{"id":3337,"date":"2010-05-12T10:58:32","date_gmt":"2010-05-12T17:58:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/?p=3337"},"modified":"2010-05-12T10:58:32","modified_gmt":"2010-05-12T17:58:32","slug":"second-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/?p=3337","title":{"rendered":"Second Thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Second Coming <\/em>crossover event currently running through Uncanny X-Men<\/em>, X-Men Legacy<\/em>, New Mutants<\/em>, and X-Force<\/em> reaches its midpoint this week. The story centers on Hope, the so-called ‘mutant messiah’ as she returns to the present day after being raised in the bleak, post-apocalyptic future by her guardian Cable, who is himself the time-tossed son of Cyclops and his wife Maddy Pryor (the psychotic evil clone of Jean Grey created by Mister Sinister who turned into some kind of crazy witch called the Goblin Queen and hooked up with Cyclops’ brother after he ditched her and his infant son to be with his resurrected ex* who later attempted to seduce an alternate-universe version of her own son**), and the X-Men’s struggle against the forces determined to stop her from laying her messianic mojo on Marvel’s merry mutants.<\/p>\n

So, at the halfway point, where are we? Hope has made it to Utopia, the island fortress of the X-Men, but not before Nightcrawler (and Ariel and, apparently, Vanisher) gave their lives, Magik got sent to Hell and Karma lost a leg.\u00c2\u00a0 The legion of resurrected former X-Men villains led by the half genocidal-robot-from-the-present\/half genocidal-robot-from-the-future Bastion (aka Bad 90s Concept #54) seems to be targeting teleporters (despite some messy scripting in X-Force #26 where Bastion initially ignores Nightcrawler as not being as high-priority a target as Rogue) and former Hellfire Club member Donald Pierce is free on Utopia and clearly looking to explode some of the X-Men’s stuff.\u00c2\u00a0 Team Evil hasn’t been unscathed, though, even if they do have the upper hand at the moment. Archangel bisected anti-mutant religious leader William Stryker (the Marvel Universe version of those Westboro assholes) in a shower of gore that discriminating readers have come to expect from the members of X-Force, while Cameron Hodge (leader of the battlesuited terrorist group The Right) was taken out by the New Mutants’ Warlock.<\/p>\n

As an outspoken fan of X-Men crossover events (I love Inferno<\/em> and Messiah CompleX<\/em>), I’m still up in the air about Second Coming<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0 In a landscape where the X-Men’s biggest antagonists right now have been off-the-radar threats or their own internal bickering, the sudden prominence of Bastion’s conspiracy (which has been running through X-Force from the beginning and has never bled into the other books prior to the ramp up to Second Coming<\/em>) seems kind of random and off-putting and almost punishes the readers of the other books for not wanting to pay attention to the book where all the X-Men with knives and\/or claws trudge through graphic violence and teenage girl chainsaw torture<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ostensibly, this is the story of the return of the Phoenix. At least, that’s what all the clues in the marketing materials and the cute convention\u00c2\u00a0 panel answers have been telling us. That’s a cosmic scale story, by its very definition. It is not dead bad guys from the 80s and 90s getting their gangs back together and facing off one by one against Cyclops and Wolverine over a girl. That’s River City Ransom<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\""The<\/a><\/p>\n

For a story that is supposed to be about Hope Summers, we’ve seen her do precious little except for drool over hair care products, sulk and bravely but ineffectually assault Bastion with a steel pipe. Other than her status as the only mutant born since the Scarlet Witch’s Decimation of the mutant populace at the end of House of M<\/em>, there is nothing noteworthy about Hope save for Scott’s belief that redheaded girls have magical powers.\u00c2\u00a0 Wolverine is right; she’d better be worth it.<\/p>\n

As the reader, we don’t know if she is or not.\u00c2\u00a0 Nor do we really know what the stakes are (and don’t give me ‘survival’; I’m ready for an X-Men story that isn’t just about the mutants’ fight to survive their genetic obsolescence and a villain with a plan that’s not ‘kill the mutants’). In fact, you might have noticed that Second Coming<\/em> is re-serving the same story as Messiah CompleX<\/em> – Cable trying to keep Hope safe, the X-Men trying to find them, random villains teaming up to take them down, Wolverine and his crack team of violent sociopaths crossing the line in order to serve the greater good.\u00c2\u00a0 Except three years ago it had more immediacy and more impact. So far, Second Coming <\/em>feels silly and bombastic, and I hope that I turn out to be wrong about it.<\/p>\n

Have you been keeping up with Second Coming<\/em>? Am I wrong? Do you love it? Don’t you just wish they’d bring Jean back already? Let us know in the comments.<\/p>\n

*The first case of what the kids now call “resurrexting”
\n** I’ll admit that I’m fuzzy on the events of X-Man<\/em>, but this actually happened, right? Or is this fanfic?<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.teefury.com\/,<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Second Coming crossover event currently running through Uncanny X-Men, X-Men Legacy, New Mutants, and X-Force reaches its midpoint this week. The story centers on Hope, the so-called ‘mutant messiah’ as she returns to the present day after being raised in the bleak, post-apocalyptic future by her guardian Cable, who is himself the time-tossed son […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[413,207,37,82,110],"class_list":["post-3337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comics","tag-comics","tag-event-comics","tag-marvel","tag-marvel-comics","tag-x-men"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3337\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}