Marauders #12: An Early Ending

[Saithor]

Alright, here we go


Cover is of Kitty staring at a box in apprehension, clearly regretting her decision to turn to the cenobites in an attempt to find a steady relationship the X-office is willing to keep going.

We open in Madripor where Dakken and Brimstone Love are beating each other up while John Dee with tentacles in his chest and Lockheed watch. Tentacle guy says while the tentacles are on team Love, he's on team Fang. This is a strange version of Team Edward vs Team Jacob, but it earns my tentative approval.

We then get a recap page. Not much to note except I can't even recognize some of this cast pictures as the same people from the cover or first page.

Next page, Polaris is making a mysterium box to be the seed for Threshold. Theia calls it a holy monument, something that's going to be more important thematically later in the book.

The Threshold mutants are walking with Tempo, there's a decent conversation about how Threshold and the right to tell stories before Tempo and Theia kiss. It's cute, the time shenanigans kind of detracts for me regarding threshold itself but it's a cute moment. I'll also note I don't like Tempo's costume in what I'm sure is a controversial opinion.

We cut to Kate and her dad's ghost talking. It's a good conversation, and honestly I wish the rest of the series was more like this and without the time travel shenanigans. Again, probably controversial. Anyway, they have a conversation about how Kate never forgot about Genosha, or her dad's final words to her, and how she sees Threshold as her way of making him proud, but how ultimately it's his and the others choice. He asks what she is drawing, and it's a copy of the map that started it all. She states she thought the first blood spilled was the Shi'ar genocide but how now she knows it's the creation of Threshold itself. Her father joins her in writing the message and the map, and then they hug.

We get a data page of the Captains discussing Cerebera and her arrival. There's a discussion of using her to back up all of the resurrection system's data, and that she's been using the gates a lot to travel the world and help her friends.

We then cut to her, rescuing a mutant named Esera from....some cyborged up racist in San Fransisco who might be one of the Reavers? Maybe? Marvel has too many generic racist cyborgs.

Next page reveals he's a mutant mutantkiller named Bushwacker as Cerebera is helped out by Psylocke and Aurora and....is that going to be Psylocke's usual look going forward? Maybe it's just the artwork but it looks...off to me.

Anyway, they talk to Esera. He's a mutant who just wants to live his own life and not be associated with Krakoa, which the three seem pretty sympathetic towards. He's a little freaked out after Bushwhacker came after him (Esera can find water and was recently using it to help out with droughts.) Psylocker offers to adjust his amygdala for a bit to make him euphoric instead of terrified temporarily. He does not seem to like that idea and offers them lunch but makes it clear he does not want to be associated with superhero antics any more than he already is. Cerebera tells him that's fine, she just wanted to make sure he's safe, not push their ways on him.

Psylocke wants to know how Cerebera found this recently out mutant so quickly, cerebera explains that he is very important, being the ancestor of 2099's Northstar. While she can no longer directly help her mutants from that time period, she can do her best to ensure their lines are safe.

Back to Dakken and Brimstone Love. Dakken stabs Brimstone in the eye, Brimstone gets pissed, then Dee reveals he's made a puppet of Brimstone and Dakken starts using it to control Brimstone Love and they burn him to death. Well that was over quickly.

Anyway, cut to the creation of Threshold, it's a lot of nice visuals but can just be summed as Kate going back in time and putting the box in the sea. We cut to Emma and Kate celebrating, Emma talks about how Magneto was right about them being gods. Emma, being a deity is not going to make Scott ditch Jean for you, she'll just go Phoenix in response. We end on them celebrating with the Maruders and Threshold mutants, and a data page of Theia talking about Threshold.

So...a conclusion. A bit of a rushed one it feels like. I don't know if this book will continue or not but it feels like the Brimstone Love was resolved much, much faster. Stryfe wasn't dealt with at all. Nova is still alive in the distant past. I don't think we even know how Threshold dies.

Overall at the twelve issue mark my impressions of this series remain relatively negative. This last issue, at least the character moments, are very nice, but at the end of the day I've made my feeling clear on time travel and ancient mutant civilizations, so this series was a tough sale. The presence of Nova, the Shi'ar material, and the artwork did not help. Ultimately though, ignoring my own personal biases, the book is fine. It's not what I'd say is great, the cast is once again for all these X-books way too large, a little disjointed, and the setting of Krakoa feels underdeveloped. But it's a decent enough idea and story. Just not one I could get into.

[Taurean Sun]

So it's done? Wow that felt long AF.

[Saithor]

It feels done. Killing Brimstone Love feels very much like a slapping the bow on because you are out of time. Stryfe is technically an unaddressed plot point but one I don’t expect to be addressed. There was a definite finality with this issue. The central mysteries are addressed. The central antagonists “dealt with”. The central character arcs competed. It feels long, but honestly is only twelve issues, and a lot of that was spent on things like the Shi’ar. Ultimately it’s the pacing more than anything else that makes it feel that length. Honestly it could have benefitted from letting things devolop longer. Or maybe just involving less plot elements

[Diammandis]

I enjoyed the ending of the series as much as I had my problems with it in general this ending was nice.

[Rift]

I enjoyed the ending of the series as much as I had my problems with it in general this ending was nice.

Wind Dancer? It's Wind Dancer! Sofia I love you!!!!!

[Jackraow21]

This series was just one big mess. I checked out the first few issues... dropped it... got bored one week when there was nothing else out and checked back into it... dropped it again... picked it up again for Stryfe... and dropped it again. Just messy as hell, both in terms of storytelling and art. Gets a 2/10 from me.

[davetvs]

Such an underrated series. Maybe it was too ahead of its time for certain people. Orlando is a very talented writer, and his respect for continuity shines through.

[Saithor]

One of the books issues is one it's predecessor suffered, and many others during this era, too many characters. There's just too many characters to the detriment of the book overall, and to those characters in specific. Introducing a host of new ones didn't help. Aurorra, Bishop, and possibly Kwannon felt like they were very underutilized throughout. The rushed nature of certain aspects did not help. Honestly the Shi'ar section should have been reported to be shorter. Stryfe should have been excised.

I'll note, if you think people did not get this series, please state why instead of saying it's too ahead of it's time. Because that's been said about a lot of other works to me that it definitely did not apply to (The Room, Cans without Labels, Velma (Jury still technically out on that one)).

[NewMutant]

Any Christian Frost?

[BobbysWorld]

I mean, I'd disagree about the too many characters bit because I thought one of the book's strengths was how well Orlando juggled so many. The character interactions were the best part of the book for me, and to be frank, I think he did WAY more with characters like Tempo, Kwannon, Akihiro, Kate, etc, than Duggan and Percy have done with characterizations of their MUCH smaller casts. All at the same time as introducing new characters while giving them enough focus-time to actually establish them like Somnus (technically created in his anthology story before this, but still a blank slate at the start of this), Theia and Amass, AND found room to squeeze in personal favorites that a lot of fans WERE delighted to see, and give them actual meaningful roles, like Wicked, Birdy, etc.

Tbh, if a lot of the other writers utilized their casts half as thoroughly as Orlando did his, their books would be much stronger for it as a result. So while I do appreciate that the sheer volume of characters, new, old and obscure could seem overwhelming when just listed out in recaps, personally, I think when read on the page in the entirety of their scenes, they each more than justified their presence in those scenes.

I kinda feel like many of the other books like X-Men and X-Force use too FEW characters in comparison - because for as much focus is put on the same handful of characters, they don't actually DO much with all of that page time, very little actual development or change or new information or dynamics unfold. Whereas Orlando did a much better job overall of making the characters make the most of each scene they were in.

[gonnagiveittoya]

Such an underrated series. Maybe it was too ahead of its time for certain people. Orlando is a very talented writer, and his respect for continuity shines through.

His Scarlet Witch is great.

His best stuff with the Marauders was with the rescue ops team in Green, which made his actual Marauders book even more frustrating since that team was done so well.

[SanityOrMadness]

Next page reveals he's a mutant mutantkiller named Bushwacker as Cerebera is helped out by Psylocke and Aurora and....is that going to be Psylocke's usual look going forward? Maybe it's just the artwork but it looks...off to me

Huh, Bushwacker was killed off pretty definitively in Immortal Hulk...

[Saithor]

I mean, I'd disagree about the too many characters bit because I thought one of the book's strengths was how well Orlando juggled so many. The character interactions were the best part of the book for me, and to be frank, I think he did WAY more with characters like Tempo, Kwannon, Akihiro, Kate, etc, than Duggan and Percy have done with characterizations of their MUCH smaller casts. All at the same time as introducing new characters while giving them enough focus-time to actually establish them like Somnus (technically created in his anthology story before this, but still a blank slate at the start of this), Theia and Amass, AND found room to squeeze in personal favorites that a lot of fans WERE delighted to see, and give them actual meaningful roles, like Wicked, Birdy, etc.

Tbh, if a lot of the other writers utilized their casts half as thoroughly as Orlando did his, their books would be much stronger for it as a result. So while I do appreciate that the sheer volume of characters, new, old and obscure could seem overwhelming when just listed out in recaps, personally, I think when read on the page in the entirety of their scenes, they each more than justified their presence in those scenes.

I kinda feel like many of the other books like X-Men and X-Force use too FEW characters in comparison - because for as much focus is put on the same handful of characters, they don't actually DO much with all of that page time, very little actual development or change or new information or dynamics unfold. Whereas Orlando did a much better job overall of making the characters make the most of each scene they were in.

Alright, he does handle it better than most but there are still definitely characters that took a hit in terms of focus.

[Diammandis]

Any Christian Frost?

Nope. He didnt show up

[BobbysWorld]

Alright, he does handle it better than most but there are still definitely characters that took a hit in terms of focus.

I mean that's fair, but I can't really think of any runs where I think every single character in the main cast was utilized well throughout, so I think that's more just a 'his characterizations were weak in terms of these specific characters' as opposed to just too many characters over all. I just mean like, I don't necessarily think that even with the cast cut in half, its a given that Aurora and Bishop would be better developed or utilized.

Personally I just think he didn't have a strong angle for either of them. One of the weakest character beats in the series for me was in the Judgment Day tie-in, Bishop's therapy session with Birdy. There was just as concentrated a focus on Bishop in that scene as there was for Tempo, Somnus, Akihiro or any of the others....I just didn't think it felt like Bishop at all. The whole thing where he didn't want to resurrect Malcolm and Randall yet, even offscreen, because he didn't think the world was good enough for them yet and they deserved to awaken to a better one....nah. That's 100% just not a Bishop characterization I vibe with, he'd never prefer leaving valued friends dead and unable to decide for themselves over having them live in an imperfect world that he himself still manages to find joy and friendship in.

So while I concede your point on certain characters I think it was more the problem was just Orlando's take on those specific characters. The size of the cast is jarring enough that its an understandable target to point to as the reason for the character work on those characters being subpar, I just don't think it was the actual culprit. But of course, all that said YMM(still)V.