn story.*

The blame doesn't lie on Jean. Nor does it lie on the Phoenix Force, a fictional construct. It lies on the writers who chose to bring her back for the conceit of 'getting the old band back together' for X-Factor, even if that meant dragging Warren and Bobby backwards in character development, and demutating Hank so that he looked like his old self, and having Scott abandon his wife and kid because they didn't fit the old nostalgic format they were going for.

[cranger]

Jean's as much, or more, of a victim of the decision to bring her back as anyone. She had this EPIC heroic choice at the end of her life to sacrifice herself to save the people she loved, and it was taken away from her. Nope. Not her choice at all. Just something pretending to be her being all dramatic since death is utterly meaningless to it, and Jean's big heroic moment is now it's (kinda pointless and temporary) decision, while Jean was sleeping in a pod at the bottom of Jamaica Bay. She was utterly stripped of agency and turned into a passive victim of the Phoenix entity in *her own damn story.*

The blame doesn't lie on Jean. Nor does it lie on the Phoenix Force, a fictional construct. It lies on the writers who chose to bring her back for the conceit of 'getting the old band back together' for X-Factor, even if that meant dragging Warren and Bobby backwards in character development, and demutating Hank so that he looked like his old self, and having Scott abandon his wife and kid because they didn't fit the old nostalgic format they were going for.

And yet it resulted in one of the best runs of X books ever. Such a travesty.

[Grinning Soul]

Before Jean's death, characters would die and come back. The writers would just pull a "oh, you thought this character had died? No, it turns out they were just pretending or a shapeshifter had taken their form" or some other BS like that.

No matter how you choose to see that character who died on the Moon - if it was the Phoenix copying Jean's body/mind/personality/memories or actually Jean (which you could infer from what happens in Inferno and it makes more sense when consider everything that happpened in DPS) - that character decided to die because Jean would have decided the same. So it's her choice.

I mean, if you buy the resurection protocols, why is it so hard to see Jean in the cocoon as an earlier backup and the Jean who died in the Moon as Jean?

[Zelena]

Of course it was all Jean's fault

not the cyclical nature of superhero comics.

Technically, sunofdarkchild said he blamed on the decision to ressurect Jean, not Jean herself… (which would be ridiculous)

[Agent Grayson]

I'm just over halfway through X of Swords and man...it's a mess. It's really draining the goodwill I had towards this run.

[Zelena]

I agree 100%. Before Jean, when a character died they stayed dead. Gwen Stacey stayed dead. Captain Marvel stayed dead. Norman Osborn stayed dead. Thunderbird stayed dead. Jean's return not only messed up DPS by making it not about Jean and turned Cyclops into a man who ran out on his wife and newborn baby, but it was a turning point for the entire industry in making death into a revolving door. So much of what has gone wrong in comics for the last 25 years I blame on the decision to bring Jean back.

It’s very different to “kill a character” and not be sure he/she will come back and saying “oh, death is pointless, it’s just a bad time to spend, wait a moment, you will be as good as new”.

The force of X-men’s stories for all the marvel and the creativity is that they were rooted in the reality. It seems to happen very far, now.

[johnnysv75]

I'm just over halfway through X of Swords and man...it's a mess. It's really draining the goodwill I had towards this run.

X of Swords is horrible. And the X-Men issues leading up to it, where they talk and talk and talk in order to explain the Arrako mythology we have to know to get X of Swords, is just as bad.

[Hizashi]

I'm not even at XoS yet and can't really see myself catching up any time soon. Shame really because HoXPoX got me back into the X-Men

I need to find time, I've got overtime work and school. My metric on if a comic is really good is that I read it immediately instead of putting it off, and unfortunately the X-Books haven't met that standard in a while.