Hmm yea, that is something I had forgotten regarding Daken. Though if someone like Mystique can still get away with anti-hero status despite her powers also somewhat infringing in that problematic territory (due to deceptive nature), I think Daken should be free to be more villainous.
If find that an understandable sentiment, it's also a subject with a lot of fine details.
One could argue that there isn't really a singular super hero genre as that there is an umberella label under which a lot of different genres are easily mixed together, as long as they posses a rought list of traits to fit under that common label.
So i agree that super hero comics don't always need to be metaphorical action packed punch by punch stories, since they can drift into the genres where this isn't necessary. However this action focus is more or less the "comfort zone" of super hero comics.
It's where weak writing can be balanced by good art and good premise, weak premise by good writing and art, or weak art by good dialoge and premise, etc. However the further we move away from this comfort zone, the more difficult it becomes for a series to succeed with it's weaknesses.
Basicly if you make a super hero comic that isn't primarily action oriented it needs to hit the marks in terms of writing, premise, characters, art, marketing and so on to succeed where other's would just need a bit of it.
As mentioned with PAD's X-factor Vol. 3.
There is PAD himself who at the time was allready a long time veteran writer, who's style and quality of writing were well known and had developed a lot of goodwill thanks to that.
He was paired with an artist who could not only bring his ideas to pannel very well, but also provided a fitting and pleasing looking style befitting the stories.
Then there was the premise which was relative easy to get into. A detective agency in an urban environment (i argue that the X-gene mutants and the whole prejudice aspect are a very urban concept) which happens to be made of veteran mutant heros who knew each other from past interactions (X-Corperation Paris).
Meaning a mixture of low level crime investigations paired with super natural powers and characters.
And then there is the aspect that the book managed to address and work the then recent Decimation and House of M storyline into itself, without distracting too much from it's basic premise mentioned above.
This all meant that the book had the benefit to be focused on interpersonal drama, outside the comfort zone of it's super hero comic roots.
Meanwhile for this X-factor series we are looking at a still fresh and relatively untested writer, working with an artist who's rough style i would argue isn't particular strong (and has a tendency to give characters unfitting comic facial expressions), using characters who had next to no previous interactions or team activity to speak of (and getting thrown together rather unorganically), in an overal status quo which is allready divisive but which the book is entirely dedicated to, all under a premise i would argue is rather difficult to sell to a casual reader (people living on a magic super island are brought back to life if they die and a random group of people decide to investigate if some of them are allready dead or not).
So a large step outside the comfort zone but without the necessary qualities to back it up. Hence why i think it might have benefited more from sticking a bit closer to it.
Though of course there is the fact that behaviour of buying and consuming comics has shifted quite a bit since PAD's X-factor Vol 3. of course.
Still as i said, it's a subject with a lot of fine details, many i likely didn't consider.
Last edited by Grunty; 05-12-2021 at 06:09 PM.
I'm remembering a Tumblr post I saw recently about someone talking to younger gens and how they didn't seem to look at pirating as an option. But maybe behaviors are different depending on the medium. And maybe lack of integration into other services plays a role. If you want to download a book, TV show or film, you can probably get it via Amazon. If you want music, you might have an iphone and apple. Getting digital comics means going through a whole separate service you never normally use unless you're really into comics. Ease of access plays a role, and maybe it's just easier to get to a pirate site than get on a digital comics site.
Regardless, I'm sure the "SJWs don't read comics" talk is bull. It's the same talk as "women don't play video games" even though women play games just as much as men and have been into them for their whole history. Just regressive types throwing their narrative out there and hoping people buy into it.
I'd also question the number of views a comic is getting on pirate sites. Is it really that high, or are they just claiming it is cause it helps their argument? If it is that high, what if it's people coming back repeatedly cause they bought physical but wanna grab digital pages for fan talk and work? What if some of them are people picking up their physical copies, or even buying their digital copies, later, but they're eager to read it now? Or on the less flattering side, how many of those views are people who would never buy the book but want to skim what it's doing in case anything relevant to them happens? There's a lot of potential explanations besides pirating. And technically speaking, if the high view numbers really are people pirating that would otherwise buy, then the question becomes more about figuring out how to make them paying customers.
Lorna can be a huge draw, but Marvel spent the past roughly half decade undermining her in that regard. And even when she was getting her origin story told or leading All-New X-Factor, Marvel had multiple missteps while not supporting or promoting the big moments at all. The closest they ever came this past decade was Lorna on Secret Wars: House of M and the various cameos, but then they threw her into limbo for 2 years and only brought her back to build up other (male) characters.
I suspect they thought the existence of Lorna's fandom and popularity via Gifted would by itself be enough to draw in a bunch of readers. That nobody really cares about what Marvel does beyond the superficial of her appearing somewhere, anywhere, in any context. Further, that if the book she appeared on was titled X-Factor, then surely they'd have oodles of 90s X-Factor fans buying the book just because of their nostalgia.
I think the outcome of the vote demonstrates there's a lot of potential readership via Lorna. But Marvel needs to prove they have enough respect for and interest in her as a character - rather than as a name and hair color - for that potential readership to make the jump to actual readership.
I believe Lorna joining the new X-Men team has a strong chance of accomplishing this. I don't think she would have won if this was not the case. Her fanbase would have simply not voted for her. The new X-Men team is a highly visible platform that heightens awareness of her while simultaneously allowing her to build her profile and dynamics with characters that no other work by any writer has made possible in decades. Fans recognized this and put enough faith and trust in Marvel doing something with it to want her to win.
That said, I disagree that X-Factor needed "star power" to sell. I think the cast could sell it just fine under the right conditions. Including (perhaps especially) without Polaris.
I can also be reached on BlueSky and Tumblr. Avatar by kahlart.
Ghosts of Genosha minicomic focused on Polaris, written by me and drawn by Fin_NoMore.
Polaris 50th anniversary minicomic written by me and drawn by Mlad!
Gallery of Polaris commissions (without NSFW or minicomics)
Mystique isn't a hero. No one takes her as hero seriously, she betrays x-men every time
I feel like people want to find excuses for them because they are LGBT
Do too much at the same time can be very overhelming, with not enough time for breath. I think that doing small arcs, like 3 issues max with enought to chew might be the best for books that we know won't sell a lot and are in danger of cancelation.
Leah let the Mojoverse plot continues instead of finished, started the Morrigan and then had to finish them in a rush. And there still things about Aurora.
Excalibur had better art and I think writing was better too. Having betsy, rogue and Gambit helped. Being on first wave too.
Last edited by Rang10; 05-12-2021 at 06:11 PM.
Oh wait, I used the wrong term. What's the parallel of anti-hero but it's like a charming villain that occasionally does good things? Anti-villain? That is Mystique. And we're not finding excuses, personally I want him to still have shades of villainy and to acknowledge he's done (and probably will continue to do so) pretty horrible stuff.
Technically someone like Sabretooth has outright spoilers:end of spoilers yet he's been on a team multiple times, gets written as anti-hero by people like CC and was on Krakora for awhile before being getting sent into the pit; so it's not just LGBT characters.
assaulted characters like Aurora, Birdy and one of Wolverine's girlfriends iirc
Daken was definitely sanitized, but he was still the most interesting character on the team. He's the only one actually pushing the Aurora plotline and had more of the big emotional moments. Eye Boy and Northstar were probably the biggest drags on the team, and Eye Boy at least did things. Northstar didn't really contribute to anything.
Since we're comparing it to the much worse but much longer Excalibur, Excalibur had a much higher tier team with the hook of Apocalypse being on it, and it was the key series for a big event. So that kept it around, and now that that event is done its been floundering even more than before.
To say it again, the book failed to fulfill its stated purpose, which was to address resurrection issues. We got that massively redacted data page early on, and then nothing to fill it in or address any of the issues we've seen.
If the author found out the series was cancelled while writing issue 9, then that means the axe must have come down really early on. Probably issue 3 or 4.
Last edited by pkingdom; 05-12-2021 at 06:23 PM.
She is just a villain. I'm not sure all this love for her is, most readers hate her. She is self serving AF
I know about but the is a villain too. e was only in one team because he was inverted to be a good person. There was Xavier giving him a second chance that ended very soon.
I relaly see more people calling out sabertooth than Mystique on the sexual assault behavior
Daken is even hard to see someone calling him out, because he is hot
Last edited by Rang10; 05-12-2021 at 06:24 PM.
Took the words out of my mouth. I'm personally fine with villainous LGBTQ+ characters (even though the deceptive bisexual trope is overdone) as long as there is also positive representation (which this book had).
Ummm Rang10 I JUST called his previous behavior out... that's how this whole conversation started.
Excalibur had a lot more potential. But the hook on Apocalypse wasn't one of them, it was the weakest part on the first half of the book and soured on some chaarcters following him. It's pretty clear the writer wanted to do a Apocalypse solo and had to put character to sell the book.
It was really bad from marel only say to her tat the book was going to get cancelled on 9t issue, at least there isa mini. That is better than many times marvel disrespects creative teams. Writers with much more baggage got much worse than her
OK, I just said it was hard to see critics to it. This is like first time, never saw anyone on twitter call out this
Last edited by Rang10; 05-12-2021 at 06:32 PM.
Didn't when this series was announced they had "big plans" for the Blob?
I think people like Mystique, maybe not so much lately when she's been written horribly for the last decade and readers are fatigued from overuse. Raven may be a villain but she's like Magneto, she can be written in a grey area, even if in the end she'll always be looking out for herself and her goals. I can see why writer's and certain fans are charmed by her despite being an antagonistic character. (see CC, Carey and her brief solo series)
No Sabretooth's technically been on the team even before being inverted. Rogue got him on the team when he was still evil, a bit she arrogantly thought nano-sentinels would control him. And as you mention, Xavier has given him chances. It doesn't matter if it's LGBT or straight, villains in general get hand-waved their crimes if the writer likes them enough. Heck the Krakoa era exemplifies this the most, there are tons of serial killers, pscyopaths and worse in this island because Xavier decided to give everyone amnesty.
I don't disagree but I don't think anyone in this thread has stated he should get a free pass just that having him be on this team and acknowledging is history is tricky.
... Actually now that I think about it, Daken and Aurora is even more of a disaster when you consider both their histories with this topic. I think Williams didn't think this pairing through enough.
Last edited by ChronoRogue; 05-12-2021 at 06:55 PM.
Sabertooth case isn't a big problem, he is on the pit for like 2 years. While mystique is looking good because she is fighting to save her wife, people are already close to forget her crimes because of it.
Xavier only gave sabertooh one chance, Rogue got called out because of the villains team that went wrong. No one takes him seriously as villians after Austen run humiliated him
I relaly think that x-men books have to stop white wash villains.
Daken and Aurora was a bad decision. I dont believe Leah know the characters stories well, she just writes how she thinks they are