X-men 21 Review/Spoiler - The End of an Era...

[skyvolt2000]

People who spend money to read books? just to be disappointed because they dawdled this election for months for some ass tag marketing stunt.

This is an X-Men book. It's already assured shelf space and at least 12 issues before it sniffs below 30-50K.

We already know some folks have issue with a certain person being on the team.

I would say DC's Round RObin was more offensive because at least this roster featured folks who were former X-Men except the one folks have issues with.

[charliehustle415]

Why would it matters? unless he has access to the secrets of Krakoa. This doesnt look the case.

I think it has to do with americans that love their nationalism but look down other people nationalism.

This entire series is all about nation building, and how Krakoa is astronomically more powerful than almost every other nation state.

I mean this very issue has the Illuminati getting together.

I don't wanna get into politics on a funny book forum, but the bolded part may speak more about how you care about American nationalism

[Stormultt Divine]

Lmaoo i love how Cherik just sit idly by as Namor rants, one would think they're not gonna let him on the council anyways with such an attitude. Cant wait for that fish to eat his words and for the premiere of Planet Krakoa or Okarra?

[charliehustle415]

So, who do you think are the two figures that observe the gala from space at the end of the comic?

I'm going to guess that they are Cardinal and Rasputin based on absolutely nothing other than that one sits like Nightcrawler.

I thought it was the Xorn twins?

[Rang10]

This entire series is all about nation building, and how Krakoa is astronomically more powerful than almost every other nation state.

I mean this very issue has the Illuminati getting together.

I don't wanna get into politics on a funny book forum, but the bolded part may speak more about how you care about American nationalism

There is very little nation building going on. They don't even have a flag LOL

Me? More about how writers are afraid of having USA as anemies, so they name Brazil (LOL) and old Russia as enemies

[Rzerox21xx]

Hey did anyone notice the Claremont cameo? He was in the panel next to Rogue and Synch when Emma was doing the psychic announcement

[Havok83]

With the exception of Lorna, all of these could work as the costumes for the new team with a few adjustments

Wolverine - give her pants instead of a skirt
Jean - remove the train
Scott - adjust his visor
Sunfire - none. It looks great
Rogue - none. Perfect as is
Synch - I'd give him a solid colored trenchcoat, like red and yellow as an homage to Gen X

[numberthirty]

So, who do you think are the two figures that observe the gala from space at the end of the comic?

I'm going to guess that they are Cardinal and Rasputin based on absolutely nothing other than that one sits like Nightcrawler.

Along that line...

I did find myself thinking "Jeez, I Hope That Is Not The First Generation Of Chimera Already..."

[Grunty]

I know the telepathic election is meant to showcase the mutants as being more advanced and fair than normal humans in their elections (As another example of what seems to be a "Remember to make the mutants look really, really better than anyone else" mandate), but an election process which involves a single telepath (or small tight knit group of them) sounds like the easiest to rig system imaginable to me.

A single person is trusted with asking a massive number of people at once in silence, using super powers notorious for being used to manipulate people by invading their very minds, to pick anyone possible (only qualification seems to be that they need to be mutants) for a team to represent them as a culture/ethnicity and fight for their interest, with the end result only ever told by said single person.

How do they know the telepath isn't making the winners up? How do they know they weren't manipulated into picking them? How do they know their transmitted thoughts weren't altered to change the winners? How can they check and recount the result without digital or physical records? How do they know where the respective votes came from? How do they know who they should chose if anyone was up for election? Who are the control groups? Who are watching the watchman here? Etc. etc.

I know Jean is a super hero and shown in an absolutely earnest light here, but in concept, this is a horrible bad looking system. Because while the reader knows Jean wouldn't manipulate the whole thing, everyone who doesn't know her should be rightfully doubtfull. It's style over substance. Something to look fancy and make the mutants look impressive, but which breaks appart logicaly under scrutiny, just by being compared to election systems from across history and how many issues can be found in even those which actualy worked.

Overall, thinking about these details i begann to notice how hollow the whole election looks to me.

First there is the team itself. It's a perfectly servicable random selection of characters. It's in line with many teams formed by the writer just wanting to tell stories with them and seemingly thinking these characters work the best for what ever they have in mind and how they will be recieved by the readers.

They would make sense as typical ad-hoc assembly of characters, who get picked by a singular person gathering them for their qualifications to a situation at hand, or because they are brought together by circumstances and decide after the initital situation is resolved to stick together.

But as the result of an election involving all mutants on earth, it doesn't feel right, mostly because they don't seem to represent any major groups, in part because such groups don't exist and because the reader will never get a good look at how they were selected, by whom and for what reasons.

Which brings me to the second reason the election feels hollow to me. There is no real substance to the mutant Nation and it's culture.

We are told there are over a hundred thousand mutants on Krakoa, plus more getting printed out from the dead every day, plus now more than a million on Arrako. But in terms of groups, factions, cultures, identities and all the other elements which form an understandable and relatable nation/realm/ethnicity we are working with the same baselines of hero or villain groups who had formed around often less than a dozen characters, all dating back to X-men's classic identity as super heros.

So with more than 1.2 million people asked to vote for someone, we can only understand the possible motivation of maybe a thousand of individual characters and none of them represent anyone of the remaining 1.199.000 people as groups, because these people have not yet been established as anything but a grey soulless, identitiless mass of backround fillers and "Mutant!" shouters.

Despite the whole current direction for the franchise being seemingly focused on nation building, no one felt it was necessary to explore it's people beyond the small selection of "elevated" individuals. Instead the viewer is just constantly reminded that everyone's cool, on the same page, united (either towards Krakoa or Arrako) and the so on. Leaving little to no division between interest groups, cultures, identities and so on which need to be established in order for fictional nations to have any kind of identity which would give the reader a clue on how certain people would get certain support.

For example, if Wakanda would hold an election for prime minister, the reader would usualy either be informed or inform themself on the various interest groups and sub-divisions in the known population of the country, to understand why someone would get voted for the position.
While Wakanda has of course not started out as a fleshed out country, it became so over time as more parts were added to it and it's people, because that was necessary to make story progressions involved it understandable.

But nothing like this has really happend in the X-men comics, despite the claim of the current direction being all about it. The X-men characters and the various villains are essentialy the artist of their society, but there is no view on the metaphorical "simple people" or various factions.

And i don't consider the fact that the current direction has only lasted for a year and a half so far, to be a valid excuse, since i've read fantasy and sci-fi comics in which a rudimentary presentation of a fictional nation and it's major sub-groups and their cultures has been achieved in less than 12 issues.

Similar while the super hero nature of these comics of course forced the plots to be constantly focused on action scenarios, it could be argued that many of these titles have lacked in meaningfull action for many issues in which the plot was seemingly stretched out, when a tighter narrative could have easily allowed to establish more cultural and social identities in this new status quo, while still maintaining the action.

Basicly it feels like there was a lot of decompressed storytelling going on, when the whole current statuos quo would require to explore, detail and tighten everything together as quickly as possible in order for the "foundation" of this new fictional nation to feel solidified. Instead it's still a hole filled with wet cement.

So with all this said. Why where these characters chosen in universe? Which thousand mutants picked a "nobody" like Synch (he had a major storyline, but that didn't made him an in universe well known figure)? Who voted for Laura? Who for Sunfire? Who for Rogue? How many votes did each one get?
Maybe they each only got like 40 votes but that was enough, because others only got a single one, often their own. Which isn't a good showcase for a nation's people voting on something.

In the end the election sounds like a cute idea to validate these characters as "heros of their people", but with a lack of overall identities and ability by the reader to percieve why anyone was chosen, it makes the whole thing hollow.
And the rushed nature of the presentation also makes it arguably quite boring. Maybe they should have presented it more like the Eurovision Song Contest (i'm kidding of course).

[numberthirty]

...

How do they know the telepath isn't making the winners up? How do they know they weren't manipulated into picking them? How do they know their transmitted thoughts weren't altered to change the winners? How can they check and recount the result without digital or physical records? How do they know where the respective votes came from? How do they know who they should chose if anyone was up for election? Who are the control groups? Who are watching the watchman here? Etc. etc.

...

Easy...

Ain't no way anything even remotely like that goes down, and Sunfire comes up a winner.

[Havok83]

I know the telepathic election is meant to showcase the mutants as being more advanced and fair than normal humans in their elections (As another example of what seems to be a "Remember to make the mutants look really, really better than anyone else" mandate), but an election process which involves a single telepath (or small tight knit group of them) sounds like the easiest to rig system imaginable to me.

A single person is trusted with asking a massive number of people at once in silence, using super powers notorious for being used to manipulate people by invading their very minds, to pick anyone possible (only qualification seems to be that they need to be mutants) for a team to represent them as a culture/ethnicity and fight for their interest, with the end result only ever told by said single person.

How do they know the telepath isn't making the winners up? How do they know they weren't manipulated into picking them? How do they know their transmitted thoughts weren't altered to change the winners? How can they check and recount the result without digital or physical records? How do they know where the respective votes came from? How do they know who they should chose if anyone was up for election? Who are the control groups? Who are watching the watchman here? Etc. etc.

I think that was the point of showing that Dr. Strange and Sersi were also listening. They are unbiased outside parties that could vouch for the validity of this

Ultimately it doesnt matter though. Its a vote to be called X-men, not President of Krakoa. Most of the mutants have been called and acted in the capacity of X-men since Krakoa existed. This vote was just a formality which we've yet to see how it actually changes things besides having their own base

[Toonstrack]

Decent issue. But we are getting a LOT of teases and little actual payoff. Something has to HAPPEN at some point.

[victor borkowski]

Mixed thoughts about this issue. Namor was fun/intriguing; I would we see him interact with Emma during the Gala. Disappointed in the Franklin being human and feel like Slott messed up a story. RD's art clearly shined above the rest. The Gen X cameo/nods are long overdue and need to keep coming. I'm enjoying this more than X of Swords; 22 issues was too long. This event is a least unusual compared to most... the market and hype felt like part of the event... ala Red Carpet to the Oscars.

Also... aside from Polaris I prefer all of the new gala outfits to their new X-Men uniforms.

PLEASE let some good writer fix the Franklin Richards mess that’s come our of the current FF series. Biggest FU of an existing mutant character in awhile.

[numberthirty]

Decent issue. But we are getting a LOT of teases and little actual payoff. Something has to HAPPEN at some point.

Planet-Size X-Men #1 and S.W.O.R.D. #6 are each highlighted one week apart(S.W.O.R.D. being the final highlighted issue...)

Outside of that pair, there are probably five "Event..." issues left to come.

As for nothing happening...

Namor just told them to go kick rocks.

[OmegaStorm87]

Jean introduced the team.....but I thought Hickman and Marvel hate her?