Disrespected Hero's who never get their Props!!!

[The Question]

Not to me. That's a small-minded, pathetic reaction to persecution, in my book. "These guys have been trying to harm us for years now, and I've had enough! Forget about setting an example, it's assassination squads and death to all threats from here on out! Mutants will live if we've gotta kill the whole world to do it!" It's just gonna perpetuate and escalate the mutant/human conflict.

I really want to see what Magneto thinks of all this. He's probably playing chess with Xavier and dishing out a sweet burn every other sentence.

 

[The Question]

I like Carnage, too. I think there's definitely room for that totally irredeemable, psychopathic killer archetype in every universe, and Carnage fills that role well at Marvel. Not every villain has to be a Shakespearean mastermind or anything.

I always kind of hoped that they'd bring Carnage back after Sentrey killed him by having some random person find the remnants of the symbiot after it fell back to Earth, fused with it and got powers, and then had Cassidy's voice in the back of their head trying to force them to kill people.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I really want to see what Magneto thinks of all this. He's probably playing chess with Xavier and dishing out a sweet burn every other sentence.

Ha, yeah, it must suck for Xavier to realize that "his" people are now more like Magneto's people.

 

[The Question]

Ha, yeah, it must suck for Xavier to realize that "his" people are now more like Magneto's people.

Magneto: Charles, do you remember that time you chastised me for "training young, confused mutants to be soldiers in my war for Mutant rights and turning them into violent criminals," as you put it?

Xavier: Erik, do you remember the time I told you to shut the **** up?

 

[terry78]

Yeah, I agree with Ant-Man. I remember that one story where Stark says he's going to take over his new team in Mighty Avengers.

Hank Pym: You can take over from here? You? Tony Stark? Mister Fought-against-Cap-in-the-civil-war, shot-Hulk-into-space-and-caused-World-War-Hulk, gave-the-Skrulls-everything-they-needed-to-invade-Earth. You're taking over? Come on, give me one good reason why—

Iron Man: Three words. You're. Hank. Pym.

 

[bored]

I still haven't read that myself. I fell out of a lot of comics around that time due to money issues. To my eternal shame, I haven't even read all of Jurgens' Thor run from around then.

If you can find a TPB of "Kang Dynasty", or at least some of the back issues, do it. It's one of the biggest, most epic stories the Avengers have had.

 

[TimBisley]

Yeah, I agree with Ant-Man. I remember that one story where Stark says he's going to take over his new team in Mighty Avengers.

Hank Pym: You can take over from here? You? Tony Stark? Mister Fought-against-Cap-in-the-civil-war, shot-Hulk-into-space-and-caused-World-War-Hulk, gave-the-Skrulls-everything-they-needed-to-invade-Earth. You're taking over? Come on, give me one good reason why—

Iron Man: Three words. You're. Hank. Pym.

It seems like most writers are hell bent on making Tony Stark as unlikeable as possible.

 

[Hmarrs]

It seems like most writers are hell bent on making Tony Stark as unlikeable as possible.

There trying to give him Batman's attitude.
And it's not working.
The only real and first and equivelent to Batman on the team non powered human who depends on a suit.
No SS serum,no Hammer,no Gamma etc.etc.
Who won't be intemdate by Super powered human and will put things in line if he feels they are out of line super human or not.

 

[Iron Man]

Jumping into this X-Force debate: I actually don't have a problem with the idea of a mutant assassination squad. It matched the urgent survival instinct that hit mutantkind when M-Day struck, and it actually does fit that kind of "kill or be killed" logic that would kick in if your entire species got cut down to two or three hundred. The problem I do have with it is the fact that Cyclops organised it. He should have been the leading paragon that kept the X-Men to the straight and narrow, while Wolverine should've been the one secretly setting out to do some damage - as it is now.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I completely agree with you, IM. People say X-Force and their tactics make sense for the current situation, but I contend that they don't make sense for Cyclops. It transforms his character into something other than what he should be. He's always been a moral idealist and a true believer in Chuck's dream. Yes, they revealed that Chuck wasn't quite as moral as he let on, but that should've just spurred Cyclops on to be better than ever, proving that even if Chuck himself didn't uphold the ideals all the time, they still had merit and they could still work. Instead, he just does a total 180 and becomes a death squad kind of 'leader.' Same goes for Warren figuring out he can turn into Archangel again and cheerfully deciding, "Welp, if I've got these metal wings anyway, I guess I may as well do some killin' with 'em! Sign me up for X-Force and I'll be sure to leave all my morals at home!"

As for Tony, they're not "trying to do" anything with him. They're writing him as Tony Stark has always been written, to some degree or another: an arrogant, egotistical jerk. They've cranked it up a bit with Civil War and the movies, but his own comics make him generally likable, in a jerkish kind of way. He's not someone you'd really want to be best buds with, but he's someone most people can get along with most of the time. But given that his defining characteristic is his arrogance, he can't help but be a jerk. He genuinely believes he can do everything better than everyone else.

 

[Iron Man]

I completely agree with you, IM. People say X-Force and their tactics make sense for the current situation, but I contend that they don't make sense for Cyclops. It transforms his character into something other than what he should be. He's always been a moral idealist and a true believer in Chuck's dream. Yes, they revealed that Chuck wasn't quite as moral as he let on, but that should've just spurred Cyclops on to be better than ever, proving that even if Chuck himself didn't uphold the ideals all the time, they still had merit and they could still work. Instead, he just does a total 180 and becomes a death squad kind of 'leader.' Same goes for Warren figuring out he can turn into Archangel again and cheerfully deciding, "Welp, if I've got these metal wings anyway, I guess I may as well do some killin' with 'em! Sign me up for X-Force and I'll be sure to leave all my morals at home!"

Agreed. While I heard good things about the title, I had no interest in picking it up because it butchered certain characters by even including them as part of the team (plus, has there actually been any explanation behind why Warren can switch between wings now? I only read Uncanny and occasionally Legacy and I haven't seen anything there).

As for Tony, they're not "trying to do" anything with him. They're writing him as Tony Stark has always been written, to some degree or another: an arrogant, egotistical jerk. They've cranked it up a bit with Civil War and the movies, but his own comics make him generally likable, in a jerkish kind of way. He's not someone you'd really want to be best buds with, but he's someone most people can get along with most of the time. But given that his defining characteristic is his arrogance, he can't help but be a jerk. He genuinely believes he can do everything better than everyone else.

Yeah, that's pretty much how he's always been. I think one of the cores of Tony's characterisation lies on the balance between writing him as a self-confident jerk or as an arrogant *****ebag. In my opinion, it should be the former. Fraction gets it right, but some writers get it horribly wrong (see: Civil War).

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Yeah, although, in fairness, when he's drifted into *****ebag territory, he's had some of his best stories. "Armor Wars" comes to mind immediately.

 

[Iron Man]

Which version? There have been so many copies of that story it's hard to keep track But yeah, I do see where you're coming from. Armor Wars is a classic - however, in that story, he did have a legitimate reason for being a *****e, he just took it a little too far.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

One of my personal favorites was the story that introduced War Machine. Tony faked his own death and kept it a secret even from Rhodey, and then he solved whatever problem caused him to do it and came back like nothing ever happened. Rhodey was pissed, but it was a pretty good storyline at the time.

 

[Iron Man]

Tony and Rhodey have some of their best stuff together when they're fighting - one of my old favourites is Hands of the Mandarin, where they spend a little while smashing the hell out of each other IGN did a list of their top 10 Iron Man stories a little while back and I remember being mostly in agreement...although they did include that terrible Doom/Camelot story that I hate but everyone else on the internet seems to love.

 

[Dread]

To be fair on the Cyclops debate, Cyclops has never been a staunch "no killing" sort of hero like Spider-Man or Superman tend to be. He has been willing to kill enemies on occasion at various points of the X-Men's history. Heck, when Xavier recruited him from the criminal Jack O' Diamonds, that story ended with Jack basically exploding (an outcome that Xavier was hardly too remorseful about, seeing no other way to beat Jack). While he was never the Punisher, and once upon a time didn't like that Wolverine killed too wantonly, he is still someone who basically blasted Mr. Sinister to microns for kissing Jean Grey at the end of INFERNO (Sinister got better). I always imagined that Xavier was the one who was endlessly patient with Magneto, not Cyclops.

The argument for the whole X-Force thing is that some of their enemies at the time could not be reasoned with and had already been given endless chances. Rev. Stryker was apprehended twice before, despite his actions always having been to kill mutants (especially children), and yet he was still alive to literally blow up a bus full of youngsters, have another shot in the head by a sniper, and leading a death-squad of Purifiers into the Mansion to slaughter CHILDREN. That is a group that will never be reasoned with and it is safer to just put them down. The students of Academy X, who literally saw their friends cut down like cattle against a threat that Cyclops and the X-Men could have handled years ago probably have a legitimate reason to feel that the X-Men were "wobbly" in the past. There are those who feel that meeting an enemy with equal force they are using against you makes one worse, when at times it is simply not being masochistic.

That all said, I do think X-FORCE took things too far, and many of Cyclops' ideas were batty. By gathering ALL mutants that were left in one central location, he created a situation where one maniac like Selene or Bastion could quite literally kill the whole species in one assault, rather than have to hunt them handfuls at a time over various locations. I have a serious problem with Cyclops encouraging teenage students to be as ruthless as possible, as he did with X-23 and Elixir on X-Force. And while the Purifiers may be a specific case, I do think Cyclops was following the old axum, "when you think like a hammer, everything starts to look like nails" with some of his policies. Even with the CURSE OF THE MUTANTS, the idea to stop the vampire army by deliberately resurrecting Dracula, even though just last year he was trying to lead a vampire army against Britain is pretty flipping insane. That's like if you wanted to stop the Acolytes by summoning Apocalypse to lead them.

Shang-Chi...

He's gonna be in Secret Avengers soon. Maybe Brubaker will do for him what he and Fraction did for Iron Fist.

I imagine Brubaker will make Shang-Chi look better in SECRET AVENGERS than Nova did.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

You're right; it'd take a real effort to make anyone look worse than Brubaker made Nova look in Secret Avengers.

 

[Dread]

Definitely. Brubaker is likely better with lower level black ops style heroes than space tankers. He's fine with Namor, so long as Namor is basically doing an Invaders style mission.

 

[fifthfiend]

Yeah I was willing to tolerate that "lol BIG LEAGUZ NAO" bit but having him get punked and then mind controlled was me no longer being interested in that comic.

I can just keep reading Thanos Imperative where Nova is the guy who is in the middle of fighting his third war for the sake of all life in the universe. Or fourth? **** who can even keep count.

 

[fifthfiend]

Yeah, that's pretty much how he's always been. I think one of the cores of Tony's characterisation lies on the balance between writing him as a self-confident jerk or as an arrogant *****ebag. In my opinion, it should be the former. Fraction gets it right, but some writers get it horribly wrong (see: Civil War).

Fraction would get it right if he had like four times as much 'people kicking Tony in the face and telling him to **** himself' and like 75% less 'people tolerating Tony's *****ey manipulative ******** for no humanly imaginable reason.'

 

[Iron Man]

Fraction would get it right if he had like four times as much 'people kicking Tony in the face and telling him to **** himself' and like 75% less 'people tolerating Tony's *****ey manipulative ******** for no humanly imaginable reason.'

The whole book would be better if it had anyone kicking anything in the face.

 

[fifthfiend]

Looking back at that I feel that instead of "kicking in the face" I should have gone with "punching in the nuts".

...I mean facekicking is Chris Sims's thing, I don't wanna step on any toes

 

[Dread]

Yeah I was willing to tolerate that "lol BIG LEAGUZ NAO" bit but having him get punked and then mind controlled was me no longer being interested in that comic.

I can just keep reading Thanos Imperative where Nova is the guy who is in the middle of fighting his third war for the sake of all life in the universe. Or fourth? **** who can even keep count.

Fourth. He was front and center in ANNIHILATION, and involved in ANNIHILATION CONQUEST (including being present in the final battle against Great Ultron, even tackling him at one point). Ego involved the Nova Corps in WAR OF KINGS and Nova's involvement was basically rescuing whatever recruits were left (including his brother) and bringing in members of the Imperial Guard for war crimes. He's also front and center again, alongside Qusar and Peter Quill, in THANOS IMPERATIVE. And heck, that's not counting 90's style stuff he may have been involved in, such as the INFINITY stuff.

 

[fifthfiend]

There you go then, his at-least-fourth war to save all life in the universe.

But offer him a spot on the Avenjerks and OMG TEH BIG TYME

...heh, "Avenjerks"

 

[fifthfiend]

That's the absolute opposite of respect to me, personally. I've hated Cyclops' more militant, aggressive portrayal of the past few years. Last time I actually liked him was in Whedon's Astonishing X-Men. He was himself, but more charismatic and confident than he's seemed in a long time. Now he's just a raging *****ebag.

I feel that if you could take that portrayal and shear off all of the actual charisma, you would have a basically perfect Cyclops.

...If I were ever in a position to publish and name an ongoing Cyclops series, it would be called "Cyclops: Nobody Likes Him"