Way of X 3 Review/Spoiler thread. The Joy of X

[Su_Whisterfield]

Way of X 3

Oh boy. Cat amongst the pigeons time!

The issue starts with two pages of Kurt getting more and more hammered and more and more embarrassing at the Gala (the Kyle/Northstar panel is my favourite “play nice, dear”). And a shot of Magneto dancing with his daughter! Oh, yes?!

We have all been there... but we haven’t really got to the bottom of why Kurt is acting like this? He’s been seen on a bender, usually with Peter or Logan, many times, but drinking beer, it’s specifically said that he’s drinking spirits here.

He wakes in the morning with an epic hangover and meets up with Doc Nemesis in the Green Lagoon, as we saw in the preview. Both Nemesis and Legion are dismissive and critical of the Mars terraforming (is it terraforming if it’s not Terra? Aresforming?). Clearly pointing out that the A-listers are above the hoi polloi. This is a Plot Point, I think.
Kurt and Dr N discuss making more mutants, Dr N bemoans that the council wont let him set up a lab to breed mutants (are you listening, Sinister?).

Skip to Pixie, Loa and Mercury.
Loa and Mercury are having dating issues involving the control of Loa’s powers.
Pixie remembers Blindfold telling her about how she and Legion were intimate inside each other’s head (side note, I love Pixie’s simple black dress with her wings and hair and butterflies) and asks Legion if he could do that for Loa and Mercury?*

*this is a bad idea...

Meanwhile, Kurt finds Stacy X handing out condoms, (good, sensible woman) which he queries, she gives him a lesson in safe sex and shows him her Bower, which are Krakoan flowers where couples can hook up for sex or just friendship. Their exchange is fantastic (“You’ll never take me alive, copper.”) and again references the non-A listers, joe mutant, running around on the island, lonely and bored.
Kurt accuses her of setting up a brothel and she belts him. Hurrah for Stacy!
She points out that religion has always been linked to sex and while Kurt sees the casual encounters as empty, she sees the need for contact and the positive side of the interaction.

Back to Legion and Loa/Mercury at the Gala.
Some dodgy consent stuff here, unlike what Stacy has going on... it is (intentionality?) creepy and you could get into all sort of issues of consent versus enabling them to achieve an intimacy they can’t accomplish physically.
Legion does his stuff, linking the young women’s minds.
(Side note, the Xorn brothers are still around. Legion says that they’re with him, another Plot Point.)
We get a psychedelic page of the psychic date, but it seems to be rather more intense than they expected. Legion and Pixie go into the link (further muddying the consent/privacy waters) and find The Patchwork Man/Onslaught feeding off their confusion and distress. It’s very uncomfortable reading, to be honest.
The link breaks and Loa and Mercury are not happy with the results. Great result for Loas’s first queer experience, guys! Pixie accuses Legion of using the women as bait for Onslaught, he doesn’t deny it. It’s all pretty nasty.
Onslaught flies off, Legion and Pixie and the Xorns in hot pursuit.
Back to Stacy’s Bower, where she also has a creche, filled with abandoned mutant babies. All the random hook ups are producing progeny, but not necessarily people to look after them (there’s a time issue here, how long has Krakoa been around? How long has ‘Make More Mutants’ be an edict?). Stacy says it isn’t babies they need, it’s for people to start caring for each other.

Looking after the abandoned babies is Lost, real name Marinette, who Stacy knows. She is happy there, comforting other lost souls (this is very touching but we’re casting the black woman as nanny?)
There is a disruption in one of the Bower’s sex pods: it’s Fabian Cortez being exactly as skeevy and gross as you would expect.
Lost, influenced by Onslaught, uses her gravity powers to beat the little weevil into the dirt. Lost and Cortez grapple, causing the roof above the babies to crack and fall. Legion, the Xorn brothers and Pixie catch up with Onslaught who beats a hasty retreat. Pixie puts Lost to sleep with her dust and the Xorn brothers dismiss Cortez.

The heroes retire to the Green Lagoon (in Stacy’s words, the procreation police, I love her!) to lick their wounds. They’re an unlikely band. Stacy is convinced that what Krakoa needs is connections between the community. Pixie, who’s seen first hand that too much connection (Loa/Mercury) is just as problematic says that some privacy must remain. They debate risk, having the guts to take chances and make changes.
Kurt is back on the gin and sporting a black eye, thanks to Stacy. We still haven’t got to the bottom of why he’s drinking so much, everyone is drinking so much.
Doctor Nemesis (with just the tiniest push from Stacy) goes up and asks Dazzler for a dance!


Phew. There was a lot going on in there.
Stacy running the Bower feels sensible and a good use of her. The crèche... not sure about the gestation period of all those babies, but it does make a plot point. Also, really not sure about mutants abandoning their children, the X-Men has always had a very strong,strand of found family and abandoning the child feels really wrong.
David/Loa/Mercury is... uncomfortable, I hope deliberately so. Pixie makes several good points of objection to the invasion of their privacy. Helping those who physically can’t engage in intimacy is a good thing and, given the nature of mutant powers, something which should be addressed. I would rather Stacy be in charge to be honest, Legion is too amoral and unstable for the task. And from an older generation. And I could go on.

Kurt is still on a downward spiral, we’re three books in and he’s still floundering, I want to see him start to come up for air. But I am liking seeing him with his new friends, Kurt is always at his best with friends around him (remember, he grew up in a circus community, then moved immediately into the Xavier Institute community, he’s never lived alone, he’s a gregarious soul).
I’m not sure I recognise this Kurt, though, who doesn’t understand sex-for-fun, as the Kurt I remember, who had baths with attractive young women at the drop of a hat, and has a long history of casual, fun encounters.

[jwatson]

Book of the week for me. Stacy was such a joy to read. And the art on the mental landscape. Yes and more. 10/10

my rankings would be
Way of X 3
Sword
Wolverine (i actually came to respect Beast.)
GOTG
X-men Legend 4

The books were all so high caliber this week.

[gonnagiveittoya]

People on Twitter don't like this for some reason but indignity a lot. Shame it's already a dead book walking

[Bgred37]

Sounds like ALOT going on here, and moving alot more unanswered and unknown factors around relationships/breeding on the island, and two ways to consider with Legion and StacyX.


Anything to share on Dazzler? Thought she was supposed to be featured here.

[wickedblender]

Dazzler gets heckled, and then hit on, by Nemesis.

I was so happy to see Stacy again, and for her to be in this 'den mother' mode is wonderful. I hope she's more than just wallpaper going forward.

[Glio]

This has been great. Kurt has good intentions, but his self-righteous demeanor needed someone to teach him the real needs of ordinary mutants.

[Proxy]

I didn’t enjoy reading this issue I’m afraid. It’s still well written and I’ll defiantly continue with the series but…this issue made me realise I’m getting tired I guess:

Rant mode:

I enjoyed Stacy and what she’s trying to do, but I found it rather sanctimonious of her to brow beat (both figuratively and literally) Kurt about how she was doing a good thing by helping people to remove inhibitions and the consequences of love and sex. Religions do it all the time you’re just tiny minded! And in the literal next panel show him the exact consequences in the form of abandoned children, because parents want the sex but none of responsibility; and then tell Kurt this is a problem I’ve just told you exists, you fix this! It is putting another problem directly onto Kurt’s shoulders since he is the only one that’s been assigned to ‘save’ the souls of the entire mutant nation.

Yet Stacy is an active participant in the problem (abandoning children without consequence), and handing out contraceptives is not managing the issue, it’s just a band-aid. Stacy says so herself: that mutants are free of STI’s, conventional relationship or family norms or consequences so what the hell is the point of contraceptives? It’s sounds like she’s handing a couple a condoms out and saying ‘Hey if you use my sex garden, could you try not having a baby and dumping it on my doorstep, k thanks!’

The love without inhibition is not a bad thing, I can completely understand Stacy’s motivations and well meaning intentions. but sex for comfort to fill a void is potentially harming as well. So I can also see Kurt’s take on ‘empty sex’. I mean, he’d probably know quite a bit about that himself.

Very against the implication that Kurt would be against enjoying sex without the purpose of making babies though. Pot, kettle Kurt. Not sure why Spurrier thinks that Kurt would be most offended by sex, as opposed to….abandoned children!

I really miss thought bubbles because I so wanted to know what was going through kurt’s head when he saw those kids. Kurt’s a foundling himself! Discarded and disposed of by a mutant mother for her own selfish gain, and now he’s seeing his people do the same to these poor babies. That had to have struck a nerve.

But he says and does nothing! Nightcrawler hasn’t done one active thing in this entire issue, he just stands there and takes it. He’s taken quite a lot actually in Way of X, everyone around him just takes the piss (usually at his religion) or tries to preach to him about how he’s wrong for not being happy on krakoa while in the same breath assuming he’s going to find a way to fix all their problems.

Kurt looks so tired, it genuinely feels like he’s about to just give up. Of course I am unfamiliar with Spurrier’s writing so this could all be leading up to a big pay off where kurt’s finally had enough and just starts wailing on people, I certainly hope so.

Rant over, what I enjoyed:

Very unusual hook up with Dazzler and Nemesis, fun but probably not going to be revisited.

The Scarlet Witch cameo, dancing/talking with Magneto while Kurt slurs about regrets.

Lost (Marinette) being an absolute angel, even though we don’t have a lot of dialogue from her, her personality shines through.

What I’m unsure about: I’m less familiar with Mercury so…..hope she and Loa get to discuss her dark murder thoughts and patch things up.

[Dthirds3]

Anyone else thing pixie is acting off ? Wearing all black is a odd choice and weren't her eyes going black ment to show the corruption in her soul was taking over ?

[Nyssane]

Was that Knockout of the Femme Fatales that Fabian was trying to dress up as Magneto for some prime pegging?

[Glio]

Anyone else thing pixie is acting off ? Wearing all black is a odd choice and weren't her eyes going black ment to show the corruption in her soul was taking over ?

It is just her her look for the Gala.

[Slicknickshady]

So it does end at what would have been issue #6 but they changed it to a one shot.

[TheRealWashout]

Stacy X is a star. I hope Spurrier gets to write more of her because she made an already great book greater.

[Leirus]

Was that Knockout of the Femme Fatales that Fabian was trying to dress up as Magneto for some prime pegging?

Kind of too buff for Frenzy, so I think so!

[Grunty]

)...)
Kurt looks so tired, it genuinely feels like he’s about to just give up. Of course I am unfamiliar with Spurrier’s writing so this could all be leading up to a big pay off where kurt’s finally had enough and just starts wailing on people, I certainly hope so.

Kurt's situation starts to make him look like a fusion of Ijob and Atlas.

I don't think Stacy is supposed to be completely right, but merely presented as a person who identified a problem and tries to adress it in her own, well meaning, but not entirely right ways. Which i think is the major focus of the story so far, not to present a resolution right away but adress that problems exist, regardless of how much people want to ignore them or believe everything to be fine, which need to be adressed.

And that's a hard pill to swallow for everyone who bought into the hype, especialy those who were willing to die for it's creation. Also just because she dresses down Kurt, doesn't mean the writer wants her to be seen as entirely right. Which includes mocking his religion.

About the writer's previous writing.
Spurrier's books are often about fantastic yet very flawed constructed worlds filled with equaly flawed people and how they find their ways in them. Though the worlds often have a certain darkness to them they don't tend to be entirely depressing so (can't say anything about his work on Crossed though as i avoid that whole series like hell).

God Shaper, The Spire, Cry Havoc, Motherland. They all introduce fantastic worlds, but are ultimately about how people just live in them.

So this whole title feels quite fitting to that. All the bio-tech, mutant powers and feeling of superiority won't help the people of Krakoa dealing with their absolute flawed human nature, especialy when they try to disregard it under the argument of not being "human".

It is just her her look for the Gala.

Or potential side effect of getting brought back while the Patchwork Man/Onslaught is active and judging by the upcomming one-shot affecting Xavier who is turn putting the minds/souls back into the new clone bodies.

So perhaps it's the result of her supconsciously knowing something is off.

[Glio]

Kurt's situation starts to make him look like a fusion of Ijob and Atlas.

I don't think Stacy is supposed to be completely right, but merely presented as a person who identified a problem and tries to adress it in her own, well meaning, but not entirely right ways. Which i think is the major focus of the story so far, not to present a resolution right away but adress that problems exist, regardless of how much people want to ignore them or believe everything to be fine, which need to be adressed.

And that's a hard pill to swallow for everyone who bought into the hype, especialy those who were willing to die for it's creation. Also just because she dresses down Kurt, doesn't mean the writer wants her to be seen as entirely right. Which includes mocking his religion.

About the writer's previous writing.
Spurrier's books are often about fantastic yet very flawed constructed worlds filled with equaly flawed people and how they find their ways in them. Though the worlds often have a certain darkness to them they don't tend to be entirely depressing so (can't say anything about his work on Crossed though as i avoid that whole series like hell).

God Shaper, The Spire, Cry Havoc, Motherland. They all introduce fantastic worlds, but are ultimately about how people just live in them.

So this whole title feels quite fitting to that. All the bio-tech, mutant powers and feeling of superiority won't help the people of Krakoa dealing with their absolute flawed human nature, especialy when they try to disregard it under the argument of not being "human".



Or potential side effect of getting brought back while the Patchwork Man/Onslaught is active and judging by the upcomming one-shot affecting Xavier who is turn putting the minds/souls back into the new clone bodies.

So perhaps it's the result of her supconsciously knowing something is off.

But most mutants don't decide their costumes, Jumbo Carnation designs them.