Way of X issue 4. Kill no man. SPOILERS!

[Frobisher]

Is this the thread for bad takes? ;-)

[Proxy]

So my take:

-Really get tired of kurt being on the backfood of all these problem. At the very least he makes a thrid option to Fabian's bullcrap and reminds us that the guy is a wimp.

-Soorya's grumbling about the volcanoes and such just feels like its trying to find something to complain about. Hopefully she has a more substantial appearance before the end.

-Charles Xavier does have empathy. He like any other man, is flawed and prone to self destructive pride. I get that David has many reasons to say this, as others, but its not true.

-Also Fabian's little test is stupid. Isn't there someone in charge of recently messed up resurrections? How was he able to just stroll out with Gorgon?! A former Captain General?

-I did like Lost's story and the implications of it all. And the mention of Sabertooth's imprisonment. I don't care about Sabertooth but the mutants, especially those still evil, should really be thinking about it.

-USing a seed and building a place to ward off Onslaught? Good call. Guess it needed the seed to happen and Charles was reluctant to hand one over. I don't know much about actual Zorn and Xorn so would them hanging around David to kill him if needed in character?

So 3/5. Not bad but not good.

For me this is the worst x-book i read this era hands down.

-somehow legion is the only righteous one here because he has the two xorns ready to take his head off when he steps out of line. "puleahse" if that was the case they would have taken it off when he came up with the idea to send onslaught to a planet inhabitting millions of mutants. A planet he just basically sent lost to because though krakoa is for all mutants, not all mutants like throwing up.

-David kills everybody, everybody in this book with the help of Xorn but hold on they are the good guys because the writers said they are. You will not recognize a single character in this book from this era, or any era they were in because they are written to fit exactly whatever the plot wants.

-Nightcrawler goes from looking like a jerk, exiling Lost through the rejects gate, to looking boredline evil as he watches what he doesn't know is a pretending gorgon in a scene that looks like he is being stoned. To looking like a absolute FOOL when he is joisting around and falls into some icecream as though he was back at the circus. To utterly incompetent as he finds out goron and Cortez no less were teaching him a lesson.

If you want stories that make no sense. Pocket continuity that ignores what happened just issues before. And pretentious characters who make everyone else look uttely incomeptent then look no futher than Way of X#4.

Oh and you know how this book gives no one the benefit of the doubt, well we are suppose to assume that legion and the xorn bros are in the right and the only ones seemingly not affected by onslaught.

And those are just a few of the problems here. I didn't even go over the terraforming thing. 1/10 from me. I wish i had a physical copy so it could find it's Way to the Trash Can.

Edit: After reading above he says every devil needs a temple so i assume he is creating a place for onslaught not to keep him out.

Agreeing with these takes and because I have no sense of self-preservation I read the book.

I don’t know if Way of X #3 just left a bad taste behind or if Spurrier’s writing style is not for me but I found this issue to be….not good, but I’m less angry about it?
Better than 3 but not as good as 1 & 2.

What I liked:

Getting to hear more from Lost.
The brief conversation between Legion and Xavier.
Dust’s powers look really impressive and continue to be displayed as background pieces while some of the stories going on, good job Bob!
Fabian Cortez being Fabian Cortez

What I did not like:

Am I to assume that Lost has been fired from her Nanny job and exiled to mars for not being able to control her powers when under onslaughts influence, triggered by whatever beef she has with Cortez. That does not seem fair. What message is Spurrier going for here? Was punish the innocent the message…..cause that’s what happened.

Spurrier either doesn’t know Nightcrawler as a character or he is completely indifferent to him. Kurt is sometimes sort of in character if you squint, but other times he’s just so off that it’s jarring! I agree with Jwatson that the characters are more often than not, unrecognizable and are written to fit the plot.

For example, the ice cream scene. On one hand, I could say Kurt is in character to clown around and ham it up for an audience. And his decision to ‘make em laugh’ does display his empathy and intelligence in this situation. On the other hand we have Gorgon, who is not in his right mind thanks to the botched resurrection and Fabian has lured him into a public human space. Kurt defuses the situation from hostile to jovial, all good so far. But he then proceeds to LEAVE Gorgan with the humans who just proved their attitudes can turn on a dime! Nightcrawler, go back for Gorgan or at least get someone to escort him back to krakoa for his and the humans own safety! I know that handing out ice cream to kids scene was supposed to be cute but Kurt just left him with what I assume to be a very pissed of ice cream man with a bill that needs settling.

Personal preference:
As I said, the clowning around is fine, but I would have preferred to have seen Kurt do something more indicative to his more well known circus talents (tumbling, acrobatics etc) just because we haven’t seen him do acrobatics in ages!

Also it’s probably best Spurrier is taking a break from twitter, I can’t imagine the mob is going to be happy about Kurt surprising a trauma victim (Lost) with her aggressor for a ‘meaningful conversation’. Especially when this is expanded upon in issue 5.


Spurriers style:

I’m sticking to the format I predicted:

A mutant shows up to lecture Nightcrawler about morality and everything the higher ups are doing wrong:
I’ve talked about Dust at length before so I’ll skip over that, but Fabian does it too. Although Fabian doing it is more forgivable because he’s awful and the audience are meant to be irritated by him. So in this case, I found Fabian okay, Dust wasn’t.

Obligatory jab at kurt being religious:
Spurrier REALLY ramped this up in book #4. Kurt talked directly to 4 people in this book (Legion, Fabian, Dust and Lost) and three out of those four made jabs, and kurt never instigates the remarks. He doesn’t talk about religion first, everyone around him does. It’s almost as if that’s all they know about him I know the books have already been written, the ship of change has sailed but I get it spurrier, you feel some type of way about religion, enough already, please!

Nightcrawler remains passive and ineffectual to the plot:
Kurt doesn’t contribute to the overall plot here, but I will say he is more active at least, and it could be leading to him being an active protagonist in book #5. (I live in hope).

Legion plays the active role to move the plot forward because it’s his book:
I think it’s pretty self explanatory. Legion is becoming more and more pretentious and morally superior.
Also a bit hypocritical to harp on about religion and then have Legion making a temple? (I’m really not sure what he’s doing with this temple thing, is he creating one, or is he the temple itself? I assume he can do that?).

Pixie and Dr Nemisis are there:
As cannon fodder this time. Pixies got a second death under her belt I guess.

I have no self control so I’ll probably still read it…..whether I support it anymore, well it’s still a no from me.

[jwatson]

Agreeing with these takes and because I have no sense of self-preservation I read the book.

I don’t know if Way of X #3 just left a bad taste behind or if Spurrier’s writing style is not for me but I found this issue to be….not good, but I’m less angry about it?
Better than 3 but not as good as 1 & 2.

What I liked:

Getting to hear more from Lost.
The brief conversation between Legion and Xavier.
Dust’s powers look really impressive and continue to be displayed as background pieces while some of the stories going on, good job Bob!
Fabian Cortez being Fabian Cortez

What I did not like:

Am I to assume that Lost has been fired from her Nanny job and exiled to mars for not being able to control her powers when under onslaughts influence, triggered by whatever beef she has with Cortez. That does not seem fair. What message is Spurrier going for here? Was punish the innocent the message…..cause that’s what happened.

Spurrier either doesn’t know Nightcrawler as a character or he is completely indifferent to him. Kurt is sometimes sort of in character if you squint, but other times he’s just so off that it’s jarring! I agree with Jwatson that the characters are more often than not, unrecognizable and are written to fit the plot.

For example, the ice cream scene. On one hand, I could say Kurt is in character to clown around and ham it up for an audience. And his decision to ‘make em laugh’ does display his empathy and intelligence in this situation. On the other hand we have Gorgon, who is not in his right mind thanks to the botched resurrection and Fabian has lured him into a public human space. Kurt defuses the situation from hostile to jovial, all good so far. But he then proceeds to LEAVE Gorgan with the humans who just proved their attitudes can turn on a dime! Nightcrawler, go back for Gorgan or at least get someone to escort him back to krakoa for his and the humans own safety! I know that handing out ice cream to kids scene was supposed to be cute but Kurt just left him with what I assume to be a very pissed of ice cream man with a bill that needs settling.

Personal preference:
As I said, the clowning around is fine, but I would have preferred to have seen Kurt do something more indicative to his more well known circus talents (tumbling, acrobatics etc) just because we haven’t seen him do acrobatics in ages!

Also it’s probably best Spurrier is taking a break from twitter, I can’t imagine the mob is going to be happy about Kurt surprising a trauma victim (Lost) with her aggressor for a ‘meaningful conversation’. Especially when this is expanded upon in issue 5.


Spurriers style:

I’m sticking to the format I predicted:

A mutant shows up to lecture Nightcrawler about morality and everything the higher ups are doing wrong:
I’ve talked about Dust at length before so I’ll skip over that, but Fabian does it too. Although Fabian doing it is more forgivable because he’s awful and the audience are meant to be irritated by him. So in this case, I found Fabian okay, Dust wasn’t.

Obligatory jab at kurt being religious:
Spurrier REALLY ramped this up in book #4. Kurt talked directly to 4 people in this book (Legion, Fabian, Dust and Lost) and three out of those four made jabs, and kurt never instigates the remarks. He doesn’t talk about religion first, everyone around him does. It’s almost as if that’s all they know about him I know the books have already been written, the ship of change has sailed but I get it spurrier, you feel some type of way about religion, enough already, please!

Nightcrawler remains passive and ineffectual to the plot:
Kurt doesn’t contribute to the overall plot here, but I will say he is more active at least, and it could be leading to him being an active protagonist in book #5. (I live in hope).

Legion plays the active role to move the plot forward because it’s his book:
I think it’s pretty self explanatory. Legion is becoming more and more pretentious and morally superior.
Also a bit hypocritical to harp on about religion and then have Legion making a temple? (I’m really not sure what he’s doing with this temple thing, is he creating one, or is he the temple itself? I assume he can do that?).

Pixie and Dr Nemisis are there:
As cannon fodder this time. Pixies got a second death under her belt I guess.

I have no self control so I’ll probably still read it…..whether I support it anymore, well it’s still a no from me.

Exactly my problem with the lost scene. Also somehow david should just be believed. None of this started happening until he showed up but somehow he is the only solution and we should believe it because if he was wrong xorn and zorn will take care of it. This is night and day from the david that was just in his last appearance written by Spurrier or the one that was written anywhere else.

And imagine how she must have felt being ostrichized and told you have to walk through the "outcast" gate. Not even to the city, they left her outside on some blanket with absolutely no protection, no backup from potential emerging wildlife. Nothing.

[Leirus]

For me this is the worst x-book i read this era hands down.

-somehow legion is the only righteous one here because he has the two xorns ready to take his head off when he steps out of line. "puleahse" if that was the case they would have taken it off when he came up with the idea to send onslaught to a planet inhabitting millions of mutants. A planet he just basically sent lost to because though krakoa is for all mutants, not all mutants like throwing up.

-David kills everybody, everybody in this book with the help of Xorn but hold on they are the good guys because the writers said they are. You will not recognize a single character in this book from this era, or any era they were in because they are written to fit exactly whatever the plot wants.

-Nightcrawler goes from looking like a jerk, exiling Lost through the rejects gate, to looking boredline evil as he watches what he doesn't know is a pretending gorgon in a scene that looks like he is being stoned. To looking like a absolute FOOL when he is joisting around and falls into some icecream as though he was back at the circus. To utterly incompetent as he finds out goron and Cortez no less were teaching him a lesson.

If you want stories that make no sense. Pocket continuity that ignores what happened just issues before. And pretentious characters who make everyone else look uttely incomeptent then look no futher than Way of X#4.

Oh and you know how this book gives no one the benefit of the doubt, well we are suppose to assume that legion and the xorn bros are in the right and the only ones seemingly not affected by onslaught.

And those are just a few of the problems here. I didn't even go over the terraforming thing. 1/10 from me. I wish i had a physical copy so it could find it's Way to the Trash Can.

Edit: After reading above he says every devil needs a temple so i assume he is creating a place for onslaught not to keep him out.

I do not think you quite got the Gorgon thing? Gorgon was not pretending, he came back with the mind of a child. Cortez was amping up his telepathy, so he was overwhelmed by the public. Nightcrawler was looking like a fool on purpose, to make the people laugh and make them think happy thoughts. That way Gorgon was not overwhelmed anymore so he could cover his eyes... He saved the day there.

[jwatson]

I do not think you quite got the Gorgon thing? Gorgon was not pretending, he came back with the mind of a child. Cortez was amping up his telepathy, so he was overwhelmed by the public. Nightcrawler was looking like a fool on purpose, to make the people laugh and make them think happy thoughts. That way Gorgon was not overwhelmed anymore so he could cover his eyes... He saved the day there.

I can give you that but even then why wait so long. Why just watch? Why not teleport him out of there. It just for me, doesn't make any sense. Nightcrawler came off like some noob. Maybe it was just me, it was hard to see him on the ground like that and kurt essentially having a conversation with Cortez.

[Malachi]

I think one thing to remind ourselves about this series is that no one is suppose to come out looking good. All scenes where you think Legion or anyone is wining the argument or looking good is just that characters view being presented but not directly challenged by Kurt. Mostly because Kurt isn't there to challenge anyone when they are describing their views. This of ocurse makes Kurt come out as less assertive or just rather bland. There could be better ways to follow this journey with Kurt being more active in the situations. Particulary more of the fun charming acrobat Kurt. The circus performer. A part of him that seems to be in opposition with him as a religous person in the stories i have read with him dealing with his faith. Not sure why.

It's a bit sad that the most fun and engaging parts of this story are the ones without Kurt. I think the scene between Legion and Xavier where good. Showing of both of their hubris. More alike then they want to aknowledge. It seems Legion always brings out the version of Xavier he expects. I think that is clever writing.

As stated before the part of Sooraya and her views of religion not being shown is a waste. I like the visuals of her powers and the dust cloud.

[Dante Milton]

I can give you that but even then why wait so long. Why just watch? Why not teleport him out of there. It just for me, doesn't make any sense. Nightcrawler came off like some noob. Maybe it was just me, it was hard to see him on the ground like that and kurt essentially having a conversation with Cortez.

Because Kurt didn't know the full extent of the situation until Cortez explained it. If Kurt had acted prematurely, either by surprising Gorgon and unintentionally triggering him to defend himself, or by assuming a defensive stance against the crowd and adding his negative thoughts to the crowd's and again triggering Gorgon, a lot of people would have gotten hurt or killed including humans who can not be resurrected. By waiting until he fully understood the situation he managed to defuse it without anyone coming to permanent harm.

And again, there is nothing in the text to suggest that Lost is exiled. She is free to use the gate home as she pleases.

[Grunty]

I can give you that but even then why wait so long. Why just watch? Why not teleport him out of there. It just for me, doesn't make any sense. Nightcrawler came off like some noob. Maybe it was just me, it was hard to see him on the ground like that and kurt essentially having a conversation with Cortez.

Just wild guessing, but maybe it connects to Kurt's statement in the first issue that he can't see anything moraly wrong with Krakoa in terms of society, behaviour and mentality. So his own belief (in the moral sense not necessarily religios) that everything has to be right (because the previous situation was so much worse), holds him back from openly being able to call things out or act on his personal morals vs. the morals of "mutantkind" in the current setup.

Basicly he is constantly stuck in a "maybe i'm wrong here?" mindset, that he is unable to act right away and feels the need to find a compromise solution like shown in this issue.

Which in turn reflects the state of his mind as shown in issue 2, a ship lost in a maelstrom (fitting enough one of the crew was a clown).

[jwatson]

Because Kurt didn't know the full extent of the situation until Cortez explained it. If Kurt had acted prematurely, either by surprising Gorgon and unintentionally triggering him to defend himself, or by assuming a defensive stance against the crowd and adding his negative thoughts to the crowd's and again triggering Gorgon, a lot of people would have gotten hurt or killed including humans who can not be resurrected. By waiting until he fully understood the situation he managed to defuse it without anyone coming to permanent harm.

And again, there is nothing in the text to suggest that Lost is exiled. She is free to use the gate home as she pleases.

Kurt is a teleporter and it has already been stated his powers have improved since what they were. How much shock would it have really cost to quickly teleport gorgon away. It would have been a split second, he was on the ground with his back turned and distance between him and the people.

gorgon.jpg

And they didn't even try to help poor lost with her tent. At least someone gave her a fire.

allalonelost.jpg

and i certainly wouldnt want to have to do the walk of shame through the outcast gate.

outcastgate.jpg

[Midnight]

Spurrier either doesn’t know Nightcrawler as a character or he is completely indifferent to him. Kurt is sometimes sort of in character if you squint, but other times he’s just so off that it’s jarring! I agree with Jwatson that the characters are more often than not, unrecognizable and are written to fit the plot.

I think that’s been my biggest problem with this book. Nightcrawler is supposed to be the main character to some extent, or at least that is how this book was sold to us and why I read it, but he ends up been wall-paper more often then not. And very passive wallpaper, which isn’t really Kurt’s style; he may be peaceful and easy-going, but he usually isn’t one to let people walk all over him. He does know how to engage in discussions or even through some snark and shade back to people. Him just standing around while, for the umpteenth time, random characters tear him down and lecture him, especially about his religion. And the constant snark he gets about his religion is becoming extremely tiring, even for an agnostic like myself.

Honestly, it feels like Si really wanted to write a Legion book but the powers at Marvel weren’t down for that, so he made Kurt the MC in name only. Sucks, but I was really hoping for some good character growth for Kurt.

[gonnagiveittoya]

A lot of people totally misreading the Fabian stuff in this issue.

[jwatson]

Just wild guessing, but maybe it connects to Kurt's statement in the first issue that he can't see anything moraly wrong with Krakoa in terms of society, behaviour and mentality. So his own belief (in the moral sense not necessarily religios) that everything has to be right (because the previous situation was so much worse), holds him back from openly being able to call things out or act on his personal morals vs. the morals of "mutantkind" in the current setup.

Basicly he is constantly stuck in a "maybe i'm wrong here?" mindset, that he is unable to act right away and feels the need to find a compromise solution like shown in this issue.

Which in turn reflects the state of his mind as shown in issue 2, a ship lost in a maelstrom (fitting enough one of the crew was a clown).

I'm just not seeing it, but i admit i can be an emotional reader and sometimes it takes time to settle. I don't mind questioning things but this just doesn't make sense to me. The little in betweens the progress if the actions. Who we are by default suppose to just trust. something isn't right, maybe legion playing everybody i don't know but this just doesn't feel kind at all. and kurt isn't unkind.

Also kurt isn't responding to anything morally wrong, Kurt is going around creating morally shady solutions to problems rather than bringing them up for all mutants to find a solution. He is basically legion minion.

[jwatson]

But on a positive note because i hate being purely negative the first few pages of lost story was interesting. Am i the only one who felt her family use to live on mars and somehow her line ended up on earth.

[Dante Milton]

Kurt is a teleporter and it has already been stated his powers have improved since what they were. How much shock would it have really cost to quickly teleport gorgon away. It would have been a split second, he was on the ground with his back turned and distance between him and the people.

He probably could have managed it, yes. But then we wouldn't have the scene with Cortez, which gives readers insight into what a shithead he is, as well as his rationalizations illustrating to both Kurt and the readers the loopholes of the Kill No Man law. Thus providing Kurt the opportunity to properly reform it or mitigate any possible harm that can come from bad faith interpretations of the law, which is kind of the entire function of this book.

And they didn't even try to help poor lost with her tent. At least someone gave her a fire.

But, again, the only thing keeping her on PA, is her. If she wants to leave, she can. If she wants to stay, that is also her choice and if she wanted help to do so, I imagine she would ask.

and i certainly wouldnt want to have to do the walk of shame through the outcast gate.

I think the interpretation of it as a "walk of shame" is a reach. They literally just brought her there so they could talk to her without constantly vomiting.

[gonnagiveittoya]

Also another "the writers didn't get the same notes" thing: Sol is now referred to as a presidency???? Which is very fucking confusing