I’m writing this after a week of U.S. Republicans screaming at women, telling them to shut up about sexual assault. There’s no time in which X-men Red’s overt politics should not be celebrated. More people should write like Tom Taylor, and as Chris Claremont continues to. X-men Red argues for truth and compassion, and we’re reminded again and again that these aren’t easy to stand up for.
X-men Red was on a downswing for me since the spectacular #5. I found 6–7 rather unsatisfying. It’s hard; I want Taylor to say what he says, and yet the storytelling becomes burdened by clunky dialogue, too large a cast, and characters standing around in Atlantis, waiting for Cassandra Nova to do something.
#8 emerges out to give us an honest-to-good resolution, and the somewhat forgotten Storm finally has something to do.
Storm’s stubborn resolution is beautifully signaled by her upturned chin; she is fierce. Kurt’s such an old hand. “Floating above the ocean? Nothing to it. I’ve always trusted Ro.”
There continues to be wonderful skewering of our media coverage, which Taylor delights in, with a series of conversations between anchors throughout the arc:
The understated glee on the anchorwoman’s face is great. “I’m a professional!”
So I’m happy to report that the Red team moves against Cassandra Nova—and their own coverage—in a meaningful way. There is an ambitious spread that involves Trinary fighting the sentinites, with help of the entire team, but primarily of the women: Jean, Laura, Gabby, and Storm.
Now come the questions. Strap in.
The battle feels anticlimactic. For one, Trinary unleashes a power that we never learned about until the moment the plot needed it.
She says, “My mutation activated when I was twelve ... I tried to protect the world from the worst of what I encountered [Internet trolling and hate speech]. I removed as much ugliness as I could. I absorbed it.” This is a fascinating idea; Trinary’s mutation is far more complicated than one expected on first read. If she can absorb and deploy the emotions communicated in technology, I would rapidly reclassify her an an Omega-level mutant. The single Sentinel she controls is child’s play for her.
That the sentinites, bots of misinformation and hatred, are destroyed by hatred, makes for an uneasy parable. I’m not quite sure how it works; it seems just as likely that the sentinites would be empowered by Trinary’s upload of “zettabytes of spite.” Does hatred really destroy hatred?
On another quibble, this time aesthetic: despite one spread in which we see her hard at work, we are in the unfurnished Atlantis too much. It looks like an episode of Star Trek: all the action takes place on the bridge, with people standing in position.
But there isn’t a tight budget on special effects. Taylor and Carnero should have conceived something truly, truly spectacular of the swarms of sentinites being overwhelmed, either in the physical world or in cyber space. Besides that one spread, we see what Gabby sees, which is this:
As with the too-large cast who are often missing or forgotten, these empty rooms grow tiresome.
The hand-holding is a nice Phoenix callback.
Speaking of Phoenix, Rachel Grey will be manipulated by the nth time, now by Cassandra Nova. Mesmero just had his hands on her in X-men Gold. A shame.
Here’s another question. Forge is the mutant, who, under Cassandra Nova’s thrall, creates the sentinites on a mass scale. Now, I love Forge. But wouldn’t it be more complicated that a mutant was complicit in engineering his own destruction? Yes, we’re working in all metaphorical terms: Cassandra is a Sauron-like vehicle for real hatred in the hearts of real people. But if everyone is manipulated to work for her, it does make the morality of Taylor’s universe rather black and white.
Even if that’s how our current political landscape appears sometimes.
I'm trying not be be upset about season 6. Basically everything I've heard about I either dislike or don't care about. There are spoiler things out from a few folks but nothing has been written and they haven't started filming and we all know Glee turns on a dime. So I'm just going to try and ignore that nagging feeling.
