I was flipping through the last chapter of Messiah Complex yesterday, and thank goodness that's over. Hopefully Peter David can get X-Factor back on track. Wait, that wasn't what I wanted to discuss.
Cable has the baby. Cyclops wants the baby. Cable is holding a gun on his father, and things are getting kind of emo, and I'm squinting and trying to decipher Bachalo's art, and Xavier steps out and tells Cable to give Cyke the baby. He says that Cyclops leads the X-Men, and so he has to speak for all of them.
All of who? All the X-Men? Is Cable an X-Man anymore? Not too long ago, Cyclops was convinced Cable might be their enemy and sent a heavily redundant team after him, but now Cable is supposed to hand over this baby he's been protecting to Cyclops, because Scott speaks for them? Sez who? Cyclops is the guy who once bailed on his wife and kid to go run around with back-from-the-dead Jean Grey, so I think that has to count as at least one strike against his judgment, and against him getting to play Solomon. What strikes me as really odd is, Cyke ultimately gives the baby back to Cable and tells him to go. In other words, Cable should proceed as he had planned to originally, so was all the talking and pointing of firearms really required?
On the plus side, at least someone stopped looking at the kid as some prize to be won, or a threat to be eliminated. The Purifiers want to destroy it because they hate mutants, Bishop wants to kill it to save his future, the Marauders, well Sinister, wanted it for whatever eugenics program he was planning to start up (come on, it's always something like that with Sinister). Mystique wanted to save Rogue, the X-Men wanted it for, some reason beyond just protecting it (because they're the X-Men, and all mutants must be under their care? Are we sure the kid wouldn't be less likely to be the target of attacks if it was with Sinister? He'd be harder to find?)
Cyclops seems to feel the child has the best chance of actually being a child if she stays with Cable. I'm less certain of that myself, but cheers to Cyclops for making his decision based on that. Did I just give a cheers to Cyclops? I'm not feverish, but I certainly must be sick. I better go lie down.
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8 comments:
The idea that Cable is the best possible person in the X-Universe to raise a child is mind-boggling. It's like Wolverine being put in charge of anger management classes.
What's the kid going to have to play with, giant guns? At least she'll have lots of pockets in her clothes. Baby's need those.
Well, maybe Cyc just felt Cable would be best positioned to give the baby to Deadpool.
Cyclops also happens to speak for Marvel editorial, and he knew Cable with a tyke will be a boffo premise for that new on-going series everybody is sure to by!
Hey, that kinda sounds like the old Nomad series from the 90s written by Fabien Nicieza!
Everything old is new again!
So it was that our fallible hero, Scott Summers, was faced with a terrible crossroads: allow an innocent mutant babe to be the desired catspaw of evil mutants, caught in a present-day tug-of-war that seemed destined to destroy the toddler; or bestow the child to a questionably-agendaed temporal traveler, who will whisk the baby to an unknown future time.
Except the baby was Nathan Christopher Charles Summers, the evil mutants were Apocalypse, Mr. Sinister, and the Goblin Queen, the time-traveler was Askani, and the X-books had a merry mess with all that nonsense, didn't they?
I guess the parallels were supposed to be there, but to what end? To show that, when faced with the choice a second time, Cyke would do it all the same? What, he thought things turned out GOOD the first time? His son grew into a bitter, angry, near-heartless soldier with an evil clone, an evil son, a heretofore unfulfillable destiny, and generally the most f'ed-up existence imaginable (even for an X-Man)...yeah, do it again with another baby, maybe it'll work out EVEN BETTER! And hey, at least Nate was raised by Scott and Jean (as "Slym" and "Redd"), Rachel ("Mother Askani"), and that post-modern Yoda, Blaquesmith ("Blaquesmith"); this kid's gonna have a gun-totin' cybernetic psychic powderkeg hauling him around in an empty gun-holster through whichever one of the X-Men's cheerier apocalyptic futures doesn't feature Sentinels, Hounds, Apocalypse, evil viruses, X-Traitors, Mad Jim Jaspers, Wacky Wanda Maximoff, or the X-Babies.
In all seriousness, though, you gotta wonder at Scott's reasoning. The X-Men, since at least Morrison and certainly since M-Day, have basically said to the world: "The Mutant Race starts at the mansion." The mutant sub-culture, the mutant school, the 198...if it was mutant, it was safe at Xavier's. Hell, that's the whole POINT of the X-Men (as opposed to the school which is a separate entity, and "the Dream" which has a different goal): a team of mutants recruited for the defense both of humans from mutants and mutants from humans. But now Scott, the most X of X-Men, decides "Eh, I don't think we can protect a baby." WTF? You didn't seem to think you couldn't protect the 198 "Last Hopes of the Mutant Race," but now that it's just one little pocketable pudding-pooper, it's too steep a hill?
I mean, Cable was able to protect the kid with Mr. Sinister, Mystique, the Marauders, Exodus, the Purifiers, Predator-X, X-Factor, and every mutant at the mansion gunning for his head. Scott doesn't think the combined might of the X-Men can protect it from the Purifiers and whichever Marauder still cares/isn't currently dead (which would be...Prism?)?
"THAT'S what Scott decided? I give him the chance at a do-over and he does it again anyway? That's it, I'm done. Shoot me in the head, Bishop!"
I guess Cyclops must have been thinking that he screwed over Cable's childhood so much, Cable would be determined to not make the same mistakes.
Maybe?
Possibly?
OK, it's thin at best. The best explaination I've heard so far was the fortress keeper's in that Cyclops speaks for editorial.
I've been avoiding this whole storyline as much as possible, but as far as I can assertain, the only conclusion to Cyclop's dickishness, is that he's a Skrull.
Oh, and he and Cable are REALLY into male posturing.
jason: Playing with guns is good for a baby's development. It teaches them loud noises can kill them or others.
anonymous: That's a good point. Deadpool was very protective of baby Cable, so he probably is best suited to care for the child, which is a terrifying thought.
fortress keeper: Maybe Marvel Editorial utilized their massive telepathic powers to control Cyclops, and make him give Cable the baby. The fiends!
cove west: Well, given the death rate in New X-Men, there certainly isn't a good track record of their being able to keep kids alive once they get to Xavier's. But you would figure many protectors would be better than one.
len!: I think that has some weight. Cable knows what his life was like growing up, so if he can get Bishop off his back, maybe he can raise the kid under "normal" conditions.
sallyp: You'd think the Skrulls would look at the X-stuff and decide it was muddled enough without them, with people switching sides, and switching teams, and shooting each other. Better left to it's own devices, you know?
On the skrull thing, don't forget that the Skrulls already infiltrated a completely unidentifiable clone onto the team (Skrull Wolverine back during the lead up to The Twelve story arc).
I do agree that it was an odd decision to give up the kid to Cable (though the fact that the New X-men have only been going to Xavier's for a year and have had 3/4 of the student body killed has to weigh in that decision).
However the relationship between Cable and Cyclops probably came into play. If Cyclops takes the baby and fights Cable as well as the others, then he loses his son as well as the potential to lose the baby. If he GIVES the baby to Cable he doesn't burn his bridges with his son, but also makes it clear that the X-men entrusted the child to Cable and thus they have a say in the child's future.
For Cable its kind of like winning a custody dispute in court rather than simply kidnapping the child from school and running off with it.
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