Thoughts on RessurXion

[Sutekh]

End of the day, what I'm saying here is that until it is officially stated, 100%, that the souls or essences of the versions of the characters we have now are the precise same ones that were inside the characters who died, I'm forced to see them as copies. Cleverly created and likely almost identical copies, perhaps, but copies nonetheless.

This option makes for an interesting story, in any event. Imagine if someone's soul is off in heaven (or whatever), and Ilyanna manages to find it and lead it back to the 616 universe in his cross-dimensional traipsing about, only for the soul to find out that there's a person in a copy of their body, with a copy of their memories (up to the moment of their death) living their life! Nobody 'misses them' because they thought they were already back! Their family, friends, etc. have accepted this new person as the continuation of them, even though it was just a copy!

That said, it feels like we *just* got rid of the O5 and teen Jimmy and old man Logan and various other annoying duplicates of people running around. I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't want a ton more of them...

There are few mutants with spiritual or mystical powers that would allow them to 'fetch souls' to inhabit these husks, with Ilyanna being the most common choice, and Wycked the most specifically-appropriate choice to get involved in a resurrection-machine-gambit. Maybe Dead Girl, from X-Statix? Dani Moonstar, with her Valkyrie death-sense? Certainly Selene... (Not that this seems like the sort of thing she should be trusted with, although Selene and Sinister, working together on their *own* resurrection process, Sinister providing the artificially-aged-up clone bodies, and Selene the souls to re-occupy them, could be a neat sub-plot for the return of the sorts of mutants that the Krakoans wouldn't be a big hurry to resurrect...)

[myownlittleusername]

Following that, why suddenly do you need a copy of the mind and memories of a person to restore them to life, if indeed they truly are the person they were before? If the original essence was being reinstalled into the new body, it wouldn't be necessary. If these copied memories are actually needed, then that can only be because the souls inside the new bodies have to be informed of the lives of the originals. As such, new versions replacing the old.

I'd guess because this resurrection mechanism is meant to be for mutants only, hence the Cerebra connection which has always been used for detecting and tracking mutants. If not for that, then this could be used for anyone, well as long as some DNA is available.

[Ravage]

The text is open to interpretation and you get to interpret it any way you want. BUT I would advise interpretation that doesn’t spoil your own enjoyment of the story. Otherwise what's the point of reading it?

My personal theory is that the copies are so their lives can be observed and the observer effect shapes reality. I expect something like this to be examined in PoX #6 based on the far future story. Lets see on Wednesday.

I think that's my basic problem, in that I don't think the text is remotely open to interpretation. To me it's very clear that this process of returning the characters to life is all about creating precise copies of the people who died, rather than actually restoring the true versions to life. What I'm reading and, in turn, comparing to all I've read regarding characters coming back to life in the past very clearly tells me that these people aren't the originals. I can't choose to interpret it simply to make it the way want it to be. Wish I could.

As you say though, let's see what Wednesday brings. It may be that all of this debate becomes entirely moot. We shall see.

This option makes for an interesting story, in any event. Imagine if someone's soul is off in heaven (or whatever), and Ilyanna manages to find it and lead it back to the 616 universe in his cross-dimensional traipsing about, only for the soul to find out that there's a person in a copy of their body, with a copy of their memories (up to the moment of their death) living their life! Nobody 'misses them' because they thought they were already back! Their family, friends, etc. have accepted this new person as the continuation of them, even though it was just a copy!

That said, it feels like we *just* got rid of the O5 and teen Jimmy and old man Logan and various other annoying duplicates of people running around. I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't want a ton more of them...

There are few mutants with spiritual or mystical powers that would allow them to 'fetch souls' to inhabit these husks, with Ilyanna being the most common choice, and Wycked the most specifically-appropriate choice to get involved in a resurrection-machine-gambit. Maybe Dead Girl, from X-Statix? Dani Moonstar, with her Valkyrie death-sense? Certainly Selene... (Not that this seems like the sort of thing she should be trusted with, although Selene and Sinister, working together on their *own* resurrection process, Sinister providing the artificially-aged-up clone bodies, and Selene the souls to re-occupy them, could be a neat sub-plot for the return of the sorts of mutants that the Krakoans wouldn't be a big hurry to resurrect...)

I certainly think that Hickman could have incorporated one of the many "supernatural" type mutants into his five, allowing for the certainty of what was happening to be clear. That Dani (to pick one) was using her power to open a doorway to the afterlife, and pulling the appropriate X-souls back to their newly created awaiting bodies. I really don't get why that wasn't the way he went with it.

But yeah, I agree, we've had more than enough duplicate X-Men stories over the last decade. One of each character for now, please!

I'd guess because this resurrection mechanism is meant to be for mutants only, hence the Cerebra connection which has always been used for detecting and tracking mutants. If not for that, then this could be used for anyone, well as long as some DNA is available.

I think that the use of Cerebra for that exact purpose would actually make a lot of sense. A filter for mutant minds only, if you will? But that still wouldn't explain why the back up was needed to recreate a mind that should, by rights, still be part and parcel of the original soul.

[FUBAR007]

I think that's my basic problem, in that I don't think the text is remotely open to interpretation. To me it's very clear that this process of returning the characters to life is all about creating precise copies of the people who died, rather than actually restoring the true versions to life. What I'm reading and, in turn, comparing to all I've read regarding characters coming back to life in the past very clearly tells me that these people aren't the originals. I can't choose to interpret it simply to make it the way want it to be. Wish I could.

The tell for me is that, this being fiction, Hickman could've structured the resurrection mechanism without the copying aspect, but he chose not to. For example, he could've made it so that, at the point of death, Cerebro automatically transfers the mind of a mutant into a new body (or an embryo of a new body, or to some kind of storage space and then to a new body, etc.). But, he deliberately didn't do that. Instead, he specifically went with this "Cerebro back-up copy + The Five grow a new body" mechanism.

That means there's in-story significance to these back-up copy X-Men not being the originals. It's a deliberate choice Hickman has made as the writer. Presumably, the reason for that choice will be revealed in-story at some point down the road. The originals are either dead or on ice somewhere.

Those posters twisting themselves into knots to insist that the back-up copies are the originals are in denial because they're afraid the originals are dead and that stories about the back-up copies won't matter.

[Emesem]

the Duncan Idaho in God-Emperor is not the Duncan Idaho in Dune.

[Lapsus]

All this could be avoided with the most simple solution, don't kill your characters like flies then you dont have to bring them back with absurd explanations.

It's really that hard for Marvel to write histories without killing important characters every month?

[Rivka]

The tell for me is that, this being fiction, Hickman could've structured the resurrection mechanism without the copying aspect, but he chose not to. For example, he could've made it so that, at the point of death, Cerebro automatically transfers the mind of a mutant into a new body (or an embryo of a new body, or to some kind of storage space and then to a new body, etc.). But, he deliberately didn't do that. Instead, he specifically went with this "Cerebro back-up copy + The Five grow a new body" mechanism.

That means there's in-story significance to these back-up copy X-Men not being the originals. It's a deliberate choice Hickman has made as the writer. Presumably, the reason for that choice will be revealed in-story at some point down the road. The originals are either dead or on ice somewhere.

Those posters twisting themselves into knots to insist that the back-up copies are the originals are in denial because they're afraid the originals are dead and that stories about the back-up copies won't matter.

Yes, and as I posted in another thread, Hickman also showed us the actual cloning process, using mutants instead of test tubes, pipettes, electric current, and a woman's womb. I wondered if Hickman had perhaps done this in spite of himself, because he did the research and respects the science. But I also wondered--as you say--if this is the writer's choice. Compare the way Scott Summers was brought back--one of those wacky, Marvel fantasy resurrections that wasn't even necessary because we all thought Emma had left his body on life support, preserved, awaiting some alien tech or medicine to resurrect him. Instead Hickman shows us the actual cloning process step by step, and describes it in prose as well.

Human cloning.jpg

1) The first step, obtain the egg from the donor--Goldballs provides the eggs. (2) The next step is to enucleate the donor egg and make it viable--Proteus uses his reality warping powers to do this. (Thinking about what DNA is already in Goldballs' eggs, and what the eggs were originally for, makes me queasy so I try to ignore it.) (3) The next step is to insert the new DNA--anyone could do that; looks like Hope does that while she's also amping/linking/coordinating the others' powers. (4) Next, in cloning, an electric current is used to fuse the new DNA to the donor egg and make the egg begin to divide and develop properly--Elixir does this. (5) At this point in cloning, the egg is implanted into a women's womb for 9 months of gestation but with Xavier/Moira's method Goldballs' eggs are more like chicken eggs that expand, and Tempus uses her powers to rapidly age the developing embryo to fetus to baby through childhood and teenage years all the way to adulthood in 48 hours. It all happens without any of the resurrected touching lady-parts. No women needed for eggs or gestation. The 13-year old fanboy's ideal fantasy--no moms, no messy female biology. (Seriously, I suppose it would have looked WAY worse if Marvel let Hickman show some female mutant producing eggs, or lying on a table having her eggs endlessly harvested.)

Finally, as you point out, Xavier downloads the back-up copy of the newly hatched/born mutant clone's memories, personality, brain patterns. There is already a brain there, a messed-up infant mind that has just been aged to adulthood in 48 hours. The brain patterns and memories downloaded rewire the clone's brain, mold the body even more into a copy of the original.

There are many ethical, moral problems with the entire procedure, and unanswered questions. But as I posted elsewhere, technically, if the clones were allowed to develop without a download from Xavier, they'd be like twins of the original with fetal brains in adult bodies.

All this could be avoided with the most simple solution, don't kill your characters like flies then you dont have to bring them back with absurd explanations.

It's really that hard for Marvel to write histories without killing important characters every month?

Yes. Simple truth.

[ARkadelphia]

Great discussion in this thread. Let me add a new wrinkle in that I don’t think has been discussed: can the soul itself be cloned?

[WebLurker]

Great discussion in this thread. Let me add a new wrinkle in that I don’t think has been discussed: can the soul itself be cloned?

Since it doesn't have DNA, I'm gonna pick answer A.: No, final answer.

[Purplevit]

the Duncan Idaho in God-Emperor is not the Duncan Idaho in Dune.

Damn, I am only at Dune Messiah.

[Sutekh]

Great discussion in this thread. Let me add a new wrinkle in that I don’t think has been discussed: can the soul itself be cloned?

I would say no. The new clone should have it's own soul, and, essentially, be a new person. (So there should be a soul of Joseph out there in the afterlife, somewhere.) Since the comics have had several cases of people being 'downloaded' into clone bodies, I would think they definitely don't have souls of their own, if not fully awakened since, if that were the case, when Xavier (to pick just one example) was downloaded into a clone body by the Shiar tech, they would have displaced (i.e. *killed*) whatever soul was already in that clone body to 'move' Xavier's current personality/soul in. That sounds a little grimdark, and not what they were intending (although I could see some future writer wanting to muddy Xavier up even more by making it canon that some displaced Xavier-soul is mucking about out there, plotting it's revenge on the Xavier that killed it to steal it's body...).

OTOH, the human soul could be said to have a sort of spiritual connection with it's old mind/body, and if they come online because of some resurrection-machine-shenanigans, the original soul (assuming it hasn't been trapped in Hell or something) might be drawn back across the ether to reinhabit it's old form, through some sort of mystic babblespeak similarity/contagion principles.

That all said, we know crap all about whether or not souls even exist, and the rules we'd be establishing here would be strictly for this narrative, and mostly geared around, 'what sounds more interesting' or 'what makes for better stories.' In the real world, we've got faiths that claim that the soul is issued at the exact second of conception, while we also know that identical twins split from a single fertilized egg into two zygotes up to 48 hours later *which means that their one single soul is either ripped in half, or that one half of every pair of (identical) twins is soulless!* It's a wonky subject.

[Chris0013]

Was there enough mutant DNA in Tier Sinclair for him to be cloned so Rahne can have her son back??

[CentralPower]

Or, have I misunderstood what Hickman intended? Does the Cyclops clone actually contain the "soul" of the original Scott Summers? Am I making a big deal out of nothing?

The first thing to keep in mind is that something like this is going to be tied in with an editorial mandate.

The real intention is to bring back every damned mutant that Marvel killed off over the last 20 years. (This probably has something to do with Marvel/Disney buying Fox, and re-acquiring the rights to the x-characters.) And, we can assume that the resurrection device will be destroyed by the end of this run. Characters whose gimmick is being dead and wholly past-tense (such as the original Thunderbird) will either be re-killed off around the same time, or will not have been resurrected yet.

Characters being brought back as copies has been done multiple times over the years. Over time, the implications of this are forgotten by characters on page and ignored by creators readers. (Iron Man is being set up for this, yet again, as we speak.)

In this case, the McGuffin is so ridiculously over-powers that I would just call it "magic" and assume that the souls are being reconstituted with the bodies.

Hickman's info-dumps have referenced the possibility of the wrong soul/mind being put in the wrong body. (And, it is not impossible to assume multiple copies of certain characters.)