The Wild Hunt Blog

Campaign History, Character Creation and RPG Philosophy

RSS

As can be ascertained by perusing my versions of Marvel’s X-Men it has been some time since my last purchase of a comic book.  I admit it, I’ve fallen behind somewhat over the last 16 years or so but really, what the hell did I miss?

From what I can see, utilizing online sources such as Wikipedia and Marvel’s own site, a heck of the lot, hardly any of it something I’d want to read, so today I want to look at the ‘Ages’.

From the Hero forums I was informed of several changes in Marvel, first the purchase of the company by Disney.  There seems to be a consensus this is a ‘bad’ thing as Disney will Disneyfy the Marvel Universe and just in general ruin the whole thing.   How could they POSSIBLY ruin it anymore?  The second is their plan to return ‘hero’ to ‘super hero’.

When I started reading comics, it was Gold Key stuff, Donald Duck, etc, but soon moved on to Superman and Batman.  (My age puts me just on the trailing edge of the Golden Age here.)  I also remember Magnus, Robot Fighter and Tarzan along with Classic Illustrated (got me to read Ivanhoe for the first time).  Being the Golden Age, good guys wore white hats and bad guys wore black hats, pretty cut and dried, perfect for the time.

When the Fantastic Four popped up, with that hideous Jack Kirby art (okay, flame me for thinking Kirby sucked, I can take it), I started reading Marvel and only drifted back into DC for Batman and Green Arrow.  The FF was followed by Spider Man and the Avengers, (it was only many years later I discovered the Uncanny X-Men) and I entered my Silver Age.  When Gwen Stacy died, no one had any conception of the changes it would bring, especially me.  To tell the truth, I never really considered the changes brought about by that one incident until the comic reading community began to divide things into Ages.

Well, finally, sometime around issue #90, I found the Uncanny X-Men and I was in the Bronze Age.  The interpersonal relationships, the trials of being a fear minority, the idea that this little group of mutants still fought to defend people who collectively despised and feared them, made the X-Men more interesting then what I’d read before and I stopped collecting everything else except Green Arrow (hey, he’s my hero).

For the next decade and a half or so I faithfully collected X-Men comics no matter where the story arc lead, Avengers, FF, Howard the Duck (okay not the last one).  I think I have the entire runs of the first volumes of X-Force, X-Factor, Excalibur and New Mutants. Slowly I began to see deterioration in the moral compass of comics as a whole, not just the X-Men.  I’ll always blame Wolverine for that.

The character was not a terrible idea, don’t get me wrong, but he set off a chain of events that drove comics into the Iron Age.  As a kid, I’d quickly perceived the way the world worked by watching TV.  Someone produces a good Western and everyone else hops on the bandwagon (or chuck wagon more precisely), soon you have ten Westerns, with only two or three worth a damn.  Next its cop shows, then PI shows, then sci-fi (the poster child for crap follow-ups trying to capture the Star Trek audience).</p>

With Wolverine, suddenly everyone had to have a lone wolf killer.

Blech.

And killers were exactly what we got.

Brutal, casual, amoral killers.

Comics became a dark and terrible world to live in, worse than anything in the real world.

I think the point where I began to despair for the Marvel Universe was Jean Grey.  Not so much that she died and came back, actually a fairly sound plot device, but the crap going on in this girl’s head.  Could anyone in all comics be more f’d up?  Angst is one thing but damn, hers had to be crippling!

Back in #93-#94 I understood the change over to the new X-Men, someone was tired of the original five.  Cool, I can handle the change.  Oh, let’s kill one off right off the bat (there’s a floodgate breached).  Membership in the X-Men became more of a revolving door than the Avengers with an on-call hearse!  And what the hell do you do with all the new ones they make up?  Two teams, three . . . four . . . FIVE?  Let’s see.  Blue, Gold, X-Force, Excalibur, New Mutants, X-Factor< not to mention X-Man and the Marvel gods know how many others I missed.  Mutants were the Westerns of comics.

Around issue #350 I’d had enough.  Whether it was the cost of so many comics each month or disgust with the stories, I quite buying, completely.

What did I miss?

THEY KILLED CAPTAIN AMERICA!!!

Jean Grey died.

Again.

And again.

Cyclops died, more than once I am sure.

Cyclops and Emma Frost? WTF?!?

Juggernaught and WHO?!?  She-Hulk?!?

Magik . . . dead.  She was a child for god-sakes.

Miora MacTaggert . . . senseless.

Professor X, you f’in’ coward! How many times can YOU run from your own creation? I despise the character.

Joseph and the ensuing hide-the-Magneto.

Psylocke, second most f’d up character in the Universe . . . or maybe third behind Rachel Summers, maybe fourth behind Rogue.  Man, mutant women as SOOO screwed up!

Oh!  And the New New Mutants!  You kill off someone like Wallflower and Icarus!  Again, kids, damn it, I hate comics that kill kids!  Okay, so the world is a big bad place, yeah, yeah. (But it’s realistic, RPG! (remember those are my real initials, fate, huh?)).  Bullshit, some lines should not be crossed.

Genosha . . . M-Day.

Gee, a comic company that has every mutant on the planet trying to avoid genocide simply does it anyway after what?  40 years of  mutant struggle?  Poof.  Millions dead or de-powered. WTF part two.  At this point why the hell would ANY mutant give a crap about the rest of the world?  Gee, they have their own little floating island now.  Lovely.  Should have named it ‘New Devil’s Island’ or ‘Ground Zero’.  All Marvel needs to do is drop a nuke or two on it and the mutant problem is over for the next 15 or 20 years . . . until the next generation starts manifesting powers.  What the hell were Summers and friends thinking putting all the remaining mutants on one small island.  Do they actually believe the rest of humanity will leave them alone?  And it only takes one crazy . . . not like there are any of THOSE floating around the Marvel Universe.  God, I thought Xavier was an idiot.

Now I read Marvel has decided to put the ‘hero’ back into superhero.

whoopee

They should never have allowed the term ‘hero’ to become so polluted in the first place!!

For the last 28 years . . . god has it been that long?  For the last 28 years I’ve been creating my own little world, partly from Marvel stuff but only on the sidelines, and not once has my own creation, Ghost Archer, turned into an anti-hero or given up the ideals that set him on his life’s path to make things better for people.  Not loss of friends, or loved ones, not the world’s general refusal to ‘get better’ has made him so cynical as to become something he is not and never will be.  Not only that but he will not tolerate someone who does not have the same perspective.

Over those 28 years I have created very few ‘player characters’ for myself and though they are each quite different from one another at no point did I feel the need to manufacture someone remotely like Wolverine.  Maybe it’s my age, my environment growing up, maybe I still retain the concept of good and evil instilled in me during my Golden and Silver Ages, maybe I am just too much an idealist, but if you have one Wolverine, one is enough.

Be HEROES!

Your damn universe is broke, Marvel, have the balls to fix it or just go ahead and bomb Utopia and end it all.  And UTOPIA?!?  God, some people are SOOO optimistic.

Truth be told, I think Marvel just ran out of new ‘superhero’ names and wanted to recycle a few.  Maggot II?  Leech II?  M II?  Truly inspired names.  Okay, so Armor’s cute just ‘cuz it is and they made a joke out of it to a degree.  Also they can clear the deck for reuse of powers.  There’s already a winged X-Men so kill off the rest.  Hey, how about you get rid of a few of those CLAW guys!  X23.  Daken. Man they don’t even try to disguise the next Wolverine duplicate, just tell you out-right.  Look, Marvel, I know how hard it is to come up with new characters, I’ve been doing it for 28 years now but I’ll be damned if I’ve ever duplicated War Eagle or Ghost Archer or Giselle.  Sometimes it’s not easy to avoid previous characters but that’s where the background and personality come into play.

I’ve created hundreds of characters and once a character has served its purpose, it just goes into limbo and I never concern myself about it.  Hmm . . . maybe if I put them all in one place and kill them off . . . oh . . . wait . . . someone already did that.

Okay, broken down into a rant, time to stop and do something creative.  Seeya all later.

RPG

0 Responses

Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.