Definitely Hank "Beast" McKoy. Man, they butchered him and on top of that killed him, such a dreadful take on someone as enlightened as Beast. When I heard they killed him from a YT video, I was thinking "What did they do to Beast?!" He is not my top favourite, but man do I feel really bad for his fans, first turning him into a villain and then killing him definitely feels sorrowful.
I don't think I've seen much of Jean or Scott, they had a few issues and there were some good feats of Jean but then such a lowball hit when they killed her from behind... yeah never thought I would see them kill Jean, once more...
Cyclops, I don't know I have mixed feelings on his arc, he had some good stuff like being a War Captain, together with Magick, even though Illyana had a lot more presence in almost all comics series than Cyclops which was a huge letdown.
Moira McTaggert never liked her she was always just a back-end character for me, but in the Krakoa era they made her a mutant and a huge villain, oh God... they stepped hard on her and the drama which they could have done with Orchis, Sinister, they didn't need to villainise her in the Krakoan era even though for some reason she was really petty with Destiny and holding back her resurrection which seemed so OOC. Oh well, they definitely smeared her hard.
Storm on the other hand had really good arcs this era, one of the reasons why I loved it so much, since Storm is my top favourite. Hopefully, they will treat her rightfully for the new era, as well.
Sabretooth Poor poor Vicky used by the leadership to do their little dirty work and then betrayed for breaking a rule that wasn't even a rule yet and just chucked literally into a hole in the ground to prove a point to the humans and to serve as an example to the other mutants of the island to "follow the rules " or else
Beast as a character.
Omega Sentinel because they wasted and sidelined her and all of the original Orchis crew for the Sinisters.
Danger again because of being sidelined. She could have had a really interesting role when the original anti AI plots were running.
Oh, and let's also not forget Nature Girl's role change into a hypocritical short sighted completely delusional psychopath.
IIRC Some people were defending Nature Girl and saying she didn't do anything wrong. I think even White and Duggan believed in that lol
Without a doubt Omega Sentinel. Moira and Beast are without a doubt up there but when it came down to the things that happened to them at very least it was their own choices that caused them to turn out the way that they did. In the case of Karima, she forcefully had a future version of herself that had been overtaken by her sentinel programming overlayed onto her mind and at no point during the entirety of Krakoa did any of her friends even bat an eye about it and instead just left her to her fate and treated her as the enemy. Even worse when they added humans to those they could resurrect yet none of the writers thought to dedicate such a perfect plot point to helping her by separating her from her future counterpart. She’s literally living her worst nightmare and her friends just sat by and did nothing.
As far as character assassination I pick Moira, Beast and Xavier.
Moira MacTaggert
Nature Girl
Eye Boy
Those are the only acceptable answers. Eye Boy at #3 because of his best friendship with Nature Girl being ruined.
It feels like Hickman just changed or ignored everything that would have metaphoricaly stood in the way of telling his "grand" story, which was focused primarily on concepts and ideas rather than characters and interactions. Which is kind of a problem when the X-men franchise is loved for it's many different characters and their interactions, with concepts and ideas secondary or even tertiary.
Established history? Retconed!
Established characterization? Twisted!
Established personality and personal history? Disregarded!
Established characters that would need to be adressed or considered? Ignored!
Though granted, this has been a problem with the comics for a while, but it feels like the current era begann with establishing a standard that set the bar even lower, resulting in this mess we see several characters and the entire setting in now.
EDIT:
According to a quick search, they didn't (corrections are appreciated). But the interview with the then editor in X-men Monday #134, where it was explained how the story came to be published, couldn't have done such assumptions any favor.
Last edited by Grunty; 04-23-2024 at 06:28 AM.