Random Back Issues #155 - Adventures of Superman #618

Superman's working hard to get his pizza rolls just the right temperature.

Mxyzptlk is now two siblings, who are hawking a complete set of the Encyclopedia Universal. They put Perry White in a coma when he didn't go for their sales pitch, but after Superman proved a tougher nut to crack they went big and canceled Earth's gravity.

As the Earth falls to pieces, buildings start soaring into space, and a S.T.A.R. Labs space station begins drifting into the void, Superman and the Atom make tracks to the Fortress of Solitude. Atom's brought the white dwarf star that powered his size-changing belt. Superman says it feels heavy, though the Atom says it's 100 tons. That's not much to Superman, right, let alone for a star? Was it supposed to read 100 million tons? I guess it's a star fragment, because even a neutron star probably wouldn't fit in your hands.

Anyway, the weight is no big deal because the starlight is charging Superman up, and oh come on, it's a yellow sun that does that! I mean, yes, yellow light is contained within white light, but so is red, which would cancel out any gains of the yellow! Dang it Joe Casey, have you no respect for fictional stellar physics?

The Mxys are just floating around, watching the show, playing word association games, for some reason retconning something from earlier in Casey's run to be their doing instead of the Prankster's. They're also debating if they'd like to level up to something more than an 'annoyance.' Maybe become real super-villains, which is a terrifying notion. But as the Great Wall of China disintegrates, they find themselves encased in glowing green light. Alan Scott and John Stewart are creating a breathable forcefield around the entire planet, to hold it together.

(It's odd that, even though Superman tells everyone this is being caused by magic, we don't see any magic-users trying to do anything. Unless whatever Tempest was doing riding an orca counts.)

That gives Superman time to drill his way to the Earth's core, stuff the dwarf fragment there, then alternately heat and cool it with his powers, because the expansion and contraction produces more gravity. That done, Supes zips into space, hauls the space station back before everyone freezes of suffocates. Then it's off to confront the Mxys.

He offers to take a set of the encyclopedias, though he doesn't specify how he's going to pay, which seems like not very carefully defining the terms of a contract with the Devil. Then he pokes the bull by saying he liked them better as a funny little imp. As they reset all the damage (including to Perry's brain), speaking in unison, they disappear with a promise that, 'next time, we won't hit the reset button.' 

{1st longbox, 18th comic. Adventures of Superman #618, by Joe Casey (writer), Charlie Adlard (artist), Tanya and Rich Horie (colorists), Comiccraft (letterer)}

Sunday Splash Page #268

 

"Closet Headspace", in Iron Man: The Inevitable #4, by Joe Casey (writer), Frazier Irving (artist and color artist), Comicraft (letterer)

Iron Spring can't be stopped or diverted! One could almost say it was. . .fated? Unavoidable? Damn it, right on the tip of my tongue. . .

Iron Man: The Inevitable is about evolution. Tony Stark at this point has the Extremis virus that lets him manipulate and control armors or other technologies at a thought. "See through satellites" was I think how he described it in that incredibly delayed story where Warren Ellis and Adi Granov gave him the ability.

With this new perspective, Stark is trying to do things differently. Improve the world with new inventions, as well as de-fang his old enemies via more peaceful methods. He wants to be done with the old "punch 'em up, repulsor ray 'em up," stuff of the past. But not everyone is as ready to move on from how things used to be.

Casey lines up three villains: Living Laser, Ghost, and Spymaster. The Living Laser is in some sort of discorporated energy state, so Stark brings in a Dr. Maggie Dillon to try and reach him through 'telepathic intrabeam particle communication.' The idea being she'll help Laser to see what's driven him to keep being a super-villain, and realize it's a dead end path he should abandon.

This Spymaster (3rd in the series, apparently) is a rich corporate raider type that thinks being a super-villain is a specific calling, complete with a code, and Tony Stark is breaking the code by trying to pretend he's not Iron Man any longer. Spymaster hires and discards the Ghost (who gets a boring costume design here, basically a beige body stocking) to try to mess up Stark's stuff. Ghost doesn't care about money, or politics or any of that. Stark owns a massive corporation, and the Ghost wants to tear it down for that alone.

Really, all of them just want Iron Man to acknowledge them. Banter, fight, and argue. Give them something to push back against. For power, for the thrill, for the weight it lends to their ideology. Stark wants no part of it, because it all seems like a waste of life and time and effort.

But Stark might not be as beyond the old ways as much as he pretends. Having gone back to pretending Iron Man is Tony Stark's bodyguard, he speaks in a faux-tough-guy tone. About being sick of their b.s., or pretending anything connects him to them. He refers to himself in 3rd person, claiming he's not going to play the same games with them Stark did, because he's not soft like that. It's Stark trying to pretend this isn't him, that's he's outgrown all of it, but it's a lie. When he guides the Ghost into a trap, he can't help info-dumping an explanation of what's happening, just like Tony Stark would. At this point, he could control the armors remotely, more than one even, as he notes after things go sideways. Heck, just tell SHIELD or the Avengers if it's really so beneath him.

Frazier Irving really likes the color pink and purple. They pop up everywhere. At the banal parties Stark has to attend as a corporate head. In the laboratories where Dr. Dillon tries to reach Laser, and in the weird space where the two of them talk. I don't know the significance of the color choices. The faces he draws are sometimes strange, falling in that uncanny valley where eyes look too wide, or hair doesn't sit naturally on their heads. Doc Samson shows up since Dr. Dillon was briefly a student of his, and Irving shades his face to really emphasize the cheekbones and brow ridges. It makes Samson look like a caveman.

Maybe that's how Stark is supposed to see him, since it's during a scene where Tony explains he still uses phones and computers when he doesn't have to, because it looks "normal". When he's alone, he doesn't bother, sends texts by just thinking of it (Irving's good about including those differences) so it's just for appearances. To not frighten the people scared of the future, and he's growing sick of it. Though mostly he just seems sick of the fact he still cares, that he lets these people locked in the past hold him back. He's a futurist, you know.

Maybe the issue with the faces is deliberate. It's most noticeable in those party scenes, or when Tony is interacting with anyone other than Dr. Dillon. Not absent the rest of the time, but not as noticeable as the oddly elongated necks, rictus grins, and weird hair at those parties. But the parties are all bullshit. The wealthy at the events that are going to do "something" to help the less fortunate, when it's really about making sure they're seen attending. It's all a waste to Stark, who has to be reminded to attend them.

But the uncanny valley issue goes away when everyone's in costume. Even if Stark's pretending he's not Iron Man, he's pretending less with that armor than he does at some gala. Ghost, Spymaster, the mask lets them be who the want to be, but aren't willing to be openly. Living Laser isn't wearing a mask, but he's a glowing outline with dark spots for eyes and mouth. No distinct features, it might as well be a mask.

But he's the guy who, like Stark, has become something more than human. Sentient light, but all he can think to do is try to kill Iron Man. It's all he wants, but the same way Stark is still just using one armor, the Laser's not expanding. Iron Man flies away and the Laser just chases him. He's light, he's the fastest thing in the universe! He could chop Iron Man up like cold cuts in a micro-second! But he can't think outside the same limited range he's used to.

Saturday Splash Page #54

"Snowblind", in Uncanny X-Men #407, by Joe Casey (writer), Sean Phillips (artist), Hi Fi Design (colorist), RS Comicraft's Saida! (letterer)

Through the '90s, I only bought X-Men comics sporadically. This does mean I mostly missed the whole Onslaught era, so, not entirely a bad outcome. I got back into the X-Men because of Wizard Magazine, of all things. They did a special issue just about the hot new creative teams that were going to shake up the X-Books. Grant Morrison and Frank Quietly were going to take over New X-Men, while Joe Casey and Ian Churchill got Uncanny X-Men. At the time, I wouldn't have known a single one of them from a hole in the ground, but Uncanny was going to have Nightcrawler in the book, while New was going to prominently feature Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Emma Frost. Gee, three characters I give fewer than zero fucks about. Also, Quietly made Xavier's head looked like a peeled potato, which is funny, but was not aesthetically appealing to early-2000s Calvin. Or mid-2020s Calvin, for that matter.

Uncanny it was, then.

I know Casey has said he wasn't really inspired for the project, or didn't have a strong idea, something like that. He took it because, basically, you only get offered a major title like Uncanny X-Men every so often. I think that's a harsh assessment, because you can see the outlines of some of the ideas Casey would go on to explore in his WildCATS work, but it's certainly true Morrison and Quietly were the ones who ultimately set the tone for the line. Having Xavier and the school be openly for mutants, greatly increasing the number of students at the school, the expansion of mutant culture.

Casey focused more on the new economic power of mutants, how they could use it, and how others attempted to exploit it. Archangel using his company to speak at a big European summit, or learning that his company had invested in a brothel specializing in mutant sex workers. Chamber being used by a Britney Spears analogue looking to boost her career from the notoriety of dating a mutant. The last story of Casey's run involved the Vanisher, of all people, trying to become a Mista Big by dealing Mutant Growth Hormone to people looking for the rush of having mutant powers. Considering he got outflanked by Warren Worthington, who is nobody's idea of a savvy businessman, that was never likely to end well. But it did speak to an idea where conflicts between mutants might start being fought with money rather than powers.

The cast Casey assembled was an interesting mix of characters from different eras and socio-economic viewpoints. Two Original Five members in Archangel and Iceman, two All-New, All Different in Nightcrawler and Wolverine, one Gen X alum in Chamber, and then Stacy X as a new character. Chamber and Stacy both had experience with people wanting to use their mutant identity to enrich themselves, although Stacy was positioned as having more control or agency over her life. Quite possibly an unrealistic view, but what we have to go on is she and the other women were friends who seemed to enjoy their lives. Wolverine of course has a lot of experience with people wanting to exploit his abilities, and Nightcrawler was a top act in the circus.

Of course, each of them also learned there were limits to how much leeway the lucrative nature of their gifts bought them. Chamber was tossed aside once he wasn't profitable. Nightcrawler was hunted by a mob once they figured out he wasn't wearing make-up. Logan has an extensive history of being mindwiped and experimented on when he's not being an obedient killer. The X-Ranch was burned down by insane religious bigots once it got too big to remain secret. Once their power becomes a possible threat or challenge, it had to be curtailed, which was only happening more frequently as mutants grew in number and status.

The book went through a lot of artists, many of them with wildly different styles, sometimes in the same story arc. Going from Ian Churchill to Tom Raney might not be too big a shift, but from Raney to Ashley Wood, then over to Ron Garney, certainly is. Wood's stuff is nearly incomprehensible, frankly. I can't tell what the fuck is going on in those issues.

The last three issues of the "X-Corps" story go Garney-Sean Phillips-Aaron Lopresti, without the tone of the book really shifting much. I think Phillips was who Casey really wanted, although it's hard to see his art fitting the more action-packed stories, but Marvel kept giving him more conventional superhero artists. Which I didn't mind, but possibly didn't help with what Casey was going for. Phillips drew the story with the Vanisher, which was rather grounded. Stacy using her powers to get Vanisher off the board for a couple of weeks so Archangel can efficiently buy out Vanisher's guys. There looks like there's going to be a fight briefly, but it's handled off-panel. Perfunctory. The Vanisher can't accept he's not ready to play in this new world.

But I'm not sure the X-Men, as presented by Casey, have entirely adjusted either. There's a hypocrisy where some of them - Archangel and Iceman mostly, the two upper or middle class WASPs - judge Stacy for continuing to hire out her powers to people looking for pleasure or release. The notion Stacy might not be willing to subsist on Xavier or Worthington's lagresse apparently not registering with them. However, they are perfectly fine with her using to seduce Vanisher and keep him in a doped-up euphoric haze for two weeks so Archangel can make his power play. Logan, Iceman, and Nightcrawler all hassled Chamber about dating the pop star. Not so much because they seem concerned for him, but they don't like him letting himself be used like an accessory. I mean, they're right that's what was happening, but it should still be Chamber's call. They're still pretty limited in their view of what's "acceptable".

Random Back Issues #95 - Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes II #3

Hank, the last time you didn't hold anything back, you built an android with your memory engrams and it went genocidal.

We looked at the issue after this 2.5 years ago, so let's see how we got to the point of Hank Pym having nightmares about crunching Adaptoids between his giant teeth like mints!

Nick Fury's sent the Avengers - Black Panther, Hawkeye, Wasp, newbie Vision, and leader Giant-Man - to an island that serves as base where AIM may be trying to make an army of Adaptoids. Still blaming Fury for the Black Widow breaking up with him and joining SHIELD, Hawkeye's giving Fury static about why he doesn't just use SHIELD agents. Apparently Fury was ordered to leave this to the superhumans, which Pym leverages to make Fury release Vision from custody, since the authorities have no proof Viz is the original Adaptoid in disguise.

For his part, Vision is grateful the team stuck up for him, and determined to keep them from failing. Hank's, on the other hand, feeling jittery, a feeling that gets worse when they find the Adaptoid replication plant leveled and the machines carving a path through the island, including at least one innocent village. A half-dozen knockoff Adaptoids notice the Quinjet and attack. Despite Vision's best efforts, they wreck an engine. The team bails out, except Hawkeye, who is determined to land the thing. Clint, it's fine, they'll just send the bill to Stark.

But he manages, in the Launchpad McQuack sense, and now he's in the main AIM base, joined by the Panther and Vision. The beekeepers aren't causing much trouble, but Hawkeye's not sure they're actually accomplishing anything beating up a bunch of libertarian nerds

(Hank notes at one point AIM loves to claim persecution when they're listed as outlaws, but they don't care who their experiments hurt. All for me, none for you types. I'm more used to AIM just openly admitting they do criminal stuff in the name of science and not caring, but maybe that mindset came in when MODOK took over.) 

Fortunately, the king and the tin can made a plan. T'Challa hacks into AIM communications and the base layout, using panicked AIM chatter to track the Adapotid, while Vision seeks out the main reactor and overloads it.

Back in the jungle, the swarm of Adaptoids are two miles from another village and closing fast. Pym sends Wasp to help the others and orders the villagers to leave. Then he gets ready to fight the entire army himself. Probably not a good sign he's having to work himself up by repeating that they aren't human, so he doesn't have to hold back. 

Casey also uses the first page of the issue to establish a subplot where certain Wakandan elements contract the Death Tiger to kill T'Challa, allegedly because he's not being a good king, hanging out with Avengers and being a schoolteacher, but probably really just to grab power. That won't come to a head for a few issues yet.

{2nd longbox, 26th comic. Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes II #3, by Joe Casey (writer), Will Rosado (penciler), Tom Palmer (inker), Wil Quintana (colorist), Comicraft (letterers)]

Saturday Splash Page #32

 

"Hard Knock Life," in WildCATS Version 3.0 #5, by Joe Casey (writer), Dustin Nguyen (penciler), Richard Friend (inker), Randy Mayor (colorist), RS and Comicraft (letterers)

Sometimes with these, I'm caught between what looks like the more interesting page, and what better represents the series. Today, I went with the first option, because I didn't really want to post a page of Spartan saying he now owns a car factory. I plan to go the other direction in a couple of weeks.

The previous volume ended with Spartan learning that the dimension Void and Noir were exploring was a source of nearly limitless energy. Batteries of all sizes that never ran out of power, and could, in fact, remove the need for internal combustion engines. From there, Casey and Nguyen explore Spartan's attempts to use this to improve the world, and how the world - or at least the people who fancy themselves the movers and shakers of it - respond.

Since Casey shuffled most of the cast off into one ending or another in the previous volume, there's really just Spartan and Grifter for this book to focus on. Spartan is moving forward, focused on making lots of these new batteries, and later on, cars that use said batteries as fuel cells. He's also focused on product placement in movies and ad campaigns, really saturating the market. Truly noble pursuits.

Grifter, meanwhile, is still clinging to the old life. Getting into gunfights, helping kidnap a major arms dealer/information broker's son back from his crazy FBI agent father, that kind of shit. Even when the injuries he sustains in the fight pictured above sideline him physically, he finds ways to keep a hand in. First by dragging one of Halo's accountants into it as his proxy, later by piloting Maxine Manchester's body remotely like an Iron Man suit.

Yeah, the treatment of Maxine doesn't get any better in this volume than in the previous one. We get some vague assurance her sentience is stored on a server somewhere while Grifter co-opts her body, but there's apparently been no effort to help her. Worse, Spartan had his ad people gimmick up some chibi -fied monstrosity as the company mascot to pop up in all their commercials. 

I am again confused on what Joe Casey expects me to conclude from all this. We also get a delightful bit where one of Spartan's other accountants snaps and straight kills a man on the freeway because he's frustrated over losing control of his life. Spartan basically erases all the evidence and makes it look like the victim was killed elsewhere. Am I supposed to conclude he feels a measure of responsibility for messing up this guy's life so completely in his grand design, or that he just thinks the guy is a useful pawn? 

Agent Wax, who Casey introduced in the previous volume, acts as Spartan's man within the government, while also using his hypnotic powers to fuck his boss' wife. There's some brief handwave by Wax that she wouldn't be as susceptible if she weren't into it that I hope we're meant to read as Wax justifying his actions to himself, and he eventually falls in love with her to the point he kills her husband and assumes his identity (which means he's hypnotizing everyone all the time to see him as that guy?) Still, pretty creepy. and again, Spartan seems aware of this, but largely gives zero fucks beyond the fact that Wax's ruse gives him greater access to government information. For as much as Spartan disapproves of what Grifter's getting up to, he's just as willing to use people and play with their lives in pursuit of his grand motives.

Yet, as I talked about elsewhere, Casey takes the "enlightened billionaire technocrats will save us" view here, which probably seemed quite intelligent in 2002, but looked laughable five years ago when I wrote that first post, and isn't any less so now. Clean, non-fossil-fuel based energy sources are a good thing, but as Spartan is leveraging capitalism for all its worth, there is still the matter of people needing jobs to have money to pay bills. He is putting a lot of people out of work, in a story which takes the viewpoint that governments are largely useless and more interested in protecting their own power, therefore unlikely to help those people.

Dustin Nguyen and Tom Friend are the penciler/artist team for the first 16 issues. Nguyen is a ways off from the more simplified, angular style he adopted on various Bat-books and Descender. You can see similarities in the shapes of characters' faces, but the work is closer to a hyper-detailed approach. Lots of little lines on faces. While there are a fair number of scenes with the same sorts of heavy shadows Sean Phillips favored, they still aren't as common in this volume, reserved for places behind the scenes. Private deals and plans, usually involving Grifter. Out in public, Spartan is Jack Marlowe, benevolent corporate bigwig. Buying ad time in the Super Bowl and buying movie studios and insisting they used Halo Corp cars in their movies. All still very manipulative and grabbing all the levers of power, but in a bright and aboveboard manner.

I'm coming to the conclusion I may be too cynical to properly enjoy this book.

While Phillips drew Spartan's silver business suit very differently from everyone else's clothes, emphasizing its alien origin (since it's part of what used to be Void), Nguyen tends to render it like a particularly shiny piece of clothing. Maybe because Spartan's had more time to get accustomed to it, to accept the benefits and the power as he has this idea of running a corporation. A suit fits him better now.

I don't know if Casey got editorial pressure or what, but the the books moves away from all the political maneuvering for the final arc, when Grifter pulls in a bunch of characters from the series (and controls Maxine's body remotely) to help rescue Zealot from the current leadership of the order she founded millennia ago. Duncan Rouleau is drawing the book as it returns to something closer to what the book was originally, and his work is a little wilder and more energetic than Nguyen. Nguyen can do wild-eyed emotion very well, but his violence tends to be rougher, more focused on how bruised and battered people get doing this stuff. Roueleau's seems closer to, "holy shit, that guy got his arm blown off!" Spartan does end up helping, but even then, he seems so damn irritated to have to do something.

Maybe they needed to program a little more loyalty into the guy.

Saturday Splash Page #31

"Business Casual Action Squad," in WildC.A.T.S. (volume 2) #17, by Joe Casey (writer), Sean Phillips (artist), Dan Brown (colorist), Richard Stsarkings and Saida Temofonte (letterers)

I bought the trades of the late 90s - early 2000s 2nd volume of WildCATS because I'd heard it lead into a lot of what Joe Casey did with volume 3 and I wanted to read that. So now you know what to expect for next week's Saturday Splash Page.

The series starts from the point that the whole big, galaxy and century-spanning war, of which the team was fighting a single front, had actually been over for a very long time. So, what now? Lord Emp, the little guy who ran the team, decides he ought to clean up a few of his messes and step aside, then leaves the Halo Corporation in the hands of the battle android Spartan, now listed as Jack Marlowe. So a machine built to fight has to decide how to run a company, and do so in a way it will materially improve the world.

Most of his attempts at that don't kick in until WildCATS 3.0, as he's largely preoccupied here with cleaning up old business. Grifter alternates between hanging around, questioning what Spartan's doing, and sleeping with women who remind him of Zealot, who he thinks is dead. She's not, and is in fact trying to clean up her old business, by wiping out the entire warrior religion/cult thing she established when she first came to Earth. Maul, who apparently grows smarter if he emaciates himself (inverse of using his powers to grow in size at the cost of intelligence), is busy trying to find a way to remove the Daemonite genetics from Voodoo as a way to be her white knight. Rather than just, you know, hanging out with her. Or bothering to ask her if she wants to be "cured." The alien symbiotic thing that bonded with a cosmonaut to form Void pops up, minus the cosmonaut.

(Other than one flashback issue early on when Scott Lobdell and Casey are co-writing the book, Warblade never appears. I don't know enough about the character to hazard a guess as to why Casey didn't include him. Grifter makes reference in the issue to a Soho art studio, so maybe Warblade was the most well-adjusted and went back to his own life as soon as possible.)

Grifter, Zealot and Maul are hung up on their pasts in various ways. Unable to accept things have changed, or that there's anything new to work towards. Voodoo seemed to content to just ignore her past. At least half of Void decided they were done and moved on. Whereas Spartan seems to almost resent every time he's forced to get involved in old business. It gives the impression that once Emp gave him a task, he programmed it into himself and anything that forces a deviation is a hindrance to be dealt with as soon as possible.

That's oversimplifying, of course. Spartan does take some things personally, but Phillips tends to draw his as this stoic, distant figure. He glowers occasionally, but never seems pleased by anything. Grifter spends most of his time looking like a scruffy drunk, sneering and shouting. But it's scruffy looking book in general, drenched in shadows. Especially when those two are in it. The sections focused on Maul and Voodoo are usually brighter, until the descendant of some guy Emp fought decades ago called Slaughterhouse Smith shows up. Then it's a lot of dark hospital rooms.

Casey adds a couple of characters to the cast as he's shuffling others out. Agent Wax, who has a telepathy/hypnosis thing going, and works for the U.S. government investigating superhuman stuff, and Noir, who is kind of a hacker/arms dealer. Guy who thinks he's the smartest person in the room, and who loves to mess with Grifter by implying all his aggression is repressed homosexual tendencies. He's a really annoying character, so the shocking yet inevitable betrayal and subsequent comeuppance are very satisfying.

He also brings in a cyborg named Maxine Manchester that was apparently a pre-existing character, and well, I'm not sure about his use of her. Grifter brings her along because they more or less run into each other on separate business and he figures it'll keep the destruction down. She hangs around being loud, but does try to help with Smith (granted, because she's bored and wants to fight rather than anything altruistic) and gets badly damaged. Spartan and Grifter basically shrug and say, "She deserved it."

I mean that literally. Grifter refers to her as a 'stupid bitch,' while she laying there smoking and Spartan agrees she, 'paid the price for her impatience.' Noir shuts down her sentience and turns her into a killbot for his aforementioned betrayal, and they still don't really care.

Maybe she tried to kill the team in the past and I should feel as bad for her as if something awful happened to Sabretooth or the Joker. Which is to say, not at all. All I have to go off is what's in this volume, which is some weird cyborg cult tried to kill her for having too many organic parts, and then the stuff I detailed above. None of which seems to merit the callous response, especially as there is no pushback whatsoever in the narrative against it. Are we meant to agree with it, or see it as evidence of how fucked up Grifter is and how inhuman Spartan is that they basically don't care?

It reminds me of Stacy X in Casey's Uncanny X-Men run where I can't tell if he wants me to take Stacy's side when Angel/Iceman/Wolverine start giving her shit (which I generally do), or if he expects me to agree with the more established characters who I think are acting like judgemental dicks.

I'm not really inclined to give Casey the benefit of the doubt considering the treatment of most female characters in this run. The descendant (who shoots fire from his eyes) goes around brutally murdering a bunch of women who have the last name "Marlowe" before he actually manages to find "Jack", and due to her having a Halo credit card in Jack's name, he goes after Voodoo. Who he paralyzes, cuts off her legs and cuts her vocal cords. She gets better as part of accepting her Daemonite heritage, but not after Maul can feel guilty, Grifter can want revenge, and Spartan can do the bare minimum of glowery emoting. 

There's Void, who loses half of herself, then is nearly destroyed in yet another phase of Noir's plan, only for the symbiote to be absorbed by Spartan, giving him the teleportation powers and a shiny silver suit look he carries through the next volume. But I don't know if she even qualified as a character by that point. Minus the cosmonaut, she didn't demonstrate much personality in her brief time on page. Other than she either knew French, or could learn it instantly from Noir saying a couple of sentences.

It all seems to come to the point that Spartan, while still seemingly just following an order, is evolving into something new and his past life is to be left by the wayside, no longer relevant. We'll look at how the evolution goes next week.

Random back Issues #31 - Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes II #4

What time is it? Time to reset the "Days Without a Hank Pym Breakdown" counter to 0!

A comic written in the mid-2000s about comics written in the 1960s. OK, that doesn't narrow it down much, but we're looking at the second Avengers mini-series Joe Casey wrote, set at the point when the Vision joined the team. I used a page from this issue for Sunday Splash Page #52.

The first half of the issue is the the Avengers attacking an island under AIM control. While the Black Panther, Wasp, Hawkeye, and Vision try to reach Central Command, Giant Man faces a wave of Adaptoids alone. He stops them, but he went somewhere ugly in his head to do it.

Unfortunately, the Super-Adaptoid escaped, which means Nick Fury isn't happy, and neither is Agent Mirch, who is some sort of proto-Gyrich government liaison dipshit. The type who blames the Avengers for not doing a better job, blames them for the existence of threats like AIM, says the President is used to disappointment, crap like that.

In other developments, Hawkeye and Vision stop a high-tech bank robbery, but get some flack from a mouthy cop. Hawkeye quite reasonably points out that if the police are so sure they can handle guys with disruptor weapons, they're free to do so. Note that I'm not saying Hawkeye says it in a reasonable tone, only that he makes a good point. This is the exact reason I wouldn't last as a superhero. Someone would complain about how I saved them and I'd tell them to fuck off and handle their own problems next time.

On top of that the public hasn't exactly warmed up to the Vision, and neither has SHIELD, which harbors suspicions he's actually the Super-Adaptoid in disguise. Hawkeye notices their surveillance van and knocks on the side, asking if they can have a copy of the footage. Hawkeye's kind of honked off at SHIELD anyway, since he thinks they're stealing Natasha away from him. No Clint, that would be Daredevil doing that. Eventually.

This is also during the stretch where T'Challa is teaching high school under the name Luke Charles. He's worried about one of his students, a quiet kid named Delroy, who misses school a lot and gets bullied by some hotshot everyone calls Mack. Or "The Mack", whichever. Guy is twice Delroy's size and has six guys backing him up, pardon me if I'm not impressed. Anyway, Mack implies that Delroy should just kill himself, or else Mack will do it for him. Lovely.

And then Pym has the nightmare above. It's the Adaptoid in his mouth that really sells the creepiness. He heads to his lab where he thinks about Captain America and Iron Man telling him about the heavy burden of being leader, then begins smashing up his equipment in frustration. By next issue, he'll be running around as Yellowjacket, claiming he killed Hank Pym.

This is the halfway point of this mini-series, and before we're done, we have the Yellowjacket fiasco, the Super-Adaptoid shows up, a certain section of Wakandan society sends a top assassin after T'Challa for apparently abandoning his duties, and the Wasp tries marrying Yellowjacket to shock Hank out of this. . . whatever you'd call it.

[2nd longbox, 70th comic. Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes II #4, by Joe Casey (writer), Will Rosado (penciler), Tom Palmer (inker), Wil Quintana (colorist), Comicraft (letterer)]

Sunday Splash Page #60

"For Any Other Hero, That Might Seem Strange," in Adventures of Superman #617, by Joe Casey (writer), Charlie Adlard (artist), Tanya and Rich Horie (colorists), Comic Craft (lettering)

One of the things I went back-issue hunting for last year was Joe Casey's run on Adventures of Superman. The one where Superman is supposedly a pacifist because Casey went roughly a year without having Supes throw a punch. That's not necessarily a big deal to me, but I usually find Casey's work at least interesting, so it seemed like it was worth a shot.

The run spans about 35 issues, roughly 590-622. Casey doesn't write every issue in there, and some of the others are a collaborative effort. Plus, this is when storylines would run between all the Superman books, each chapter in a different title. Only buying one title means getting the beginning or middle of a bunch of stories and being confused. 

That stops the last year of the run, which is unsurprisingly when it becomes a lot easier to follow what the hell is going on. Up to that point there are stories where some devil knockoff imprisons part of Superman's soul and Lois has to help rescue it, or President Luthor tries to trick him into creating an international incident. Or something about Brainiac being reborn in a baby in the Anti-Matter Universe, then retreating to Metropolis, the Crime Syndicate hot on his tail. Yeah, I didn't know what the hell to make of that one.

Overall, Casey focuses a lot on how Superman is perceived. Usually as an inspirational figure, but sometimes as one who protects a status quo that doesn't serve everyone. Sometimes as a distant figure whose nothing but a problem for the common man.

The artists are all over the place. Derec Aucoin's the closest thing to a regular artist, in a style that reminds me a bit of Scott McDaniel's in the use of shadows, but isn't nearly as angular or jagged. Charlie Adlard's here for two issues with Mxy (now a couple of twins trying to sell encyclopedias?). Mike Wieringo's on the book some in the early issues, Duncan Rouleau pops up for a story where Clark and Lois are able to visit Krypton somehow (I assume the explanation came in one of the other titles). Maybe that's the right approach for stories that vary as widely in setting and tone.

Sunday Splash Page #52

"Pym Needs A Fly-Swatter", in Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes II #4, by Joe Casey (writer), Will Rosado (penciler), Tom Palmer (inker), Wil Quintana (colorist), Comicraft (letterer)

This was the second of two mini-series Joe Casey did expanding on a particular part of early Avengers' history. The first focused on the very beginning of the team, and involved Scott Kolins on art. This one starts up almost immediately after the Vision initially tries to kill the team, then turns on Ultron and is allowed to join. Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor aren't on the roster, so the leader role falls to Hank Pym, with Vision, Wasp, Hawkeye, and Black Panther rounding out the roster. I figure nowadays it'd be T'Challa, or maybe the Wasp. Hawkeye as third choice. Not that he would be my third choice, but I figure if we're talking someone writing the book for Marvel. There's no reason to put any more responsibility on Pym's shoulders than you absolutely have to.

Not having read the issues these events took place in originally, I'm guessing Casey wanted to expand on various security agencies' reactions to the Avengers allowing an artificial being that just tried to kill them on the team. Plus, there's the Vision's early attempts to try and fit in to humanity, T'Challa assuming his identity as Luke Charles, schoolteacher, and Hank's first total nervous breakdown and the emergence of the Yellowjacket persona. Hawkeye and Black Widow are nearing the end of the road as a couple, but I mostly just enjoy Hawkeye being cocky and abrasive. He notices a SHIELD van running surveillance on him and the Vision (mostly Viz) and he walks over and knocks on the side of it to ask for a copy of the tape.

Casey takes that opportunity to present Jan trying to marry a Hank Pym who doesn't even realize he's Pym as her hoping it'll snap him out of this, rather than her figuring however she can get Hank to the altar is OK. I don't know how sound of an idea it is even with that motivation behind it, but it's a little better than what I've heard we got originally. 

Rosado's artwork feels a bit like John Buscema's in the musculature of the characters, that might be Tom Palmer's inking. There are times it doesn't feel as fluid as I'd prefer in the fight scenes, but in this issue, Hank has a nightmare that's a combination of his war against those Adaptoids and his own fears of inadequacy. The Adaptoids are swarming over him, and there's one being crunched between his teeth as he tries to fight them off with a wild eye. That's suitably creepy.

Some People Have More Immediate Concerns Than World Saving

I was rereading Joe Casey and Dustin Nguyen's WildCats version 3.0 over the weekend. I don't think I'd reread them since I originally purchased them, but there's been a lot of other things to read.

Most of it revolves around the former warrior cyborg Spartan, having been put in charge of the Halo Corporation by its late founder (and leader of the WildCats back in their more extreme, Jim Lee drawn days), to improve the world. There's another thread in there about Grifter still being used to doing things how they used to do them, with bullets and cool one-liners, and struggling to adapt (or to avoid adapting).

Beyond the fact the thing ends before the Halo Corp. gets much beyond making themselves a big deal in the news and generically spooking the Powers That Be with their batteries that never run out, the biggest issue is it's a limited scope. It's admittedly difficult to buy into a story that argues some enlightened plutocrat is going to use his corporate resources to save the world where the governments have failed. OK, so the governments failing because they have too much invested in the status quo isn't hard to believe.

But the whole thing is very top-down, and ignores certain issues at the same time that it seems to be trying real hard to convince us how different it's being. Yes, batteries which last forever, and more critically, car batteries that function as fuel cells, eliminating the need for petroleum in vehicles, is a pretty big deal. We're told this is putting all other battery manufacturers out of business, and will presumably eventually do the same to a lot of automotive manufacturers. Halo Corp's factories are shown to be entirely automated. Left unmentioned, that a lot of people will be losing their jobs. No pages spent on anything Halo Corporation might be doing to help those people.

One might presume the well-meaning cyborg businessman has some ideas he will try to implement down the line, when he's finished buying product placement in big-budget action movies. I'm sure he's envisioning a world where people have their needs met, and don't have to worry about rent, or medical bills. But while he's busy with such important matters as placing an accountant in charge of a CIA front operation as a mole, all those unemployed folks still have bills to pay right now. And we clearly can't trust the incompetent, self-interested government to do anything for them.

A little surprised Casey didn't do anything with the government trying to fight a p.r. war. Condemn Halo's actions on news programs or through negative press from friendly outlets. Run lots of false information about negative effects. Instead they opted to try and assassinate the guy. Because I guess they were still operating in the old ways, like Grifter.

What Do You Do When There's No More Covert Action To Be Had?

I picked up four volumes of WildCats, 2.0 I guess, a few months ago, mostly because I was curious to see how it lead into version 3.0, the two trades of which I purchased when DC released them over the last couple years. Mostly, it's made me want to go back and reread version 3.0, now that I better understand how things got to that point, but I did have some other thoughts.

- The first volume does lay out the basic idea very well. All these various people were brought together to help fight this war against the Daemonites that's been raging across the universe for ages. Except they'd recently found out the war's been over for some time, and the powers that be simply took their sweet time tracking down all the remaining pockets of fighting to let them know. So the team members are trying to decide what to do next. And the answers are pretty varied. Grifter reverts back to old habits, Zealot decides it's a good time to clear up some loose ends, Voodoo doesn't really have anything to do, which makes her a bit more obviously adrift than some of the others, but she also seems more comfortable with her life than the rest.

- Spartan gets the most interesting task, being left an entire corporation to run as he sees fit, with only the basic idea to use it to help humanity. It's interesting to see him saddled with this, since I feel like he's the only member of the team that never really had a choice about fighting. The others were drafted, but he was literally built to fight Daemonite. So what does the android do when his purpose is no longer necessary? And while he clearly believes in the idea of using Halo to improve the world, I'm not sure he has any clue how to do so. It's something entirely outside his realm of experience, so we don't see him do anything with Halo. Most of what he does involves trying to help old teammates, or in one case, helping a cop try and get some new drugs off the streets. But he does that with superpowers, not business acumen. Joe Casey did something similar in his last storyline for Uncanny X-Men, except Archangel did use his money, rather than superpowers. I don't know if that's a case of Casey refining his approach by the time he got to Uncanny, or if he was just trying to underscore the limitations Spartan's dealing with.

- Which is where Noir, a weapons merchant, comes in. Lobdell introduces him in the first volume, as part of a fake weapons buy Spartan's holding. He winds up being hired to be the computer guy, but it's his ambition that sets things in motion for what happens in version 3.0. Because his goals are more mundane (money, power), he can see paths to exploit Spartan (as Jack Marlowe), with his loftier, more ambiguous goals, can't. Those plans are still limited in scope in Noir's hands, because his goals are limited, but he still provides a starting point no one else could.

- It's a nice touch that as Noir berates Spartan and Grifter for being so lacking in vision, he doesn't see that he's fallen into some old super-villain cliche. The double-cross, the big speech about his scheme, it's old-school Bond villainy.  I mean, death traps, idiot minions, not just killing the hero at the first opportunity? He prattles on, never realizing Spartan's letting him reveal his whole scheme, or suspecting that Grifter might be more resilient than he thinks. For all that Noir thinks they're locked in their ways, he ends up like most villains, his ego being his downfall.

- The conspicuous absence of Warblade. He shows up in a flashback story, and one character even comments on his absence, but other than that, he never shows up. He even gets cut out of a picture Dr. Stone has of the old team (well, you can see part of his arm, but otherwise he's out of the picture). I don't know if that's because someone else was planning to use him, or neither writer, first Lobdell and then Casey, had any plans for him. Maybe he adjusted better than the others, walked away with no regrets. Who knows.

- The team as a whole is highly unconcerned with civilian casualties. When Jacob Marlowe (team founder) is trying to draw out an old mistake of his named Kenyan, he basically lets the guy slaughter a casino full of people. Prior to that, he didn't do much to rein in Grifter when he was firing into a crowd of people at Kenyan or beating up cops who tried to arrest him. When Slaughterhouse Smith the 2nd goes on a rampage, there doesn't seem to be much concern for the dozens of women he killed just for having the last name "Marlowe". Heck, even when Maxine Manchester gets torched trying to take Smith down (he shoots fire out of his eyes), neither Spartan nor Grifter seem terribly concerned. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised. Grifter's a merc, and kind of an asshole. Spartan's an android who says he can't feel, and they both tried to keep her out of it, but still.

- I'm not sure whether I buy that bit about Spartan not being able to feel. At times, I can buy it. When he says he isn't sure whether he'll have Maxine repaired (she's a cyborg, heavily machine), well, it seems callous, but from a non-emotional standpoint, Maxine is kind of nuts. She was an anarchist in that looney tunes, burn everything sense, and giving her a robot body with machine guns and stuff is asking for trouble. At the same time, he said he wanted to exterminate Smith for what he did to Voodoo, which suggests he's feeling something (they used to be an item, apparently). And he's capable of surprise, because he was definitely stunned when Grifter told him Zealot was alive. He seemed angry when he saw that car chase on TV, angry enough to teleport out and stop it in broad daylight. Maybe that was a concession to fans wanting more action, and so Casey went with it so he could make Spartan deal with the fallout? I don't know.

- Travis Charest drew the first few issues, before it switched largely over to Sean Phillips (with a couple of issues drawn by Steve Dillon and Bryan Hitch in there). I prefer Charest's design sense to Phillips'. Charest's Kenyan seems more creepy and other worldly (the wide-brimmed hat with pupiless eyes peeking out from underneath helps), while Phillips' just looks like a guy in a suit with a gun. At the same time, some of Charest's page layouts were a bit confusing. He maybe ditches the panel borders a bit too much. Phillips doesn't go that route, so it's at least easy to tell what order things are happening in. Phillips does do some good, moody work. There's a bit in Spartan's confrontation with Slaughterhouse that evoked a real Darkseid vibe, which was very effective. Very spooky too. 'Pray that you have more to give.' Yikes.

I'm Not Sure Who Was Taking Vengeance, To Be Honest

In one of my back issue sprees this spring, I bought Vengeance, the mini-series Joe Casey and Nick Dragotta did last year. I admit, I bought it because I heard Casey used Stacy X and I was curious to see that. I still have a soft spot for the character, to the extent I ignore anything involving her Casey didn't write, for my own benefit. I think the mini-series as a whole turned out to be a chance for Casey to use most of the characters or concepts he'd come up with for Marvel no one else was using, like that Defenders lineup he came up with.

Having admittedly only read it through once, it was an interesting story, even if it doesn't feel like all the threads necessarily hold together. The one about the Red Skull felt somewhat superfluous, and I have no idea what the spectral scientists commenting on the fight were about. Dragotta's artwork reminds me of Marcos Martin's, though, which is never a bad thing, and he makes the monsters pursuing the In-Betweener suitably terrifying.

I did find both the Teen Brigade and the Young Masters of Evil kind of irritating. The Teen Brigade moreso, because they seem to spend a lot of time chastising the super-heroes (like the Defenders) for how they're going about doing things, while patting themselves on the back for how they go about their business. It's akin to someone bragging about how modest they are. It's easy to say you're in it for tradition, not for glory, but when you're clearly glorying in your own exploits, the line of bull starts to fall apart.

I think that was part of the point, but I'm not sure which direction Casey was going with it. Both the Teen Brigade and the Young Masters are the sort of typical frustrated youth, convinced the adults are doing everything wrong, or are focused on the wrong things, the unimportant things. But for all their talk about saving the world without worrying about anyone knowing it, or getting back to real villainy (which seems to be pointless slaughter and chaos, which makes sense given the true villain behind everything), they waste a lot of time hooking up or geeking out over Bullseye's corpse. At the same time, as far as the heroes are concerned, they do spend a lot of time fighting each other, or getting into punchups that don't solve the real problems the world faces (world hunger, climate change, so on). Maybe those aren't the problems the Brigade thinks the heroes should be worrying about, but there's certainly a fair bit of "You're doing it wrong!" in their viewpoint.

What I can decide is whether Casey feels the kids are right, the heroes and villains have lost their ways, and they need to get back to their roots, or if he's making a point that each generation feels this way about the one preceding it, but in reality they all have their blind spots, and the kids are guilty of the same thing they accuse the adults of, just in a different way? I suppose it could be a screed against nostalgia, about wanting things the way they used to be, because the world is going to change, and you can't run back and hide in some time and place you think is idyllic. That might incorporate the In-Betweener, since it tried to hide from its responsibilities in the form of a kid.

Anyway, like I said, an interesting read, and a well illustrated one. I don't know if I'd say splurge on the hardcover (though you can probably find it at reduced cost out their now), but it's worth looking into, especially if you're a fan of Casey's work. I run hot and cold on him myself. I own the two volumes of WildCATS version 3.0, and the 4 trades I could find of 2.0, and it's well-written, but it never totally grabs me. There are ideas I like, that I want to see explored, but Casey never quite seems to get around to it.

What Is The Appeal?

I tell you, to this day I can't figure out why exactly I was excited by Joe Casey's Uncanny X-Men. I mean, I know why I had zero interest in Morrison's X-Men. It was a team with Emma Frost, Scott Summers, and Jean Grey, one of whom shouldn't be a hero, and the other two I'm sick to death of. But Casey's team, for some odd reason, worked.

Archangel: I've haven't really liked him since he went back to the birdy wings. I'm sorry, but those metal wings were frickin' awesome. And he was periodically psychotic, and throwing blades out of the wings, cool! Without them, I thought he'd be kind of lame. But he took over, became the leader. He was kind of bossy, but that was made sense, most of the other people on this team are stubborn, and not big on following commands, so you need someone to rein them in.

Iceman: He became the Guy Gardner of the team, the character I could hate without reservation (though I've never read anything with Gardner in it long enough to hate him). He was a smug, arrogant jerk, who gave the newbie on the team a bunch crap, and even talked crap towards his friends. Still, he was always there in a fight, even when Black Tom impales him with a tree branch (though that's from the Adequate Chuck Austen period, before he started to suck).

Wolverine: On certain occasions, I need a character that likes to maim other sentient beings. Plus, he likes to give whoever is running the team a lot of static. Down with authority! Kalinara's glaring at me right now, while holding a Cyclops poster.

Nightcrawler: I remember when Bendis started New Avengers, he said Spider-Man and Wolverine were one of the great unintentional comedy teams in comics. I wouldn't know, they haven't spent more than five pages together in the entire book so far! Besides, Nightcrawler and Wolverine form a great 'buddy cop' tandem. "Come on Logan, I'm tired of having to teleport you away from the cops for killing people whenever we go out drinking." Come on Elf, lighten up a little." Hmm, I don't think I've quite captured the essence. Whatever. Teleporting is cool. So is speaking German. Plus, he tries to be funny without being good at it. And while not a religious person myself, I always found Kurt's faith to be kind of an interesting facet, and while I didn't think he would really try to enter the clergy - he's too much of a swashbuckler to take a vow of celibacy, like Hal Jordan, except not eternally concussed - I thought it made things kind of interesting until Horrible Chuck Austen decided Kurt was being mentally manipulated the whole time. Cripes.

Chamber: I knew nothing about him. Still don't know much other than he's British, telepathic, ran with Generation X, and can fire energy blasts. I'll be straightforward: I HATE telepaths. For some reason, the whole idea of people being able to get in someone's head bothers me. Actually I know the reason, I wouldn't want people being able to get inside my mind, how rude. And I wouldn't believe them if they said they would never do that to me. But one whose ability is basically just developed to the point of communication, like Chamber's, plus he has a different cool power, plus he didn't want to join the team initially, and never seemed totally onboard with it, though that may be because he was gone so frequently.

Stacy X: Some people hate her. I'm not one of them. Before Austen turned her into Super-Slut, I thought she was progressing nicely, maybe making a few friends, or at least people who trusted her (Logan, Chamber, Nightcrawler). Then Horrible Chuck Austen. . . well, I've said it all before. People didn't like a character who's an 'escort'? Fine, it's called "character development". Watch the character "develop" over time into someone who maybe isn't quite as rude, but still independent, and has friends, and isn't hitting on every person in the Mansion (which was Austen's fault, God I HATE CHUCK AUSTEN!).

The thing I notice is the symmetry. You have two old-school X-Men (Archangel, Iceman), two 2nd-generationers (Wolverine, Nightcrawler), and two relative newbies (Chamber, Stacy).

I think what made the team work was a bunch of them didn't like each other. Drake hated Stacy. Stacy hated Drake. Archangel had never liked Logan. Logan has never gotten along with a person who called themselves his "leader". Chamber really wished he could still be with his pop star girlfriend. Kurt's supposed to be the leader, but he didn't really want the responsibility. If you throw in the Juggernaut or Northstar as the 7th member (all good teams just seem to have seven members, don't they?), that's a team full of abrasive personalities. But they come from enough walks of life, with enough different powers, that they could have been in any number of different stories.

Sadly, Casey didn't last. Nothing good ever does. But, we'll always have those ten issues or so.

Requiem for a Fallen Character

I mentioned last week that I saw a favorite character of mine in Generation M #2. Stacy X showed up, having lost her powers, and was now just another aging(?) 'lady of the evening'. I've had a hard time figuring out what I wanted to post about related to her, and who I'm mad at. It's not Paul Jenkins, though I wish he would have picked a different mutant, and just left me wondering about her. But I had pretty much figured Stacy wasn't one of the few who got to retain her powers (Iceman probably stole her spot. Worthless bastard). I'm not mad at Bendis, or even Quesada, well I am, but not for this. No, it's Chuck Austen who decided Stacy wasn't good enough to be on a book he was writing, and dumped her so he could write "Paige Guthrie and Archangel are in luvvvvv", without Stacy's interest in Archangel to get in the way. Before you suggest I'm being bitter, or paranoid, Chamber was still interested in Paige and he vanished at roughly the same time as Stacy, so take from that what you will.

But this isn't about how much Chuck Austen sucks, or how badly I want to him smack him in the face with a tire iron. Repeatedly. It's about Stacy.

She showed up in Uncanny X-Men #399, courtesy of Joe Casey, as one of the ladies at the X-Ranch, a brothel owned in part by Archangel's company. This apparently not being an example of human/mutant equality, the team goes to shut it down, and instead fails to stop the Church of Humanity from destroying it and killing everyone but Stacy. They described her power as 'phermone control', I thought of it as 'control over biochemical processes', just sounds more scientific. Make you vomit, make you pass out, susceptible to suggestion, and so on. A little limited by her need to make physical contact, but at least she wasn't another telepath. With nowhere to go she sticks with the team, and experiences the problems you would expect having to adjust to a life where you may get boulders thrown at your jet by the Juggernaut fairly often. It isn't clear how much she bought into Xavier's ideas, and she was still 'working', while she was on the X-Men. Wolverine seemed to want to help her, Nightcrawler seemed to grow used to her, and she had a few nice conversations with the nurse, Annie. On the flip side, Iceman disliked her, she chewed out Paige Guthrie, after sensing her interest in Archangel, and in general had trouble fitting in, though Chuck Austen portraying her as a complete slut might have something to do with that. Thanks Chuck, you miserable. . .

I'm probably in the minority, but I thought she had lots of potential. I could have seen her developing something gradually with Nightcrawler (that whole clergy thing never fit with him. He's too much of a swashbuckler to take a vow of celibacy). Logan could have helped her fit in. Or maybe, she never buys into the philosophy. She just stays because she does have some friends, some connections here. Or hell, maybe down the line she leaves anyway, but the way it happened, so forced, so arbitrary, just, ugh. I could see her leaving because she gets that humans will only accept mutants when it's convenient for them, when mutants can be useful, in Stacy's case, providing pleasure. But at the very least, she would have made a bigger deal out of it than just leaving a videotape for Archangel. She had a theatrical streak to her, which is part of why I think she and Kurt could have gotten along well.

Stacy, I hope things turn around for you somewhere down the line. I would have liked for you to have gotten better than this. Hopefully your appearence in X3 will turn out all right.