For me, it’s not even about the characters’ mindsets vs the writers’. Since the Marvel Voices story was a short story in an anthology written by someone mostly outside of comics, I have no idea how much was Darcie Little Badger & how much was editorial. Guessing a bit of both? But either way, this really acknowledged “mutants as minority allegory” & made a (small but important) comment on what intersectionality means to Krakoa. Meanwhile, Dan Slott made one of two really dumb writing mistakes. Option one: He’s doing a lazy bait-&-switch, just to rile people up & get attention. Option two: He’s actually retconning decades of canon, squashing what Hickman & Zdarsky set up, just to cut his run off from what Hickman & company are doing. Either way, from a “mutants as minority allegory” perspective, that choice is... rough.
Yeah I'm not sure if "you always dreamed of being different, so you made yourself think you were one of us" is the best idea for a franchise that's always basically been marketed as an allegory for minority groups.
It totally makes sense though because now it’s an allegory for cultural appropriation! Genius! It’s so deep!
The only X-Men comic I know of that actually touched on cultural appropriation intentionally is, unsurprisingly, Grant Morrison’s New X-Men.
Rewatching Dark Phoenix this morning while eating leftover Dutch apple pie for breakfast. I just... really like this movie, lol. The blend of things that work very, under-appreciated-ly well & things that do not. The references to past films & various comics, alongside blatant contradictions. Dramatic, with genre schlock. It all comes together in a way that just feels like X-Men to me. It is funny, especially having recently reread the first half of Grant Morrison’s run, how full circle this ended up being. The first Fox X-Men film directly inspired Morrison & Quitely, & then the last Fox X-Men took directly from them.
Forget if this was previously announced, but year two of HiX-Men is called “Reign of X.” I feel pretty comfortable saying year three, after “Dawn” & “Reign,” will be called the “Fall” or something similar. Wonder if they’ll collect X of Swords in the Dawn of X trades, or stop right before & make it its own thing. 22 issues, some of ‘em oversized, will certainly be a lot to collect outside of the initial hardcover edition, which is basically an omnibus, lol.
I'm really hoping Scott and Jean basically saying they're over the Council basically being the sole force on Krakoa leads into a more "traditional" X-Men book being part of Reign. I love almost everything Hickman's doing with mutants, but having at least one back-to-basics book about the X-Men being heroes would be nice.
So the whole X of Swords thing still really didn’t address why the whole vibe of Krakoa is kind of off right?
If you mean that in the way I think you do, they kinda did at the end of X-Men #15. They retired the "X-Men" label cause of the connotations it had not lining up with how Xavier and Magneto want things to run/putting more emphasis on the Council than being heroes.
@TEGCRocco will probably like this comment. The whole interview is pretty good: https://aiptcomics.com/2020/12/07/x-men-monday-86-jonathan-hickman/
That issue was such a good one for my boy. Was also probably the most I've ever liked Scott and Jean together, so I'm excited to see where Hickman goes with them. Very happy to see Hickman has bigger plans for Storm too. Hearing that a lot of the initial plans they had for her got thrown out kinda explains a lot regarding her presence (or lack thereof) in the overall story of Dawn.
It's hard for me to put into words the love that I have for the last year of X-stories under Hickman and company. Like X of Swords, not everything hits but I appreciate the way that something new is being tried and the added lore that has been added in the last year. The new life that has been breathed into the franchise after a few years of misfires and tributes to the past. X of Swords was bloated, but was nonetheless interesting. It was more of a Apocalypse/Excalibur story that could have been its own book like Infinity that could have helped me from feeling that way. The ending really hit the mark for me after the initial "battles", and I won't lie that Apocalypse staying behind left me tearing up. Who would have thought that I would feel for him in this way? I'm interested in seeing how they do establish this more "Traditional" X-book especially with losing a member of the council. And no, they have not address the off feeling of Krakoa. I think X-men #7 feels like a horror story to me.
Weezy & Walt X-Factor story gonna be so good. Dunno how much X-Men Legends I’m gonna buy off the shelf, but whichever issue they’re on? 100%.
Inspired by this thread I read... God Loves, Man Kills (loved it) Days Of Future Past (a little too dated but funish) New X-Men (most x-cellent) Age Of Apocalypse (only read some, kinda loved it kinda hated it)
Don't think Moira has even been mentioned since Dawn started. Honestly wouldn't be too surprised if she doesn't show up again until the middle/end of Reign and into the final part of Hickman's run (which I'm gonna take a stab and say it'll be called Fall)
Got my first HiX-Men collected volume for my bookshelf. (Waited for the trade to come out... and then the discounts meant the hardcover was only slightly more expensive, so I asked for that version anyways, lol.) Looks so nice in this hardcover format. These bigger pages, the data pages, & the decision to save all the covers for the end... It’s just so nice to flip through & is gonna be so nice to read in this format.
Fun little interview about Hickman’s design stuff. Most interesting insight for me is the influence “Five Years Later” Legion had for him. That’s a corner of superhero comics I need to read more of. If Hickman has an itch for another Big 2 run when his X-Men is done (assuming Bendis is done with Legion by then), I’d like to see what a Hickman Legion would be like.
Very excited to see also that Xavier Files is totally leaning in on being an ALL comics news site. Still haven't found a comic news site to fill the voice of the long-defunct Comics Alliance, but it's what it is.
New series with Nightcrawler leading a team of Pixie, Blink, and Dr Nemesis? Sign me the fuck up. Love all of those characters.