well, OK.
i was wrong. way wrong. clearly. all appropriate concessions to those who called this.
i was opposed to the whole Xorneto development because a key part of NXM for me has been the idea that the X-Men were moving on into new conflicts, and that there was a certain "passing of the torch" from Xavier to a new generation going on.
to me, Xorn was a major new unknown quantity, a character with seemingly limitless potential to change the dynamics of the X-universe. Magneto's death was the necessary sacrifice to makr the point of transition, the clean break.
that's obviously not the case.
the thing that still bugs me here is the loss of potential. the great unknown has been replaced with a very-well-known. it's really killed a lot of my enthusiasm for the climax of GMs run, and makes me like a lot of the older stuff less in retrospect.
that said, maybe that's the point.
to a certain extent, i was expecting that when Xorn finally stepped up to the plate, something amazing would happen. in some ways, i was hoping for Xorn to save the day, or something. i wanted to believe he was capable of becoming anything.
BB Said: "I'm finding that Xorn solo issue to be even more poignant as it's pretty much Chuck's projection of what he wants Xorn to be, manipulated by Erik."
to a certain extent, Xorn was the embodiment of Xavier's dream. Xorn is exactly what Xavier hoped humanity would become in some sense: peaceful, gentle, and wise, but powerful - a great force for good.
but now, Magneto has killed that. "the dream is over," indeed.
GM's been playing here with a lot of core concepts here, but the one that's really striking me now is the power of ideas to affect the world. the X-Men were revolutionary in terms of superhero concepts in part because the main conflict was, in many senses, ideological, and GM has been playing with that. first, with Magneto-as-pop-culture-icon, and now with Xorn, the embodiment of Xavier's dream, exposed as a sham.
i suppose that what i'm feeling is a sense of disappointment and disillusionment, and a sense of hopelessness. all the progress that i thought was being made is, in some sense, gone, and we have returned to the familiar set of players, the same conflicts that i had hoped we'd left behind.
which, i suppose, is also how the X-Men are feeling at this point in the storyline. Magneto's reappearance has crushed my hopes as much as it's crushed those of the characters in the storyline.
i have to concede that this is a fucking masterful accomplishment. |
