Come on down to Larry’s Wonderful World of Comics for free comics, autographs from Tyler James of Comix Tribe and Herb Trippe, father of Wolverine, and to see the convention premiere of Autumn Grey and Illweed by Jason Mooers!
Author Archives: Kristi McDowell
Blades of Glory What If..?
Guys, what if the entire film is really just in Hector’s mind? Playing Chazz and Jimmy’s adventures in their shoe box diorama?
And then they flew away from the rink on their rocket skates…
The Show Must Go On Con
As many of you know, my hometown of Boston has been the scene of a number of tragedies this week. It’s easy to lose hope in a crazy world like this. Why bother to go on when we’ve got terrorists threatening the things we love?
We bother because we’re Bostonians. We go on because we’re Americans. And we go on because we’re fans.
One of the side effects of this tragedy was the postponement of Boston Comic Con, a huge event here in New England for us fans, creators, and vendors. In the wake of this news, Larry Doherty, of Larry’s Wonderful World of Comics, is offering a very special event at his shop in Lowell, Massachusetts. Soon after the announcement from officials at Boston Comic Con, Larry sent out this statement to his special friends on the mailing list:
Damn,
I just heard Boston Comic con is officially cancelled due to the manhunt for the Boston marathon bomber.
We should not allow terrorists to control our lives.
I will not allow these douche-bags to control mine.
Let’s have a fun day together & heal.FREE for vendors.
early vendor confirmations:
Chris’ comics
Comics X-Plosion
Magic Dragon Comics
Golden age collectables.
Fantasy Comics
Finar Comics already on board!FREE for fans. Volunteer. Promote it via your social media!
FREE for creators.
Early confirmations.
Tyler James
Alex McCormack
David LeBlanc
Scott HamiltonTomorrow in Lowell, MA I’m hosting an impromptu convention:
The show MUST go on in my building in Lowell, MA.
Tell the fans.
Use your Twitter & Facebook.Tell the vendors.
Tell the creators.
I’ll be up all night.
We need tables & volunteers to shuttle creators from Boston.
An advocate for print media, Larry is very active in the comics community and keeping the Con going in the face of this setback gives us something bigger than a place to geek out with other geeks, something bigger than meeting some of the creators behind our favorite books, something bigger than buying comics swag. It shows the world that WE WILL NOT BE TERRORIZED. We’re Bostonians. We’re Americans. We’re comic book fans.
And nobody in the ‘verse can stop us.
Archer’s Missed Mark?
This has been an interesting season of Archer. I could probably say with little uncertainty that Archer is my favorite show (sorry, Buffy!) but this season, even with all of its clever barbs and witty segues, has left me a little flat now that I’ve seen the season finale.
Warning, spoilers to follow.
This PSA has been brought to you by pears: great to eat nearly nude.
Until this season, Archer has largely been pretty cohesive. There’s been a pretty clear story revealed with each episode until the finale, where the whole thins is resolved in some manner. A lot of it revolves around Archer and his relationship with his mother (and, thus, how it affects his relationships with other people) and season 4 started out similarly. Malory keeps sending her son on more and more dangerous missions under suspicious circumstances and Archer keeps fixating on his real father for quite some time.
Then things started to kind of go awry. The father subplot seemed to disappear entirely and Malory Archer has been painted as more of a villain character, making her agents perform less than honorable missions all for her own benefit (once was simply so she could get a better carpet in her office). ISIS has become something of a joke, which starts to spring up throughout the later half of the season, and Lana Kane is getting tired of being second fiddle to the boss’ son in a sham organization.
Meanwhile, Lana is back to dating Cyril Figgis, Pam Poovey becomes an ISIS agent, Cheryl Tunt keeps getting crazier and crazier, Ray Gillette gets robotic legs, and Krieger is hardly anywhere to be found. Archer helps rescue former ODIN agent Barry Dylan from space, only for Barry to disappear for the rest of the season. Just chaos.
Chaos would be fine if it was controlled, focused maybe on one large finale where everything is wrapped up in a nice little bow. It could even result in a cliffhanger, since Archer has been renewed for a fifth season. But the two-part season finale “Sea Tunt” really just sets itself up for Sealab 2021 references and the revelation that (and here’s the big spoiler, fans) Lana is pregnant. And it’s not Cyril’s.
Don’t let the name board fool you, this is actually a picture of Sterling Archer.
The episode ends with the team escaping a destroyed sealab and Cyril being pretty darned rude to Lana. She apparently got a donor for the baby without telling him and he’s all ticked off about it. Which is stupid, considering their first go at a relationship ended because he has a “sex addiction” and kept cheating on her. (author’s note: I know sex addiction is a thing, I’m just not convinced Cyril actually has it)
Ray’s back in a wheelchair because Archer, excited that he survived the escape from the sealab against pretty incredible odds, accidentally fried the CPU in Ray’s robot legs with a defibrillator. He’s pretty angry at Archer, as a result, but I don’t understand why Krieger can’t just replace the CPU. Hopefully that will get worked out in season 5. I’m a little over the Ray’s damaged legs running joke. Keep him paralyzed or keep him walking. C’mon.
The big part of the episode and, to me, the season, was Archer giving up his scuba gear so that Lana and her baby would be guaranteed safety. As he was taking what might have been his last breaths, he told her to be a better mother than his was. This moment right here adds a depth to Archer that I’m hoping carries over into season 5. And that connection he had with Lana right then? I think that’s going to change their entire dynamic.
We’ve already seen how good he is with kids. I’m sure he’ll be a great father figure to little “Jack Bastard.”
Maybe that’s what all the father stuff at the beginning was hinting at. It wasn’t that Archer was going to find some lost father of his own; it was that he was destined to become one, at least figuratively? That’s probably stretching it but I don’t know. This show can be awfully damn clever sometimes and that would make me feel better about what, otherwise, felt like a very disjointed season.
But it’s got me excited for a season 5, so maybe that was the glue that held season 4 together.
Marry Me, Batwoman
Major spoilers after the lady kisses.
Not exactly the face I would make in Maggie’s position.
I don’t know how to express how beautiful Batwoman #17 is. This issue wraps up quite a long story in which Batwoman has been struggling with her role as a hero and as a girlfriend, trying to find a balance. And, as you can see above, she decides that the way to do that is to put both elements of her life together. Such a strong, confident lady, Batwoman is so sure of her decision to “out” herself to Detective Maggie Sawyer after bringing a perfect engagement gift of the missing children that the Gotham City policewoman has been searching for nearly their entire relationship.
Co-starring Wonder Woman and featuring the triumphant return of Bette Kane, now calling herself Hawkfire, Batwoman #17 settles this major arc in every way. It’s energizing in it’s victories and heartbreaking in its tragedies, specifically poor Abbot’s untimely end. Most importantly of all, it establishes that Batwoman is over playing by the D.E.O.’s rules.
One of the things that I like about this series is the dialogue choices. I feel like so many writers out there feel the need to make all of their characters constantly witty and bantering, a la the entire cast of The Avengers (sorry, Joss, you know I love you!) but Batwoman’s cast has a strong, distinct voice that doesn’t sound like any other book out there. Each character sounds unique and I imagine that I could tell who was speaking if I were to close my eyes and have the comic read to me.
Well said, Kate. You sure know how to talk to the ladies.
But if my eyes were closed, I wouldn’t have been able to see just how gorgeous this issue is. As usual, I love the choices made in dividing up the panels. The borders are just as intense as the panels. The introduction of a Hawkfire theme into the borders was a super choice. And, and this isn’t something I normally comment on, Dave Stewart’s colors were incredible. I feel like I’m just glowing about Hawkfire tonight (and rightly so) but that insertion of orange into a predominantly dark and red palette was the most perfect addition that I could think of.
I only started reading Batwoman with the New 52, heck, any DC with the New 52, so I don’t have the background with many existing characters. As such, I only know Bette Kane, formerly Flamebird, from this series. Until this issue (and the last), I’d been reserved about her character. She was Batwoman’s sidekick, sort of, and then broke out on her own, got majorly injured, got Batwoman blackmailed by the D.E.O., was rehabilitated by Batwoman’s estranged father… it was all just a lot of background noise in the story that was Kate Kane.
But this issue! Whoa, baby! Her comeback is amazing! The way she set fire to her past insecurities in such a literal way was so empowering. She’s like the phoenix rising out of the ashes of her injuries, coming out a stronger, more powerful figure.
When life gives you lemons, set the lemons on fire.
Okay, now onto the real topic of this blog. That reveal. That proposal. I did not see that coming. I expected Batwoman to reveal herself as Kate Kane to Maggie eventually. Even soon. The fight the couple had right before Batwoman left to recruit Wonder Woman and Kate sharing the tragedy of her childhood loss earlier than that were all pointing in that direction. But a proposal? In front of the rescued children? I’m not sure that was the right move there.
Don’t get me wrong. I love it when ladies get engaged. Having been engaged to another lady for, like, a hundred years, it’s a blast. But it’s hard to tell what kind of time has passed in this story arc (partly due to that really weird stretch of time when the comic was written like Pulp Fiction) so it feels maybe sooner than it really is. I feel like only a few months have passed. But, hey, lesbians do move pretty fast.What’s really strange is that Kate proposes and kisses Maggie, in her Batwoman attire, in front of all those kids. Is she outing herself to the city of Gotham as Batwoman? Is that how she plans to get out of the D.E.O.’s blackmail?
It’s just a bit out of my comfort level to accept. But in an issue where every single page managed to amaze me on some level, I can let it marinate until we see the fallout from this turn of events next issue. Especially with the final reveal at the very end: the return of Kate’s “deceased” sister, Alice! I’m obsessed with this issue and now I’m even more excited to see what’s going to happen next!
Turtles Really Are Slow
I’ve talked about what a great reboot Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is. One of the things I’ve really dug about the series is the blend of science-fiction and mystical elements. Plus, there are few things in the world more fun than ninjas.
Dearly beloved, we have gathered here today to say goodbye to Kristi, who sadly passed after an especially epic ninja battle…
If I had any complaint at all, it’s that the story moves a little slowly for my liking. I’m eighteen issues in and we’re still trying to figure out what’s really going on with our hero turtles. Part of the reason the story’s so slow, I think, is the complicated nature of the origin. In feudal Japan, Hamato Yoshi disagreed with the dishonorable direction that new Foot Clan leader Oroku Saki is taking the clan of ninjas. He left the Foot but Saki wasn’t content to let Yoshi leave. He ordered that Yoshi and his entire family be killed for abandoning the Foot.
Of course, death couldn’t stop Yoshi and his sons for long. Skip ahead to today, where a lab rat and four turtles are being experimented on in Stockgen. The lab is using a mysterious ooze that seemingly has mutagenic and reincarnation properties. The ooze eventually transforms the rat and the turtles into the mutant vessels for the souls of Yoshi and his boys.
The origin gets complicated further as the story unfolds. A group of ninja break into Stockgen, freaking out April O’Neil in the process. It turns out that those ninja are being led by a reincarnated Oroku Saki! Plus, the ooze seems to be getting used to transform cats, dogs, and foxes for all manner of shenanigans.
Cats, dogs, and foxes cuddling. Well done, internet.
This serves to bring up more questions than answers. How is Shredder back? How does the ooze transform the likes of Hob and Slash? Are they reincarnated from someone, too? And, perhaps most importantly, where is that ooze coming from?
TMNT #18 finally starts to answer that last question. The turtles have been teleported to Dimension X, specifically to the planet Neutrino, where there is a war happening. We learned a little about that war in the TMNT micro-series featuring Fugitoid, who is a shape-changing robot that has been working for Stockgen disguised as Dr. Chet Allen, but now we learn that General Krang and his followers are trying to find a new world to inhabit, since their own world has been destroyed.
What destroyed their world? Over-use of ooze.
Ding, ding, ding! We finally have a connection! Krang’s people destroyed their world in Dimension X and have been using the Neutrinos to develop a way to take over Earth so that they have their own planet again. However, Dr. Baxter Stockman has proven to be largely incompetent on top of the fact that his lab keeps getting attacked by ninja. As such, progress is slow going and Krang is getting pretty desperate.
Not as desperate, though, as the poor Neutrinos. They go after Dr. Allen, who’s really Dr. Honeycutt who got turned into Fugitoid (whew!) so that they can use a new weapon against Krang and his army. But Krang launches an attack of his own, capturing the Neutrino royal family. He’s about to get away with the lot of them, but Michelangelo rescues Princess Trib (who looks like what might have happened if Princesses Peach and Zelda somehow made a baby). The Neutrinos and the turtles all preparing an assault on Krang when the evil alien general hacks into their airwaves and shows a badly beaten royal couple. The threat is obvious: turn over the scientist or the king and queen bite the big one.
Now kiss.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, April and Casey Jones leave Splinter’s side to go find more information. As April grills a fellow Stockgen scientist about her knowledge of the secret oozey projects, one of Shredder’s ninja (in fact, his great granddaughter) is listening in.
The already thick plot thickens.
The turtles have been rebooted to be more modern. The Neutrinos are still stuck in the 80s.
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate highly detailed, nuanced stories, but we’re eighteen issues in and hardly anything has been resolved. When DC’s New 52 launched at around the same time, they’ve come and gone through several story arcs. TMNT is really stuck in this one and I’m starting to get a little bored. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #19 comes out tomorrow and I really hope it starts to wrap up some of this origin stuff. It seems like this showdown with Krang is on it’s way to a climax, thank goodness, so hopefully the story can go back to being about the ancient rivalry between Shredder and Splinter.
Pitch, Please
I’m cheating a little for iTunesday. After my abysmal attempt to review Justin Timberlake’s new song without any real knowledge of music terminology, I figured I’d do us all a favor and find a way to stick to my strengths but try to do it within the confines of my subject schedule.
I recently gave Pitch Perfect a second chance. I’d seen it once before and wasn’t overall impressed. Part of it, I’m sure, has to do with the fact that it got talked up a lot by someone whose taste in things I usually trust, but the other part is I think I have too much faith in musicals. I kept giving Glee a chance long beyond the time I should have, I am practically frothing at the mouth for Smash to start again, and I’m pretty sure the reason I still watch kid movies is because they tend to have musical numbers.
The world would be a better place if we really broke into song every fifteen minutes or so.
I spent most of my first viewing of Pitch Perfect being one half appalled, the other half also appalled. The gross out humor does nothing for me and I can’t be the only person who is tired of a woman only being funny if her weight or neuroses are being made fun of. I walked away from that first viewing quite annoyed, having barely listened to the music.
The second time I watched the movie was better. I suspect it has to do with my lowered expectations and knowing when to cover my eyes before something gross happened. Not seeing collegiate a cappella singers projectile vomit certainly helps me to enjoy a movie more.
Oh, spoiler alert: there’s some projectile vomiting in this movie.
In fact, that’s how the whole movie starts out. The Barden Bellas are competing in some big college a capella competition, though their biggest rivals, the Treblemakers, come from the same school so I don’t super understand why the plot couldn’t be about epic a cappella battles but whatever. Time travel.
After that terrible showing, the two remaining Bellas, bitchy blond and hot implied lesbian redhead, need to put together a new band. I suppose after all the vomiting, the rest of the Bellas would need to take their leave.
So at the student activities fair, they put up a sign looking for new blood. But let’s flash back, in a less time travel-y way, to our hero, Anna Kendrick, has arrived (she’ll have a love interest throughout the movie but no one cares about that). She’s an aspiring DJ but her father, who (when he’s not playing Cathy’s brother in The Big C) is a professor at the college she’s attending. Despite her father paying her way to go to school, the plucky DJ is unhappy. She feels that she needs to move to the city, live in dumpsters, and pay her dues. Or however it is that DJs make it in the biz.
It’s hard out there for artists.
Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson (the albino lady roommate in Bridesmaids) are both enticed to join the Bellas. Rebel Wilson is completely abused in this movie and I don’t want to even talk about how disappointed I am in how a woman could hate other women so much as the writer of Pitch Perfect seems to. So they join the Bellas, only to find that the leader of the pack is so obsessed with sticking with the old, failing system of only choosing songs made popular by women that she is unable to cope with new ideas. I should mention that I also find this offensive, as a woman, since apparently songs made popular by female artists are incapable of being good. Good on you, Pitch Perfect.
Bah, it legitimately makes me angry.
Moving on. The biggest rule for the Bellas is not to date a member of the Treblemakers, because they don’t respect women (nice try). Anna Kendrick, of course, is interested in one of the Treblemakers, which causes some drama.
“I’m supposed to call you what? Oh, I get it, we want the audience to only see you as fat, not as a person.”
What mostly bothers me is the music choices made in the movie. They do lots of a capella mash-ups, which is the big thing to do when you’re an a capella group, if shows like the Sing Off and Glee are any indication, but none of the mash-ups make any damn sense. Let’s take the last one for instance, the one that wins it all for the Bellas (spoiler alert). Here’s a list of the songs in that mash-up:
- Price Tag by Jesse J
- (Don’t You) Forget About Me by Simple Minds
- Give Me Everything by Pitbull
- Just the Way You Are by Bruno Mars
- Party in the USA by Miley Cyrus
- Turn the Beat Around by Gloria Esteban
It’s a relative hodge-podge of musical choices but the only ones that make any sense plot-wise are the Simple Minds song, the Bruno Mars song, and the Gloria Esteban song. In the case of (Don’t You) Forget About Me, it’s Anna Kendrick’s apology for being a total dick to her love interest in the Treblemakers. For Just the Way You Are, it’s reflecting the first time that the Bellas pulled it all together to be a real a capella group. And Turn the Beat Around was in the original repertoire for the Bellas, so it grounds them in their roots as a group.
The rest of the music is just there because it’s fun and while the performance is a good time, I was more distracted by trying to figure out why they would have have bothered with the rest of the song choices. There are a million ways they could have mixed just the three relevant songs together or added other music to the mix to make more sense. Why not take a Treblemaker song and blend it with their own, thus unifying the groups toward their new future as cooperative competitors? Why not pick songs that symbolize their journey as friends, students, and singers? Why put Pitbull in at all (and even Simple Minds) and show that they can win using music popularized by women?
Everyone lives happily ever after, Anna Kendrick learns that college and companionship are not a total waste of time, and Fat Amy is still called Fat Amy throughout the film, without anyone showing any ounce of decency and acknowledging that, beyond the weight, she has other qualities. Like bus driving and mermaid dancing.
Not that anyone would know, watching this movie.
I could talk about the awful portrayal of lesbians, too, but this post is already enough of an angry rant. Watch Pitch Perfect if the only thing you care about is having songs stuck in your head for days. Don’t watch this movie if you actually give a damn about women.
Silver Linings Playbook play-by-play
I’m about to get serious here. I know I don’t do that all that frequently, but after seeing Silver Linings Playbook this weekend, I knew that I needed to tell you all about it. And a film like this deserves the utmost respect.
First, it takes a lot to get me to go see a movie in the theater. I’m one of those weirdoes that doesn’t enjoy the whole theater experience. It’s big, loud, and (lately) usually in 3D. I just can’t be bothered with all that nonsense anymore. I don’t think surround sound or giant screens really add anything to my experience watching a movie. Maybe if it’s big and action-y, then sure, maybe, but for the most part, I’m content to wait until it’s available on Redbox.
Redbox, if you ever want a spokesperson, I am so in lesbians with you.
The other factor in whether I go to the movies or not is whether my partner wants to see it. Fortunately, I avoid most of the romantic comedies she wants to see, but occasionally she’ll convince me that a drama is worth shelling out the insane amount of money it costs to actually see a movie in the theater. And, in the case of Silver Linings Playbook, I’m very glad she did.
The film follows Bradley Cooper’s Patrick as he is released (against the advice of his doctors) from a hospital. It is very clear right away that he is not quite with it. He is constantly agitated and needs something to do at all times. What he chooses to do, when left with nothing is, is work out (usually running) or read books from a high school syllabus.
It turns out that Patrick has been hospitalized after beating a man half to death after he finds that man in the shower with his own wife. His (frankly understandable) reaction is fueled further by the fact that his wife and her paramour are listening to their wedding song when they are caught by Patrick.
Flash forward eight months and Patrick is still a wreck. He feels that, were he in better shape and took more of an interest in his wife’s job (she teaches high school English), Nikki wouldn’t have cheated on him. He takes all of the responsibility of his actions upon himself and is constantly trying to make himself the man he thinks she wanted him to be. As such, most of his focus throughout the film is in working out or reading books, all of which he hates because they all seem to highlight the misery of human existence, rather than provide any kind of silver lining, a concept that he is clinging desperately to.
Adjusting to life outside of the hospital is difficult for Patrick. His former friends and colleagues want nothing to do with him, now that he has established himself as capable of incredible violence. His parents, including his father played by Robert Deniro, don’t know how to help him aside from providing a place to stay and forcing him to keep going to therapy. It’s even pretty clear that his family is a source of his aggravation. His only friends seem to be Danny, a fellow hospital patient who keeps trying to escape, and Ronnie, a mutual friend of Pat and Nikki’s. It’s through Ronnie’s wife that Pat meets Tiffany, a woman who is struggling with the death of her husband and the resulting promiscuity that her grief brings out in her.
We can do it right here on the table or we can actually work out our problems. Oh? You actually want to work on our problems?
Things happen and Pat and Tiffany realize that the whole world is messed up. Even the “perfect” people have problems and it’s when you start to find the right crazy person who fits into your own craziness that you can start to feel normal. Pat starts to see, through his time spent with Tiffany, by accepting his therapist into his life, and by taking his medication that Nikki wouldn’t have insisted that he change who he was in order to be with her if there was truly something special there. But Tiffany, his parents, his brother, his friends all just want him to be the best that he can be, even if that best is a little messed up.
Silver Linings Playbook doesn’t tell us that everything magically gets better because Pat and Tiffany get together and that’s what I appreciate the most. So many movies want to sell the audience on this idea that true love somehow solves every problem that you might have. Silver Linings Playbook doesn’t pull any punches about love: it’s hard, it’s stupid, it’s unreasonable. But it also doesn’t paint love as something hopeless, either. Pat’s best intentions are when he’s trying to get better because he loves Nikki so much. And while we can tell that this isn’t healthy or good for him, part of you roots for him because all he wants is to be deserving of the woman he loves.
I already called out Bradley Cooper’s amazing performance but the entire cast is just terrific. Jennifer Lawrence was barely a blip on my radar when she played Mystique in X-Men First Class, but she’s certainly on the map now. I didn’t know what to expect but she is so utterly convincing as she ranges from lucid to manic to hopeless in just a few lines. You can feel the pressure that she’s put on herself to get over her husband’s death and to help Pat heal.
Chris Tucker was remarkably subdued, playing Pat’s friend from the hospital. And this is a good thing. Instead of the zany, loud, over the top performances that I’d expect from other roles, he is a wonderful, calm foil to Cooper’s simmering pot of rage, ready to boil over at the slightest provocation.
Julia Stiles is in there, too, as Tiffany’s sister. She plays a bitch really, really well. I don’t like talking that way about Julia Stiles, even if I mean it complimentary, so I’ll leave it at that.
You frighten me, but in a very good way, Ms. Stiles.
Finally, I can’t wrap this up without discussing Deniro’s Pat Sr. His obsessive-compulsive behavior in regards to his football games (only partially motivated by the fact that his entire financial future relies on the money he makes in betting on the games) serves as the exact right amount of a catalyst to Cooper’s breakdowns throughout the film. You get the feeling from both men that this has been a silent battle their entire relationship until now and their struggle to deal with it now that it is right in front of their faces is just tragically beautiful.
Silver Linings Playbook deserves every award it’s nominated for and more. Do yourself a favor and see this movie.
Elimination Chamber Predictions
Soooo, it's been a while. I was a bit busy with work and going back to school last semester and the blog unfortunately took a back seat to life. I am back, and hopefully not going anywhere anytime soon. So without further delay, Elimination Chamber Predictions! GO!
Brodus Clay and Tensai vs. Team Rhodes Scholars - Pre-Show
Who needs the win…
I am the lamest wrestling fan, whose interest ebbs and flows with the tides, but it would be terrible of me to not acknowledge this bit of pop culture. Plus, my BFF writes it, so read it!
Crush of the Week #16
Who’s blue, beautiful, and this week’s Crush? It’s Mystique and this brazen babe is the highlight of All-New X-Men #7.
Super powers and she’s packing heat? I think I’m in love!
For those not following, All-New X-Men is a story written by Brian Michael Bendis featuring the original five X-Men. Like, for real the original five X-Men, pulled from the past by a Dr. Hank McCoy (another blue hunk) to see what kind of monster Cyclops has become. His hope is that young Scott Summers will see what he is in the future and, when he goes back to his original time, will never become that. Ah, time travel.
The X-kids are pretty appalled at how the future has turned out but instead of helping Hank cure his self-inflicted mutant cancer, they decide to stick around and see what good they can do in this horrifying future. They know that when they do go back, Charles Xavier will likely erase their memories anyway, so they might as well make the most of their trip.
It’s actually been a pretty poignant series so far. Jean Grey’s realization that she’s dead but easily one of the most admired mutants since Charlie X is quite heartbreaking and the reveal at the end of issue 7 actually hurt my heart a little.
But that’s not the point of today’s blog. Don’t you worry, though, I have some opinions on Marvel Girl’s story that I’ll be sharing before too long. Today, I want to talk about how badass Mystique is.
Raven Darkholme has always been one of my favorite villains in the X-Men franchise. She walks the line between good and evil with such finesse that you never, ever know which side she’s truly on. For all the good she’s done in the world, like raising Rogue (who would go on to be one of the most liked female X-Men in the history of the series), she’s also done some quite terrible things, mostly killing a lot of innocent people. In this issue, it seems like she’s there for the former but the reveal toward the end hits home as possibly one of the most evil things in her reign of terror.
She shows up to find young Scott Summers being accused of bank robbery, because apparently after being an avatar of the Phoenix Force means that he’s not above petty thievery, and saves him by disguising herself (rather convincingly) as Wolverine. She’s a shape-shifter and a quite good one. One of the reasons that she’s a crush is the fact that she takes shape-changing to an entirely untouchable level than anyone else in the comics. She literally embodies the characteristics, mannerisms, and habits of those she’s mimicking, making it damn near impossible to tell who she is at any given moment. That dedication to her power is just incredible and worthy of admiration there.
Without getting into his mind, Mystique can really handle someone’s head.
After saving Scott, Mystique reveals herself and plays the young X-Man like a fiddle. Everyone knows Scott Summers at this point but only Mystique knows how to use her knowledge of both the young and current versions of the hero to make this journey all about him. She plays on his dedication to mutant equality, his love of his friends, and his desire to be the best mutant he can be. As such, by the time she ends her carefully woven monologue and the real Wolverine shows up to take him back to the school, Scott’s purpose is clear: he must find and kill his older self because no one else dares to. And, if nothing else, Cyclops is always the one person who will do what no one else can, if it means that he’s a step closer to the greater good.
Of course, Mystique does not give a damn about the greater good. She is picked up by her crew and reveals that with young Scott’s new motivation in life, the X-Men will be too busy dealing with him to be able to stop whatever nefarious scheme she’s got cooked up.
Did anyone else just get the chills?
I wouldn’t want to play a game of chess against this master manipulator. But it’s Mystique’s tenacity that makes her my Crush of the Week. There aren’t many villains out there who would dare mess with the X-Men legacy the way she has. It is clear that, on some level, she really does respect the heroes but that respect only goes so far. The only person Mystique truly respects is Mystique and it shows with every single machination she devises.
