A Robotic Work in Progress

corsair getting punched ❤️

Magik does "air quotes"

Honestly, I just think it's neat. Magik being a sarcastic jerk in her 6160 position as Tsar of Eurasia and a very bad boss. We find out she fired a scientist by killing them with the Soul Sword and oversees atrocities on the reg.

She is what Kitty needs on a carnal level.

Heh, not in this universe. Generally agreed though.

True, a bad example. Although, to be fair, anyone is better than the Peters she's dated.

Haha, mostly agreed. I don't mind Pete Wisdom, though I'm not sure if Kitty was an adult at that point. Probably not. Mixed feelings on Colossus beating him up.

I think Kitty WAS supposed to be an adult when she dated Pete. But the rolling timeline hit and...oops.

It's a lesson for all comic writers really, don't have your thinly veiled self inserts date Kitty Pryde, because you might accidently get retconned into an ephebophile.

(I like Pete though, he's pretty fun as Betsy's foil in the Krakoa era books.)

Yeah...

The thing is that there was nothing stopping anyone at any time devoting two panels to Kitty's 18th birthday party or whatever, regardless of the timeline. It was absolutely on the table, they just didn't do it. By that time she'd been through a ridiculous amount of adventures/danger and had stopped acting like the dopey kid for the most part. 18 is still very young in the grand scheme of things - you lose the opportunity to do things like make her attend a boarding school (no great loss) but you gain so much - while she remains the youngest on the team.

I mean, to be fair, didn't poor Bobby turn 18 more than once?

And then, I think, was explicitly too young to drink around the time of Giant-Sized X-Men (when the drinking age in NY in 1975 was 18...)

So I think that even if they had explicitly said Kitty was 18 at the time (and I do think by context clues, she was probably meant to be in her very early twenties in those issues), poor Pete would still have been doomed.

I suppose that's one thing to thank New X-Men for. It took a long time, but once they got a few kids from that generation to stick, (and when they gave Jubilee a baby), they finally gave Kitty a status quo of early twenties. It'll be harder to backtrack now.

But not impossible. Comics creators beware.

Magik does "air quotes"

Honestly, I just think it's neat. Magik being a sarcastic jerk in her 6160 position as Tsar of Eurasia and a very bad boss. We find out she fired a scientist by killing them with the Soul Sword and oversees atrocities on the reg.

She is what Kitty needs on a carnal level.

Heh, not in this universe. Generally agreed though.

True, a bad example. Although, to be fair, anyone is better than the Peters she's dated.

Haha, mostly agreed. I don't mind Pete Wisdom, though I'm not sure if Kitty was an adult at that point. Probably not. Mixed feelings on Colossus beating him up.

I think Kitty WAS supposed to be an adult when she dated Pete. But the rolling timeline hit and...oops.

It's a lesson for all comic writers really, don't have your thinly veiled self inserts date Kitty Pryde, because you might accidently get retconned into an ephebophile.

(I like Pete though, he's pretty fun as Betsy's foil in the Krakoa era books.)

Magneto fucking shit up

This is from a What if where Mister Sinister leads the X-Men. Poor guy doesn't even have his loser husband to spar with, just an awful immortal Victorian eugenicist and some kids he hoodwinked+plus Sauron.) It's like he knows he's in a What if and he's mad about it. Valid tbh.

that's actually Maddie

So it is. Thanks for the correction! With my memory I really need to take more notes.

To be fair, Scott and actual Jean have something going on in this issue too, IIRC.

(Sinister's team set up is really rather fascinating...)

The fact that it's the ace colors makes it somehow poetic.

If there's ever a condemnation of Xavier and the Council of Krakoa, honestly, I think it's that Scott couldn't get this group of kids sanctuary on Krakoa proper.

They're KIDS. They're superheroes. And they're friends of his! I feel like this is probably one of those unspoken reasons that he and Jean break away from Krakoa and create the X-Men instead.

I have been disappointed at the lack of their relationship in From the Ashes, but I feel like there's a decent amount of potential interaction in the upcoming Kamala crossing the timeline adventure. I'm pretty sure both the Dark Phoenix Saga and Age of Apocalypse are on the list, which could give some interesting possibilities.

There's an even worse one when some literally enslaved refugees weren't allowed on the island, though they did find a place for them. I can see a justification based on their age, wanting to avoid 'Krakoa kidnaps kids' problems, as well as needing to protect state secrets - but still... Good thing nobody listens to the council.

Agreed.

Hopefully. Giant-Size House of M, too, though that seems to be focused on Kitty and Logan. The possibilities are there, but with time travel and an antagonistic 'old man Legion' plus White Hot Room stuff in Giant-Size X-Men #1 and #2, there might not be room. We'll see!

Part of the problem is everyone wanted to use Krakoa as a backdrop, but books like the Champions weren't edited by the X-Office, so while they could borrow characters for cameos here and there, they're not allowed to upset the X-Men's status quo by enacting major changes on their own, like the Champions emigrating to Krakoa and Scott starting a war in their defense.

And there's a similar problem with the secondary and tertiary x-books, like one-shot King in Black Marauders (I believe that's the refugee story you're alluding to?) where ultimately the X-Books themselves need to hew to the direction of the flagship titles (i.e. X-Men at the time, and later Immortal X-Men), who are already building towards the Fall of X and can't well have the rest of the line disrupting that narrative momentum.

I think the Quiet Council's actions outside of the core books are always far and away the biggest stumbling block with plot coherence in this era of comics, because they always need to come to the wrongest decisions for the downfall of Krakoa to work, even though the individual members wouldn't have voted for any of those things. At the time Eve Ewing's Champions took place, there are 6 X-Men and former X-Men on the Quiet Council. Which of them voted against this, for the motion to fail? It just wouldn't happen but for editorial fiat. King in Black is a bigger problem, because we know explicitly that Magneto was onboard with it and tried to whip up support. Magneto plus the Hellfire Trio plus the other former X-Men is an outright majority. So did Kurt vote against stopping slavery? Did Charles?

Indeed, and many of the non-mutant books/editors leaned into the mutant supremacy thing that was certainly present but a bit more nuanced. I really would have liked to see the vote, but my guess is that they didn't want to spend political capital fighting a law with broad support in another sovereign nation. I think it works narratively though.

I think Charles makes sense actually, given his particular flaws. While I tend to mock him for his King Arthur fantasy, I think at times, the comparison is apt.

I'm no Arthuriana expert, but I remember reading about how one of the issues with the Guinevere and Lancelot affair was that Arthur was trapped - he couldn't show mercy to either his wife or a beloved knight because it would be showing favoritism, and gone completely against what Camelot was supposed to represent.

(This is the cue for @ragnell or any other expert in Arthuriana to tell me how absolutely wrong I am. :-D)

Here, I can see Charles saying no to giving the Champions sanctuary on Krakoa for the same reason that he told Cain that he couldn't come, for the same reason that poor Idie ended up in the pit over a misunderstanding of her duty and the laws, and for the same reason that they were initially against resurrecting clones, like Gabby, at all.

I think Xavier believed that he had to apply the laws and judgment of Krakoa equally across the board. No special treatment. No exceptions. And maybe he's even got a point, considering how many of the Krakoans are X-Men - OTHER mutants may have been wary about special treatment.

IIRC, Champions was during the early Krakoa run. (Since Kitty's a Marauder and not in space. And I think it also predated the Treehouse, since Scott would have likely offered them sanctuary there.) So the Council is: Magneto, Charles, Apocalypse, Jean, Kurt, Storm, Emma, Kitty, Sebastian, and Mystique, Exodus, Sinister.

Magneto hadn't yet had his realization about non-mutants. Apocalypse, Sebastian, Mystique, Exodus and Sinister aren't likely to care, and at least a few of them might have been inclined to say no just because it was Scott who asked.

Jean, Kurt, Storm, Emma and Kitty are complicated. I could see the first three, as idealistic as they are, siding with Xavier's Camelot ideal. Emma, I think, would vote to let the kids stay, as would Kitty.

TBH, this decision feels a lot more in character than say, giving the Hellions to Mister Sinister (and not setting Sinister on fire when he told Scott he was prettier when he smiled. Jean would NEVER have let that slide.)

I feel like it really works as a realistic negative effect of Charles's particular idealism and the flaws of his version of Krakoa. When I complain about it, it's a Watsonian complaint, not a Doylistic one.

If there's ever a condemnation of Xavier and the Council of Krakoa, honestly, I think it's that Scott couldn't get this group of kids sanctuary on Krakoa proper.

They're KIDS. They're superheroes. And they're friends of his! I feel like this is probably one of those unspoken reasons that he and Jean break away from Krakoa and create the X-Men instead.

I have been disappointed at the lack of their relationship in From the Ashes, but I feel like there's a decent amount of potential interaction in the upcoming Kamala crossing the timeline adventure. I'm pretty sure both the Dark Phoenix Saga and Age of Apocalypse are on the list, which could give some interesting possibilities.

People saying "Betsy didn't choose to end up in Kwannon's body!" is crazy to me because it's just such an obtuse way of looking at things. The actual narrative of the body swap ultimately is inconsequential, because objectively speaking Betsy profited off having a proximity to nonwhiteness and being a Sexy Asian Ninja Girl as a character. She became one of the most popular X-Men characters of all time based off that depiction, because she was read as being a Japanese woman rather than a white woman. It does not matter that in canon she did not technically maliciously steal Kwannon's body, when the fact that she did have Kwannon's body was what propelled her to being one of the most iconic X-Men of the 90s.

It's more that fans want people to stop saying she "stole Kwannon's body" because people who have not read the stories take that literally. There are a lot of people post-Krakoa who do think that she did it on purpose, especially because of how often she is called out or expresses guilt over it.

So fans just want to point out that she didn't literally do that. "She was a victim in the narrative, and she benefited from the situation in the meta," are two statements that are equally true. I don't see how it's obtuse to acknowledge both.

I think the problem is that ultimately it derails the real conversation.

Betsy, as a character, is an innocent victim of the situation. But Betsy isn't a real person, she's a product. And as attached as we get to these characters, and as emotional as we can get about them, the fact is that the things that "happen" to her are choices made by writers and artists, specifically to further her story.

We all get how frustrating when folks misrepresent or misunderstand our favorite characters.

But the conversation about the NARRATIVE CHOICE to take a pre-existing white British female character, and put her into the body of an Asian woman, while playing up the racist stereotypes and over-sexualization in the process - all of which happened in the 1990s, a decade when we damn well should have known better, and continued into the 21st century...

That's an important conversation. One that doesn't need to be derailed into a "defense" of a fictional character. There's a time and a place for that conversation, but it's not when folks talking about deliberate choices made by the real people who created the story in the first place.

wow! your understanding of this character is so. . . Unique! just wondering by the way but when was the last time you directly interacted with the source media

respectfully to everyone whos been like Well have you considered idc about the source media and im doing whatever i want with my little blorbos <3 like... you know thats allowed right. like thats fine. i am not condemning you. But you have to accept the fact that nobody has that context besides you unless you put that disclaimer on everything you make. and youre not gonna do that. so if i go into a character tag and see someone call the character, who is canonically a cat, a dog with no extra explanation with their whole chest, i am not going to go Ohhh haha theyre just playing dolls! i am going to go Just wondering by the way but when was the last time you directly interacted with the source media

I had a completely different post to accompany this image. Then my brain decided to stall on what Scott is actually saying here.

"Allowed."

Being with the Champions is not the first time that Scott's been ABLE to relax, no, it's the first time he's been ALLOWED to relax.

I've always thought using Scott in the Champions was a brilliant move, because it allowed us to see a side of the character that we've never seen before. Even beyond what we got in All New X-Men and his solo series.

Scott in ANXM and his solo series was a fun addition to the modern Marvel Universe, but there was nothing really surprising about it. The Scott we see there is the Scott we pretty much expected to see: uptight, tense, very oriented toward responsibility and guilt. It's rougher for him now than the original 60s run because he has to deal with carrying his future self's perceived and actual sins. But it's the same deal. It doesn't really change how we see the original comics.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy those stories very much. I am a Scott fan after all, and I never get tired of seeing my favorite character being recognizably himself.

But Champions was the first time someone did something honestly and truly different with that version of the character. On multiple levels.

The first, of course, is that we've never seen ANY version of Scott on ANY of the more broad Marvel Universe teams before. Hank and Logan are frequent faces on Avenger teams. Storm, Rogue, even Havok have popped up in the broader Marvel Universe. But for whatever reason, despite being a fairly iconic character in his own right, Scott's never made the leap.

(Kind of like Kitty Pryde, I realize. Kitty is probably THE iconic X-Men for a few generations, and I can't remember her ever getting to be on a non-X team either. Though I may be forgetting something.)

So already, we have Scott in a brand new context: a team that isn't just mutants and mutant issues. A team where he's not automatically set in a leadership role. A team that's not instantly hated wherever they go. It's novel.

But the second part of it is that this is a set-up that only could have worked with the time displaced version of the character. Leaving aside, of course, the current events of the comic which would have made adult Scott joining any kind of Avenger-satellite team impossible - even if they WERE on good terms, the thrust of the story we got in Champions really required Scott to be a child.

Because the revelatory part of Scott in Champions wasn't just seeing him extracted a bit from the burdens of the mutant cause and not shoved into a leadership position. It wasn't even getting to see Scott talking like a forty year old and completely failing at acting like a normal kid. As fun as that is.

The revelatory part is how much Scott sincerely wanted to act like a kid.

Scott doesn't know how to Halloween. And it's tragic and hilarious and utterly expected. But he TRIED. He put on a fake mustache! That's a costume! He WANTED to do Halloween with his friends!

Scott in the 1960s comics kept himself somewhat isolated from the team. And it was clearly a choice: there was no doubt that Jean, Hank, Bobby and Warren were happy to include him any time he was willing and would have been very willing to have him around more.

But in Champions, we actually get to see Scott WILLINGLY and HAPPILY watching tv with his team, sitting in on karaoke with his team, playing laser tag with his team. And he loves it. Even when he has no idea how being a kid actually works.

And THAT recontextualizes everything we've seen in the 1960s comics (and any other time we revisit that era.) Because it's clear now that as much as Scott chose to isolate himself at that time, it's because he felt like he had to. NOT because he wanted to.

Scott might well have been "able" to relax with the Original Five. IF he thought he was "allowed" to be. IF he weren't their leader. IF he weren't put in that position of authority. If, for example, it had been Jean in that role from the beginning - Jean, who is socially capable, emotionally aware, and generally has a good grasp on how to be both one of the senior members of the team when needed, but part of the group and have fun when not - then maybe Scott's original experiences could have been very different.

But Xavier chose Scott, because Scott already had the skill set that Xavier thought was needed for the role. The fact that Scott had those skills because he had no choice BUT to develop them, thanks to a string of abusive authority figures. The fact that Scott DIDN'T have the social skill set to deal with being (further) set apart from his peers, or any idea how to balance the burdens of responsibility with any other aspect of a healthy life. That apparently never occurred to him.

By giving us this new context, Champions completely justifies the entire "bringing the O5 to the future" storyarc and I'm thrilled that it hasn't been forgotten.

And if Xavier ever does deign to come back to Earth after fucking off to be the Prince Consort of the Space Bird Empire, I hope they egg his house.

I feel the same way tbh. It's such a fascinating character study. Oh and Kitty was in the Guardians of the Galaxy for a while, even taking the Star Lord title. It was pretty meh IMO

Oh, that's true. That was pretty recently, wasn't it? Around the same time as the O5 storyline?

It's interesting that there are certain characters that haven't really branched out until very recently, despite their recognizability/popularity.

There's a lot I loved about the original five in the future storyline(s), but I really don't understand the very bizarre way Emma is written with regard to them.

I'm pretty sure I've brought this up before, but this creepiness reminds me a lot of how, later on, she ends up trying to telepathically force teen Scott to become adult Scott. It's not even the same writer, so it kind of seems like an overall thing, where Emma seems unable to separate the teenaged versions from their future version - therefore leading to repeatedly inappropriate behavior.

I could deal with that if this were ever overtly addressed in the text itself, but it never is, so it's just this weird plot tumor that is particularly grotesque since, for all her faults, Emma's usually portrayed as someone who takes her role as teacher seriously.

It would have been much more interesting if we'd gotten to see Emma get to know the teenaged characters completely separate from their adult versions - especially given how wrapped up she'd been in Jean's "perfect" facade. Actually getting to know the frightened, angry teenager who needs help and support would have potentially a growth moment for her.

There were a couple of what ifs that I thought were actually pretty interesting scenarios.

The one I always thought was pretty fascinating was the "What if Mr. Sinister Formed the X-Men?" scenario which involved Sinister forming his own group of X-Men, including Scott, Madelyne, Havok, Sabertooth and Sauron.

Scott had a truly amazingly terrible cape costume. Xavier's X-Men still exist, and they end up crossing paths with instant connection and all:

Scott, naturally, starts doubting Sinister, but Sinister fakes his death, leading Scott (and Alex) to fake join the X-Men to seek vengeance or something.

I always thought that was a pretty amazing concept that could go in all sorts of interesting directions.

And there are capes. I'm very fond of terrible capes.

I reread this recently actually and enjoyed it! I wasn't writing off What Ifs full stop, but there's been a lot of terrible ones.

Capes rule. My ex and I got married in capes and we looked excellent haha

I definitely didn't mean to imply that you were writing them all off!

I feel like "What Ifs" fall into three categories: a genuine questions/prompt that inspires a whole new potential backdrop for interesting fanfic-type stories, rampant mean-spirited stupidity leading to the Punisher murdering everyone or Kitty ripping Emma's heart out or random justifications after the fact for unpopular narrative decisions that basically amount to "see, the right people won all along."

Unfortunately, I think most of the modern what ifs fall into the last two categories. Either we get the many misogynistic deaths of Emma Frost. Or we get stuff like if Steve Rogers won Civil War, it would have led to Earth's defeat in an alien invasion. Or the X-Men winning AvX would have been catastrophic because somehow Danny Fucking Rand can help Hope learn to control the Phoenix in a way that a bunch of characters actually experienced with the Phoenix can't.

(I'd respect them more if they just admitted that Tony won Civil War because there saw more story potential in the darker ending - leading to Dark Reign and Utopia, among others. And that the X-Men had to lose, because we needed Scott Summers to angstily suffer for our sins for a while. Or whatever the real rationale was there.)