#resurrection protocols

[rei-ismyname]

New York mourns Cyclops

Cyclops was slain very publicly in a plot by the fiendish Doctor Stasis! Hmm, maybe I could get a job writing solicits. Brevoort, holla. I do love that it's Emma who's there to resurrect him and stroke his brow. Jean is off planet, but it's known that they do this on the reg. The secret of Krakoan resurrection protocols must be protected, so the world believes he is truly dead for now.

The Quiet Council forces him to alpha test a battle suit built by Forge intended to protect non-combatants. Using it to pose as CAPTAIN KRAKOA, Scott visits his own memorial at the X-Men's New York treehouse. Duggan really twists the knife here with this devastated child and a wonderfully sincere public memorial. Sure, the Quiet Council or X-Force might have put it on to sell the secret, but there are strangers there weeping over his passing.

Cyclops was this kid's favourite and now he's sad. I really didn't expect this to be honest and it made me emotional. Perhaps it's the soul cruising 'hated and feared'/Cyclops is mutant Hitler stuff the previous decades had been filled with, but I didn't imagine Cyke having fans like this. We've seen them before and he's been on the cover of Rolling Stone, but compared to his previous public death it's night and day. Cyke himself is having some complicated feelings, as you would imagine. What else can he say in a situation like this?

This is a bit more light-hearted. Scott and Synch are chilling in the tree watching Negasonic Teenage Warhead make out with one of her many girlfriends. I love that there's no further analysis of her value as a potential X-Man - Synch thinks that alone means she'll make a fine member one day. I agree and good for her.

It's so sweet of these randos to bake banana bread 'for Cyclops' and give it to ... the first mutant they see? It doesn't get further context so I assume that's the case. I love everyone here - the world needs more love, banana bread, tree sitting, and kindness to strangers. NTW and all the WLW folks should have as many girlfriends as they like - for Cyclops.

[blushingphoenix]

Resurrection Protocols from House of X #5 (2019)

[samasmith23]

Hot dang! This trailer showing more artwork from the upcoming Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant miniseries has gotten me even more hyped to see what Iman Vellani & Sabir Pirzada do with the character as a inhuman/mutant hybrid! And it confirms my previous statement that the accusation from some fans that they’re “erasing Kamala’s culture & ethnicity” are bullcrap since not only does Kamala look like her normal self in he artwork present (her nose actually looks correct here in contrast to the Hellfire Gala preview pages where she’s resurrected; seriously, her nose looks incredibly off there…) but we get several apperances of her supporting cast like Bruno, her Ammi & Abu, and older brother Amir and his wife Tyesha & baby son Malik as well!

Like, as long as the actual Ms. Marvel solo-titles are contained to be written by Muslim authors, I feel a lot more confident less worried about the current direction of Kamala’s character like a lot of other fans are.

I just wish that Vellani & Pirzada were writing an ongoing for Kamala instead of a 4-issue miniseries, since for whatever reason Marvel has not let Kamala have an ongoing since March of 2021 when Saladin Ahmed’s Magnificent Ms. Marvel run wrapped up at Issue #18 (even though Kamala’s solo-ongoing titles lasted for a total of 75-issues under G. Willow Wilson & Saladin Ahmed’s pens). While the miniseries released in-between Magnificent and Kamala’s fridging in Amazing Spider-Man (2022) #26 have been very solid like Samira Ahmed’s Ms. Marvel: Beyond the Limit, I’m honestly baffled as to why Marvel hasn’t given Kamala another ongoing for quite awhile despite her massive success and popularity both in and outside of comics (she not only had a successful MCU Disney+ series, but was also the main star in the Marvel’s Avengers video game).

So if the Vellani & Pirzada penned Ms. Marvel: The New Mutant miniseries is successful, can we please finally have a new Ms. Marvel ongoing? It’s seriously long overdue for Kamala!

[karenxmenfan]

X-Factor (2021)

[wherethedragonends]

Inferno.1/Jonathan Hickman/Valerio Schiti/David Curiel/Joe Sabino/Tom Muller/Lauren Amaro/Annalise Bissa/Jordan D White/CB Cebulski/Marvel

[rei-ismyname]

How do you think about the krakoan resurrections, narratively, I’ve been reading more of the Krakoan line and while I’ve enjoyed the worldbuilding and the plotting related to the resurrection process(like how big of a deal it was for the secret to get out), I do appreciate it’s gone.

I feel letting everyone have a get out of jail free card, with exceptions to people who don’t want to get brought back(even then that didn’t work, good one Erik), spoils the stakes a little, and also funny in a morbid sort of way that despite all their suicide missions and long odds, it’s only now that our major xmen are dropping off like flies for these multiple deaths.

Apologies if this was incoherent, just observations i have reading so far

Worry not, it coheres well enough! A great question :).

I love it! I thought it was an amazing achievement for the mutants to have and a luminous yet fraught foundation to build a country and culture around. Five mutants working in concert to resurrect people! What a concept, and the mutant circuit itself was taken to exciting places even when it was mundane. It was a compelling developing world building choice in the need for secrecy while still being quite fragile. There's not as much redundancy as they'd like, for instance - though fortunately they didn't all die at once.

Of course, the flipside of that is how the worst person on the island managed to subvert it and burn the universe. That was fun too. It's no small thing to have power over life and death, and even seeing the younger mutants become so cavalier about it felt new and interesting.

Comic book deaths rarely feel like anything more than a setback, and the convoluted or unexplained ways people return tend to feel rote and predictable. I can't get excited about a solicit saying 'next issue an X-Man dies!' or similar because I know it's a temporary inconvenience to goose sales. In most cases creators already know when or how they're coming back. I didn't really see it as a get out of jail free card - more a paradigm shift that challenged writers to introduce more interesting stakes.

Taking that arbitrary, low stakes genre convention and pushing it to its logical endpoint struck me as a clever way to move past that tiresome sensationalism. Death doesn't have to be the only stakes, especially when mutants have more to lose than ever. A nation, vulnerable to external threats. A society built on quicksand. Bad faith actors living next door. Geopolitics! Any mutant can return without preamble to this brave new world, for good or ill. It wasn't a perfect safety net either - Otherworld, Arakko, dying publicly, the secrecy, requiring proof of death, the clone issue, etc all altered the paradigm with new stakes.

In short, HoxPoX stopped pretending that death was final or even meaningful and found new stakes to explore. I don't think Krakoa would have been as powerful without it, narratively and thematically. The fact that warriors were prioritised and precogs secretly banned set up dominos to explode in everyone's face. Mainly Chuck and Mags. The power they exercised over Mystique, for example, was so fucked up. That was always going to ignite and it didn't disappoint. They solved for death but they didn't solve for life - and that's the tricky part. As powerful as resurrection is, it's just as powerful a thing to have weaponised against you.

I do wish we got a book about The Five as characters, exploring their family unit, the pressure and position, the religious awe surrounding them. They're all pretty interesting people who barely knew each other beforehand (except Egg and Tempus.) They appeared in books here and there, but X-Factor and IXM (and HoxPoX to a degree) were their most substantial appearances. COVID happened at a terrible time for X-Men comics and messed up publication but I'm still happy with what we got.

As for how I feel about resurrection protocols being off the table (except for Chuck, apparently. Nevermind that it doesn't work that way) - it was inevitable and I think I've mostly just accepted it. From The Ashes is very back to basics and it wouldn't really fit, so I'm happy it's not being used RN. Definitely think R-LDS is a cynical and shallow idea taking shots at something wonderful for little gain.

Thanks for the ask! I hope it makes sense.

[wherethedragonends]

New Mutants.21/Vita Ayala/Rod Reis/Travis Lanham/Joe Caramagna/Tom Muller/Martin Simmonds/Jonathan Hickman/Nick Russell/Annalise Bissa/Sarah Brunstad/Jordan D White/CB Cebulski/Marvel

[wherethedragonends]

Excalibur.22/Tini Howard/Marcus To/Erick Arciniega/Ariana Maher/Tom Muller/Mahmud Asrar/Matthew Wilson/Jonathan Hickman/Nick Russell/Annalise Bissa/Jordan D White/CB Cebulski/Marvel