The Dream

It was Stan Lee, the spiritual Godfather of Marvel Comics and former head honcho for years and years, who anecdotally gathered his editors around sometime in the 1970s once it looked like the comics industry was here to stay and said 'We no longer need change - we only need the illusion of change' - a philosophy which has carried through mainstream Super Hero comics almost completely undeterred to this day. In the 1960s, especially in the new and blooming Marvel Comics, change was a constant - characters actually aged, their surroundings changed, their premises weren't yet set totally in stone.

Nowadays that kind of change is almost impossible to find - characters have a status quo and almost every great change will eventually revert back to that status quo. Daredevil and Spider-Man may both be publicly unmasked, Steve Rogers can be murdered on the steps of the Capitol, Spidey and Mary Jane can even enjoy a 20 year marriage together - but eventually things revert back to their most classic forms. There's a logic to this - comics are unique in a way that no other industry can boast: characters like Superman or Batman have now been published consistently on a monthly basis for 70 years, and nearly all of their appearances are canonical. In the goal not to alienate both long term and first time readers, these characters enter a sort of cyclical pattern - whereby they constantly change and revert - or the 'illusion of change.' This is especially true once a character reaches a certain degree of popularity or mainstream attention - a small character can be endlessly re-tooled, but once public perception of a character is established you can bet that they'll be back that way one day.

Even harder to change is the actual premise of a strip, the fundamental ideas that govern a specific Super Hero. One of the few lasting changes has been the marriage of Lois and Clark, completely changing the 'Love Triangle' engine that a lot of people felt was the core of Superman's success (Clark loves Lois, Lois loves Supes, Supes wants Lois to love him as Clark). Now, with Lois knowing who Clark is, the nature of Superman's core has changed - Lois is played as Clark's tether to humanity, his true connection to the people of Earth in his times of greatest struggle as an outsider, his greatest source of strength and his greatest weakness, and in a way his embrace of mortality even as a God. Even with this deepening of the character, most of the Superman mythos remains the same: Clark is a mild mannered reporter for a major metropolitan newspaper, kryptonite can kill him, Jimmy Olsen is his goofy pal, Metropolis is his home, etc. All of these elements are intrinsically Superman and even if one changes for a time it will return because that is the satus quo.

Which is why has happened recently and over the years with the X-Men is so fascinating.
In a way it makes sense that a comic book who's premise is based in evolution would be one of the few to slowly but genuinely change past the point of it's original concept and evolve into something I don't think can ever revert back from.

The X-Men's original premise was that Charles Xavier was a mutant with a Dream - a fictional analogue to Martin Luther King. Homo Superior, or 'mutants' had begun to evolve from Homo Sapiens, each blessed and cursed with strange and wondrous powers. More importantly, their very arrival signaled the impending deth knell of the Human species, a prospect that fundamentally scared the crap out of a culture that generally fears and hates what it does not understand. Mutants are considered a menace to society and face termination and camps. Xavier secretly runs a school to train and teach young mutants with an eye towards peaceful co-existence between man and mutant alike - never hating the humans back for their fear, but offering peace as a choice instead. His students become the outlaw group the X-Men, designed to combat the more violent and proactive mutant groups, especially those led by Magneto - Xavier's old friend, a holocaust survivor, and the Malcolm X to Xavier's MLK.

So while there are a ton of other fantastical aspects to the stories, the core of the X-Men is a few things - that Xavier dreams of peaceful coexistence, runs a school to teach young mutants, operates in secret; the world not knowing he is a mutant, and is embroiled in a deep idealogical debate over the nature of evolution with Magneto. The X-Men are taught the moral code of most heroes: not to kill, to act selflessly and with care to man and mutant alike, lead by example. His greatest student is a young man named Scott Summers, or Cyclops, an orphan who looks to Xavier like a father figure. Cyclops is so straight laced that it becomes a character point - some fans see him as lame, but he becomes synonymous with Xavier's dream. Established many times is that Scott is groomed to be Xavier's succesor. Being an X-Man is the only thing Scott knows.

What makes the X-Men so culturally relevant is the idea of mutant as the minority, easily accessible to any group who has been hated or feared. The camps in Days of Future Past are reminiscent of Concentration Camps during the Holocaust, the rounding up and registration of mutant Americans like Japanese internment camps. Prop X, a law written to keep mutants from breeding is the Marvel U analogy to Prop 8. Gay, Jewish, Black, White, Straight, Asian, what have you - all of us have likely been persecuted at one point because of what we are and the X-Men stand as a spandexed point of unity to that shared experience. Because of that the X-Men have been one of the few comics to embrace a diverse cast - the first major change in the comic being the '70s when they went from a classic whitebread quintent to a more adult lineup featuring a German (Nightcrawler), Canadian (Wolverine), African (Storm), Irishman (Banshee), Native American (Thunderbird), Russian (Colossus), Japanse (Sunfire), and soon a Jew (Shadowcat). Even with this radical cast expansion the school remained the same. And of course, Scott led them unwavering into the field.

But the basic tenets of the X-Men have actually completely changed now, and in a deep and profound way. Whether it be a response to the changes of society or the evolution of the story, Xavier's dream is no longer the guiding force of the X-Men as a group and I truly believe we have moved so far past that original concept that things will never fully revert.

The X-Men comic and what it represents has truly evolved and in the world of mainstream comics that is amazing.

One of the key moments of this was Grant Morrison's 'outing' of Professor X to the world at large as a mutant. Suddenly the school was no longer a secret, and that was a total game changer in the premise of the storytelling. Taking the Homosexual metaphor that True Blood has also been playing with - once the X-Men were out of the closet, there is no going back. That would be an insult to the very audience supporting the comic. Scott Summers took on the headmaster role of the school after being posessed by and released from the ultimate evil and was no longer the straight forward boy scout he used to be - carrying on a telepathic affair with the White Queen. 16 million mutants were massacred by Sentinels in Genosha - showing that mutants were no longer a minority in the way they had always been, but capable of populating a country the size of Israel. And Charles Xavier was revealed to have been manipulative in ways only hinted at before - including Xavier hiding the existence of Scott's younger brother Gabriel and how he almost killed him - creating a seismic schism between teacher and student.

Then Marvel pulled the coup de gras - in an attempt to make mutants more unique and less prevalent, with a magic word they rid the entire Marvel U of every mutant but 200. Mutants are no longer the inheritors of the earth - they are a dying species hell bent on survival at any cost. Forget the dream - there is no school anymore, Xavier has been completely replaced as the X-Men's leader. Scott Summers is no longer a teacher or the leader of a team - he is the spokesperson for an entire people, like Moses before him. Settled in San Francisco, America's cradle of acceptance, Scott has gone from student to President/General/Ambassador/Savior. The man who wouldn't kill now has a secret Wetworks team he sends to take hits out on mutant and human foes alike. He operates on the political level against the government of the United States and sees his people as an army.

It's actually rather startling to see how a concept to born and bred in the '60s, that gained entirely new success with it's diversity in the '70s, and was the example of absolute excess in the '90s has come to perfectly capture the fears of our generation, in the post-modern and technical age. Who has time for dreams when the Government is telling you how to breed? (or marry?)

Scott Summers is the new face of the X-Men, and while Xavier will still live on the margins, I don't see us ever going back.

The dream is dead.
Embrace change.

This Week in 4 Colors - Part 1

A look at what I bought this week at the Comic Shop for the initiated and uninitiated comics reader.

*Spoilers Abound*

-UNCANNY X-MEN #513
"Utopia - Chapter 2"
Writer: Matt fraction
Artists: Terry and Rachel Dodson
Publisher: Marvel

What You Need To Know: This is the second part of what is being billed as the first X-Men/Avengers crossover in 15 years (the last being 'Blood Ties' in the mid '90s). That's a relatively debatable claim given that House of M wasn't a crossover in the more old school sense of the word like Utopia is (where the story is interconnected linearly between titles) but was a more 'event' crossover, originally billed as an Astonishing X-Men/New Avengers event before overtaking the entire Marvel Universe.

Also, these aren't the Avengers.

Oh, they call themselves the Avengers. To the people of the Marvel Universe they might be seen as the Avengers. But make no mistake, with few exceptions, these are no heroes worthy of being called 'Avenger.' As a byproduct of a series of significant Marvel events - Secret War (Where Nick Fury took a bunch of Super-Heroes of the radar and helped overthrow a country and then brainwashed them leading to his total disappearance from the world scene); Civil War (Where Captain America and Iron Man split the superhuman community in half and took the streets fighting over Super Hero rights the end of which led to Captain America 'dead' and Iron Man in charge of S.H.I.E.L.D.); and Secret Invasion (Where shapeshifting alien Skrulls infiltrated the Marvel Universe, kidnapped and impersonated heroes and irrevocably corrupted the system) - S.H.I.E.L.D. is now no more, replaced by a new organization - H.A.M.M.E.R. And Tony Stark is now out of power and on the run while H.A.M.M.E.R. and the 'official' Avengers have come under the care of Norman Osborn.

That's right - the Green Goblin, arch-Spidey foe and murderer of Gwen Stacy is now in absolute control over the defense of the United States. And his team of Avengers? Called 'Dark Avengers' for a reason. Lets look at this lineup.

THE IRON PATRIOT - Normie himself, flying around in one of Tony Stark's suits of armor, having appropriated the iconography and imagery of both Captain America and Iron Man.

'SPIDER-MAN' - Actually VENOM (Mac Gargan) former Scorpion and perennial loser, now bonded with an alien symbiote with a mad on for Spider-Man and a desire to eat people. Lots of people.



'HAWKEYE' - Actually BULLSEYE, the psychopathic master assasin who once murdered Elektra, now dolled up in Clint Barton's old purple duds for public consumption.








'MS. MARVEL' - Karla Soffen, the former MOONSTONE, and can you guess it? Another Super Villain dressed up in hero's clothes with a driving ambition and need for control.

'WOLVERINE' - DAKEN, or Wolverine's son - who's basically a douchebag hipster version of Wolverine with the power to control pheromones and is just doing this the fuck with dad.

CAPTAIN MARVEL - Noh Varr, young alien warrior of the Kree who has no idea what he's gotten himself into. Yet.

ARES - God of War. Like, the actual one.

and finally THE SENTRY - the 'Golden Guardian of Good,' actually a completely Schizophrenic and mentally unstable Super-Hero with absolute power, a child's naivete`, and an evil split personality known as 'The Void.' Quite possibly the most powerful being on the planet and a time-bomb waiting to explode.

Not quite "Avengers' material I'd say. On top of that Norman has formed a secret Cabal with some of the most powerful and infamous people in the Marvel Universe in order to make sure that now that the bad guys run the system, they get to keep it this way. This group includes Dr. Doom (Fantastic Four villain and ruler of Latveria), Loki (Norse God of Mischief, now in the body of Thor's wife), The Hood (Parker Robbins - new kingpin of crime with a demon powered hood), Namor (King of the former kingdom of Atlantis, now a ruler with no country), and Emma Frost - co-leader of the X-men, and there in secret. Emma made a deal with Osborn behing Cyclops' back - Emma keeps the mutants in line, Osborn leaves them the hell alone as he goes gunning for every other Super-Hero worth his salt.

Over in The X-Men's word things haven't been any less quiet. After the events of House of M (where Quicksilver used his mentally unstable sister The Scarlet Witch to recreate reality into a world where mutants were the dominant species and their father Magneto ruled America) Wanda used her powers to cause the Decimation - robbing all but 200 mutants in the entire world of their powers and ceasing all mutant births. Mutants, in a literal second, effectively became an endangered species. And in that moment the fundamental goal of the X-Men changed as well: from Xavier's dream of peaceful coexistence to Cyclops' new mission statement of survival. If there was ever an official moment of 'passing the torch' this was it - and Scott Summers now stands as defacto leader of Mutantkind.

Things took a sharp turn when in, of all places, there was a mutant birth in Cooperstown, Alaska. The X-Men raced to get there but they were beaten by the anti-mutant zealots the Purifiers, Sinister's Marauders, and Cable. In the ensuingbattle the entire city was razed to the ground. In the end, Cable ended up with the child, Xavier got shot in the head (he's better now), and the X-Men, now knowing a mutant birth is possible, all relocated the place most known for accepting the different - San Francisco. Welcomed with open arms San Francisco is now a mutant haven where the X-men live their lives, help the cops, and work on saving their species (which basically amounts to Beast setting up a crazy science team and everybody having sex a lot.)

Things were good.

Until a video surfaced showing the Cooperstown Massacre and its cause - a mutant birth. Now a wave of anti-mutant hysteria has come bubbling over California, led by Simon Trask and his Humanity Now coalition, pushing forth 'Proposition X' a piece of legislation that would make chemical birth control mandatory for all mutants. Suffice it to say the X-Men are none too pleased, riots have hit the streets, and Norman Osborn and his Avengers have been called into clean up the mess. Seemingly abandoning Scott, Emma meets up with Norman who lays down the law while The Avengers hunt down the X-men through the streets of San Francisco.

Got all that? Good, cause here we are.

Uncanny X-Men, under the pen of Matt Fraction, is probably the best this title has been in years and is finally the flagship of the brand once again. Under the 17 years of Chris Claremont Uncanny X-Men was the hottest title Marvel had. But recent stellar runs by Grant Morrison on New X-Men and Joss Whedon on Astonishing X-Men had let some of the luster on Uncanny start to rust. But since issue #500 the focus has been squarely back on the book that started it all. FRaction is one of my favorite writers out now, with a fresh voice and off the wall ideas. He understands these characters and the absolute, most important factor of any succesful X-book is that the characters are true to who they are. Not that they can't grow, they absolutely should, but we read the X-Men to hang out with old friends and these are very much the voices of the characters I have loved since grade school.

Making the tragedy of this issue that so few of them get the spotlight. It's a tough act to balance, with three separate teams operating in one issue and a supporting cast of even more. Of the core team we see Scott, Emma, and Hank but thats about it (Colossus and Iceman have a page). This issue is all about advancing plot and introducing Norman's new initiative - The Dark X-Men, his complementary X-Men team to his Avengers. Some of them get moments to shine, some don't, though with four parts left to go I'm sure we'll see more of them. The problem with stories of this scope is that it's easy to feel like characters are just set pieces being moved into position. We're not at that level yet, but the issues do feel a bit more hollow than I'm used to.

Given that so much of the issue is given towards introducing these Dark X-Men I think its only fair we take a brief look at them since they're poised to become major players in the X-world.

MIMIC - In another universe Calvin Rankin went on to become one of the greatest heroes his world had ever seen before being picked up by the reality hopping Exiles and eventually being killed. In our reality, however, Cal is a definite has been - a former X-Man and washout of a Super Villain with powers to mimic up to 5 mutant powers he comes in contact with at any given time. Since we've seen what kind of hero he can be under other circumstances and that he can very much be a fan favorite character I'm hoping this storyline represents the start of some sort of redemptive arc that leads Mimic down a truly noble path.

CLOAK & DAGGER - Tyrone Johnson and Tandy Bowen are runaways and former drug addicts with nothing but each other and special powers - his revolving around darkness and teleportation and hers healing and light. The two are cult favorites who have had very little play on the main scene. Cloak has gotten a lot of attention recently with some high profile moments in House of M and Civil War, and a long awaited mini-series was scrapped for them to be free for this storyline so I do hope this represents something bigger for them and not to be used as so much cannon fodder. A permanent home in the X-books would be nice.

DAKEN - We covered him earlier. Wolverine's son, now getting just as much over-exposure as his dad, but without the years of character building or massive popularity. They actually make fun of that in the book though, and it's a cute moment as Norman says, in reference to Q ratings, 'Turns out people LOVE Wolverine. Can't get enough of him. Who the hell knew?"
Marvel does. And that's why he has 4 monthly solo series, is featured in 5 monthly team titles, and a consistent string of one-shots and guest appearances. He's the best as what he does, and apparently what he does best is sell comics.

WEAPON OMEGA - Michael Pointer was introduced in the rather unfortunate New Avengers arc known as 'The Collective' where he was the receptacle for all the displaced energy when the mutants lost their powers wordwide. This was also the arc where Brian Michael Bendis attempted his own rationalization for the Xorn debacle, which is a story for another time. Under posession by Xorn (ugh) Michael muredered the Canadian team Alpha Flight and since then has been making penance by serving in the replacement team Omega Flight. With him here, USAgent now in Mighty Avengers, and Beta Ray Bill off in space Omega Flight looks pretty depleted and Canada kinda got the shaft. Oh well.
As a Canadian national and official government Super-Hero I'm not quite sure what he's doing here under Osborn's flag waving command, but I do have faith that will be adressed sooner than later.

DARK BEAST - The Hank McCoy from an alternate dimension in which Charles Xavier was murdered, never formed the X-men, and thus Apocolypse took over (known famously as the epic 'Age of Apocolypse' story). This Beast escaped that dimension before nuclear war overtook it and has hung around here since then.) A brilliant genetecist he's also completely sadistic and sarcastic and thus gets the best character moments of all the Dark X-men in the book. Putting Dark Beast on the dark X-Men was a great choice and seeing the two Hanks interact is always fun.

MYSTIQUE - Raven Darkholme - Nightcrawler's birth mother, Rogue's adopted mother, former terrorist, former X-man, shape shifter - her allegiances change as often as she does. She killed Moira McTaggert, had sex with Iceman, and is only here cause somehow Norman infected her with a controllable bomb. She's pretending to be Professor Xavier, who is actually locked up in jail.
I imagine when Emma finds out about that she won't be very happy.

NAMOR - One of Marvel's oldest characters in terms of actual creation, he is one of Marvel's Golden Age trifecta with Captain America and The Human Torch. He's also considered the first mutant of Earth's 'mutant boom' period, thogh this is his first time ever really participating in the X-World. He's here because Emma pretended to kill Sebastian Shaw for him (who is really being holed up in their brig) and because he wants to bang her again.

The long story made short is that there are a TON of secrets at play here. Scott is hiding from Emma, Emma from Scott, Emma from Namor, Osborn from Emma. Beast is in jail, Cyclops is a fugitive, and Wolverine is making his way back from New York as you read this. If they pull a few of this triggers, big things may happen.

That was a LOT longer than I thought. I'll continue my round up of this week's haul tomorrow.

Happy 4th!