I'm not sure I'm ready for a Marvel Universe where Cyclops gets to be right. Especially since it's given him a martyr complex. Gad, he'll be insufferable. Thing is, was he right?
Yes, Hope used the Phoenix Force to restore mutants, just as Cyclops said. But there seems to be an implication Hope needed the training she received in K'un-Lun to actually control the giant space bird. Without that, it's likely she'd have gone the same route Scott and the rest of the Phoenix 5 ultimately went.
Of course, I get the impression no one writing the damn crossover ever explicitly pointed this out. Which isn't surprising. You'd think people co-writing a book would bother to get things straight. Or their editors - oh right, never mind. Anyway, it would have been a nice way to deflate Scott. Point out that if he had simply thrown Hope in front of the Phoenix unprepared, it'd have been a disaster. Have Hope be the one, as she tells him what it felt like to try and control an ancient, incredibly powerful force hellbent on destruction.
Because I have a hard time believing restoring mutantkind is what the Phoenix actually came there to do. If so, why does it need a host? Just spread its wings, and make the magic happen. Why destroy a bunch of innocent planets? Surely the Giant Space Fire Bird is maneuverable enough to avoid them? That's not even getting into the question of why the Phoenix cares what the Scarlet Witch did.
Ultimately the results were what Cyclops wanted, so I guess he doesn't care about the methods. Ends justify the means, and all that. Considering the circumstances though, calling Cyclops "right" is a stretch. If the Avengers had stayed out of it, assuming Wolverine and his crew of X-Folks didn't step in*, the Earth would have been destroyed, which puts the kibosh on Cyclops "restore mutants" dream. Then again, maybe he wouldn't care. I get the impression Cyke doesn't think Earth should continue to exist if there aren't mutants. Which is at least one more good reason to not like Scott Summers. Add it to the pile, then.
* I don't know if they would have. Did they even know the Phoenix was on its way until the Avengers showed up and started throwing their weight around? That's the really disappointing thing from the Avengers' standpoint. If they had just been more reasonable, they could have come out looking a lot better in contrast to Cyclops' idiocy, I mean zealotry.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
hell
of cousse , rachel summers never controled phoenix force , so she never could help hope if necessary ...
only avengers could , and they were right to invade utopia , and push cyclops in the dark phoenix way by constantly attacking him ( as far as i read , he lost control during the final battle )
btw , their first move wasn't to train hope , they tried this after accidentaly creating the phoenix 5 ( thx tony , good move )
cyclops was right to think phoenix and hope were the key
x-men have a story with the phoenix force , not the avengers , so if hope needs help , there's more in their side for her ( i speak about rachel , but askany's is good too , better than light k'un-lun mojo )
he was right fighting the avengers when they attacked utopia , without even knowing how to deal with hope ( maybe like hulk , a exile in another planet ? maybe let wolverine kill her , like his first idea was ? )
he was right when , accidentaly phoenix powered , he tried to use phoenix force for the planet's good ( no war , no famine , i don't call this "evil plans" , or "only mutant matters" )
avengers never helped in the whole story , they just acted as jackass , improvising things without a damn clue about the subjet , and doing worse every time , never trying diplomacy
sooo , i'm sorry ,
CYCLOPS WAS RIGHT !!!
ps : the real problem is marvel 's new direction , trying to make every hero an avenger for sales's sake .
x-men had 50 years of story , with a strong part tied to the phoenix force , but in avx lot of this story is simply avoided
with this kind of project to have strong leaders in x-men wasn't good , so cyclops become a "vilain" ( despite wanda's genocide or wolverine multiple murders that justify jailing too ) , xavier is killed ( then is used by red skrull ( wtf ??? ) and is magneto again on the run ( seems like his help against dark phoenix didn't count ) while he is a complex character ( he's only 100% vilain in non x-men comics , read some of them plz )
maybe , no , surely , cyclops was destined to fall , but here this simply doesn't work
as an old reader , i beg marvel to stop wasting good characters and ignore years of stories !
anonymous: I agree with several of your points. I don't understand making everyone an Avenger, or Magneto being a bad guy. I agree Rachel Summers would have been a good person to train hope. Though it seem the Avengers AND the X-Men both forgot she'd been a host, to the extent Aaron wrote an issue of Wolverine and the X-Men addressing the point. Or was it Gage on X-Men Legacy? The main mini-series had both sides ignore her for some reason.
The Avengers screwed up, no doubt. I think their heart was in the right place (don't let Phoenix destroy Earth the way it was other worlds), but they went about it entirely stupidly.
Still, I can't agree Cyke was right. He also had good intentions, but I still feel he appeared so focused on his goal, he was oblivious to the possible pitfalls. Yes, the X-Men have experience with the Phoenix. Yes, Hope may be easily able to control the Phoenix and undo the damage Wanda did. But if they screw it up, the planet is toast, and that's a pretty serious risk for a group of people who are no more infallible than the Avengers.
Also, there's a good chance a number of the people who are mutants (Again? did it just undo the whammy Wanda put on existing mutants, or did it make entirely different people into mutants?) didn't want it. Maybe they had (or got) a crappy mutation. We've seen plenty of those. Maybe they had settled into a life without powers, not better or worse than what they had before, just different, and now that's been wrecked because Cyclops (and Hope, I suppose) decided for them that they would get their powers back. Who gave Cyclops the right to make that decision for other people? He did, near as I can tell, which does not make him right.
The best I could say is he had good intentions (no doubt there), but I still can't call his actions "right".
I keep hearing people say Cyclops was wrong to allow the Phoenix to come to earth.
How exactly did Scott Summers allow the Phoenix to come to earth? Explain how a celestial entity that destroys planets would be stopped by Cyclops saying "Don't come here - no thanks don't need you"?
If you assume its on Hope, was he supposed to kill her? Wolverine was right? And how exactly would a cage stop the Phoenix (the Avenger's solution)? But the logic is he should turn over Hope because the Avengers say so?
If you think he was wrong to "allow" Phoenix to come, what logic did the Avengers use to determine it was coming for Hope?
Faith? Please - your bias is telling. There was no stopping it, short of killing her.
Be real, Cyclops was right. Kun Lun and Wanda were really badly written ways for Cyclops to be "wrong".
Tell me this: who has the more recent disasterous effect on the Earth? Phoenix or Wanda? But the Avengers suddenly have 100% faith in Wanda? Right, but CYCLOPS was wrong. Kun Lun's teaching meant what exactly to Captain America, Iron Man and the Avenger? Do they have any reliable reason to believe them? Oh, wait, they trusted Iron Fist's experience? ...But Cyclop's experience was wrong.
OK
If I recall correctly, Hope and her four sidekicks were supposed to share the Phoenix Force, and spread thusly, they wouldn't be overwhelmed and driven mad (but evil space robot thwarted that destiny, right?) and would have ushered in a golden age or some such.
And if I recall correctly, when the Phoenix Five shared the power, they did mostly good and healing the earth and so forth.
And if I recall correctly -- tho I'm kinda hazy on this -- Namor attacked Wakanda because Hope -- was she kidnapped or not, I can't recall? Well, she was being groomed as a weapon in any case -- was there (or because Emma is evil, I'm not clear on that point), and once Namor was de-powered, the remaining Phoenix-bearers got increasingly more unstable as their numbers reduced. Or were they always attacking nations and creating hell-prisons entirely unprovoked? I can't quite recall.
I dunno, the way it was written, Cyclops -- dickishness aside -- was right. And what great message for the kids: Even if they are in the right, "minorities" should submit to the will of the "authorities" -- and their Uncle Toms/Logans -- otherwise the "authorities" will ensure they are doomed to fail.
And Wolverine -- anyone remember when he was possessed by the devil and Cyclops assembled a team to help him? Even after the other time he was possessed by the Hand or whatever and killed all those SHIELD folks and stuff? Short memory and very little empathy there Logan.
"Waaah! I kiwwed five of my own chiwdwen -- bastards I never bovvered to check on or acknow-wedge -- in sewf-defense, and now I've got a totawwy new mowal code, and my pwevious cuwpabiwity and child-kiwwing is aww wedeemed!"
Damn, a year or two -- in comic-book time -- with the Avengers really does rehabilitate one's image. Tony Stark was right!
"I'm the best there is at what I do, and what I do is act like a judgmental, hypocritical dick!"
Feh and meh. Feh and meh…
DFresh: No, they shouldn't kill Hope. No, Cyclops didn't call the Phoenix, and couldn't make it go away. No, I don't know why Wanda gets a pass because she was possessed but the Phoenix 5 don't.
Yes, Wanda's done more harm to Earth in the recent past than the Phoenix, but the Phoenix was destroying inhabited worlds as it approached Earth! And it isn't the first time it's done so. The Phoenix Force has done considerably more harm to living beings than the Scarlet Witch over their respective histories. Should that not matter because those are just aliens? And that is part of Cyclops' experience. He's seen Dark Phoenix, he knows the danger it carries, but chose to ignore it in this case.
As for why the Avengers might trust Iron Fist, a) he was working with them, not against them, which might not be the best reason, but people are more likely to listen to those they don't consider foes at the moment, and b) didn't he find archival evidence in K'un-L'un to support his claims?
What I'd have liked to see is Captain America - by himself, no army of heroes - approach the X-Men to discuss the situation. Cyclops believes the Phoenix arriving will be mutantkind's salvation, and Hope will be its instrument (or vice versa). Great, but is destroying every world in its path, so perhaps precautions are in order. Move Hope to another world, if the Phoenix is headed towards her specifically, rather than Earth. Have all their super-scientists build some potable safe habitat, send a few folks along to help, maybe the Five Lights as Don mentions. If it ignores Hope, there are still some heroes - X-Crew and Avengers both - on Earth to try and stop it. If it possesses Hope and she loses control, at least there's a small buffer between the Phoenix and Earth, so they have a little time to try and stop it. And if Cyclops is on the money, and Hope with no K'un-L'un training can totally handle it, then she won't have any trouble making it to Earth and taking care of business.
Basically, everyone behaves reasonably and the conflict is either against the Phoenix itself, or someone else trying to screw things up. I don't know, pick a supervillain.
Don1138: Hope and her 5 Lights would have made sense. I've heard conflicting reports about whether she was kidnapped. Sometimes yes, sometimes she wanted to get away from Cyclops because she didn't believe she was ready and thought he wouldn't listen. I have no idea when they made the hell prison. I don't believe it was shown until after Namor went off on Wakanda. Could be wrong. I've said it before, the Avengers handled things wrong at most every juncture. I'm glad they didn't want to risk Earth being destroyed by the Phoenix, but they went about everything wrong, and (this I probably haven't said but need to) the writers are dropping the ball if they don't do more to acknowledge that.
You're right about the lousy message. I saw Tim O'Neil suggest a reading that might be even worse, back when the Phoenix 5 first happened, and it seemed obvious they'd eventually go bad (because the fighting wouldn't make much sense if they just kept making the world better, though why I'm expecting this to make sense is beyond me). He said there was a possible reading of the book saying that minorities would destroy everyone else given the chance and power to do so, which makes it OK to hate and fear them.
I don't know which is worse, frankly.
And yeah, Wolverine's role in this is kind of ridiculous. The guy gets mind-controlled every other week, and even when he doesn't, he still slaughters ninjas or whomever by the dozens. I'm not sure he's ever had a moral high ground, except against the likes of Sabretooth.
Hello Calvin! A happy New Year to you and everyone reading! I really wish I'd come across this blog earlier. I wish to thank the posters above for their insightful posts.
Let me be a bit radical for a moment: Let's assume you're Jewish, and you wake up one morning to find a European aircraft carrrier off the coast of Haifa, just because a certain country feels threatened. Your first thought would be self defense: of your family and your homeland. No question.
So the show of force by the Avengers on Utopia was a huge mistake, and things just got worse from that point. Cap especially should have been more discreet.
As someone who lives in a part of the world where persecution is a norm, I thoroughly sympathise with Scott, and I wish my country had leaders like him.
Jeremy Chamba: No argument there, the Avengers approached things completely wrong. Like I've said, that's what irritates me about it. I'd like to think Captain America could be more reasonable, but he suffers from the same malady as everyone else in the Marvel Universe. Once he got put in charge, he became a complete jerk (though most of the people, like Gyrich, were already jerks).
I still don't understand why Cyclops wasn't more concerned that the Phoenix was in world-destroying mode. It's like, there's standard Marvel continuity, where the X-Men would be seriously worried about that development, but hey, we think Hope can use the Phoenix for something good, and we have Rachel Grey to teach her how to do it, and after some arguing, everyone works together.
Then there's AvX continuity, where Cyclops draws strange conclusions and doesn't seem to care about the potential world-destruction, but Hope needs training from Iron Fist and the Scarlet Witch before Cyke's plan will work. Even for a Marvel Event, things seem twisted around.
Post a Comment