Hellions #14 Review/Spoilers - stuff Tarn cares about

[NicoPony]

Sinister has plausible deniability… Xavier: Sin-is-TERR! Sinister: I didn’t do it, it was the clone! Xavier: who made this clone? Sinister: that other clone! I’m innocent!

Re: wrapping up a plot line. Sinister can’t keep torturing Psylocke forever. In his Secrets page, he seemed to infer that he knew she’d come to a breaking point.

Wells will run out of horror movie references eventually. We’ve had Night of the Living Dead, Arcade/Jigsaw (or Chucky, as Sinister called him), Mastermind (Freddie Krueger), and the Locus Vile is like Jason and Ghostface were adopted by the family from Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Night of a 1000 Corpses. Nanny/Orphan Maker died and came back weird, like Pet Semetery.

We still have the killer Smiley crew out there, and a resolution with Maddie (Carrie?) is needed.

[Grunty]

I need more Arrako mutants. They are beautiful and fresh and I need them. This series is amazing.

I can't help but wonder if anyone in the 90's and 2000's expressed the same about Gene Nation or The Neo?

Call me cynic but i keep feeling the Arrakii are going to share their fate.

[jwatson]

I can't help but wonder if anyone in the 90's and 2000's expressed the same about Gene Nation or The Neo?

Call me cynic but i keep feeling the Arrakii are going to share their fate.

In the ewing x-men monday he said Planet Arrako isn't going anywhere and he is drafting a ahead a year already on a lot of Arrako stuff.

[Grunty]

In the ewing x-men monday he said Planet Arrako isn't going anywhere and he is drafting a ahead a year already on a lot of Arrako stuff.

That's commendable dedication, but my own problems with the concept of the Arrakii aside (to me they are narratively just another alien race, as they lack the basic qualities which make mutants intersting as a concept in the Marvel universe), i would have more faith in these plans and words if Marvel comics wasn't such an inconsistent managed mess for the past 10 years.

Which among other problems results in constant writer and artist shifts, editorial enforced interruptions and shoehorning of other aspects into books (something SWORD especialy has suffered from since the start despite Ewings best actions to balance it out), frequent danger of cancelations and frequent relaunching

He might have plans for over a year, but so did Leah Williams with X-factor and we saw how that played out.

These are fickle times for anything created in the IPs of the big two and anything new will not only have to climb the increasingly larger hill, which the established things are standing on, to become equal to them, but also crawl over the corpses of the previous "failed" new things, a constant reminder to readers not to become attached to them so soon.

And the Arrakii have a lot of what could doom them even if the situation was better, which it isn't.

[jwatson]

That's commendable dedication, but my own problems with the concept of the Arrakii aside (to me they are narratively just another alien race, as they lack the basic qualities which make mutants intersting as a concept in the Marvel universe), i would have more faith in these plans and words if Marvel comics wasn't such an inconsistent managed mess for the past 10 years.

Which among other problems results in constant writer and artist shifts, editorial enforced interruptions and shoehorning of other aspects into books (something SWORD especialy has suffered from since the start despite Ewings best actions to balance it out), frequent danger of cancelations and frequent relaunching

He might have plans for over a year, but so did Leah Williams with X-factor and we saw how that played out.

These are fickle times for anything created in the IPs of the big two and anything new will not only have to climb the increasingly larger hill, which the established things are standing on, to become equal to them, but also crawl over the corpses of the previous "failed" new things, a constant reminder to readers not to become attached to them so soon.

And the Arrakii have a lot of what could doom them even if the situation was better, which it isn't.

I feel the exact opposite. This team has been here now for what almost 3 years shell out stories through a pandemic and still making it work and cohesive. I won't get into Leah X-factor as once the shop market can very much be manipulated and can and have killed books but that is what it is. But the fact that the x-line has been able to maintain what it has with "offbrand" books and a dedicated writing room shows that ips can grow and now is exactly the time to do that. Success is measured in many ways.

[Devaishwarya]

I'm so grateful for my comic-book passion having started back in the days Before Internet, when I actually had to wait an entire month before I read the next issue without any idea where the story was going and no idea about what to expect or what the writers were doing other than what they revealed in the Bullpen Bulletins and in Marvel Age. Those early days in the 70's and 80's really strengthened my "living in the moment" ideology where I can never be worried over something that's completely and entirely out of my control and which may or may not happen.

[Grunty]

I feel the exact opposite. This team has been here now for what almost 3 years shell out stories through a pandemic and still making it work and cohesive. I won't get into Leah X-factor as once the shop market can very much be manipulated and can and have killed books but that is what it is. But the fact that the x-line has been able to maintain what it has with "offbrand" books and a dedicated writing room shows that ips can grow and now is exactly the time to do that. Success is measured in many ways.

I see your points, not agreeing on all of them, but i understand them.
It seems i simply have seen too many "hot new things" or attempts at establishing something new in these book fail or fall appart right away or in short time via the circumstances mentioned above.

And with Arrako i'm getting reminded to both Gene Nation, which was also an "army" (they turned out barely a hundred) of freakish mutants who developed over multiple generations in a hostile alternate dimension and The Neo, who were introduced as "survivalist" mutants so "advanced" they were claimed to be to mutants what mutants are to normal humans.

And we saw what happened to both of these groups pretty quickly.

And then there were the "Ghost Boxes" people from an Astonishing run, who got hyped up as destroyers of multiverse sized numbers of X-men and Earths, similar to how Saturnyne showed Wolverine a vision in which the Arrakii would utterly crush and defeat the X-men and any other hero on earth. But at the end of their story the Ghost Boxes people got destroyed with nothing more than a death star laser to their planet, never heared from or ever alluded to ever again.

Hence where my cycnism comes from looking at this army of freakish mutants from another dimensional realm, who are extremely advanced survivalist and mentioned to be capable of conquering all of Earth and defeat the X-men in a day if were given the chance.

Because i half expect Orchis to eventualy show up and just destroy them all with a death star laser because the writers want to raise the stakes and all the development now ends up just being there to make the readers feel sorry for them.

Though i admit, the groups i mentioned didn't had the dedication by their creators that the Arrakii have (Gene Nation was more or less allready written off by Lobdell as he introduced them, while the Neo fell to the wayside because of interference in Claremont's plans and the switch to the Morrison status quo).

But i can't help but wonder if in the times before the widespread internet communication there were people who felt these were fresh new interesting groups and wanted to see more of them, as i see some do with the arrakii now?

I'm so grateful for my comic-book passion having started back in the days Before Internet, when I actually had to wait an entire month before I read the next issue without any idea where the story was going and no idea about what to expect or what the writers were doing other than what they revealed in the Bullpen Bulletins and in Marvel Age. Those early days in the 70's and 80's really strengthened my "living in the moment" ideology where I can never be worried over something that's completely and entirely out of my control and which may or may not happen.

Those were also the times when people often had to judge characters they didn't knew by what they saw of them in the first issues they would read, only possibly affected by pop culture, talk of fellow local readers or cartoons. Hence likely much more open to them and willing to give them a chance, rather than looking them up online and finding people deriding them all over the place.

Which i admit i'm making myself guilty of, partialy writing the Arrakii off allready.

Meanwhile there are characters i still like despite being C-listers simply because i could only puzzle together their backstory based on bits of dialoge and what i saw "live" while reading the books. So i likely had a headcanon of their past appearances and backrounds much more interesting than what was actualy there, artifical affecting me positively in how i thought about them.

[BroHomo]

I see your points, not agreeing on all of them, but i understand them.
It seems i simply have seen too many "hot new things" or attempts at establishing something new in these book fail or fall appart right away or in short time via the circumstances mentioned above.

And with Arrako i'm getting reminded to both Gene Nation, which was also an "army" (they turned out barely a hundred) of freakish mutants who developed over multiple generations in a hostile alternate dimension and The Neo, who were introduced as "survivalist" mutants so "advanced" they were claimed to be to mutants what mutants are to normal humans.

And we saw what happened to both of these groups pretty quickly.

And then there were the "Ghost Boxes" people from an Astonishing run, who got hyped up as destroyers of multiverse sized numbers of X-men and Earths, similar to how Saturnyne showed Wolverine a vision in which the Arrakii would utterly crush and defeat the X-men and any other hero on earth. But at the end of their story the Ghost Boxes people got destroyed with nothing more than a death star laser to their planet, never heared from or ever alluded to ever again.

Hence where my cycnism comes from looking at this army of freakish mutants from another dimensional realm, who are extremely advanced survivalist and mentioned to be capable of conquering all of Earth and defeat the X-men in a day if were given the chance.

Because i half expect Orchis to eventualy show up and just destroy them all with a death star laser because the writers want to raise the stakes and all the development now ends up just being there to make the readers feel sorry for them.

Though i admit, the groups i mentioned didn't had the dedication by their creators that the Arrakii have (Gene Nation was more or less allready written off by Lobdell as he introduced them, while the Neo fell to the wayside because of interference in Claremont's plans and the switch to the Morrison status quo).

But i can't help but wonder if in the times before the widespread internet communication there were people who felt these were fresh new interesting groups and wanted to see more of them, as i see some do with the arrakii now?



Those were also the times when people often had to judge characters they didn't knew by what they saw of them in the first issues they would read, only possibly affected by pop culture, talk of fellow local readers or cartoons. Hence likely much more open to them and willing to give them a chance, rather than looking them up online and finding people deriding them all over the place.

Which i admit i'm making myself guilty of, partialy writing the Arrakii off allready.

Meanwhile there are characters i still like despite being C-listers simply because i could only puzzle together their backstory based on bits of dialoge and what i saw "live" while reading the books. So i likely had a headcanon of their past appearances and backrounds much more interesting than what was actualy there, artifical affecting me positively in how i thought about them.

Dude spot on.. .I remember reading about Febe Nation....Emplates Hellions....Bedlam Hellions lol thinking these groups were gonna be the antithesis of their X-contemporaries....only for them to fizzle out as soon as the book changed hsnds

[Devaishwarya]

That's what inevitably happens when books/franchises change hands and directorship...to lesser and greater degrees depending on who takes over. And will happen to this Krakoa Era when the time comes...characters will be wall-papered or limboed; plots left dangling; stories ignored or retconned...that's the nature of this beast. The least we can hope for is that the next crop of writers at least acknowledges the best parts of this era while they forge their own path forward.

[GeneTitan]

This book is freakin’ hilarious! “@#$% TARN!” LOL!!!

[BroHomo]

This really was a fun issue to read

[numberthirty]

...

I love evolved Nanny!



...

Worth noting that this line might be lifted from the Scarface tune "Diary Of A Madman".

[Sylarmax]

I can't help but wonder if anyone in the 90's and 2000's expressed the same about Gene Nation or The Neo?

Call me cynic but i keep feeling the Arrakii are going to share their fate.

I hope so, they are absolutely unnecessary, let Hickman leave the x offices, and his mutant phenomena will share the same fate of the Neos race, dead or in limbo, for practical purposes it is the same


Perhaps a few will be saved from limbo.
But I doubt it, if interesting ideas how the Apocalypse twins they are in limbo I don't see why that circus of freaks which is Arako are saved.

[Sutekh]

This really was a fun issue to read

My favorite line, from Tarn (paraphasing, since my book is elsewhere), was after Greycrow said, "Essex! I'm going to rip your eyes out!" and Tarn was like, "Yes. I like the sound of that. Do that."

Such a normal-sounding thing for him to say, after all his portentious pseudo-religious claptrap.

[Sylarmax]

In the ewing x-men monday he said Planet Arrako isn't going anywhere and he is drafting a ahead a year already on a lot of Arrako stuff.

The question is if S.W.O.R.D that lives on the brink of cancellation since it premiered is going to last a year lol.