REVIEWS: The X-Axis - 20 April 2003
Paul O'Brien
20 April 2003
=============
For more links, cover art, archived reviews, and information
on the X-Axis mailing list, visit http://www.thexaxis.com
------------
This week:
NEW X-MEN #139 - "Murder at the Mansion, 1 of 3: Shattered"
by Grant Morrison, Phil Jimenez and Andy Lanning
SOLDIER X #10 - "Rebels, Freaks & Prophets, part 2 of 2"
by Karl Bollers and Arthur Ranson
WOLVERINE #189 - "Good Cop/Bad Cop, part two"
by Daniel Way, Staz Johnson and Danny Miki
WOLVERINE: X-ISLE #3
by Bruce Jones and Jorge Lucas
X-MEN UNLIMITED #44 - "Can they Suffer?"
by Chuck Austen, Romano Molenaar and Danny Miki
BEWARE THE CREEPER #1
by Jason Hall and Cliff Chiang
RUNAWAYS #1 - "Pride & Joy, chapter one"
by Brian K Vaughan, Adrian Alphona and David Newbold
------------
Writing the X-Axis can be rather irritating during these transitional
phases for the line. While we wait for the dead wood to be cleared and
the new titles to begin, there can be weeks like these, where you can
almost hear the gentle lapping of water being treaded.
Five X-books, this week. Two fill-in stories, one miniseries that I've
written about two weeks in a row already, and an issue of X-Men
Unlimited which seems to be an overflow from Uncanny X-Men. Can we get
on with it so that I can write an interesting review about the creative
direction of New Mutants?
Ah well. On the bright side, we have NEW X-MEN, which produces an
excellent issue this month.
We tend to focus primarily on the ways in which Grant Morrison's run on
the X-Men differs from those who came before him (ie, Chris Claremont).
But they do have a lot in common - after all, Morrison's been making
plenty of use of the soap opera character angles which were the basis of
Claremont's formula in the nineties. And, in these days when
everything's meant to be neatly divided up into easily reprintable
storylines, it's pretty clear that Morrison is thinking primarily in
terms of the ongoing series. Which means we get long, simmering subplot
that finally pay off after months in the background.
This is one of them. Emma and Scott's relationship has been getting a
page here and there ever since last year's annual. Now Jean's finally
found out about it, and this issue gives us the big confrontation.
The clever thing about this issue is the way it plays with your
sympathies. Most readers will start off sympathising with Emma who is,
after all, traditionally the morally questionable one, and who's been
presented as trying to seduce Scott. Morrison shows tremendous skill as
he inverts the entire thing in the course of what's essentially an
extended conversation, leaving Emma as the victim motivated by love, and
Jean as an intimidating and faintly irrational bully.
After all, what exactly have Emma and Scott done wrong? They've thought
about committing adultery, but in reality they've barely touched. But
it matters more, because Emma's a telepath, and the key thing about
adultery is the betrayal of intimacy.
The attraction of telepathy as a superpower (or magical ability, or
whatever) lies in the fact that the human mind is the one part of
reality that it's impossible to observe directly. You might believe
somebody loves you, and you might be right, but you can never look into
their minds to see for yourself. The minds of other people can only
ever be inferred at one remove. Unless you're a telepath, in which case
you get direct access to everyone around you.
This is all very well as a power fantasy, but pretty much terrifying for
everyone around you, since they have no way of knowing whether you're
looking at them or not. They have to take it on trust that you're
respecting their privacy. The potential for abuse and for interference
with thought processes - which violates the entire concept of identity -
gives the whole thing a very nasty undertone.
And that's at the core of this issue. Emma's whole persona is about
keeping up a public image to conceal what she's really thinking. Her
obsession with maintaining that inscrutable image is neatly signalled by
the decor in her office - modernist furniture, Prisoner-style chairs,
and images of herself as a pastiche Warhol print. Emma gets to maintain
that degree of inaccessibility while seeing through everyone around her.
But Jean, as the more powerful telepath, can smash straight through
that. And does.
The catch being that Emma really hasn't done anything to merit it. Emma
hasn't done anything unethical, so far as we've seen, in her relations
with Scott. She might have been using her telepathy to achieve intimacy
with him, and that might well be seen as a betrayal of Jean, but it's
Scott's betrayal, not Emma's. And that's why Emma ends up coming out of
this with the audience's sympathies. It's a wonderful piece of writing.
This month's artist is Phil Jimenez, who worked with Morrison before on
Invisibles. He's a great character artist, ideal for this sort of
stories. There are some nice flashback sequences where he deliberately
echoes the work of earlier artists (specifically John Byrne and Leinil
Yu) without losing his own style. The scene with Emma's family, all
heavily redesigned by Jimenez or introduced from scratch, is excellent.
A really, really good issue. One of the best in the Morrison run, and
well worth the long months of build-up.
Rating: A+
LINKS:
http://www.marvel.com
http://www.grantmorrison.com
------------
Meanwhile, over in the fill-ins, SOLDIER X has the second half of
"Rebels, Freaks & Prophets."
And it's a bit of an anticlimax.
Part one was considerably better than expected, for several reasons. It
had some great art from Arthur Ranson. It made reasonably effective use
of the American fear of domestic terrorism. And it hinted at
interesting hidden depths in the villain's motivations.
Unfortunately it doesn't live up to that promise. As expected, Jonas
Keller has a hidden agenda. But it's not a very good one. The high
concept is that Keller is a precognitive. He's known for years that
he's going to fight Nathan at this point, and he can't see past it. So,
after establishing that he can't get away from this path, he's been
going ahead with his visions in order to see what happens.
So, alright, it's a free will versus predestination routine. In theory
that's an interesting subject. The problem is that this particular
answer to the question - "predestination wins" - doesn't make for good
drama. It leaves Keller without coherent motivations, simply acting as
a slave to arbitrary premonitions inflicted on him by the writer. Of
course, that's the point - but unmotivated antagonists are bad for
drama. Drastic deviations from the structural norm are required to
carry off that sort of character, and this issue doesn't manage it.
Unfortunately, the nature of these characters is that if they don't
work, they tend to take the entire story down with them.
The other problem is that it means the story was doing a bait and switch
routine with the domestic terrorism sequences in the previous issue.
Bait and switch can work as long as what you eventually give the
audience still makes sense, and is more interesting than what you
originally promised. Keller's theme, as eventually explained, has
nothing to do with terrorism. And something tells me that in the
current climate, the average reader is more interested in terrorism than
in undergraduate philosophy.
It's a nice try, and at least it's got ambition - not to mention Arthur
Ranson on art, which is always a good thing. But it doesn't work.
Rating: C
------------
Continuing the theme, WOLVERINE also has a disappointing second half to
a fill-in storyline.
Part one of "Good Cop / Bad Cop" was notable for its strikingly low
Wolverine content, taking to extremes the old formula of structuring
fill-in stories around all-new characters who can be safely disposed of
without affecting the status quo. The second half does more with him,
but it's still not really a Wolverine story. It's a crime story into
which Wolverine's been inserted on the general assumption that as a
hero, he'd probably do something about it if he stumbled upon the events
in question.
Of course, everyone knows that you can't write stories where the hero is
interchangeable, and Daniel Way is well aware of that. So the idea is
to make this story specific to Wolverine by having the plot hinge on him
doing a trick with his healing powers. After that, he can bugger off
back to the mansion and let the other characters get on with it.
Well... hmm.
It's a nice idea in theory, this story, but there are two gaping plot
holes which stop it working. The big central set piece goes like this.
Wolverine wants to expose McLawry as a murderer. So he sets himself up
as a witness who knows about McLawry's crimes and then plays along as
McLawry kills him too and then disposes of his body. Of course, since
he's got healing powers, Wolverine's fine, so he rises from the grave,
and brings McLawry down by tipping off the honest police officer, Brown,
about where the bodies are hidden. Not a bad idea on paper.
Here are the two problems.
One, the story hinges on the fact that Wolverine can be shot pointblank
in the face, three times, and live. Why can he live? Because he's got a
metal skull, and he heals over the flesh damage. Is Way seriously
inviting me to conclude that McLawry shot Wolverine three times in the
face, saw the limited amount of damage that would cause - surface damage
and exposed metal bone - and went ahead to bury him anyway? Is McLawry
blind? It doesn't make sense for McLawry to fail to notice the very
thing which is then used as a central plot point two pages later.
Of course, if McLawry had poisoned Wolverine, that might have worked.
But he didn't, and the plot pretty much precludes him doing that because
his track record is shooting people. So he should have immediately
exposed Wolverine. But he didn't. Big, huge, glaring plot problem.
Two, what exactly is Brown supposed to do with the map? We're invited
to believe that he'll use it to bring down McLawry. But how is he going
to do that? Where was Wolverine buried? Next to the other bodies of
McLawry's victims? But we were told his other victims were drug dealers
for whom he claimed self-defence. So their bodies can't be missing.
There's the two witnesses from the previous issue whom he killed to
protect himself, of course. They're missing. Perhaps McLawry is so
cripplingly stupid that he buried all the bodies right next to one
another, and so Wolverine was able to give Brown that information.
Except Brown was under suspicion for those murders himself.
I suppose the idea is that Brown gets the bodies exhumed and then uses
forensics to link them with McLawry. But Brown has been shown in the
story so far as a useless alcoholic with no credibility in the
department who can never get his investigations underway because they
keep being cancelled from under him. So why should we believe he's
going to get anywhere thanks to this new evidence? He's a crap
policeman. The evidence isn't conclusive enough to provide closure and
allow us to believe that Brown will win.
I like the general approach that Way and Johnson are taking here. I
think Wolverine in crime stories is a good idea. There's a decent story
in here, just waiting for a rewrite to solve the plot problems and bring
it out. But as it stands, the plot holes are too big to be bridged.
Rating: B-
------------
Of all the records to get stuck in my brain, why does it have to be "All
Over" by Lisa Maffia?
This is a seriously irritating record. The backing track is one bloody
note, repeated jerkily for five sodding minutes. Over the top, Lisa
sings two notes, one of which is the same as the one on the backing
track. And it just goes on and on and on and on with minimal variation
until every so often somebody says "And who got the in flow keeping it
tight", and it changes chord for one second to go LIIIISSSSAAA (Maffia)
before going back to the same frigging riff again. It's the sort of
record that makes you want to drive it from your skull via trepanning.
I am seriously impressed that my spellchecker includes the word
"trepanning."
Well, that took up plenty of space that I would otherwise have had to
spend on reviewing WOLVERINE: X-ISLE for a third consecutive week, thank
god.
Wolverine's still on the island, and the island is still weird. There's
a barmaid who's the only person Wolverine can relate to and who seems to
be a stand-in for Amiko. There's a big hairy monster which is obviously
a metaphor for Wolverine himself, because every time he slashes at it
with his claws, he gets hurt.
It remains a determinedly oblique puzzle story, and there is nothing
much to be said about it that I haven't already said. Get back to me in
a couple of weeks time when all is revealed and I'll let you know
whether this is a decent series or not.
Rating: B-
------------
Two issues of X-Men Unlimited in two weeks. Such bounty.
Bafflingly, this is to all intents and purposes an extra issue of
Uncanny X-Men, featuring that title's cast and written by that title's
regular writer Chuck Austen. It's the same length as a normal issue, so
why not just run the damn thing in Uncanny and sell twice as many
copies? Seems a dreadful waste of money.
Anyway, the big subject of the day is animal rights. When the X-Men
find some neighbouring kids torturing animals, they stop them. Because
torturing animals is bad. And... yup, that's pretty much it.
Okay, that's a little harsh. It's fairly obvious that Austen is trying
to make a wider point about animal rights. He opens with a lengthy
quotation from Jeremy Bentham, in which Bentham seems to be rebutting
the old nonsense that animals can't have rights because they don't have
a sufficiently advanced intellect to have obligations. This argument is
total drivel, for the reasons Bentham gives.
As Bentham and Austen say, the moral question to ask is whether animals
can suffer. It's at this point that we hit a snag.
Few people would disagree that gratuitously torturing animals is a bad
thing. It's doubtful that there are all that many people out there
reading this comic who spend their free time nailing a squirrel to a
plank or chucking darts at a stoat, and that's the level we're dealing
with here. Vivisection is a separate matter. Rightly or wrongly, it at
least claims to be justified by reference to the greater good. I am
deliberately going to avoid getting any deeper into the merits of that
argument. The point is that since it at least claims to be justified by
countervailing virtues, vivisection has no moral equivalence to the
scenario presented here.
That leaves us with a story whose main point is to hammer home the idea
that animals can suffer pain. And yes, Austen sells that idea quite
effectively. The problem is that it's not really a moral viewpoint in
itself. Either they do or they don't. Since the story assumes as a
starting point that they suffer, wheeling out the telepaths to provide
spurious evidence - complete with shameless anthropomorphism of the sort
that the opening quotation declared irrelevant - it's hardly surprising
that it reaches the conclusion that they suffer.
It's all a bit of a straw man, and directed towards a particularly
unsubtle version of animal abuse which doesn't really get into the true
animal rights debate. Everybody already opposes the mistreatment of pet
dogs, aside from the handful of psychos who actually do it. It's quite
an effective exercise in tugging at the heartstrings, but to the extent
that it's trying to make a point about the animal rights debate, it
misses the mark. Really, it misses the entire field of debate.
Rating: B-
------------
Basic rules of the Vertigo imprint: if in doubt, revive an old character
in almost unrecognisable form.
In BEWARE THE CREEPER, Jason Hall and Cliff Chiang take this to
incredible lengths. The Creeper was Steve Ditko's first creation for
DC, debuting in Showcase #73 back in 1968. Quite honestly, I've never
paid much attention to the character. Jones and Jacobs' The Comic Book
Heroes describes him as "a hard-boiled journalist who terrifies
criminals and police alike with a demonic yellow costume".
What any of that has to do with Beware the Creeper, I have absolutely no
clue. There's a vague similarity in the Creeper costume design, but
aside from that it's pretty much a ground-up rethink. It's Paris in
1925, and the Surrealist movement is in full flow. The Creeper is...
um...
Well, we'll come back to the Creeper. The series actually focusses on
identical twins Judith and Madeline Benoir. Identical twins are always
a source of confusion in visuals, which is presumably deliberate because
it takes a couple of scenes before we see them together. Judith is a
surrealist painter, whereas Madeline is a more restrained playwright.
We don't get told all that much about Madeline's work, aside from the
fact that it's largely about death (which Judith evidently considers a
bit of a rut). The focus is more on Judith, since Hall and Chiang seem
much more interested in the underlying theory of surrealism. As Judith
helpfully explains, "it's all about the relationship between dreams and
reality." Judith's dreams evidently do have reality, since the Creeper
- a woman who turns up at the end of this story - is patterned on one of
her dreams.
That said, it's a dream committed to canvas, since Judith used it as the
basis for a painting. It doesn't take a genius to figure out the most
likely candidate for the role at the end of the issue, given that the
usual role of dual identities in the superhero genre is as a device for
expressing different sides of the personality, and there wouldn't be a
great deal of point in putting Judith in the costume. Nonetheless, the
Creeper evidently represents Judith's dreams penetrating reality, which
presumably provides the basis for the surrealist themes in the story.
It's an intriguing start, and quite unusual in its attempt to relocate
the superhero genre to such a wildly unlikely (yet strangely
appropriate) setting. Cliff Chiang's artwork is atmospheric, dense with
panels and full of information. He keeps the twins distinct, at least
when he's called on to do so, and does some nicely staged scenes to keep
characters in shadow without it being too contrived.
Strange, but definitely interesting.
Rating: A-
LINKS:
http://www.dccomics.com
http://www.vertigocomics.com
http://www.pistolwhipcomics.com (Jason Hall)
------------
RUNAWAYS stands out from the other Tsunami books as the only title to
feature a completely new set of characters. It's also a tricky book to
review, since the main plot twist of this issue involves revealing the
concept of the series. So if you haven't read the series yet, and you
don't already know what the idea is, I strongly suggest just reading the
damn thing and coming back to this review later.
Still here? Okay. Runaways is about a group of kids from Malibu who
are brought together (and, presumably, go on the run) after learning
that their parents have a rather odd secret. Vaughan and Alphona set
themselves a tricky task, since the basic conceit is to set up
everything as basically normal and then throw this idea in from nowhere.
They pull it off, largely by playing it as absurd at the same time as
they play the kids' reactions seriously. The real-world idea is
teenagers realising that they don't know their parents as well as they
thought, which gives it all some psychological credibility to hang onto.
Obviously, the first issue is a set-up piece. Since the concept calls
for the introduction of six main characters and all of their parents,
that means that eighteen characters have to be brought in, to some
extent, in the course of one issue. That's a tough sell, and Vaughan's
way round it is to focus mainly on Alex and Nico so that we get to know
them, while dropping in enough information about the rest of the cast
that we'll want to know them better.
The art style seems to have been chosen to appeal to that sought-after
manga audience without actually being outright manga itself. It's based
on nice clean linework, with the characters only slightly exaggerated -
but just enough to carry off the roundtable scene at the end without a
noticeable shift of style.
A solid first issue with an interesting premise, which'll do me fine.
Rating: A-
------------
Also this week...
DARKNESS #3 - Issue #3? It's been going longer than that, surely?
Actually, I reviewed issue #3 back on 24 November 2002, which means it's
taken Top Cow roughly five months to produce the following two issues.
Is this supposed to be a bimonthly title? Because it's not even
achieving that. What the hell was happening in this book again? Where
did I put the first two issues? I can't find them. Oh well, maybe
there'll be a recap in the inside front cover. Oops, no, the inside
front cover is a misprint containing the credits for Witchblade #63.
For christ's sake. Anyway... this book was something to do with a hitman
who had the Darkness powers returning to his "family." And this would
be quite a decent build-up, if it was on a monthly schedule, but at this
pace, it's dragging. Something is very odd with the art, which lurches
back and forward between conventional inking and shot-from-pencils
digital painting with no discernible rationale. B
http://www.imagecomics.com
http://www.topcow.com
http://www.fullbleed.com (Dale Keown)
H-E-R-O #3 - Okay, I get the idea. The superhero power fantasies always
backfire because their lack of subtlety renders them counterproductive.
Fine, whatever. I know this book has been getting lots of good reviews,
but really, I don't see it. C
POWERS #30 - The end of the Unity storyline, with extra pages! Story
pages, at that! This is basically the same riff on superheroes as
invincible and unaccountable gods which you've probably seen before, and
I'm not entirely sure that the characters in this book really work in
stories on this scale. That said, it's still a good read, and it does
result in a major status quo change for the series which promises plenty
of new material. B+
http://www.jinxworld.com (Brian Bendis)
http://www.mike-oeming.com
SILENCERS #1 - Another crossover between the superhero and crime genres.
This time the angle is that it's a supervillain book - the Silencers are
the enforcers of the local mob. Not a bad idea, but it doesn't quite
work. There's some rather goofy powers in here (a superpowered zoot
suit?) which clash with the crime elements - it doesn't seem quite sure
how tongue in cheek it wants to be. The art seems similarly confused
about the visual style of the book, not to mention that it completely
fails to sell lead character Cardinal as being 70 years old, despite
that being a key plot point. He looks about 30. Nice idea, though, and
it has its moments. B-
http://www.moonstonebooks.com
SLEEPER #4 - I was wondering how Ed Brubaker was going to find a
different angle on the old idea of a hidden council running the world in
secret. And the ending of this issue certainly answers that one. Now I
get to wonder how on earth you follow through with the logical
consequences of it. I wasn't quite sure about the first issue of this
series, but Brubaker and Phillips have got me persuaded now. A-
http://www.wildstorm.com
http://www.edbrubaker.com
THUNDERBOLTS #78 - Cancelled with issue #81, I see. And to think,
everyone said that relaunch gimmick was such a surefire winner, too. It
would have been interesting to see how this book would have done if it
had been launched as a new series; it would certainly have faced an
uphill struggle, with no established characters and no big name creators
attached. The sales on the Tsunami books should be a rough indicator.
Anyway, this month Daniel Axum embraces his new life as an underground
fighter, despite his continuing reservations as to whether any of this
is legal. It's a good series, which deserved better all round. B+
WILDCATS V3.0 #9 - Grifter inducts Halo accountant Edwin Dolby into the
weird world of superheroes. Admittedly, whether WildCATS still counts
as a superhero book rather than a bizarre, increasingly absurdist sci-fi
conspiracy story is open to question. Nonetheless, it's all the better
for that, and you've got to love a training montage which includes
Grifter explaining the vital importance of holding your gun in a cool
way. Pretty good. A-
http://www.manofaction.tv/casey (Joe Casey)
------------
Last week's Article 10 is still up at Ninth Art. http://www.ninthart.com
You can still vote in the UK National Comics Awards at their website.
The X-Axis and Ninth Art are both eligible for the website awards.
http://www.sitsvac.org/awards2002.html
Next week, a ton of stuff. The big news is that the ongoing Mystique
series debuts. Agent X #10 is another fill-in, but with Evan Dorkin
writing, it could be good. Uncanny X-Men #422 is the second half of
"Rules of Engagement", Weapon X #8 continues the "Underground"
storyline, Wolverine: X-Isle reaches issue #4, X-Men Unlimited #45...
[double-takes]
Nope, that's what it says. Third issue of X-Men Unlimited in three
weeks. X-Statix #10 is out as well, and X-Treme X-Men #24 kicks off God
Loves Man Kills II.
--
Paul O'Brien
THE X-AXIS - http://www.thexaxis.com
ARTICLE 10 - http://www.ninthart.com
Regime change begins at home.
Paul O'Brien
Franklin Harris
"Paul O'Brien" <pa...@esoterica.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:q0UQlzIV...@esoterica.demon.co.uk...
> Anyway, the big subject of the day is animal rights. When the X-Men
> find some neighbouring kids torturing animals, they stop them. Because
> torturing animals is bad. And... yup, that's pretty much it.
>
> Okay, that's a little harsh. It's fairly obvious that Austen is trying
> to make a wider point about animal rights. He opens with a lengthy
> quotation from Jeremy Bentham, in which Bentham seems to be rebutting
> the old nonsense that animals can't have rights because they don't have
> a sufficiently advanced intellect to have obligations. This argument is
> total drivel, for the reasons Bentham gives.
This issue comes off even worse, of course, if you don't buy the total
drivel that "this argument" is total drivel.
But therein lies a totally different discussion.
--
Franklin Harris
Pulp Culture Online, www.pulpculture.net
"The truly psychotic don't need to cop an attitude." -- Poppy Z. Brite,
alt.horror, 2/21/03
Laura M. Parkinson
<pa...@esoterica.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Writing the X-Axis can be rather irritating during these transitional
>phases for the line. While we wait for the dead wood to be cleared and
>the new titles to begin, there can be weeks like these, where you can
>almost hear the gentle lapping of water being treaded.
Not to mention sheer volume...
>Ah well. On the bright side, we have NEW X-MEN, which produces an
>excellent issue this month.
*snippage*
>And that's at the core of this issue. Emma's whole persona is about
>keeping up a public image to conceal what she's really thinking. Her
>obsession with maintaining that inscrutable image is neatly signalled by
>the decor in her office - modernist furniture, Prisoner-style chairs,
>and images of herself as a pastiche Warhol print. Emma gets to maintain
>that degree of inaccessibility while seeing through everyone around her.
>But Jean, as the more powerful telepath, can smash straight through
>that. And does.
>
>The catch being that Emma really hasn't done anything to merit it. Emma
>hasn't done anything unethical, so far as we've seen, in her relations
>with Scott. She might have been using her telepathy to achieve intimacy
>with him, and that might well be seen as a betrayal of Jean, but it's
>Scott's betrayal, not Emma's. And that's why Emma ends up coming out of
>this with the audience's sympathies. It's a wonderful piece of writing.
Hrm, I'd have to disagree here, and I'm not sure how much of the rest
of the audience is sympathetic with Emma more than Jean. Yeah, Jean
went a bit off the handle - but I personally think she deserved to.
For a telepath, what Scott and Emma was doing *is* cheating, and you
can't really say that "well, Scott was in the wrong, but Emma was
fine!" Being the other woman isn't morally right, either, assuming you
know that the man *is* otherwise involved. Which Emma did.
>Of all the records to get stuck in my brain, why does it have to be "All
>Over" by Lisa Maffia?
Never heard it, although maybe I'm lucky....from the description, I
am.
>This is a seriously irritating record. The backing track is one bloody
>note, repeated jerkily for five sodding minutes. Over the top, Lisa
>sings two notes, one of which is the same as the one on the backing
>track. And it just goes on and on and on and on with minimal variation
>until every so often somebody says "And who got the in flow keeping it
>tight", and it changes chord for one second to go LIIIISSSSAAA (Maffia)
>before going back to the same frigging riff again. It's the sort of
>record that makes you want to drive it from your skull via trepanning.
>
>I am seriously impressed that my spellchecker includes the word
>"trepanning."
>
>Well, that took up plenty of space that I would otherwise have had to
>spend on reviewing WOLVERINE: X-ISLE for a third consecutive week, thank
>god.
Heh, personally I find it more worthwhile than anything to do with
Wolverine: X-Isle, but then I tend to have a lot less patience for
this sort of crap than you do I suspect. ;) Even if it does end up
having a high concept at the end, I don't think it's worth four
build-up issues of utter surrealism and horrible characterisations.
>Wolverine's still on the island, and the island is still weird. There's
>a barmaid who's the only person Wolverine can relate to and who seems to
>be a stand-in for Amiko. There's a big hairy monster which is obviously
>a metaphor for Wolverine himself, because every time he slashes at it
>with his claws, he gets hurt.
Hrm, I'm glad you caught that bit about the monster, since, as I said
last week, I couldn't be bothered. ;)
>Two issues of X-Men Unlimited in two weeks. Such bounty.
>
>Bafflingly, this is to all intents and purposes an extra issue of
>Uncanny X-Men, featuring that title's cast and written by that title's
>regular writer Chuck Austen. It's the same length as a normal issue, so
>why not just run the damn thing in Uncanny and sell twice as many
>copies? Seems a dreadful waste of money.
>
>Anyway, the big subject of the day is animal rights. When the X-Men
>find some neighbouring kids torturing animals, they stop them. Because
>torturing animals is bad. And... yup, that's pretty much it.
While I also wasn't as impressed with this issue as I am generally
with Austen's Uncanny, I do think there's supposed to be a bit more
than that. I think this is supposed to be tying in the whole
animal/human tension with the human/mutant issue. Especially when you
look at how much, for instance, Sammy identifies with the fish that
have been tortured.
Or for that matter when you look at the cover, which has Logan next to
a ghostly image of a wolf, Beast matched up with a lion, and Warren
paired with an eagle.
>Next week, a ton of stuff. The big news is that the ongoing Mystique
>series debuts. Agent X #10 is another fill-in, but with Evan Dorkin
>writing, it could be good. Uncanny X-Men #422 is the second half of
>"Rules of Engagement", Weapon X #8 continues the "Underground"
>storyline, Wolverine: X-Isle reaches issue #4, X-Men Unlimited #45...
>
>[double-takes]
>
>Nope, that's what it says. Third issue of X-Men Unlimited in three
>weeks. X-Statix #10 is out as well, and X-Treme X-Men #24 kicks off God
>Loves Man Kills II.
Please tell me I miscounted when I got a total of eight bloody X-Books
for next week. PLEASE.
Please?
Oh hell, and with Weapon X *and* Wolverine: X-Isle in those? I think
my brain may implode.
Brian Doyle
"Laura M. Parkinson" <lpark...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:mq26avo74j18gj4ad...@4ax.com...
> On Sun, 20 Apr 2003 19:31:49 +0100, Paul O'Brien
> <pa...@esoterica.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >The catch being that Emma really hasn't done anything to merit it. Emma
> >hasn't done anything unethical, so far as we've seen, in her relations
> >with Scott. She might have been using her telepathy to achieve intimacy
> >with him, and that might well be seen as a betrayal of Jean, but it's
> >Scott's betrayal, not Emma's. And that's why Emma ends up coming out of
> >this with the audience's sympathies. It's a wonderful piece of writing.
>
> Hrm, I'd have to disagree here, and I'm not sure how much of the rest
> of the audience is sympathetic with Emma more than Jean.
I sure was.
> Yeah, Jean went a bit off the handle - but I personally think she deserved
to.
PO'd yes, going cosmic scale Phoenix flaring psi-blasting medaevil, no!
Especially when, as we found out she hadn't even had the common sense to ASK
her husband for his side of things, especially when it turns out "Miss Psi
and Mighty" Grey actually had got her facts _wrong_.
HBWolf21
>Loves Man Kills II.
>
>
Actually that's issue #25, #24 is the Cannonball solo story which presumably
explains why he's joining Storm's group.
Joey
Billy Bissette
news:b7vbi2$t81$1...@newsg2.svr.pol.co.uk:
You clipped the part where Laura brings up that "For a telepath, what
Scott and Emma was doing *is* cheating"
I mention it because Laura then downplays the other side of that
sword.
Jeam smashes her way into Emma's mind, with no concern for Emma.
She is brutally assaulting Emma's mind, to the point that Emma is
mentally screaming in pain. She's knocks Emma across the actual room,
and torments her mentally as well. She's not burning Emma with the
phoenix for any just reason, she's doing it because it hurts, while
trying to claim some moral high-ground justification for the torture
she's inflicting. She stomps through Emma's mind and memories to
see why she ticks, hits her with the phoenix, breaks her down with
the memories of the dead bodies of her students, then forces her way
into Emma's memory of Hong Kong when Scott finally stops her.
Even if you aren't willing to commit to mental cheating for telepaths,
what Jean does is pretty evidently a brutal assault and battery.
And all for something Jean was wrong about. Not that being right
would have justified her.
It's not really any different from a drunken muscle-freak boyfriend
breaking in his girlfriend's door and beating her because she's been
talking to her ex about problems with the drunken muscle-freak. That
is what Laura is sympathizing with, the drunken muscle-freak that is
Jean. It's not just "a bit off the handle".
Paul O'Brien
Parkinson <lpark...@mindspring.com> writes
>
>>Of all the records to get stuck in my brain, why does it have to be "All
>>Over" by Lisa Maffia?
>
>Never heard it, although maybe I'm lucky....from the description, I am.
UK-specific reference. But fortunately - if you can call it that...
The opening page riff is the one I can't get out of my head. Except
this time, it truly is endless. On the record, it merely seems that
way.
Paul O'Brien
Bissette <bai...@coastalnet.com> writes
>
> You clipped the part where Laura brings up that "For a telepath, what
>Scott and Emma was doing *is* cheating"
And up to that point, I can agree. But does it justify Jean violating
Emma's memories? Hardly.
Laura M. Parkinson
It doesn't sound like she was all *that* wrong, at least not on the
mental aspect, and Scott wasn't exactly helping to lay her fears to
rest. Especially with the "we didn't sleep" crack he made previously.
> It's not really any different from a drunken muscle-freak boyfriend
>breaking in his girlfriend's door and beating her because she's been
>talking to her ex about problems with the drunken muscle-freak. That
>is what Laura is sympathizing with, the drunken muscle-freak that is
>Jean. It's not just "a bit off the handle".
Actually it is. If you're going to use a physical analogy, it's like a
boyfriend literally walking in on his girlfriend and another guy
getting intimate, seeing red, and beating the other guy up. Without
the possibility of breaking bones/accidentally killing the guy. Which
isn't the best way to behave, and I really did probably downplay
Jean's culpability there, but I still tend to have my sympathies more
on Jean's/the boyfriend's side here. The moral highground isn't all
that high on any side, but Jean's the one who just got to deal with
her own husband sneaking around behind her back and being intimate
(even if in this case it's mentally) with another woman, thereby
betraying her.
Logan was right: Emma really *should* have known better.
Kidan Anubix
"Paul O'Brien" <pa...@esoterica.demon.co.uk> wrote in message >
<major snippage>
>
> Two issues of X-Men Unlimited in two weeks. Such bounty.
>
I do have a question about this story. Am I wrong, or was Sammy (Fish boy)
previously portrayed as a teenager? If memory serves, the issue featuring,
Sammy, and Jugs, Sammy came up higher than Jug's knees.
-------
Kidan Anubix
kidan.wrighton.org
Billy Bissette
> On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 00:27:52 GMT, Billy Bissette
> <bai...@coastalnet.com> wrote:
>
>> Even if you aren't willing to commit to mental cheating for telepaths,
>>what Jean does is pretty evidently a brutal assault and battery.
>>
>> And all for something Jean was wrong about. Not that being right
>>would have justified her.
>
> It doesn't sound like she was all *that* wrong, at least not on the
> mental aspect, and Scott wasn't exactly helping to lay her fears to
> rest. Especially with the "we didn't sleep" crack he made previously.
Ah yes... The line that could be read in more than one way.
(I'm leaving the above because kind of factors in what I say later,
if I remember to say it.)
>> It's not really any different from a drunken muscle-freak boyfriend
>>breaking in his girlfriend's door and beating her because she's been
>>talking to her ex about problems with the drunken muscle-freak. That
>>is what Laura is sympathizing with, the drunken muscle-freak that is
>>Jean. It's not just "a bit off the handle".
>
> Actually it is. If you're going to use a physical analogy, it's like a
> boyfriend literally walking in on his girlfriend and another guy
> getting intimate, seeing red, and beating the other guy up. Without
> the possibility of breaking bones/accidentally killing the guy. Which
> isn't the best way to behave, and I really did probably downplay
> Jean's culpability there, but I still tend to have my sympathies more
> on Jean's/the boyfriend's side here. The moral highground isn't all
> that high on any side, but Jean's the one who just got to deal with
> her own husband sneaking around behind her back and being intimate
> (even if in this case it's mentally) with another woman, thereby
> betraying her.
>
> Logan was right: Emma really *should* have known better.
Yes, Emma should. She after all knew that Jean has already once before
smashed her mind and left her in a mental hospital.... Emma knew she was
playing with fire. Morrison also does a little implication that her life
was messed up enough that she might not have been able to help herself. Of
course Jean didn't want to help anyone anyway, she just wanted to shout and
break stuff and brutalize Emma. She knew Jean could kill her or worse,
and yet still try to steal away Scott. And the result? Jean tries to
"or worse" Emma. Just because Emma was 'wrong' doesn't mean Jean was
'right' or 'justified'. (Of course, writers of the future can again blame
Jean's over-the-edge actions on the Phoenix force.)
You say Jean has got to deal with her husband sneaking around her back?
That's the thing, she doesn't. She doesn't force her way into Scott's
mind. She doesn't knock Scott across the room, nor does she mentally
burn him for being a cheat. She doesn't confront him beyond the first
intrusion. She goes straight for Emma. She's angry at Scott, but she
takes it out on Emma. If she had known Scott hadn't slept with Emma,
do you really think she would have been so ballistic and rough? Of
course not. She might even *gasp* have let Scott explain things, rather
than shutting him off and out in order to deal with Emma alone. She's
mad because she believes Scott has slept with Emma, and in a way that
even a non-telepath would immediately see as "cheating".
As for Jean's assault of Emma, your words are downplaying it because it
was mostly mental. "without the possibility of breaking bones/accidentally
killing" First of all, I disagree on that. People with Jean's powers even
without the Phoenix backing her have enough power to "accidentally kill".
When you account for the phoenix backing her, and her lack of concern for
Emma...particularly if Emma had actually been stronger and better able to
fight back/defend herself... As for breaking bones... Again go to Emma's
quote about the last time Jean barged into her mind... Jean could smash
someone's mind or drive them insane. She's off to a good start with Emma
here, when she decides to try to burn away any and all self-deceptions
Emma has... Forcing that on someone's mind all at once could probably do
the job. But Jean doesn't stop there... She's making Emma hurt through
the whole process, and grinding more salt into the wounds with things like
the death of Emma's students. That kind of mental assault is the mental
equivalent of "breaking bones" and could easily be argued as worse. (Bones
put you in a cast for a while, the other might have you in a straight
jacket for the rest of your life, if you don't kill yourself first.)
Jean didn't want to trust Scott. She didn't want to force the truth
from Scott; that would have been the final nail regardless. That would
have proven that she didn't trust him, that she had to rely on reading
his mind to trust him (which wouldn't be 'trust' at that point). And by
the final confrontation, she didn't want to be proven wrong anyway. That's
why she runs off after Scott forces her to read the truth from his mind.
She wanted him to be guilty of physically cheating on her with Emma in
Hong Kong, she needed him to be physically guilty. When she finds out he
wasn't, she is reduced to saying "they were thinking about it" and she
knows she's lost there... She was being driven because she thought it
was both mental and physical, but it wasn't. So she storms off. She
doesn't want to hear Scott or Xavier or anyone. She doesn't want her
self-deceptions burned away (that Scott had slept with Emma, that Jean
was justified in her anger, that the marriage problems were all on Scott's
side), so she storms off... A luxury she didn't give Emma earlier.
She knows she's lost when she sees that Scott didn't sleep with Emma,
and Scott runs off. She's shown that she doesn't trust him, that she
hasn't trusted him, that she will only believe him after she has proof
of his innocence. She's shown that she will assault someone she thinks
is sleeping with her husband. That she will rampage through their minds
before she bothers to find out whether they are even guilty of the actions
she holds against them.
Thing is, I have a real feeling that if the sexes were reversed, there
wouldn't be such a defense of Jean's actions. If for example it had been
Xavier going off mentally on someone he thought had tried to seduce
Lilandra. Does Emma deserve a bit of wrath? Yes? Does it justify what
Jean does? Not even close. Who's the "biggest evil" of the three? By
far it is Jean. If Scott didn't love her so much, the best advice I'd
give him would be to stay far away from Jean and hope she doesn't flip
out again, next time hurting someone even worse. Jean here is a dangerous
personality, and in neither a "nice" nor "cool" way. She is the battering
husband, the jealous boyfriend that badly beats other guys...
And she doesn't trust Scott... She doesn't trust Scott in areas where he
was trustworthy... That's bad for any relationship. Worse when you have
Jean acting like she does here.
Billy Bissette
news:20030420195357...@mb-m23.aol.com:
*sigh*
Marvel is trying everything it can to get me to drop X-Treme.
I never could stand Cannonball.
On a positive though, in a few months I'll be saving several more
dollars a month. Black Panther has been cancelled and at this rate I'll
drop X-Treme by then as well. (I was already getting near borderline
before the art change.)
Dan McEwen
news:mq26avo74j18gj4ad...@4ax.com:
> On Sun, 20 Apr 2003 19:31:49 +0100, Paul O'Brien
> <pa...@esoterica.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>The catch being that Emma really hasn't done anything to merit it.
>>Emma hasn't done anything unethical, so far as we've seen, in her
>>relations with Scott. She might have been using her telepathy to
>>achieve intimacy with him, and that might well be seen as a betrayal
>>of Jean, but it's Scott's betrayal, not Emma's. And that's why Emma
>>ends up coming out of this with the audience's sympathies. It's a
>>wonderful piece of writing.
>
> Hrm, I'd have to disagree here, and I'm not sure how much of the rest
> of the audience is sympathetic with Emma more than Jean. Yeah, Jean
> went a bit off the handle - but I personally think she deserved to.
> For a telepath, what Scott and Emma was doing *is* cheating, and you
> can't really say that "well, Scott was in the wrong, but Emma was
> fine!" Being the other woman isn't morally right, either, assuming
> you know that the man *is* otherwise involved. Which Emma did.
Doesn't this present a problem,then? If a telepathic affair is
cheating for a *telepath*, doesn't that suggest that Scott isn't quite
as wrong in this? Mind you, it's iffy moral ground and is almost
certainly akin to "cyberdating", but I'm trying to work with your
wording.
>>Anyway, the big subject of the day is animal rights. When the X-Men
>>find some neighbouring kids torturing animals, they stop them.
>>Because torturing animals is bad. And... yup, that's pretty much
>>it.
>
> While I also wasn't as impressed with this issue as I am generally
> with Austen's Uncanny, I do think there's supposed to be a bit more
> than that. I think this is supposed to be tying in the whole
> animal/human tension with the human/mutant issue. Especially when you
> look at how much, for instance, Sammy identifies with the fish that
> have been tortured.
I thought the same, especially when Jean outright said that Juggernaut
felt the same about mutants early in his career. Regardless of whether
or not that's true, the link was being made.
>>Nope, that's what it says. Third issue of X-Men Unlimited in three
>>weeks. X-Statix #10 is out as well, and X-Treme X-Men #24 kicks off
>>God Loves Man Kills II.
>
> Please tell me I miscounted when I got a total of eight bloody
> X-Books for next week. PLEASE.
I've actually just decided to pick up X-Statix. The X-Men Encyclopedia
gave me a start and then I read one of the X-Force TPB's. Good stuff,
IMO.
--
Dan
a.a. #1617
Jim Connick
"Laura M. Parkinson" wrote
: >Next week, a ton of stuff. The big news is that the ongoing Mystique
: >series debuts. Agent X #10 is another fill-in, but with Evan Dorkin
: >writing, it could be good. Uncanny X-Men #422 is the second half of
: >"Rules of Engagement", Weapon X #8 continues the "Underground"
: >storyline, Wolverine: X-Isle reaches issue #4, X-Men Unlimited #45...
: >
: >[double-takes]
: >
: >Nope, that's what it says. Third issue of X-Men Unlimited in three
: >weeks. X-Statix #10 is out as well, and X-Treme X-Men #24 kicks off God
: >Loves Man Kills II.
:
: Please tell me I miscounted when I got a total of eight bloody X-Books
: for next week. PLEASE.
:
: Please?
:
: Oh hell, and with Weapon X *and* Wolverine: X-Isle in those? I think
: my brain may implode.
Don't forget X-Statix, we know how much you love that title :)
Jim
Laura M. Parkinson
>Laura M. Parkinson <lpark...@mindspring.com> wrote in
>news:mq26avo74j18gj4ad...@4ax.com:
>
>> On Sun, 20 Apr 2003 19:31:49 +0100, Paul O'Brien
>> <pa...@esoterica.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>
>>>The catch being that Emma really hasn't done anything to merit it.
>>>Emma hasn't done anything unethical, so far as we've seen, in her
>>>relations with Scott. She might have been using her telepathy to
>>>achieve intimacy with him, and that might well be seen as a betrayal
>>>of Jean, but it's Scott's betrayal, not Emma's. And that's why Emma
>>>ends up coming out of this with the audience's sympathies. It's a
>>>wonderful piece of writing.
>>
>> Hrm, I'd have to disagree here, and I'm not sure how much of the rest
>> of the audience is sympathetic with Emma more than Jean. Yeah, Jean
>> went a bit off the handle - but I personally think she deserved to.
>> For a telepath, what Scott and Emma was doing *is* cheating, and you
>> can't really say that "well, Scott was in the wrong, but Emma was
>> fine!" Being the other woman isn't morally right, either, assuming
>> you know that the man *is* otherwise involved. Which Emma did.
>
>Doesn't this present a problem,then? If a telepathic affair is
>cheating for a *telepath*, doesn't that suggest that Scott isn't quite
>as wrong in this? Mind you, it's iffy moral ground and is almost
>certainly akin to "cyberdating", but I'm trying to work with your
>wording.
I'd say Scott's still in the wrong, because he's *been* psychically
linked to Jean, he *knows* how big a deal it is. He knows that he's
not just fantasizing, that Emma really is there on the other end of
his thoughts, so to speak.
Laura M. Parkinson
wrote:
Yeah, though at least with that it has the chance of being something
I'll like (fairly slim given the track record, but it can happen), and
it's more a matter of thinking the stylistic choices are bad, for lack
of a better wording, rather than thinking there's just nothing there
worthwhile...
David
> On Sun, 20 Apr 2003 19:31:49 +0100, Paul O'Brien
> <pa...@esoterica.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
> >The catch being that Emma really hasn't done anything to merit it. Emma
> >hasn't done anything unethical, so far as we've seen, in her relations
> >with Scott. She might have been using her telepathy to achieve intimacy
> >with him, and that might well be seen as a betrayal of Jean, but it's
> >Scott's betrayal, not Emma's. And that's why Emma ends up coming out of
> >this with the audience's sympathies. It's a wonderful piece of writing.
>
> Hrm, I'd have to disagree here, and I'm not sure how much of the rest
> of the audience is sympathetic with Emma more than Jean. Yeah, Jean
> went a bit off the handle - but I personally think she deserved to.
> For a telepath, what Scott and Emma was doing *is* cheating, and you
> can't really say that "well, Scott was in the wrong, but Emma was
> fine!" Being the other woman isn't morally right, either, assuming you
> know that the man *is* otherwise involved. Which Emma did.
Yes, but Emma's never made any promises to Jean about exclusivity.
*Scott* did, then proceeded to share emotional intimacy with a
telepath other than his wife, and with far worse motives than
apparently drove Emma. At least Emma believes she's in love with
Scott. Scott, on the other hand, is turning to Emma because he's too
much of a martyr or a coward to confide in Jean. I certainly don't
think what Emma has done is fine, but from a relative standpoint, she
doesn't owe Jean anthing, and Jean's anger is very largely
misdirected.
Not that Jean's behavior doesn't make sense in that "angry logic" kind
of way. Jean has no reason to care about her future relationship with
Emma, and Jean is much more likely to lash out at someone you might
describe as "emotionally expendable" than the man she believes is her
life partner. She's like an animal fending off a rival for her mate's
affection (and I say this as the witness to a very heated cardinal
love triangle in the back yard). Jean puffed up, stuck out her chest,
and proceeded to kick the crap out of a rival. It's understandable,
but it's hardly admirable.
David
Shawn Hill
: On Sun, 20 Apr 2003 19:31:49 +0100, Paul O'Brien
: <pa...@esoterica.demon.co.uk> wrote:
:>Writing the X-Axis can be rather irritating during these transitional
:>phases for the line. While we wait for the dead wood to be cleared and
:>the new titles to begin, there can be weeks like these, where you can
:>almost hear the gentle lapping of water being treaded.
: Not to mention sheer volume...
I'm not really feeling the "transitional period" thing. New titles may be
impending, but I don't have a sense of old ones just burning off issues.
The major ones (New, Uncanny, Xtreme, Xstatix) seem to be moving right
along.
:>The catch being that Emma really hasn't done anything to merit it. Emma
:>hasn't done anything unethical, so far as we've seen, in her relations
:>with Scott. She might have been using her telepathy to achieve intimacy
:>with him, and that might well be seen as a betrayal of Jean, but it's
:>Scott's betrayal, not Emma's. And that's why Emma ends up coming out of
:>this with the audience's sympathies. It's a wonderful piece of writing.
: Hrm, I'd have to disagree here, and I'm not sure how much of the rest
: of the audience is sympathetic with Emma more than Jean. Yeah, Jean
: went a bit off the handle - but I personally think she deserved to.
To the point of threatening to put Emma in a mental hospital again, which
the Phoenix power always implies?
Instead, she rather forcefully rifled through Emma's mind to answer some
rather pointed questions about her behaviour, but it was no more
sympathetic than what she did to the merc she and Xavier therapized when
she was protecting Phantomex.
: For a telepath, what Scott and Emma was doing *is* cheating, and you
: can't really say that "well, Scott was in the wrong, but Emma was
: fine!" Being the other woman isn't morally right, either, assuming you
: know that the man *is* otherwise involved. Which Emma did.
But why should Jean be bitch-slapping the woman, when the real issue is
not Emma betraying her (they had no covenant), but rather her husband
straying all on his own, no matter with who?
Why isn't she talking to Scott? Because she sees him as victimized by her
rival telepath, or because she just isn't, these days, talking to Scott at
all?
Shawn
xfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxf
"I'm fine, Agent Doggett."
-- dana
xfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxfxffxfx
sh...@husc.harvard.edu Shawn Hill
Shawn Hill
: her own husband sneaking around behind her back and being intimate
: (even if in this case it's mentally) with another woman, thereby
: betraying her.
Which Scott did, not Emma.
: Logan was right: Emma really *should* have known better.
Not, though, because what Emma did was wrong. Rather, the "better"
involved not getting a bully like Jean mad at her. Just like a 98 lb.
weakling should probably not sleep with a boxer's wife.
Shawn
Shawn Hill
: In message <Xns9363D019220E...@207.217.77.21>, Billy
:>
:> You clipped the part where Laura brings up that "For a telepath, what
:>Scott and Emma was doing *is* cheating"
: And up to that point, I can agree. But does it justify Jean violating
: Emma's memories? Hardly.
But, see, Jean was offering Emma some insight into herself. Without
permission, whether she wanted it or not. Because, I guess, the Phoenix
knows best these days. Scourge of truth and all.
Poor Emma, I guess there's nowhere to hide from Jean anymore, so why not
(perversel) run out in front of the headlights instead?
Shawn
Dan McEwen
news:b81llk$3os$2...@news.fas.harvard.edu:
> In rec.arts.comics.marvel.xbooks Paul O'Brien
> <pa...@esoterica.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>: In message <Xns9363D019220E...@207.217.77.21>, Billy
>: Bissette <bai...@coastalnet.com> writes
>:>
>:> You clipped the part where Laura brings up that "For a telepath,
>:> what
>:>Scott and Emma was doing *is* cheating"
>
>: And up to that point, I can agree. But does it justify Jean
>: violating Emma's memories? Hardly.
>
> But, see, Jean was offering Emma some insight into herself. Without
> permission, whether she wanted it or not. Because, I guess, the
> Phoenix knows best these days. Scourge of truth and all.
I don't think you could make a claim that Jean was doing something she
felt would be beneficial to Emma. Her goal was simply to hurt.
Remember, people develop all kinds of defense mechanisms to keep from
going insane. If Jean shuts them down...well, it could be messy.
--
Dan
a.a. #1617
sw
>But, see, Jean was offering Emma some insight into herself. Without
>permission, whether she wanted it or not. Because, I guess, the Phoenix
>knows best these days. Scourge of truth and all.
Which is, of course, total twaddle. And even if it were "true" in some
cosmic sense, it's still not a particularly heroic or sympathetic act.
--
--- An' thou dost not get caught, do as thou wilt shall be the law ---
"Religion disperses like a fog, kingdoms perish, but the works of
scholars remain for an eternity." - Ulughbek
Laura M. Parkinson
<bai...@coastalnet.com> wrote:
>Laura M. Parkinson <lpark...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 00:27:52 GMT, Billy Bissette
>> <bai...@coastalnet.com> wrote:
>>
*snip some for space*
>>> It's not really any different from a drunken muscle-freak boyfriend
>>>breaking in his girlfriend's door and beating her because she's been
>>>talking to her ex about problems with the drunken muscle-freak. That
>>>is what Laura is sympathizing with, the drunken muscle-freak that is
>>>Jean. It's not just "a bit off the handle".
>>
>> Actually it is. If you're going to use a physical analogy, it's like a
>> boyfriend literally walking in on his girlfriend and another guy
>> getting intimate, seeing red, and beating the other guy up. Without
>> the possibility of breaking bones/accidentally killing the guy. Which
>> isn't the best way to behave, and I really did probably downplay
>> Jean's culpability there, but I still tend to have my sympathies more
>> on Jean's/the boyfriend's side here. The moral highground isn't all
>> that high on any side, but Jean's the one who just got to deal with
>> her own husband sneaking around behind her back and being intimate
>> (even if in this case it's mentally) with another woman, thereby
>> betraying her.
>>
>> Logan was right: Emma really *should* have known better.
>
> Yes, Emma should. She after all knew that Jean has already once before
>smashed her mind and left her in a mental hospital.... Emma knew she was
>playing with fire. Morrison also does a little implication that her life
>was messed up enough that she might not have been able to help herself.
I don't buy that you can't help yourself to keep from doing something
like cheating just because your life is messed up.
>Of
>course Jean didn't want to help anyone anyway, she just wanted to shout and
>break stuff and brutalize Emma. She knew Jean could kill her or worse,
>and yet still try to steal away Scott. And the result? Jean tries to
>"or worse" Emma. Just because Emma was 'wrong' doesn't mean Jean was
>'right' or 'justified'. (Of course, writers of the future can again blame
>Jean's over-the-edge actions on the Phoenix force.)
Alright, I'll admit that I may have let Jean off a little light, but I
still think Emma is not really sympathetic here at all. She's been
smacked around mentally, but she also brought it on herself. Whether
or not she deserved that much devestation for what she did, or whether
or not Jean was right in acting as judge and jury in doing it to her,
she *still* started all this off by cheating with Scott mentally.
(And for the record, I'm not figuring that Scott's blameless either.)
> You say Jean has got to deal with her husband sneaking around her back?
>That's the thing, she doesn't. She doesn't force her way into Scott's
>mind. She doesn't knock Scott across the room, nor does she mentally
>burn him for being a cheat. She doesn't confront him beyond the first
>intrusion. She goes straight for Emma. She's angry at Scott, but she
>takes it out on Emma. If she had known Scott hadn't slept with Emma,
>do you really think she would have been so ballistic and rough? Of
>course not. She might even *gasp* have let Scott explain things, rather
>than shutting him off and out in order to deal with Emma alone.
You mean like before, when she asked him if he slept with Emma in Hong
Kong? That's just it - she wanted to know, he wouldn't tell her. What
is she *supposed* to think, when her own husband won't even bother
saying "hey, we didn't sleep together," combined with how strangely
he's been acting, and how much he's been pushing her away?
>She's
>mad because she believes Scott has slept with Emma, and in a way that
>even a non-telepath would immediately see as "cheating".
>
> As for Jean's assault of Emma, your words are downplaying it because it
>was mostly mental. "without the possibility of breaking bones/accidentally
>killing" First of all, I disagree on that. People with Jean's powers even
>without the Phoenix backing her have enough power to "accidentally kill".
Except that this time around, she seems to have full control. Oh yeah,
she might go into a real rage and kill Emma in the heat of passion -
but I don't see it happening accidentally.
*snip most of the rest, but I did have to reply to this*
> Thing is, I have a real feeling that if the sexes were reversed, there
>wouldn't be such a defense of Jean's actions. If for example it had been
>Xavier going off mentally on someone he thought had tried to seduce
>Lilandra.
"Trying to seduce?" You mean "mentally cheating on with." Not to
mention that they'd still be technically "together" and expected to
not betray each other's trust.
And I think it's unfair to just assume that I'd feel differently just
because of the genders involved. I don't think that's the case.
> Does Emma deserve a bit of wrath? Yes? Does it justify what
>Jean does? Not even close. Who's the "biggest evil" of the three?
While I'd agree that I did downplay Jean's culpability, I still don't
think she's the biggest evil here, sorry. Maybe it's partly because I
have such a seething distaste of the whole idea of cheating on your
significant other behind their back. Although I'm finding it hard
pressed to figure out which out of Emma or Scott is most deserving of
scorn - I think Scott. Emma seemed to be having a motive to hurt while
Scott just seemed more confused and reaching out, but if Emma really
does love Scott, then at least there's that motive as well, not that
that excuses anything. Scott on the other hand is the one that's
*supposed* to be faithful to his wife, and instead making excuses and
going around behind her back.
> By
>far it is Jean. If Scott didn't love her so much, the best advice I'd
>give him would be to stay far away from Jean and hope she doesn't flip
>out again, next time hurting someone even worse. Jean here is a dangerous
>personality, and in neither a "nice" nor "cool" way. She is the battering
>husband, the jealous boyfriend that badly beats other guys...
>
> And she doesn't trust Scott... She doesn't trust Scott in areas where he
>was trustworthy... That's bad for any relationship. Worse when you have
>Jean acting like she does here.
Let's see, doesn't trust Scott when he actually *is* cheating on her,
even if not physically? When he won't come out and say "oh, don't
worry, we didn't do anything in Hong Kong" and instead intentionally
leaves his answer ambiguous, if not leaning toward "yeah, we slept
together"? When he's suddenly acting completely unlike himself,
walling himself away from Jean emotionally? Not to mention that when I
mentioned that it was out of character for Scott to cheat on Jean, I
had lots of people pointing out "oh no, it's just in character, look
at what happened with Madelyne..."
Not to mention that the whole "trust/not trust" issue is a bit moot
when she is actually told be students that Scott is cheating on her,
and walks in to find, hey, guess what, they are, even if it's "just"
mentally. And at that point, it'd take either a saint or a completely
gullible lovesick fool to *not* figure that they might well be
cheating physically as well.
Laura M. Parkinson
>In rec.arts.comics.marvel.xbooks Laura M. Parkinson <lpark...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>: her own husband sneaking around behind her back and being intimate
>: (even if in this case it's mentally) with another woman, thereby
>: betraying her.
>
>Which Scott did, not Emma.
Emma still fooled around with him (mentally, granted) knowing that he
was married, and knowing how much it would hurt Jean.
Very far from blameless.
Peter Dimitriadis
I still don't get how there's really any difference, if they're doing the
nasty in a telepathic shared fantasy it's any different than actually
doing it. Assuming (as it's always been depicted in the art) that the
'shared fantasy' looks, feels, etc, exactly the same as the real thing,
what's the difference (presuming people were practicing safer sex)? Is it
that there's no actual skin-to-skin contact?
I mean, I could understand some grey area if it was say phone sex, or
cyberchat (I personally think that'd still be cheating, but I could accept
that not everyone does). What if, hypothetically, Scott _didn't know_ he
was in one of Emma's telepathic fantasies, and he thought he was in the
real world doing it? Would he then be guilty of cheating, for those who
don't think he was cheating now? Conversely, what if he thought it was
just a telepathic fantasy, but Emma was cleverly manipulating him and he
was actually doing the real deed?
Peter Dimitriadis
Trek Barnes
"Shawn Hill" <sh...@fas.harvard.edu> wrote in message
news:b81lqk$3os$3...@news.fas.harvard.edu...
> In rec.arts.comics.marvel.xbooks Laura M. Parkinson
<lpark...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> : her own husband sneaking around behind her back and being intimate
> : (even if in this case it's mentally) with another woman, thereby
> : betraying her.
>
> Which Scott did, not Emma.
I'd say helping Scott cheat is almost as bad as cheating yourself.
If you give a gun to someone *knowing* they plan to rob a bank with it,
aren't you partilly guilty?
What if you ask them to rob it for you?
Shawn Hill
: "Shawn Hill" <sh...@fas.harvard.edu> wrote in message
: news:b81lqk$3os$3...@news.fas.harvard.edu...
:> In rec.arts.comics.marvel.xbooks Laura M. Parkinson
: <lpark...@mindspring.com> wrote:
:>
:> : her own husband sneaking around behind her back and being intimate
:> : (even if in this case it's mentally) with another woman, thereby
:> : betraying her.
:>
:> Which Scott did, not Emma.
: I'd say helping Scott cheat is almost as bad as cheating yourself.
: If you give a gun to someone *knowing* they plan to rob a bank with it,
: aren't you partilly guilty?
: What if you ask them to rob it for you?
It's not good, from Jean's perspective. Doesn't make Emma much of an ally or
friend.
But those are the only roles Emma was expected to adhere to. Scott was expected
to do much more.
Shawn
Shawn Hill
:> Yes, Emma should. She after all knew that Jean has already once before
:>smashed her mind and left her in a mental hospital.... Emma knew she was
:>playing with fire. Morrison also does a little implication that her life
:>was messed up enough that she might not have been able to help herself.
: I don't buy that you can't help yourself to keep from doing something
: like cheating just because your life is messed up.
Neither did Jean, which is why she staged her little psychic invasion; to make
Emma face up to her foolishness.
: smacked around mentally, but she also brought it on herself. Whether
: or not she deserved that much devestation for what she did, or whether
: or not Jean was right in acting as judge and jury in doing it to her,
: she *still* started all this off by cheating with Scott mentally.
Or did Scott start it by liking what she was doing, and coming back repeatedly
for more?
: (And for the record, I'm not figuring that Scott's blameless either.)
But, in this issue, Jean had a clear focus for her rage.
: Except that this time around, she seems to have full control. Oh yeah,
: she might go into a real rage and kill Emma in the heat of passion -
: but I don't see it happening accidentally.
She was, as you say, very much in control. Which is really the nice thing about
the way Morrison is writing Phoenix this time around. The Force, or whatever it
is, seems quite content to bend to the will of its host right now.
:> Thing is, I have a real feeling that if the sexes were reversed, there
:>wouldn't be such a defense of Jean's actions. If for example it had been
:>Xavier going off mentally on someone he thought had tried to seduce
:>Lilandra.
:> Does Emma deserve a bit of wrath? Yes? Does it justify what
:>Jean does? Not even close. Who's the "biggest evil" of the three?
: significant other behind their back. Although I'm finding it hard
: pressed to figure out which out of Emma or Scott is most deserving of
: scorn - I think Scott. Emma seemed to be having a motive to hurt while
Yes, I think Scott, too. He owed something more to Jean. Emma's behavior was at
least predictably in character.
I also think Jean has to shoulder some of the blame, too, for this rough spot
in her marriage. She was content to let Scott withdraw, and willing to reach
out to Logan just as he reached out to Emma.
Emma, not currently as stable as Logan, made the mistake of reaching back.
: Scott just seemed more confused and reaching out, but if Emma really
: does love Scott, then at least there's that motive as well, not that
: that excuses anything. Scott on the other hand is the one that's
: *supposed* to be faithful to his wife, and instead making excuses and
: going around behind her back.
Exactly.
Shawn
Shawn Hill
: Shawn Hill <sh...@fas.harvard.edu> wrote in
: news:b81llk$3os$2...@news.fas.harvard.edu:
:> But, see, Jean was offering Emma some insight into herself. Without
:> permission, whether she wanted it or not. Because, I guess, the
:> Phoenix knows best these days. Scourge of truth and all.
: I don't think you could make a claim that Jean was doing something she
: felt would be beneficial to Emma. Her goal was simply to hurt.
: Remember, people develop all kinds of defense mechanisms to keep from
: going insane. If Jean shuts them down...well, it could be messy.
"People?" All people? We all are protected by bundles of defenses that ward off
our insanity? Or just twisted old Emma?
I was being somewhat ironic (or at least rueful) in the prior post, but I do
think Jean saw herself as helping on some level. She saw Emma as deeply flawed
and in need of fixing, and her anger justified her being the one to do it. She
wanted to know why Emma behaved as she did, and she wanted Emma to face it,
too.
The Phoenix, now, corrects what it sees as errors. It's something like Nomad on
that classic Trek episode.
Emma did have a realization at the end of it all; that she wasn't just toying
with Scott, that for all her bravado she actually loved him.
Shawn
Johanna Draper Carlson
> I was being somewhat ironic (or at least rueful) in the prior post, but I do
> think Jean saw herself as helping on some level.
I don't think that's the case at all.
The people that annoy you most, that make you most furious, are those
most like you. The whole "there, but for the grace of God" thing. I
think that's why Jean went psycho and sadistic -- Emma reminds her too
much of who she might have been.
Shouldn't this not be in rac.misc and rac.mu? Followups set.
--
Johanna Draper Carlson
Reviews of Comics Worth Reading -- http://www.comicsworthreading.com
Newly updated: The Nimrod, Reviews of Content, JLA: Age of Wonder,
Politically InQueerect, The Runaways
Shawn Hill
: Shawn Hill <sh...@fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
:> I was being somewhat ironic (or at least rueful) in the prior post, but I do
:> think Jean saw herself as helping on some level.
: I don't think that's the case at all.
: The people that annoy you most, that make you most furious, are those
: most like you. The whole "there, but for the grace of God" thing. I
: think that's why Jean went psycho and sadistic -- Emma reminds her too
: much of who she might have been.
: Shouldn't this not be in rac.misc and rac.mu? Followups set.
It's cross-posted like your reviews because several comics are covered.
I don't think Emma reminds Jean of herself at all. Jean doesn't masquerade
behind so many defense mechanisms, she's always been comfortable to be who
she is, and do what she wants. Luckily, she's beautiful and powerful, so
it hasn't been that hard. No need for plastic surgery there, or
extricating herself from the influence of a bad daddy.
Jean went psycho in a very systematic way, because Emma's disorder and
misery was intrusive and unwelcome. In a sense of making the world a
better place, she set about making Emma face up to her flaws by shattering
her facades.
That it became literal in the final scene is one more level of their
conflict. Whether or not it means what it seems to or if Jean caused it.
Just because might makes right is a poor moral concept doesn't mean Jean
was totally wrong in this case. A good therapist might also try to get
Emma to live more honestly.
Shawn
Billy Bissette
> On Mon, 21 Apr 2003 04:14:43 GMT, Billy Bissette
> <bai...@coastalnet.com> wrote:
>>Laura M. Parkinson <lpark...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>> Yes, Emma should. She after all knew that Jean has already once
>> before
>>smashed her mind and left her in a mental hospital.... Emma knew she
>>was playing with fire. Morrison also does a little implication that
>>her life was messed up enough that she might not have been able to
>>help herself.
>
> I don't buy that you can't help yourself to keep from doing something
> like cheating just because your life is messed up.
Didn't say that I buy into it either, just that Morrison did imply
it here. Indeed, Jean went looking for it.
>>Of
>>course Jean didn't want to help anyone anyway, she just wanted to
>>shout and break stuff and brutalize Emma. She knew Jean could kill
>>her or worse, and yet still try to steal away Scott. And the result?
>>Jean tries to "or worse" Emma. Just because Emma was 'wrong' doesn't
>>mean Jean was 'right' or 'justified'. (Of course, writers of the
>>future can again blame Jean's over-the-edge actions on the Phoenix
>>force.)
>
> Alright, I'll admit that I may have let Jean off a little light, but I
> still think Emma is not really sympathetic here at all. She's been
> smacked around mentally, but she also brought it on herself. Whether
> or not she deserved that much devestation for what she did, or whether
> or not Jean was right in acting as judge and jury in doing it to her,
> she *still* started all this off by cheating with Scott mentally.
>
> (And for the record, I'm not figuring that Scott's blameless either.)
Scott isn't blameless. But he's actually more stupid than "wrong".
He was oblivious to the idea that Jean might find mentally fooling around
with Emma to be cheating. And his approach does at least have some logic
to it, particularly since he isn't actually a telepath. Simply being
married to Jean isn't necessarily enough to know.
Now Emma was most likely trying to break down Scott's rejections to
the point that he would go along physically... And Scott might have even
realized that, and have that be where he drew the line.
Also, for all of Jean's rumblings about Scott mentally cheating on her,
she was looking for evidence that Scott physically cheated on her. If
she equated the two acts as exactly the same, she wouldn't have needed
that evidence as she caught them at the start of the mental.
>> You say Jean has got to deal with her husband sneaking around her
>> back?
>>That's the thing, she doesn't. She doesn't force her way into Scott's
>>mind. She doesn't knock Scott across the room, nor does she mentally
>>burn him for being a cheat. She doesn't confront him beyond the first
>>intrusion. She goes straight for Emma. She's angry at Scott, but she
>>takes it out on Emma. If she had known Scott hadn't slept with Emma,
>>do you really think she would have been so ballistic and rough? Of
>>course not. She might even *gasp* have let Scott explain things,
>>rather than shutting him off and out in order to deal with Emma alone.
>>
>
> You mean like before, when she asked him if he slept with Emma in Hong
> Kong? That's just it - she wanted to know, he wouldn't tell her. What
> is she *supposed* to think, when her own husband won't even bother
> saying "hey, we didn't sleep together," combined with how strangely
> he's been acting, and how much he's been pushing her away?
She wants to know because she already doesn't trust him at that point.
And Scott knew she didn't trust him. Being in an off mood himself, he
decided to get a bit of a dig at her through her own mistrust, in that he
left it open whether he had sex with Emma. If Jean had trusted him, it
wouldn't have been a dig. But she already figured he had slept with Emma,
so it was.
If she had trusted him, the whole Emma thing might never have even
started. Since she didn't trust him, it only drove him further away.
When before he was trying to figure things out on his own, Jean showed
here that she didn't believe he was faithful and that she sure wasn't
going to be a help.
>> As for Jean's assault of Emma, your words are downplaying it because
>> it
>>was mostly mental. "without the possibility of breaking
>>bones/accidentally killing" First of all, I disagree on that. People
>>with Jean's powers even without the Phoenix backing her have enough
>>power to "accidentally kill".
>
> Except that this time around, she seems to have full control. Oh yeah,
> she might go into a real rage and kill Emma in the heat of passion -
> but I don't see it happening accidentally.
And what dictates full control? Was she in full control or was she
just in a cold deadly rage, that kind of emotionless state that you can
hit...
>> Does Emma deserve a bit of wrath? Yes? Does it justify what
>>Jean does? Not even close. Who's the "biggest evil" of the three?
>
> While I'd agree that I did downplay Jean's culpability, I still don't
> think she's the biggest evil here, sorry. Maybe it's partly because I
> have such a seething distaste of the whole idea of cheating on your
> significant other behind their back. Although I'm finding it hard
> pressed to figure out which out of Emma or Scott is most deserving of
> scorn - I think Scott. Emma seemed to be having a motive to hurt while
> Scott just seemed more confused and reaching out, but if Emma really
> does love Scott, then at least there's that motive as well, not that
> that excuses anything. Scott on the other hand is the one that's
> *supposed* to be faithful to his wife, and instead making excuses and
> going around behind her back.
A seething distaste of your SO cheating behind your back? Personally,
I loathed the idea even before I lost two relationships to the women in
question fooling around with their ex's.
And yet I still find Jean to be the most wrong here.
Emma wants to hurt Jean, but she also believes she loves Scott. Not
only that, she sees Scott as trapped in the shell of a relationship with
Jean. Emma also sees Jean as the problem of the relationship. She after
all knows that Scott still loves Jean and was faithful to Jean, and that
Jean has been pushing back against Scott and believing he was unfaithful.
Now, she works in that crack in their relationship, trying to win Scott
over to her or to break Jean down so that Scott might leave her. But she
also tries to stay relatively "honest" in this. She could have set Jean
off for example by simply letting her know what was going on, or having
the girls let her know. But she presumably wants Scott to choose freely.
Scott is a guy that is just messed up. He wants time alone, physically
and mentally, to recover from what happened to him. Jean doesn't like
that, but accepts mainly because she doesn't really have a choice. Emma
makes a play for him, but he turns the physical part down while accepting
the advice part. But Jean immediately jumps to the conclusion that Scott
cheated on her. Guess she figured a guy can't stay celibate if he wanted
to. That has to be a bit of a blow to Scott... The moment his so-called
loving wife stops reading his mind, she starts to think he is cheating on
her. Which would beg the question in Scott of whether or not Jean ever
trusted him, or was it only because she could read his mind whenever she
felt like checking? A good prompting there to take a dig at her. Which
Jean falls for hook, line, and sinker. And deservedly so perhaps.
Jean's mistrust sets Scott up to fall into the mental cheating bit, with
reassurances from Emma that it isn't a big deal. After all, it is little
more than two people fantasizing about the same thing at the same time.
(Which is the logical path I figure he is using. Whether I believe it is
a different thing.) She's even playing the part of counseler, which is
something both he and Jean need at the moment.
So now we have Jean on her growing powertrip, with her personality
become a bit more distant as she uses her powers more and more casually.
While Emma is making progress with Scott where Jean hadn't.
Then Jean catches on. She immediately shuts Scott out of the whole
deal, as she doesn't want to hear anything he has to say. If she had
listened to him, and had a level head, the whole thing could have been
sorted out without the mental assault on Emma. Now, "sorted out" doesn't
mean eveything would be mended.
But Jean wants a bit of pain for Emma first. Whether she does her
assault because she wants to hurt Emma or because of some twisted desire
to "help" Emma, it definitely hurts her. And Jean keeps herself deaf
from Emma's cries, as she drives her closer to the brink of a complete
mental break.
Scott of course sees Jean willing to do to Emma what she isn't willing
to do to him. He's most likely blaming himself for what Jean is doing to
Emma (because she is doing it out of what has become a twisted sense of
love), and probably figures Jean should be attacking him instead of her.
So he forces Jean to read the truth from his mind. Forces her to realize
that her whole tirade started off the wrong assumption that he cheated on
her the first chance that he got. Perhaps forcing her to see that she
drove him away from her, and perhaps also seeing that she drove him further
away with this assault on Emma. And in a way emphasizing that point, he
leaves. Leaving Jean to rant and rationalize to herself, as she shuts
down any comments from others, as they might say things that she doesn't
want to hear. Who knows, they might take away some of her self-deceptions
about the whole situation.
Scott only cheated on Jean telepathically, and not being a telepath he
didn't even realize that was cheating. If Jean hadn't suspected him of
cheating on her physically, she most likely wouldn't have come in like
some avenging angel. Her whole assault on Emma was to eventually find
"proof" that Scott had sex with Emma in Hong Kong, not evidence of other
mental incidents. She wanted and needed to find evidence of physical
cheating. The mental stuff simply increased her belief that they had
done something physical (because they had been thinking about it).
Brian Doyle
"Billy Bissette" <bai...@coastalnet.com> wrote in message
news:Xns93658F3FFEF0...@207.217.77.21...
> Scott only cheated on Jean telepathically, and not being a telepath he
> didn't even realize that was cheating.
But being married to one of the worlds most powerful psi's, and sharing a
psi-link for years with her, you think nhe'd have SOME clue! :)
Paul O'Brien
<sh...@fas.harvard.edu> writes
>
>I'm not really feeling the "transitional period" thing. New titles may
>be impending, but I don't have a sense of old ones just burning off
>issues. The major ones (New, Uncanny, Xtreme, Xstatix) seem to be
>moving right along.
It's more at the B-list level. Wolverine's in fill-ins. Agent X is
being cancelled, plus it's in fill-ins. Soldier X is being cancelled,
plus it's in fill-ins. New Mutants hasn't launched yet. Mystique
hasn't launched yet. X-Men Unlimited is churning out fill-in issues for
no discernible reason, along with a slew of pointless miniseries -
X-Men: Ronin, for god's sake?
And Weapon X is crap.
That leaves the X-Men titles themselves running normally... and
X-Statix. There's plenty of promising stuff on the horizon, but god,
there's an awful lot of mediocre timefiller hitting the shelves at the
moment.
--
Paul O'Brien
THE X-AXIS - http://www.thexaxis.com
ARTICLE 10 - http://www.ninthart.com
Regime change begins at home.
~consul
>>can't really say that "well, Scott was in the wrong, but Emma was
>>fine!" Being the other woman isn't morally right, either, assuming
>>you know that the man *is* otherwise involved. Which Emma did.
> Doesn't this present a problem,then? If a telepathic affair is cheating for a *telepath*, doesn't that suggest that Scott isn't quite as wrong in this? Mind you, it's iffy moral ground and is almost certainly akin to "cyberdating", but I'm trying to work with your wording.
But there is precedent of Jean not liking it. WRT cyberdating, it's the same thing. Jean
knows that she doesn't want Scott thinking about other women for so long like he did with
Emma. Scott knows this. So he should refrain from it. It's like someone having a bad habit
that the spouse _really_ doesn't like. Out of respect for the other, you stop. Sure, cyber
dating doesn't really hurt, picking your nose in public doesn't really hurt, but if she
says something, eh, might as well not do it.
> I thought the same, especially when Jean outright said that Juggernaut
> felt the same about mutants early in his career. Regardless of whether
> or not that's true, the link was being made.
I like how Juggs makes the 'mutants only' comment to Xavier too. Cain knows how it goes
around here ...
--
"... the chaos brings about the necessary struggle for Good and for Evil ..."
till next time,
Jameson Stalanthas Yu http://www.dolphins-cove.com
dedes...@dolphins-cove.com.invalid
Johanna Draper Carlson
> <joh...@discardme.comicsworthreading.com> wrote:
>
> : Shouldn't this not be in rac.misc and rac.mu? Followups set.
>
> It's cross-posted like your reviews because several comics are covered.
At the time I joined the thread, the discussion was solely about what
happened in an X-book. I wasn't referring to Paul's column, but the
follow-ups.
> I don't think Emma reminds Jean of herself at all. Jean doesn't masquerade
> behind so many defense mechanisms, she's always been comfortable to be who
> she is, and do what she wants.
We have different visions of the character, then. You've probably read
much more about her than I have, but I wouldn't describe someone with
the whole Phoenix history (what little I know about it) as "comfortable
with who she is" or lacking defense mechanisms.
Billy Bissette
news:b845ta$iu9$1...@newsg3.svr.pol.co.uk:
Hey, I'd be one of the last people to call Scott smart, or to try
to imply he has people skills, or even a personality other than "annoying
****".
Of course, Jean looks into his mind and sees the personality of a
guy that would drop wife and child in order to run back to Jean. (Ref
to Maddie there.) And still decides she loves him for it.
I do wonder whether Jean would even have had argument with Scott and
Emma if Logan hadn't shut her down earlier in the run... Perhaps if
Logan had been written in normal "no-IQ, groin for a brain, redhead-fixated
mode" we might would have had Scott optic blasting his way in to find
Jean under the sheets with a Wolverine...
Billy Bissette
news:oAyQIOGJ...@esoterica.demon.co.uk:
> And Weapon X is crap.
Look on the bright side... With Marvel's track record, in a few
years they'll have a title out that will make you remember fondly
when the bottom of the barrel was only as bad as books like Weapon X.
Feel better now?
What? I can't hear you with your head in the oven like that.
Dan McEwen
> In rec.arts.comics.marvel.universe Dan McEwen <dannyb...@aol.com>
> wrote:
>: Shawn Hill <sh...@fas.harvard.edu> wrote in
>: news:b81llk$3os$2...@news.fas.harvard.edu:
>
>:> But, see, Jean was offering Emma some insight into herself. Without
>:> permission, whether she wanted it or not. Because, I guess, the
>:> Phoenix knows best these days. Scourge of truth and all.
>
>: I don't think you could make a claim that Jean was doing something
>: she felt would be beneficial to Emma. Her goal was simply to hurt.
>: Remember, people develop all kinds of defense mechanisms to keep
>: from going insane. If Jean shuts them down...well, it could be
>: messy.
>
> "People?" All people? We all are protected by bundles of defenses
> that ward off our insanity? Or just twisted old Emma?
In general, whenever you suffer a trauma, you develop defense
mechanisms. It's quite normal.
> I was being somewhat ironic (or at least rueful) in the prior post,
> but I do think Jean saw herself as helping on some level. She saw
> Emma as deeply flawed and in need of fixing, and her anger justified
> her being the one to do it. She wanted to know why Emma behaved as
> she did, and she wanted Emma to face it, too.
Yes, I know, and your successive posts gave me a better view of your
opinion of Jean's actions.
> The Phoenix, now, corrects what it sees as errors. It's something
> like Nomad on that classic Trek episode.
True, but the Phoenix, however correcting it is, isn't necessarily in
the right. Just keep in mind what the Shi'ar think the Phoenix will do
with its cleansing.
> Emma did have a realization at the end of it all; that she wasn't
> just toying with Scott, that for all her bravado she actually loved
> him.
True, but what's the net benefit of this knowledge to her? Admittedly,
we might find out in the next couple of issues so I'm willing to wait
and see.
--
Dan
a.a. #1617
Dan McEwen
Shawn Hill <sh...@fas.harvard.edu> wrote in
news:b82n1f$fdp$4...@news.fas.harvard.edu:
> In rec.arts.comics.marvel.xbooks Laura M. Parkinson
> <lpark...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>:> Yes, Emma should. She after all knew that Jean has already once
>:> before
>:>smashed her mind and left her in a mental hospital.... Emma knew
>:>she was playing with fire. Morrison also does a little implication
>:>that her life was messed up enough that she might not have been able
>:>to help herself.
>
>: I don't buy that you can't help yourself to keep from doing
>: something like cheating just because your life is messed up.
>
> Neither did Jean, which is why she staged her little psychic
> invasion; to make Emma face up to her foolishness.
I'm not sure anyone (except possibly Scott) really thinks that Scott
wasn't cheating. I certainly do, but I would consider "lesser"
breaches (cybersex, phone sex) just as much cheating. I don't
necessarily find Jean's actions to be justified. I felt it was too
extreme and too focused on blaming only one person.
>: smacked around mentally, but she also brought it on herself. Whether
>: or not she deserved that much devestation for what she did, or
>: whether or not Jean was right in acting as judge and jury in doing
>: it to her, she *still* started all this off by cheating with Scott
>: mentally.
>
> Or did Scott start it by liking what she was doing, and coming back
> repeatedly for more?
This is how I interpreted it. I don't think Scott had any intention of
doing _anything_ with Emma other than talking. When she began the
seduction by assuming Jean's clothes, Scott realized he liked it and
kept coming back. I don't feel that Emma forced anything on Scott that
he wasn't willing to do.
>: (And for the record, I'm not figuring that Scott's blameless
>: either.)
>
> But, in this issue, Jean had a clear focus for her rage.
Which is the problem. Scott, as the husband, should have had most of
the blame placed on him.
>: Except that this time around, she seems to have full control. Oh
>: yeah, she might go into a real rage and kill Emma in the heat of
>: passion - but I don't see it happening accidentally.
>
> She was, as you say, very much in control. Which is really the nice
> thing about the way Morrison is writing Phoenix this time around. The
> Force, or whatever it is, seems quite content to bend to the will of
> its host right now.
It makes sense. Last time around, the Phoenix screwed up pretty badly
and the D'Bari paid the price for it. (Though, with this cleansing
stuff going on now, we might have to re-evaluate why they died.) By
allowing Jean the control, and not the extreme range of emotion, she
keeps herself from becoming the Destroyer.
> Yes, I think Scott, too. He owed something more to Jean. Emma's
> behavior was at least predictably in character.
Unfortunately, Jean seems to think that Emma was simply taking
advantage of poor Scott who didn't know what he was doing because he
was suffering from post-Apocalypse-possession Syndrome.
> I also think Jean has to shoulder some of the blame, too, for this
> rough spot in her marriage. She was content to let Scott withdraw,
> and willing to reach out to Logan just as he reached out to Emma.
The difference here was that Logan was smart enough to realize that he
didn't want to be caught up in their marital problems. If he was to be
with Jean, it would have to be only him.
--
Dan
a.a. #1617
Dan McEwen
>
Why? Again, when you don't have this ability to perceive thoughts like
reality, you could easily misread it. And, I'll state again, I do
think he was cheating, but I have a hard time believing a non-telepath
could truly understand what it's like to be a telepath.
--
Dan
a.a. #1617
Dan McEwen
Billy Bissette <bai...@coastalnet.com> wrote in
news:Xns9365C9614F18...@207.217.77.24:
> I do wonder whether Jean would even have had argument with Scott
> and
> Emma if Logan hadn't shut her down earlier in the run... Perhaps if
> Logan had been written in normal "no-IQ, groin for a brain,
> redhead-fixated mode" we might would have had Scott optic blasting
> his way in to find Jean under the sheets with a Wolverine...
This is the part I think far too many people are just flat-out
ignoring. They forget that Jean came on to Logan not all that long
ago. It's hard to fully understand all this fury when Jean was willing
to do the same thing on an entirely phyical level.
--
Dan
a.a. #1617
Dan McEwen
Laura M. Parkinson <lpark...@mindspring.com> wrote in
news:gvb9av4hpotierfdq...@4ax.com:
The point I think you're missing (or at least not commenting upon) is
the part about the betrayal. There was no betrayal on Emma's part
because she never made a committment to Jean. Scott's betrayal should
have been far more significant than Emma's actions.
--
Dan
a.a. #1617
Shawn Hill
: "Billy Bissette" <bai...@coastalnet.com> wrote in message
: news:Xns93658F3FFEF0...@207.217.77.21...
Especially as Morrison has picked up on Scott as the master strategist and
natural born battle-field leader; ie he senses all the factors and puts
them into play effectively. He's enough used to mutant powers to
understand what they mean and imply for personal lives.
Shawn
Shawn Hill
:> Yes, I think Scott, too. He owed something more to Jean. Emma's
:> behavior was at least predictably in character.
: Unfortunately, Jean seems to think that Emma was simply taking
: advantage of poor Scott who didn't know what he was doing because he
: was suffering from post-Apocalypse-possession Syndrome.
That's Jean's fault, here. Emma is simply the easier target than Scott,
because neither of them still want to face the flaws in their
relationship. So he steals Logan's ride and runs away again.
:> I also think Jean has to shoulder some of the blame, too, for this
:> rough spot in her marriage. She was content to let Scott withdraw,
:> and willing to reach out to Logan just as he reached out to Emma.
: The difference here was that Logan was smart enough to realize that he
: didn't want to be caught up in their marital problems. If he was to be
: with Jean, it would have to be only him.
Hopefully (sorry) somebody can help Emma put the pieces back together.
Shawn
Shawn Hill
:> <joh...@discardme.comicsworthreading.com> wrote:
:>
:> : Shouldn't this not be in rac.misc and rac.mu? Followups set.
:>
:> It's cross-posted like your reviews because several comics are covered.
: At the time I joined the thread, the discussion was solely about what
: happened in an X-book. I wasn't referring to Paul's column, but the
: follow-ups.
Which have gotten very loose in this era of relatively few posts in ANY
comics newsgroup. I just don't see it as that important any more, and I
definitely read about X-topics in rac.mu frequently. Not that I mind, as I
won't be resetting or crossposting this thread now that a preference has
been stated.
:> I don't think Emma reminds Jean of herself at all. Jean doesn't masquerade
:> behind so many defense mechanisms, she's always been comfortable to be who
:> she is, and do what she wants.
: We have different visions of the character, then. You've probably read
: much more about her than I have, but I wouldn't describe someone with
: the whole Phoenix history (what little I know about it) as "comfortable
: with who she is" or lacking defense mechanisms.
The Phoenix is an amoral, all-powerful universal force. Jean's purity (and
power) drew it to her in a time of intense crisis, when she was fighting
solo to save the lives of the entire team on a space shuttle caught in a
solar flare.
She then became uber-powerful, but with her own effective mental blocks
(mental not meaning psychological, but because her powers are telepathic)
to turn the power off when she felt overwhelmed, subconsciously. All would
have been well had a group of super-villains (including Emma, who gave a
telepathic device of her own design to a master illusionist) not embarked
on a concerted plan to corrupt Jean through something like psychic
brainwashing.
That interference unleashed Dark Phoenix, ie, as a result of an invasive
outside influence, not flaws within Jean herself. Which she even then
(were we to accept the Phoenix-Jean as a real one, even though her
original body at the time was in a self-healing cocoon in the East River)
managed to control with the help of Charles Xavier.
A later What If? story implied that the corruption was imminent within
either the Phoenix, the Phoenix-human mix, or the flawed clone body the
Phoenix created, but that's not canon.
Jean was, basically, attacked at a period where she was highly vulnerable
and potentially godlike. And Emma did part of the attacking. Emma,
however, actively pursued selfish and corrupt ends for many years, until
the bodies began to pile up high enough to make her rethink her modus
operandi. She's never yet been the loyal lover, nurturing and protective
ur-mother figure, or even the brave heroine and intimate friend (to
Storm and Logan among others) that Jean has always been.
Furthermore, Jean's powers awakened when, as a teen, she experienced a
friend's death telepathically. She basically (without the Phoenix)
symbolizes empathy, a tradition Morrison is tweaking by making the Phoenix
some sort of mutant judge and jury.
Emma symbolizes defensive self-preservation, made literal by her diamond
form these days.
Shawn
Shawn Hill
: In message <b81lgi$3os$1...@news.fas.harvard.edu>, Shawn Hill
:>
:>I'm not really feeling the "transitional period" thing. New titles may
:>be impending, but I don't have a sense of old ones just burning off
:>issues. The major ones (New, Uncanny, Xtreme, Xstatix) seem to be
:>moving right along.
: It's more at the B-list level. Wolverine's in fill-ins. Agent X is
: being cancelled, plus it's in fill-ins. Soldier X is being cancelled,
: plus it's in fill-ins. New Mutants hasn't launched yet. Mystique
: hasn't launched yet. X-Men Unlimited is churning out fill-in issues for
: no discernible reason, along with a slew of pointless miniseries -
: X-Men: Ronin, for god's sake?
Ahhhh. I don't feel it, because I don't buy any of those. Happily free
from your charge of covering all of them, I suppose! Though I may pick up
Mystique this week (loved Vaughn's Swamp Thing, with another villainous
protagonist).
: And Weapon X is crap.
Noticed that long ago.
: That leaves the X-Men titles themselves running normally... and
: X-Statix. There's plenty of promising stuff on the horizon, but god,
: there's an awful lot of mediocre timefiller hitting the shelves at the
: moment.
Poor guy!!! Though, of course, some have long wondered why you shoulder
the X-book burden at all. At least you've had some rewards with the few
good series that have emerged or improved in recent years.
Shawn
Brian Doyle
"Dan McEwen" <dannyb...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:Xns9365F3A35544Fd...@130.133.1.4...
> "Brian Doyle" <BD@No__spam.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in
> news:b845ta$iu9$1...@newsg3.svr.pol.co.uk:
>
> >
> > "Billy Bissette" <bai...@coastalnet.com> wrote in message
> > news:Xns93658F3FFEF0...@207.217.77.21...
> >
> >> Scott only cheated on Jean telepathically, and not being a
> >> telepath he
> >> didn't even realize that was cheating.
> >
> > But being married to one of the worlds most powerful psi's, and
> > sharing a psi-link for years with her, you think nhe'd have SOME
> > clue! :)
>
> Why? Again, when you don't have this ability to perceive thoughts like
> reality, you could easily misread it.
Because apart from all the times he has mind linked with telepaths like
Xavier, Jean, Betsy and Emma, he _was_ able to perceive thoughts, Jeans
thoughts, through their two way intimate mind-link. It might only be a
shadow of the real thing, but it should be enough to give a bright guy like
Scott a glimpse of the concept and the possible implications
CleV
>The Phoenix is an amoral, all-powerful universal force. Jean's purity (and
>power) drew it to her in a time of intense crisis, when she was fighting
>solo to save the lives of the entire team on a space shuttle caught in a
>solar flare.
Purity? Say rather passion and fire. What would purity have to do
with anything for the Phoenix?
(Later, that was all retconned into something genetic, of course ...)
Shawn Hill
: On 23 Apr 2003 16:13:14 GMT, Shawn Hill <sh...@fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
:>The Phoenix is an amoral, all-powerful universal force. Jean's purity (and
:>power) drew it to her in a time of intense crisis, when she was fighting
:>solo to save the lives of the entire team on a space shuttle caught in a
:>solar flare.
: Purity? Say rather passion and fire. What would purity have to do
: with anything for the Phoenix?
I was meaning to imply something about Jean's simple motivations at that
point: caring, protecting, saving, self-sacrifice. Her need was
transaparent, simple, clear. People with complex or conflicting emotions
(ie, Emma's ever-roiling mind) seem to me not the type to attract primal
universal forces.
Shawn
Laura M. Parkinson
<bai...@coastalnet.com> wrote:
I'd say he's stupid *and* wrong, since he's been in a relationship
with Jean for a good long while, and has had a psychic link with her -
he KNOWS how close it can make two people, as well as how important it
can be. And he could always use a little bit of common sense to boot.
> Also, for all of Jean's rumblings about Scott mentally cheating on her,
>she was looking for evidence that Scott physically cheated on her. If
>she equated the two acts as exactly the same, she wouldn't have needed
>that evidence as she caught them at the start of the mental.
Just because the physical cheating may have been even worse doesn't
make the other "okay." Or not reason for going off on Emma.
>>> You say Jean has got to deal with her husband sneaking around her
>>> back?
>>>That's the thing, she doesn't. She doesn't force her way into Scott's
>>>mind. She doesn't knock Scott across the room, nor does she mentally
>>>burn him for being a cheat. She doesn't confront him beyond the first
>>>intrusion. She goes straight for Emma. She's angry at Scott, but she
>>>takes it out on Emma. If she had known Scott hadn't slept with Emma,
>>>do you really think she would have been so ballistic and rough? Of
>>>course not. She might even *gasp* have let Scott explain things,
>>>rather than shutting him off and out in order to deal with Emma alone.
>>>
>>
>> You mean like before, when she asked him if he slept with Emma in Hong
>> Kong? That's just it - she wanted to know, he wouldn't tell her. What
>> is she *supposed* to think, when her own husband won't even bother
>> saying "hey, we didn't sleep together," combined with how strangely
>> he's been acting, and how much he's been pushing her away?
>
> She wants to know because she already doesn't trust him at that point.
>And Scott knew she didn't trust him. Being in an off mood himself, he
>decided to get a bit of a dig at her through her own mistrust, in that he
>left it open whether he had sex with Emma. If Jean had trusted him, it
>wouldn't have been a dig. But she already figured he had slept with Emma,
>so it was.
But she still trusted him enough to at least ask, rather than try to
rummage through his thoughts, or to sneak around and try to find out
in other ways. And Cyclops hadn't exactly been Mr. Open to that point,
or blameless in having Jean mistrust him at all.
And whether Jean trusted him or not it's certainly not helpful in the
slightest to just give her even more reason to suspect that he's been
sleeping with another woman.
And yet I'll note that even given all of the above, Jean still
apparently was willing to trust him enough to go off doing her normal
things without trying to keep tabs on him, and that when the Cuckoos
told her about Emma and Scott's mental affair, she was shocked enough
to really fly off the handle.
*snip some*
>> While I'd agree that I did downplay Jean's culpability, I still don't
>> think she's the biggest evil here, sorry. Maybe it's partly because I
>> have such a seething distaste of the whole idea of cheating on your
>> significant other behind their back. Although I'm finding it hard
>> pressed to figure out which out of Emma or Scott is most deserving of
>> scorn - I think Scott. Emma seemed to be having a motive to hurt while
>> Scott just seemed more confused and reaching out, but if Emma really
>> does love Scott, then at least there's that motive as well, not that
>> that excuses anything. Scott on the other hand is the one that's
>> *supposed* to be faithful to his wife, and instead making excuses and
>> going around behind her back.
>
> A seething distaste of your SO cheating behind your back? Personally,
>I loathed the idea even before I lost two relationships to the women in
>question fooling around with their ex's.
.. I was going to say that I haven't actually had this happen to me,
but I'm wrong, I have been completely stabbed in the back by a guy
before. But I don't really think that's the reason for my seething
distaste, or at least not the main one. I don't really *know* why it
is - something in me just cries out that it's horribly horribly wrong.
> And yet I still find Jean to be the most wrong here.
*shrugs* Different folks...
*snipping your description of events, partly because I think some of
the stuff I've responded to above, and partly because just going on
and on comparing viewpoints is just going to waste space...*
Anyhow, I don't know how much more I have to say on the subject. I've
already admitted that I did downplay the negative parts of Jean's
assault, but the rest I suspect is just a matter of completely
different perspectives that aren't really going to change on either of
our parts, just because of discussion.
Laura M. Parkinson
Well, Emma *is* supposed to be a teammate. And I could argue that it's
another form of betrayal - a betrayal just of one human to another,
though that's stretching things a bit. But betrayal or not, it's just
low, and dishonest, and downright wrong. You just Do Not Do This.
Billy Bissette
postings to the non-X groups.
Laura M. Parkinson <lpark...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Apr 2003 18:04:16 GMT, Billy Bissette
> <bai...@coastalnet.com> wrote:
> Just because the physical cheating may have been even worse doesn't
> make the other "okay." Or not reason for going off on Emma.
Not that Jean ever had justification for what she did to Emma.
Which ultimately is the biggest disagreement between us. You weight
Emma trying to win Scott away from Jean as worst that Jean assaulting
Emma.
On one side, at worst you have Emma playing around trying to break up
a marriage (since we don't know if Emma started this because she was
attracted to Scott, or did that happen as she got to know him better).
On the other side, you have Jean playing jury and executioner without
even bothering with details like facts. She beats on Emma because
she [Jean] couldn't keep her own husband, a man that she helped drive
away when she didn't trust him at a point where he was emotionally off
balance. And that is being *kind* to Jean in all of this. In the worst
case, she might have been shagging Logan if he had been stupid enough to
get involved.
So you have a woman who tried to break up a marriage, and by the end was
doing so because she really did want the guy herself (not just to mess up
the two). Potentially she really even saw herself as trying to save Scott
from a bad marriage.
On the other side, you have a woman who assaulted the "other woman" of
the triangle because she was certain her husband was cheating on her. And
it wasn't a simple slapfest, but a potentially life-debilitating assault.
This woman also shuts her husband out of the whole deal.
Seducing a married man, versus brutal assault... Hrm... I'll go with
brutal assault as being the worst here. Just because the 98-pound weakling
fools around with the cheerleader doesn't give the jock the right to put
him in the hospital.
Funny thing here though. Unless there is trickery involved, you can't
really "steal" someone away from someone else. They simply choose to go.
You have been quite willing to accept Scott as responsible for a lot of
this, and even disagree with the idea that "should know better but didn't"
isn't a defense for him. Which pretty much takes out the majority of the
argument that Emma manipulated or tricked him.
>> She wants to know because she already doesn't trust him at that
>> point.
>>And Scott knew she didn't trust him. Being in an off mood himself, he
>>decided to get a bit of a dig at her through her own mistrust, in that
>>he left it open whether he had sex with Emma. If Jean had trusted
>>him, it wouldn't have been a dig. But she already figured he had
>>slept with Emma, so it was.
>
> But she still trusted him enough to at least ask, rather than try to
> rummage through his thoughts, or to sneak around and try to find out
> in other ways. And Cyclops hadn't exactly been Mr. Open to that point,
> or blameless in having Jean mistrust him at all.
The moment she rummages through his thoughts, she proves to both of
them that she simply does not trust him even when there is no evidence.
That she doesn't force the truth from him doesn't mean she trusts him,
it just means that she realized it could be the end of the relationship
if she did (regardless of what she found). That's the point where she
proves she can't trust him, and has to read his mind to even pretend.
Scott didn't make it easier, but did he need to? His personality was
already shot and Jean knew it. He had already tried to explain it to
her, and she was the one that wasn't catching on. He claims he wants
some mental privacy and celibacy, and the moment he is alone with a
woman Jean jumps to the conclusion that he was sleeping with Emma.
When you are in a mood where you are questioning yourself and your
relationships with others, having your SO say "You're cheating on me
aren't you?" doesn't exactly do wonders for things. Particularly in
the case of Scott, where the telepathy issue also comes into play, and
he can legitimately ask himself "Did she ever trust me, or did she
just read my mind up until now?".
How Jean responds is another measure of her trust or lack thereof.
> And yet I'll note that even given all of the above, Jean still
> apparently was willing to trust him enough to go off doing her normal
> things without trying to keep tabs on him, and that when the Cuckoos
> told her about Emma and Scott's mental affair, she was shocked enough
> to really fly off the handle.
Or was she off in her own funk? Then the phoenix force is rising in
her and she gets caught up in that growing power along with everything
else. Then she flies off the handle when she is told about the mental
affair, but also assumes that means Scott and Emma had cheated physically.
Notice also that she didn't wait to spy mental consumation. She had
the word of the Cuckoos (Emma's prize students as far as Jean still
knew at the time) that Scott was mentally fooling around with Emma, and
that was it. She spies on Scott and Emma in a questionable mental
situation, but she doesn't wait to see what happens. She doesn't wait
to see if Scott backs off, or goes full tilt.
>> A seething distaste of your SO cheating behind your back?
>> Personally,
>>I loathed the idea even before I lost two relationships to the women
>>in question fooling around with their ex's.
>
> .. I was going to say that I haven't actually had this happen to me,
> but I'm wrong, I have been completely stabbed in the back by a guy
> before. But I don't really think that's the reason for my seething
> distaste, or at least not the main one. I don't really *know* why it
> is - something in me just cries out that it's horribly horribly wrong.
>
>> And yet I still find Jean to be the most wrong here.
>
> *shrugs* Different folks...
Part of the reason I find Jean so wrong is that for one of those
relationships listed above was pretty much parallel to the Jean/Scott/Emma
thing, without the telepathy of course. With me in Jean's place, with
relationship problems at the start, with me not trusting the woman in
particular due to a questionable weekend she spent, etc... Even with
friends of hers eventually coming to me to say she was up to something.
(I also knew that calling her on the incident would have been putting the
nails in the coffin for the relationship regardless. Yes, there would be
a chance things would be worked through. But also a good chance things
wouldn't. So you just sort of let it ride a while.)
Difference being that unlike Jean I didn't attack anyone for it.
Argued and shouted yes, a lot of cold calculating silent rage yes, knocking
people around no.
(The other relationship isn't a parallel, but has a few nastier things
in it that play part of my opinion. But for the sake of those involved
I don't speak about those to anyone. No one was physically hurt off it
though.)
From a perspective I know all too well, Jean was very wrong in what
she did. While it's a nice image, that of the "justified" wrath of god
coming down to smite the seductress, it is only an image. It's the same
as the image of a skull-wearing vigilanting killing criminals for being
criminals, its a nice image of retribution but that doesn't make it
"right." The idea of beating up someone who steals your partner away
is a...satisfying...image, but that doesn't make it right.
And it is so easy to blame the seducer for it... But it is problems
in your relationship that allow the seduction to work. Either you've got
a partner who would prefer someone else, or you've got problems with your
partner that causes her/him to accept someone else. That 'someone else'
isn't your friend, but they aren't really evil incarnate either, despite
what rage you might feel. They likely didn't "steal" your partner, your
partner likely left of their own free will. At the very least, they
stayed in the affair of their own free will. (Else you have a different
kind of problem than an affair/seduction.)
> *snipping your description of events, partly because I think some of
> the stuff I've responded to above, and partly because just going on
> and on comparing viewpoints is just going to waste space...*
>
> Anyhow, I don't know how much more I have to say on the subject. I've
> already admitted that I did downplay the negative parts of Jean's
> assault, but the rest I suspect is just a matter of completely
> different perspectives that aren't really going to change on either of
> our parts, just because of discussion.
Possibly not. If your perspective does change to mine, I at least hope
that it doesn't happen due to you experiencing the same things I have.
All in all though, its the sort of thing that experiencing can indeed
change your perspective, whether you be the cheater or the cheated. At
one time I was of the kind of mind that cheating should be a mandatory
death offense. Then I ended up with someone I cared too much about to hate
who cheated on me. And I know why she did it. It wasn't even my fault.
But... *shrug* I also know why what Jean did is really wrong, but that
is another story that I won't burden you with.
But yeah, we'll probably continue to disagree here. Besides, I've
bored enough people with my own personal info in this thread already. :)
Billy Bissette
> Billy Bissette <bai...@coastalnet.com> wrote in message news:
>> them that she simply does not trust him even when there is no
>> evidence. That she doesn't force the truth from him doesn't mean she
>> trusts him, it just means that she realized it could be the end of
>> the relationship if she did (regardless of what she found). That's
>> the point where she proves she can't trust him, and has to read his
>> mind to even pretend.
>
> right? I don't nessesarily believe that it would have been anything
> close to a good idea, but she could have.
True, but there are a few issues there.
First is that Morrison has so far ran with the idea that the X-Men all
having training against such stuff. Scott with his general mood for
those months would probably actively be doing what he could to at least
tell if someone takes a peek. Now this point may be irrelevant, because
we don't know whether Jean was at the time strong enough and skilled
enough to get past whatever defenses Scott has without any risk of being
caught. You can't really just because "mental defense" is something
that changes in effectiveness for whatever the current plotline is.
Most likely though Jean would be good enough to do so undetected.
But would she want to take the slightest risk, when she could just
wait and see what happens?
The second issue is the more likely the one that matters though. For
Jean to read Scott's mind at that point would be to break the trust
between them. She doesn't know if Scott cheated on her, and at that
point she should realize that regardless of whether she believed he
cheated on her. Even if Scott never found out, she would have broken
his trust that she not read his mind, and also broken the idea that she
doesn't need to read his mind to believe him. That's enough to cause
big problems in a relationship in the future, even if the act itself
never becomes known. And if she reads that he was perfectly innocent,
then she's been the first one to break the trust of their marriage (as
Scott was only guilty of being a jerk).
> This is more or less like being given access to a secret camera
> showing pictures of whether or not your boy/girlfriend is cheating and
> deciding against looking at it, or having a friend who you know would
> know for a fact if you were being cheated on and you never asking.
>
> I would say that takes a relatively strong character not to fall for
> the temptation, especially as it's there 24/7 and nobody would ever
> find out.
Of course, what does it say for your relationship when you do use it?
Particularly if you use it in part *because* you know no one would find
out?