Originally Posted by
Grunty
I can't help but feel i'm watching the story of Icarus here. Only we spend the previous 50 years watching the story of Daedalus and his son's various adventures and the last 20 years were just a chain of horrible depressing events involving them.
Only now it was even retconned in that Daedalus lived 8 previous lives and in each he killed Icarus in some other way by his hubris.
So now we are the point where Icarus is soaring above the clouds, seeing how small the world beneath him is, the sky so open and glorious above him and Deadalus is totaly sure that having replaced the wax with some secret super glue is sure to have the desired effect.
But we know the story can't end with Icarus staying in the air forever and Daedalus needs to still needs to struggle until the company writing his story closes down, so Icarus has to come crashing down and now it's just the guessing game what will ultimately burn the wings.
I find it darkly ironic that the narrative structure of this super hero universe, which has given the mutants all this suffering in the past and which is now used to justify their actions, mentality and perspective, is also what will ultimately doom this moment of glory and prevent anything of this "earth shattering greatness" like the terraformed mars, the super island and the unity of mutants under one (badly detailed) banner from remaining for long.
Because this comic is not allowed to have an end point. There is no true victory achievable here, as the nature of this universe requires that 10 years from now the heros need to still live in a world forced to reflect our own, because the narrative is required to allow readers to relate to the "common man" of this universe who goes to school (kids and teens) or does their 9/5 job (adults) and sees reports of catastrophies, conflict and crime on the news that they might wish there could be these stand up individuals of power and moral who oppose these injustices in the real world too.
Therefor it is not a universe which allows an utopic future based on these current events. No world ruled by benevolent super powered overlords, no world of technology and magic that solves all needs (at least not for the common man) and not a world were everyone has super powers themself (as that would make the various heros redundant).
A situation which the X-men and mutants would only ever be allowed to escape from if they would live in their own universe cut-off from the rest of the marvel properties (see My Hero Academia for how such a world could look like) and allowed to have a victorious end, but which in turn would have not created this continuity where a new writer with little respect for the franchise decided to casualy kill of 16 million mutants for a cheap shock moment, an editor in chief felt the need to reduce the mutant population to 198 all of a sudden because mutants became "too common" and overshadow the other marvel heros, or where the head of the company felt they need to replace mutants with inhumans because of movie rights (and much more).
Which in turn are the foundation for justifying this current depiction of the "heros" and why the mutants suddently have all these benefits the writer snapped into existence.
So in a way it's a catch 22 situation. All of this would only have a happy ending if it was allowed to end at some point and stood on it's own. But the reason this story is happening at all is because it's not standing on it's own and it's not allowed to have a happy ending.
After all the apathy inducing darkness Morrison kicked off (and which in my opinion should finaly been burried rather than be taken as standard for how the X-men should be written heading forward), i would have wished for the mutants and X-men to finaly have at least some 20 good years ahead of them now. Years were things are looking brighter for the mutants and where slowly but steadily the overall situation improves through all the hardship they might still face. A sustainable improvement compared to everything since House of M, which wouldn't cause the all might status quo to roar it's ugly head and break everything down again to fit in line.
Just like how in the real world there are steady improvements, even if the world at large remains bleak.
But this isn't a steady improvement or sustainable direction in my opinion, this is a massive sudden expansion which will just blow up and leave behind even more damage. Because as detailed above, there is no victory achievable here and sooner or later it all has to fit into the old box again and the bigger it has become the more it needs to be broken down.
After all, with the mutants being able to casualy terraform a planet, how are big purple robots and hate mongers with lead pipes supppsed to feel like a worthy problem for them anymore?
As far as i can see it the answer is, not really. There doesn't seem to be anything at stake here, because the writers seem so focused on making the mutants look strong, powerfull, ahead of everyone else and better, that nothing feels like being a danger to them anymore.
Heck they now have a respawn system in place and it normalizes dying for the heros to the point of comedy.
This current direction does not have any memorable or stand out villains. Everyone either feels laughable weak or meaningless or if they can overpower the heros like the grannies did, it feels contrived. So there are no stakes, no real danger nothing interesting going on but just another "look how awesome they are now". Which again is not a sustainable direction as far as i'm concerned.
In turn, this would mean that eventualy all of this current situation has to turn out to be "wrong" in some way, regardless of how much the writers want to convince the reader that it's "right".
Something needs to throw a wrench into all of this, not only to break it down but also explain why it can't just been done again afterwards.
So it's no suprise some are trying to see or argue where the "wrong" is, something which is at times difficult because it's not always clear where a writer is sincere with showing cracks or does so unintentional because they didn't notice how badly they depict the heros.