X-Men #13 Review *spoilers*

[BobbysWorld]

Do you think Bobby could grow giant ice arms and hands, then turn them into giant flesh arms and hands, and then he just created these giant and gross limbs laying around? It'd be pretty morbid, but I think it could make for a fun prank.

EDIT: Actually, if that's possible, he'd theoretically be able to shapeshift and change his looks, or don his human form after going kaiju.

Full disclaimer, this post is just a response that goes off-topic based on this tangent, but I linked a couple relevant posts from the Bobby Appreciation thread so further thoughts on this tangent could be continued there instead of taking over this thread.

Anyway, in theory the only thing stopping Bobby from using his powers to change his organic form is a lack of knowledge as to how to go about it, or knowing where in his subconscious to FIND the 'blueprint' his powers use as his body's base factory settings every time they transmute him back to flesh. If he knew how to consciously find that in his own mental settings, and had the knowledge to tweak that template in various ways that resulted in changes to his flesh and blood body....then yeah, theoretically its possible. The fact that he's always been capable of teleporting himself and others, with the AOA version of him regularly teleporting his team....that's proof that he's not limited to just changing ice into new bodies for himself, he can literally do it for anyone he teleports.

Before we knew he was winding up on the Year Two lineup, one of my random ideas was that Emma's often overlooked friendship with Bobby AND her history with his powers and insight to how they work.....like, this aspect of his powers could've been used as the basis for Emma recruiting Bobby to help scheme against Sinister, undermine his political powerbase via making Krakoa less dependent on his genetic database for mutant resurrection. Don't want to derail the thread further so just linking to where I went into that in the Iceman thread here and here.

Anyway, tbh I don't think shapeshifting in his organic form is anything we're likely to see soon, even if it theoretically fits his themes and powers, and I think its too big a leap from where he is CURRENTLY to being able to do that without hitting certain further stops in his power developments first.

Honestly, the far easier/more likely next step, based off the 'can transmute any ice into a new flesh and blood body' aspect of his powers.....is combining this with his ice golems, which he can already split his consciousness amongst, and do everything with them that he can do with his primary ice form....meaning there really isn't any reason he can't hit the button that changes one of his ice bodies into flesh and blood...to make any of his ice bodies organic, even more than one at a time. Forget shape-shifting, he's already doing what Jamie Madrox does. In theory it shouldn't be any different for him to do it via organic duplicates instead of just ice ones, while opening up a lot of new narrative possibilities. And again, the Dark Iceman arc and the Ice Hulk his future self made already establish precedence for his consciousness to fragment or fission off parts of itself and make duplicates that act autonomously.

I also expanded more on that in the second post I linked above, but my ideal direction for Bobby Drake would be less about leaning into the magnitude of his feats, and more into the versatility of them....and what possibilities that offers up in terms of how his character is used. His real potential to me is that historically, he's more interested in the spectrum of human experiences rather than power itself. His wariness with his own powers has been he fears they make him too distant from other people and their own experiences, unable to relate to them or BE related to.

Now combine this with the teleporting, genetic screenshotting, transmuting, and self-replication aspects of his powers.....and a Bobby Drake who has 'backed himself up' with other flesh and blood versions all scattered across the universe, each living out their own lives and existing as a living ark of mutantdom's genetic codes....Bobby would basically be a mutant hydra experiencing life all over the universe in as many different ways he can, and safeguarding his people as the ultimate failsafe in the process. As long as no enemy can find and track down every Bobby 'spawned' from the original and sent off in another direction.....he can always be used to bring mutants back from extinction. Keeping all mutant genetic codes on ice, frozen in the vault of his own omega-level consciousness in case it that vault ever needs to be cracked open to use his 'screenshots' as the basic building blocks for jumpstarting mutant lives again. Embodying the duality of ice/winter's themes of extinction, death, as well as ideas like cryostasis as a form of preservation.....as well as themes of water being a basic building block of life that comes in all kinds of shapes and forms. And thus NARRATIVELY making the most of his much-vaunted omega level potential that doesn't rely on Feats where he one-shots armies all on his own every other issue.....

Because something like 'The Many Lives of Bobby Drake' where he fragments himself amongst a bunch of golems he then turns into organic duplicates and scatters throughout the universe as lifeboats/arks off living very different lives and experiencing new adventures anywhere and everywhere.....narratively, they'd have a REASON to each limit their own power-usage and refrain from doing lots of big feats. They're SUPPOSED to be keeping their heads down so they don't draw attention to themselves and paint a target for anyone gunning for the Bobbys in order to take out mutantdom's big failsafe.

So I'd argue you could easily do a solo series where the entire draw is the writer(s) could 'check in' on wildly different versions of Bobby Drake all living radically different lives anywhere you want in the Marvel universe.....while 'self-limiting' the Bobby of each arc to smaller, less obvious uses of his power that DON'T make headlines and draw a lot of attention. And this isn't really nerfing him, because readers get WHY he's not going skyscraper sized as his solution to every fight he winds up in, and 'safeguarding the entire mutant race's long-term longevity, nbd' is a pretty good explanation for that which still keeps his power and importance to mutantdom front and center.....it just doesn't require constantly SHOWING it via feats. Plus, it gives writers reason to get creative with smaller-scale usages of his power that don't rely on shock and awe to be interesting.

One Bobby could be off being a (good) space pirate having cosmic adventures while just using his powers to heal damage to his organic body, so even his own crew think he's just some random mutant who got bored of Earth and just has some kind of regeneration power. They figure maybe he's related to that Wolverine guy. In their defense, assuming the cryptic Earth mutant with a mysterious past and regenerative powers is somehow related to Logan is a likelier guess than that he's a nigh all-powerful omega level mutant who's at this point devoted years to passing himself off as a cynical, brooding loner because he thinks this is probably the funniest thing he's ever done, at least to anyone who gets the joke. Its not his fault he's the only one who gets the joke. Whatever.

Another Bobby could be having adventures in Otherworld where he's learning magic, or figured out he can manifest his mutant power as a kind of anti-magic that halts magical energy in its tracks the way he negates energy in the main universe. Another Bobby HAS learned to do some basic shapeshifting tricks and is doing a street-level vigilante thing in Madripoor, another one's joined an artist commune on Arakko and there's one who stays in ice form while living in Atlantis, another one hooked up with a time-traveler and is off jaunting through future timelines while another one hitched a ride with an Exiles-esque team of reality hoppers, and travels around the multiverse lending his Ark-ness to mutants whose realities have their own versions of Krakoa and Sinisters who screwed them over, leaving them stuck with all these backed up mutants but no templates with which to give them new bodies.

But like I said. All theoretical and not really anything to do with this issue, just Bobby thoughts based on various comments and hey, never know what the future holds.

[PolarIceFire]

I already posted my decidedly cantankerous review elsewhere--and fair warning, it's unpleasant, as I'm not happy--but nonetheless...

Just not into... 'Judgement'.

And much like most, if not all of 'Destiny of X', I found this fairly uninspired and frankly... barely serviceable. In fact, I would've given it an even lower score, but am trying to maintain--with desperation, increasingly--the benefit of the doubt. Which pretty much stems from what little goodwill there is left from pre-'Inferno' 'Reign of X', combined with the healthy but short-lived boost this year's 'Hellfire Gala' gave.

Magik was obnoxiously annoying and unlikable, while Havok comes across as stupefyingly insensitive and oblivious. Synch, Jean, and Iceman were basically satisfactory, stock portrayals, as was Forge, more or less. And I'm not sure why Cyclops and Firestar were even there, as they couldn't have been, and not much... if anything, would've changed.

So, yeah, I'm feeling disheartened and rather... salty, toward the X-line of books these days. But to be honest, as soon as I saw the promo teaser for 'Destiny', I kind of figured it was the beginning of the end... for the 'Age of [Professor]X-Man'-cum-Krakoa era. Though I suspect that may very well be put to the new "vote"... at the beginning of 2023. I guess, we'll see.

[ARkadelphia]

Honestly, I'm just not feeling this issue, nor Judgment Day.

Great event
Mediocre issue

[ARkadelphia]

Perfect example of event slog.

What a waste of a debut for the new team. This was boring.


Honestly does anyone actually like this event?

Why yes. Yes I do.

[Rift]

Full disclaimer, this post is just a response that goes off-topic based on this tangent, but I linked a couple relevant posts from the Bobby Appreciation thread so further thoughts on this tangent could be continued there instead of taking over this thread.

Anyway, in theory the only thing stopping Bobby from using his powers to change his organic form is a lack of knowledge as to how to go about it, or knowing where in his subconscious to FIND the 'blueprint' his powers use as his body's base factory settings every time they transmute him back to flesh. If he knew how to consciously find that in his own mental settings, and had the knowledge to tweak that template in various ways that resulted in changes to his flesh and blood body....then yeah, theoretically its possible. The fact that he's always been capable of teleporting himself and others, with the AOA version of him regularly teleporting his team....that's proof that he's not limited to just changing ice into new bodies for himself, he can literally do it for anyone he teleports.

Before we knew he was winding up on the Year Two lineup, one of my random ideas was that Emma's often overlooked friendship with Bobby AND her history with his powers and insight to how they work.....like, this aspect of his powers could've been used as the basis for Emma recruiting Bobby to help scheme against Sinister, undermine his political powerbase via making Krakoa less dependent on his genetic database for mutant resurrection. Don't want to derail the thread further so just linking to where I went into that in the Iceman thread here and here.

Anyway, tbh I don't think shapeshifting in his organic form is anything we're likely to see soon, even if it theoretically fits his themes and powers, and I think its too big a leap from where he is CURRENTLY to being able to do that without hitting certain further stops in his power developments first.

Honestly, the far easier/more likely next step, based off the 'can transmute any ice into a new flesh and blood body' aspect of his powers.....is combining this with his ice golems, which he can already split his consciousness amongst, and do everything with them that he can do with his primary ice form....meaning there really isn't any reason he can't hit the button that changes one of his ice bodies into flesh and blood...to make any of his ice bodies organic, even more than one at a time. Forget shape-shifting, he's already doing what Jamie Madrox does. In theory it shouldn't be any different for him to do it via organic duplicates instead of just ice ones, while opening up a lot of new narrative possibilities. And again, the Dark Iceman arc and the Ice Hulk his future self made already establish precedence for his consciousness to fragment or fission off parts of itself and make duplicates that act autonomously.

I also expanded more on that in the second post I linked above, but my ideal direction for Bobby Drake would be less about leaning into the magnitude of his feats, and more into the versatility of them....and what possibilities that offers up in terms of how his character is used. His real potential to me is that historically, he's more interested in the spectrum of human experiences rather than power itself. His wariness with his own powers has been he fears they make him too distant from other people and their own experiences, unable to relate to them or BE related to.

Now combine this with the teleporting, genetic screenshotting, transmuting, and self-replication aspects of his powers.....and a Bobby Drake who has 'backed himself up' with other flesh and blood versions all scattered across the universe, each living out their own lives and existing as a living ark of mutantdom's genetic codes....Bobby would basically be a mutant hydra experiencing life all over the universe in as many different ways he can, and safeguarding his people as the ultimate failsafe in the process. As long as no enemy can find and track down every Bobby 'spawned' from the original and sent off in another direction.....he can always be used to bring mutants back from extinction. Keeping all mutant genetic codes on ice, frozen in the vault of his own omega-level consciousness in case it that vault ever needs to be cracked open to use his 'screenshots' as the basic building blocks for jumpstarting mutant lives again. Embodying the duality of ice/winter's themes of extinction, death, as well as ideas like cryostasis as a form of preservation.....as well as themes of water being a basic building block of life that comes in all kinds of shapes and forms. And thus NARRATIVELY making the most of his much-vaunted omega level potential that doesn't rely on Feats where he one-shots armies all on his own every other issue.....

Because something like 'The Many Lives of Bobby Drake' where he fragments himself amongst a bunch of golems he then turns into organic duplicates and scatters throughout the universe as lifeboats/arks off living very different lives and experiencing new adventures anywhere and everywhere.....narratively, they'd have a REASON to each limit their own power-usage and refrain from doing lots of big feats. They're SUPPOSED to be keeping their heads down so they don't draw attention to themselves and paint a target for anyone gunning for the Bobbys in order to take out mutantdom's big failsafe.

So I'd argue you could easily do a solo series where the entire draw is the writer(s) could 'check in' on wildly different versions of Bobby Drake all living radically different lives anywhere you want in the Marvel universe.....while 'self-limiting' the Bobby of each arc to smaller, less obvious uses of his power that DON'T make headlines and draw a lot of attention. And this isn't really nerfing him, because readers get WHY he's not going skyscraper sized as his solution to every fight he winds up in, and 'safeguarding the entire mutant race's long-term longevity, nbd' is a pretty good explanation for that which still keeps his power and importance to mutantdom front and center.....it just doesn't require constantly SHOWING it via feats. Plus, it gives writers reason to get creative with smaller-scale usages of his power that don't rely on shock and awe to be interesting.

One Bobby could be off being a (good) space pirate having cosmic adventures while just using his powers to heal damage to his organic body, so even his own crew think he's just some random mutant who got bored of Earth and just has some kind of regeneration power. They figure maybe he's related to that Wolverine guy. In their defense, assuming the cryptic Earth mutant with a mysterious past and regenerative powers is somehow related to Logan is a likelier guess than that he's a nigh all-powerful omega level mutant who's at this point devoted years to passing himself off as a cynical, brooding loner because he thinks this is probably the funniest thing he's ever done, at least to anyone who gets the joke. Its not his fault he's the only one who gets the joke. Whatever.

Another Bobby could be having adventures in Otherworld where he's learning magic, or figured out he can manifest his mutant power as a kind of anti-magic that halts magical energy in its tracks the way he negates energy in the main universe. Another Bobby HAS learned to do some basic shapeshifting tricks and is doing a street-level vigilante thing in Madripoor, another one's joined an artist commune on Arakko and there's one who stays in ice form while living in Atlantis, another one hooked up with a time-traveler and is off jaunting through future timelines while another one hitched a ride with an Exiles-esque team of reality hoppers, and travels around the multiverse lending his Ark-ness to mutants whose realities have their own versions of Krakoa and Sinisters who screwed them over, leaving them stuck with all these backed up mutants but no templates with which to give them new bodies.

But like I said. All theoretical and not really anything to do with this issue, just Bobby thoughts based on various comments and hey, never know what the future holds.

Hell yeah.

[lefthanded]

Does this forum actually like any comic?

The problem with the forum (and the internet overall), is that the negative/nit-picking gets the most play.
One post mentioning that they liked the issue, will maybe get 2x the replies in support of specific points that were brought up.
One post mentioning things they hated about the issue, will get 10x the response to pile it on or as counterarguments.


I've been actually enjoying the event so far. What I haven't like tangentially related to the event, is how it halted/changed the other xbooks in their tracks. The other xbooks were killing it, so I was excited to see them continue. But having to halt and play into this event is disappointing. But the actual AXE issues and the tie-ins have all been very solid so far (just look at Trial of Magneto as an example of how wrong things could be instead).

[jwatson]

Or trial shows how to do it right. Despite being heavily edited what it did do was resolve a decades old x-plot, rebuild the connections of a prominent popular marvel mutant family, and add to the very fabric of the x-lore while the current event is doing nothing but using another franchise to subtract. I know which event in the history of the x-line will actually matter even if krakoa ended tomorrow and it's definitely not the current one.

[Marvelfan1992]

Does this forum actually like any comic?

people with something negative to say will always have more energy to talk about it than someone who is satisfied, hence majority of the talk about comics here is negative haha

[Del torro]

I've been enjoying judgement day and the tie ins.
Enjoyed Xmen too, looking forward to seeing more


I agree with the iceman stuff.
He transmutes his flesh into ice and shown he can do it to the other people. The only thing holding him back is himself

[nx01a]

OK art. Villa has done far better.
Meh story. The battle against the kaiju Eternals really never felt dangerous or gripping, and the design of the Hex technology and defenders was boring. It's Celestial tech; where were the complex Kirby machines spewing Kirby Krackle? This new team is boring. Firestar, Forge, and Havok are already borderline unlikable, and Iceman was meh. At least Synch's aura was actually rainbow this time, and Magik is always awesome.

Favourite panels...
x1.jpg
x2.jpg
x3.jpg

[Hulkout42]

Well, at least Iceman got more screen time in this than he ever did in Marauders plus did not need to remind us that yes, he is gay.

[ohsnapulon5000]

I actually really dig the art here. it a nice digression of the heavy larraz art that needs some time to breathe. This felt energetic in an uncluttered way, it reminded me of Townsend era 90's pop art and it had a sense of animation.

Synch looked more like an actual character and less like a plot gimmick. I hope his suit becomes red at some point. I also really need M on this team instead of a lot of people. M vs Synch in The Who's the best mutant one uppance battle dujour is the stuff that completist arch rivalries are made of!

otherwise it ws a solid action comic that even featured jean landing an actual joke that was funny and didn't come at anyone's expense. "you shall not pass" was cute cute.

7/10