X-Sanction #4 (Spoilers)

[PSB]

Sooooo......

Cable is back and purged of the techno-organic virus. Though we knew it was coming, Hope has been revealed to truly be the embodiment of the Phoenix Force. Probably the best issue of a very mediocre mini-series. Thoughts?

[AdamC]

Jean Grey is a bitch for not doing that to Cable ages ago...

[PSB]

[AdamC]

Wait, but Hope does? I thought she just has a minute fraction she isn't even aware of. Otherwise, what the heck is AvX about '.'?

[Phillies64]

And here I thought that Phoenix well was sucked dry twenty years ago. Wake me up when AvX is over.

[MadroxDupe42]

Hope is already the über-mutant who can use everyone's power all at once and sometimes even better then they can. And now she can already do things with the Phoenix Force that Jean couldn't? That's a ridiculous amount of power.

And I'm still miffed that they have already completely undermined Cable's death in Second Coming.

[CIBAWAG]

Cable and Magneto.... All I know is sooner or later, no matter how awesome they are... old people need to pass.

[ChrisPartin]

I didn't pick up this miniseries, but I'm seriously considering it because I think I'm hooked on the AvX concept. It seems like a lot of fun (and this is a guy who's stayed away from both Avengers and X-Men titles until recently).

PLUS... I'm a sucker for Cable. Love that character!

[pmaestro]

i'll admit i like the concept of cable as an older luke skywalker, raised to fulfill his destiny bla bla, use the force, nate!

but grizzled old vets are lame. it's bad enough there are a million nick fury LMD's walking around. we don't need one that's ALSO a mutant. plus he's passed on his prophetic "chosen one" mantle to Hope, which is far more interesting. i prefer the idea that his whole purpose led to raising her. his time is done.

magneto though should never die, because he's the single greatest villain in history.

[CIBAWAG]

I'm a huge fan of both Cable and Magneto. But I also think that Cable has already served his purpose. He was already old as hell, before the 15 years he spent raising Hope in the future. His death had a major impact on the Second Coming. From his birth, to his death, his life meant something big to all mutants. But no... no, he's not dead.

Marvel just doesn't have enough respect for the character. Same with Magneto. I'm sorry, they can keep de-aging him a decade at a time, but it does not justify a holocaust survivor banging a 30-year old. That's only going to get worse and worse.

I think these characters would have more meaning being dead, than they would being alive. Marvel just doesn't have the balls to give a character his proper lifespan.

[Phillies64]

[MadroxDupe42]

I suspect Phillies64 nailed it on the head.

So now that Cable is free of the T-O virus, do we think he'll revert back to his omnipotent, omniscient status from the beginning of Cable & Deadpool?

[CIBAWAG]

[MadroxDupe42]

I think it goes beyond trademark renewal. New readers expect certain things from an X-Men comic because of their perceptions from other media. They expect Magneto to be the archnemesis of the X-Men because that's what the movies and cartoons depict. And I don't think "Magneto was right" posters would satisfy that.

Not to mention that we currently have a cohort of writers who grew up with these characters and think of them in certain ways, and so that's how they want to write them.

Batman has the same problem. There will always be Joker stories because that's what people want to read and write. In theory, Joker and Bruce Wayne should be even older than Magneto, since they've been around a lot longer. But they don't tend to be perceived that way, because their stories are not tied to particular real world events. Thus there is no obligation for them to age. Only certain characters have this problem because they are so strongly linked to historical events with set dates. Some of them can be updated by changing which war they were involved in, but there's really no equivalent to the Holocaust (thankfully) to allow Magneto's story to be recontextualized. So it will be interesting to see if they just keep de-aging him, or if they ever find another way to keep him around.

[Phillies64]

[CIBAWAG]

[Phillies64]

[CIBAWAG]

I go to great lengths to justify all those other things in my head. I just can't do it with Magneto and his situation. And now I can't do it with Cable either. I hope he at least wears his age, wherever he ends up from here. 15 years older than old. Like, that's really old. They just decided to do the opposite to him, than what they did to Mags. They at least have to make him somewhat frailer and wrinklier, and not as spry as Captain America anymore, and not having sex with Kitty Pryde. If he's still as beefcake as ever, than that's just a failure with no excuse.

[Phillies64]