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

[Kisinith]

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).

This reads like a complaint in search of an issue to complain about. There is nothing indicating that there was anything shady about the election and in fact from Sersi and Strange we have in comic confirmation that it was on the up and up.
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You are imagining problems and then condemning them for those imagined issues.

[Rang10]

From what I have read of Laura, knowing that she has any length of time with missing memories should be traumatic, given both her past and that of her father (and his experience with memory gaps). Make that missing gap be 500 years, and it might eat her alive - it would do that to many characters, but Laura worse than most.

She isn't missing 500 years. That is the flaw on the argument.

She shouldn't have any trauma, she is just fine missing some months. Any person would rather not live and remember 500 years locked on a fault, that would change completely any person nd give them the worse PTSD.

[Devaishwarya]

Sersi bringing the receipts.

[Diammandis]

lol i just imagine mutants all at once giving their cases as to why they should be on the new xmen team and then after they vote on which case resonated with them the most and went from there lol it doesn't sound shady at all, some of you guys are thinking way too hard about this

[loke13]

This reads like a complaint in search of an issue to complain about. There is nothing indicating that there was anything shady about the election and in fact from Sersi and Strange we have in comic confirmation that it was on the up and up.
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You are imagining problems and then condemning them for those imagined issues.

I love Hickman he no doubt saw these complaints coming from a mile away and had this dialogue here to prove to readers that I did no uncertain terms as was a fair and equal election.

[Kingdom X]

She isn't missing 500 years. That is the flaw on the argument.

She shouldn't have any trauma, she is just fine missing some months. Any person would rather not live and remember 500 years locked on a fault, that would change completely any person nd give them the worse PTSD.

I'm sorry, but why are you the authority on why a fictional character is fine missing some months? I'm not saying she should be riddled with trauma, but it'd be normal for her to be uneasy with the knowledge that a version of her lived this whole life that she can't remember. The only one who actually knows her emotional response to what happened is the person who is about to write her in a month.

[Rang10]

I'm sorry, but why are you the authority on why a fictional character is fine missing some months? I'm not saying she should be riddled with trauma, but it'd be normal for her to be uneasy with the knowledge that a version of her lived this whole life that she can't remember. The only one who actually knows her emotional response to what happened is the person who is about to write her in a month.

I'm not, but some months is really easy to catch up. It's awful, but short interval of time cause less stress and basically no trauma.

It's something to think about and be even not confortable, but not for a trauma. She can't remember because it was never her that lived her life. And that should be positive, I wouldn't want to live 500 years locked on a shitty place

[loke13]

She isn't missing 500 years. That is the flaw on the argument.

She shouldn't have any trauma, she is just fine missing some months. Any person would rather not live and remember 500 years locked on a fault, that would change completely any person nd give them the worse PTSD.

Wow I actually agree with you. Everyone who has gone through Resurrection has missing memories and no one seemed to be having any sort of existential crisis over it so I can imagine Laura Wolverine of all people would.

[Rang10]

Wow I actually agree with you. Everyone who has gone through Resurrection has missing memories and no one seemed to be having any sort of existential crisis over it so I can imagine Laura Wolverine of all people would.

No one is questioning ressurrection, people are even dying casually on missions just to get ressurrected. If she has some doubts some conversations will undo any doubt she may have about ressurrections.

[Havok83]

Wow I actually agree with you. Everyone who has gone through Resurrection has missing memories and no one seemed to be having any sort of existential crisis over it so I can imagine Laura Wolverine of all people would.

No one has lost as large a chunk of time as Laura. Most people have missed maybe a few days at most

[Ambaryerno]

No one is questioning ressurrection, people are even dying casually on missions just to get ressurrected. If she has some doubts some conversations will undo any doubt she may have about ressurrections.

Except we've seen since her first appearance that Laura has never been good at opening up about what she's feeling, so I can see her NOT talking about it, internalizing things, and making it worse.

The fact other characters have died and resurrected without questioning who they are when they come out of the pod is frankly a failure by the writers and just another problem with the entire setup. But given Laura has a history of being uncertain of her identity because of her origins and poor sense of self, it would make sense for her to struggle with the idea of having lived a life, died, and been brought back again.

No one has lost as large a chunk of time as Laura. Most people have missed maybe a few days at most

I think it's less the length of time in of itself as it is that it happened at all.

[Agatha's Ghost]

What a terrible character. I hope she is traumatized.

[Agatha's Ghost]

What were her reasons for becoming an X-Man — that she’s the second best there is at what she does?

[BroHomo]

I think it's less the length of time in of itself as it is that it happened at all.

oh what do they think.the other X-Men fvcked with their bodies??? You remember every waking moment of your life??

[lefthanded]

Not sure I understand the fixation on the 'trauma' Laura should be experiencing. By that logic, Moira has a lot more trauma to deal with, and she does still have memories from all those years.

Most comic book characters have a ridiculous amount of trauma they should be dealing with if principles of our reality are applied.

It's fine if a writer chooses not to focus on comic book trauma, just as it is fine if a writer does focus it.