Comics Official ASTONISHING X-MEN Discussion Thread

[quietorloud]

Beast hasn't returned back to normal yet.

 

[Mother_Askani]

Joss has said Torn happens AFTER Civil War. That's why the other two teams have left/will leave the Institute. Civil War will probably end in The 198 and O*N*E leaving as well, leaving everything set-up for Torn.

Unstoppable is leading up to the big event with all three teams getting back together next summer.

 

[Manic]

Beast hasn't returned back to normal yet.

He'll be back soon enough. Everyone else just woke up (why Blindfold and Hisako weren't knocked out, I'll never know), and Wolvie is snapping out of it.

 

[CaptainCanada]

Unstoppable is leading up to the big event with all three teams getting back together next summer.

When that happens, I insist on a double-splash page of all the X-Men together (that would pretty much automatically become my desktop).

As for Hisako and Blindfold, it's best not to think about those things.

 

[Iceman]

When that happens, I insist on a double-splash page of all the X-Men together (that would pretty much automatically become my desktop).

That would be sweet. It's about time

 

[PhePhe112]

anyone have all the comics scanned, or know of a site where i can read them all?? thanks!!

 

[Manic]

anyone have all the comics scanned, or know of a site where i can read them all?? thanks!!

That would be illegal. Doesn't the Hype have rules against posting links to that stuff?

 

[Jennifer Walters]

When was it said the three teams would meet in a big event next summer?

 

[Specter313]

When was it said the three teams would meet in a big event next summer?

Never, as far as I know.

 

[Mother_Askani]

When was it said the three teams would meet in a big event next summer?

It's speculation based on a couple things that have been said by Joss.

Joss has been hyping the finale as a epic and that he's going out with something spectacular. He's also said that he wants to have any of the X-Men that editors will let him have.

It's possible that the editors tell him he can't have anyone but the current Astonishing cast, but you could assume that they'll let Joss have all three teams for his big finish.

 

[Manic]

I doubt it. A good chunk of the team is in Shi'ar space, and won't be coming back to Earth for at least another 8 issues.

 

[Mother_Askani]

The timing of the books seems to line-up for Adjectiveless and Uncanny to stay out of Astonishing's way until the end of Unstoppable for the finale (issue 25 or the Annual, whatever way they do it),

Uncanny's Shi'Ar arc will end in April. Bru has said the end is still up in the air and keeps saying he doesn't know if or when they will come back.

Adjectiveless will end their arc at the same time.

If Astonishing can maintain a monthly schedule, issue 25 would be due out in May.

Joss had a rant recently saying it's not his fault that the book went bimonthly, he doesn't like bimonthly books and he would have preferred it was monthly. So, it looks like the scheduling was done for a specific reason, perhaps to set-up the timing for the conclusion of Astonishing's Unstoppable to be a big X-event for the summer.

 

[CaptainCanada]

Astonishing's scheduling is the way it is because John Cassaday isn't exactly Jack Kirby in terms of dependable production. I'm quite willing to believe Whedon isn't the issue, since he never had any problem running multiple weekly TV shows.

 

[triplefive]

Yeah, I remember reading the delays were the fault of Cassaday.

 

[Boba_Fett_123]

It would be very interesting if they used the end of Whedon's run to segue into some big event. I guess we won't know until they announce it.

 

[Mother_Askani]

If Cassaday and Whedon get behind, the other books will probably have their arc extended so they keep away from the Institude for an even longer period of time.

Since it's lining up that so many arcs will be ending at the same time, it looks like another reboot will be happening, and with a new editor, there could be big changes.

And, Joss' plans could potentially change. He doesn't seem privy to a lot of what else is planned, and has complained about being completely in the dark about House of M. It's been nearly a year that he's been talking about his big finale as this epic type big battle with all the characters they'll let him have, which is the conclusion of the Ord/Breakworld storyline. He's described Torn as this internal arc and Unstoppable as their big, gigantic epic arc. So it's the Breakworld-ians trying to kill the X-Man destined to destroy the Breakworld.

But, at the same time they have this big epic arc in Uncanny where essentially the same thing is happening - the Shi'Ar are trying to kill Rachel to prevent her from potentially becoming Dark Phoenix and destroying planets.

So, maybe Joss will be forced to change it up a bit. he's fond of doing a lot of off-key finales as well. In Season 4 of Buffy, they did the big epic battle, and then the finale of that season was a weird dream episode that explored who the characters were and how they had changed. I could see him doing something like that to wrap up Astonishing.

But Joss is really fond of characters like Rogue and Storm, and it seems like he wants the opportunity to write them before he's gone.

 

[Boba_Fett_123]

Do you have any links to any of this?

 

[Galact-Gal]

He'll have a hard time writing Storm now that she's Queen of Wakanda. Since she decided to marry T'Challa, her first duty is to provide an heir to the throne. I don't think the people of Wakanda would be too happy if she ran off to have adventures with the X-men.

 

[Jennifer Walters]

God, I await their divorce. I love T'Challa and I love Ororo more, but neither is benefiting from the marriage what so ever. Lamest Marvel Marriage ever.

 

[Mother_Askani]

Do you have any links to any of this?

Just go thru Whedonesque.com's archive of X-Men posts and read all of Joss' interviews.

Someone needs to put together a Spoilers Slayer type site for X-Men comics spoilers. It's fairly easy to figure out what's going to happen based on what's said in interviews.

 

[mightiest_mortal]

Um... hello? "Danger"? Scott? Charles? Father-son relationship shattered? Will probably never trust another person in his life? Further fueled by Emma forcing Scott to confront all of his insecurities in issue #14?

Aww man youve got me started on "Danger" now. If it wasn't Whedon writing it, it would have been torn apart by the entire X-Community. This is gonna be a long rant....

Danger was a flawed story, Both in opinion and in facts. Even using a large amount of willing suspension of disbelief, Whedons grasp on computer programming is quite embarrassing.
Firstly the danger room itself. Creating fully sentient sotware just to power some combat scenarios is ridiculous overkill, but we can easily excuse that, it is Shiar Technology afterall. Maybe they find it easier to program that way.
Making it sentient is one thing, but why the hell would they program it so that it can feel opressed and a slave and like its being forced into doing its work? I make a lot of websites + games... never once have i felt obliged to add a little action script or something so that my Webpage would feel cheap and exploited, having to show the same information again and again to the point that it would wish to be free. Sentient or not, it was still programmed. Its nuts.
Now even if we assume that the Shiar really did program it to feel this way, I guess they like theyre software to feel opressed, I dont get Professor X keeping a sentient being locked up. Its making out like he had to do it for the X-Men and felt he had no other choice. Its not like it was his only option. The X-men were doing exercises and scenarios in the danger room, with fancy robots and traps, long before they added the shiar tech and they managed just fine. Professor X having a prisoner just so that his Danger Room looks swankier and more high tech is reidiculously out of character.
Now on to the Sentinel. How does a weapon, built and programmed PURELY TO HUNT AND KILL MUTANTS, suddenly decide that it feels really guilty about having killed people and run and hide. A conscience isn't just some thing that you suddenly get when you get intelligent enough, it all has to be learnt. what good would it have done, building big mutant hunting robots, and programming them to be able to feel really guilty and suicidal about killing mutants? Sentinels are weapons. Thats all they were programmed to be. Its pretty much the equivalent of a Soldier, about to shoot someone, but then his gun suddenly, miraculously, decides that killing is bad and feels guilty about all of the people its killed so won't fire any more bullets. Its sounds dumb when you put it that way because it is.
This doesn't even cover the lack of originality in the story. The "holodeck coming to life" scenario was over done to the point of being a joke in the star trek series, and was used as a crutch in Voyager when they couldn't think of any other stories. Even in the X-Men universe, we've already had Cerebro come to life, take on human form and try to kill all the X-Men. I believe generation X even had a story line where their danger grotto tried to kill them.

Back to Cyclops, yes the argument (allbeit for a stupid reason) did cause them to fallout, they were already very uneasy, with Prof X run away to Genosha. Deadly Genesis damaged their friendship considerably more than Astonishing did, and Scott's already showing signs that he could forgive him.
Aside from this already forgotten argument between them, Scott showed little development in that arc at all. In the end, it was Kitty that saved the day..... again.

As far as 14 goes, if I thought this "development" of cyclops was going to last even as long as Spideys IronSpidey suit, I would have cried. Cyclops uncontrollable blasts..... are controllable? :| .....he just decided not to learn to control them so that he would have something that he could control? :| Were there no other Cyclops fans out there that felt that this was a serious slap to the face?
It felt like if we had discovered that Prof X had never needed a wheelchair at all, he chose to go around in one so that he would feel more humbled, despite any problems or danger that it might cause for the other X-Men to have to carry him around.

This is all the progression that Cyclops has done over the course of Astonishing IMO...

-he had an argument with Prof X (thats been forgotten about already)

-he can control his optic blasts after all (wont last more than a couple of months anyway)

-he needs Kitty to keep saving the day now

-he has a gun now so can shoot people (which i guess must make him instantly cool now then)




hmm... sorry for the long rant, but im curious if anyone agrees with me on any of it :S

 

[Specter313]

Aww man youve got me started on "Danger" now. If it wasn't Whedon writing it, it would have been torn apart by the entire X-Community. This is gonna be a long rant....

Danger was a flawed story, Both in opinion and in facts. Even using a large amount of willing suspension of disbelief, Whedons grasp on computer programming is quite embarrassing.
Firstly the danger room itself. Creating fully sentient sotware just to power some combat scenarios is ridiculous overkill, but we can easily excuse that, it is Shiar Technology afterall. Maybe they find it easier to program that way.
Making it sentient is one thing, but why the hell would they program it so that it can feel opressed and a slave and like its being forced into doing its work? I make a lot of websites + games... never once have i felt obliged to add a little action script or something so that my Webpage would feel cheap and exploited, having to show the same information again and again to the point that it would wish to be free. Sentient or not, it was still programmed. Its nuts.
Now even if we assume that the Shiar really did program it to feel this way, I guess they like theyre software to feel opressed, I dont get Professor X keeping a sentient being locked up. Its making out like he had to do it for the X-Men and felt he had no other choice. Its not like it was his only option. The X-men were doing exercises and scenarios in the danger room, with fancy robots and traps, long before they added the shiar tech and they managed just fine. Professor X having a prisoner just so that his Danger Room looks swankier and more high tech is reidiculously out of character.
Now on to the Sentinel. How does a weapon, built and programmed PURELY TO HUNT AND KILL MUTANTS, suddenly decide that it feels really guilty about having killed people and run and hide. A conscience isn't just some thing that you suddenly get when you get intelligent enough, it all has to be learnt. what good would it have done, building big mutant hunting robots, and programming them to be able to feel really guilty and suicidal about killing mutants? Sentinels are weapons. Thats all they were programmed to be. Its pretty much the equivalent of a Soldier, about to shoot someone, but then his gun suddenly, miraculously, decides that killing is bad and feels guilty about all of the people its killed so won't fire any more bullets. Its sounds dumb when you put it that way because it is.
This doesn't even cover the lack of originality in the story. The "holodeck coming to life" scenario was over done to the point of being a joke in the star trek series, and was used as a crutch in Voyager when they couldn't think of any other stories. Even in the X-Men universe, we've already had Cerebro come to life, take on human form and try to kill all the X-Men. I believe generation X even had a story line where their danger grotto tried to kill them.

Back to Cyclops, yes the argument (allbeit for a stupid reason) did cause them to fallout, they were already very uneasy, with Prof X run away to Genosha. Deadly Genesis damaged their friendship considerably more than Astonishing did, and Scott's already showing signs that he could forgive him.
Aside from this already forgotten argument between them, Scott showed little development in that arc at all. In the end, it was Kitty that saved the day..... again.

As far as 14 goes, if I thought this "development" of cyclops was going to last even as long as Spideys IronSpidey suit, I would have cried. Cyclops uncontrollable blasts..... are controllable? :| .....he just decided not to learn to control them so that he would have something that he could control? :| Were there no other Cyclops fans out there that felt that this was a serious slap to the face?
It felt like if we had discovered that Prof X had never needed a wheelchair at all, he chose to go around in one so that he would feel more humbled, despite any problems or danger that it might cause for the other X-Men to have to carry him around.

This is all the progression that Cyclops has done over the course of Astonishing IMO...

-he had an argument with Prof X (thats been forgotten about already)

-he can control his optic blasts after all (wont last more than a couple of months anyway)

-he needs Kitty to keep saving the day now

-he has a gun now so can shoot people (which i guess must make him instantly cool now then)




hmm... sorry for the long rant, but im curious if anyone agrees with me on any of it :S

On the Sentinel, it just didn't suddenly decide it had a conscience, Danger essentially gave it one. That's what Danger does, with both Sentinels during that arc. It essentially gives "life" to electronic things, it just blocks parts of their new minds so that she can easily control them. Which is why it had that one part blocked by Danger. It doesn't matter what its programming was before, because Danger can easily write that out and put whatever she wants in. The Blackbird isn't programmed to kill mutants, but when she got ahold of it, that's exactly what she had it try to do.

 

[Boba_Fett_123]

I agree with you on the flaws of Danger, and so does Whedon. He said that he got too caught up with the idea of the sentient Danger, and it affected the quality. Don't have the link handy, but I'll track it down.

Cyclops, on the other hand...Cyclops has been on this track since Morrison's run. He hates not being in control; in fact, he's terrified of it. I guess it all comes down to whether you like the idea of him being a neurotic control freak. Personally, issue 14 of AXM is one of my favorite issues of an X-Men comic, and I think it really lays Scott's character bare for everyone to see. I've seen real development with him, but obviously you disagree.

 

[mightiest_mortal]

On the Sentinel, it just didn't suddenly decide it had a conscience, Danger essentially gave it one. That's what Danger does, with both Sentinels during that arc. It essentially gives "life" to electronic things, it just blocks parts of their new minds so that she can easily control them.

It developed the conscience on its own, Danger blocked the consience so that it would attack the X-Men. (thats what I gathered from it anyway)

I agree with you on the flaws of Danger, and so does Whedon. He said that he got too caught up with the idea of the sentient Danger, and it affected the quality. Don't have the link handy, but I'll track it down.

Hmm.. now that really is interesting. Its not that I dislike Whedon. Angel was fantastic +Firefly+serenity were pure genius. I just feel that his Astonishing run has been a bit underwhelming, and so bits like the danger arc, where he really could hve done better kinda annoy me more than they would do.

Cyclops, on the other hand...Cyclops has been on this track since Morrison's run. He hates not being in control; in fact, he's terrified of it. I guess it all comes down to whether you like the idea of him being a neurotic control freak. Personally, issue 14 of AXM is one of my favorite issues of an X-Men comic, and I think it really lays Scott's character bare for everyone to see. I've seen real development with him, but obviously you disagree.

Think i'l wait till the end of Whedons run before i make any realy final decisions. He did just gun down Emma 2.0 with apparently not a care in the world so he must know its not the real her, and if it was him talking to blindfold aswell, then hopefully it means hes got a plan, and it wont just have kitty saving the day again.

 

[Specter313]

Danger gave it the conscience when it gave it "life". Danger can't block something if it develops after she's already tooled around in it's mind. Kitty straight out says that Danger blocked it when she gave it life. Essentially, she gave it a mind like any other living thing, but blocked the part of it that would make it feel guilty for all the genocide it caused, which is blocking its conscience.