User blog:RaefGall/Marvel Characters Die Another Day

Modern comics, especially Marvel, have a terrible reputation regarding the permanency of character deaths. I remember my friends referring to characters who weren't really dead in other venues as being "Marvel Dead." Early on, this was largely a reference to Jean Grey, whose first few deaths and resurrections were actually purposeful, but eventually became a laughing stock. Recently, Marvel has even brought back several characters whose deaths were very meaningful, like Colossus who sacrificed himself to cure the legacy virus. For a long time, a part of this ongoing joke was that you could always count on classic characters like Bucky staying dead, but now you can’t even count on that.

For the most part, Marvel fans have come to accept this part of comic book culture and storytelling; when a new writer or editor steps in, sometimes they try and undo what they consider mistakes from their predecessors by resurrecting characters. Marvel has even grown to embrace this stereotype, such as when they poked fun at themselves in X-Factor v3 when Siryn’s response to her father’s death was simply “It’s ok, he’s an X-Man, I’m sure he’ll be back.” Even when these resurrections are completely meaningless (Doug Ramsey), the backlash from fans has grown to a quiet murmur of complacency with few exceptions (One More Day).

(Note: Spoilers Ahead)

I’ve been reading the (painfully) slow release crossover miniseries Children’s Crusade since it began last year, being a big fan of the Young Avengers. At first, I found the concept very appealing: get together Magneto, Quicksilver, Wiccan, and Speed to have a little family reunion and look for the Scarlet Witch. Marvel had pretty much established that the Scarlet Witch was still alive, so this wasn’t too big of a deal, but it had also implied that she was both depowered and had amnesia. So, through the use of time travel and a parent’s love for her children, Wanda gets her memory and powers back. She submits to the authority of the Avengers for her crimes against humanity and accepts whatever punishment they offer her, even death.

In my opinion, this would have been a great end point to the story. The twins have had the chance to meet their mother, the crusade has been successful, and the Avengers have her in custody for future plot convenience. Unfortunately, during the most recent issue, the series took it a step further and introduced two more elements to the already heavy crossover title. In addition to the Avengers and Young Avengers, the Scarlet Witch actively seeks out the mutant team X-Factor in order to try and begin making amends for removing the powers of most of the mutants on the planet on M-Day. She restores Rictor’s powers and the issue ends with her coming face to face with the X-Men after commenting that she only has 1 million more mutants to restore.

In my mind, this is unacceptable for several reasons.

House of M was a bit odd and unnecessary, but the concluding statement of “No More Mutants” was a huge plot point in the Marvel universe, especially for the X-Men and other mutant teams. Endangered Species dealt with the search for answers and a solution. Utopia was the mutant response to separate themselves from human society. Messiah Complex, Messiah War, and Second Coming dealt with the hope that there would be new mutants in the wake of the ‘mutant messiah.’ The new Generation Hope series deals directly with mutants born after the decimation of M-Day and things are getting better. Marvel has no need to use the Scarlet Witch to undo M-Day, because things have already started to come back full circle.

Besides this, while Rictor has been struggling with the loss of his powers since it happened, it had seemed to me that through his relationships with Wolfsbane and Shatterstar, as well as his continued presence on the X-Factor team, he had at least begun to work through his issues. Am I surprised that he would still want his powers back? Not really. But a part of his chemistry with the team was the lack of his powers, the token human that helped serve as an ambassador between the mutant detective agency and their human or depowered clients. The return of his powers means a lot more than the team gaining the ability to bring buildings down (faster) and really doesn’t contribute to the book.

I will be fair and say that there are three more issues left in this series, and a lot more could still happen to prevent the ‘un-decimation.’ Honestly, I don’t even have that big of a problem with more mutants being repowered. My biggest problem is the way it happened. I’ve been collecting X-Factor v3 since it launched in 2005, and if I didn’t happen to follow Young Avengers, I would have missed it! X-Factor and the X-Men have barely been mentioned since Children’s Crusade started a year ago, nothing on the cover indicates their presence in the book. What makes the editors think that Avengers readers are going to be really interested in some off-brand X-Man getting his powers back, or that X-Factor readers are necessarily going to be following this book?

To undo a major event renders the reactions to that event meaningless. Was Beast’s desperate search to find a way to restore the mutant race just a trivial game? Why did Cable and Nightcrawler have to die saving Hope when the Scarlet Witch can still restore the mutant race? What is the point of following a series for five years when one of the most significant changes in it happens ‘off camera’ in an unrelated miniseries? I’ve only been actively collecting for about those 6 years, but I have to say that this is the most disappointed I’ve been with the way things have been handled in the titles I collect.