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Topic: Et tu, Moira!? Or...what makes a mutant - SPOILERS Post ReplyPost New Topic
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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 09 August 2019 at 1:12pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

Also, as a note, they've established that Days of Future Past was at the end of one of her lives, so that remains an alternate timeline and implies that she took action the next time through to make sure it didn't happen.

••

Huh. I thought the X-Men did that.

This has all the earmarks of CRISIS. "We're going to clean up all these mixed up timelines and universe!" Yeah. And make it worse than it was before.

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Steve De Young
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Posted: 09 August 2019 at 1:12pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply

Does this make sense though? We the viewers have only ever been looking at the one timeline, right? At no point have we been jumping from one timeline to another throughout the history of the publication. (Except for stories like DOFP). Seems like a stretch to tell the readers that at any point, we may have been seeing one timeline or another.
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The idea is that we've been consistently following Moira's current timeline.  So the timeline shifts are the various times she's died.

This basically lets Hickman, at the conclusion of the current mini-series, have a streamlined X-continuity from which to make a fresh start.  It lets him bring characters back whose deaths were pointless and/or stupid.  It lets him take characters who were mangled by previous writers (looking at you, Cyclops) and return them to their classic form.  And it lets him do all that in-continuity without having to make up contrived explanations for every one of these changes.  This one Moira retcon takes care of all of it. 
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John Byrne
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Posted: 09 August 2019 at 1:16pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

Ignoring the mess not being an option?

When I took over FANTASTIC FOUR, Reed and Ben were far too young to have served in WW2. But I didn't do a complex multi-part "saga" explaining how they could have. I just did five years on the book and never mentioned it.

But current writers seem to have lost that gift. Everything has to be mentioned. Repeatedly.

(Arguably Chis laid the foundation for this, with his endless references to Phoenix after her death.)

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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

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Posted: 09 August 2019 at 1:19pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

The idea is that we've been consistently following Moira's current timeline. So the timeline shifts are the various times she's died.

••

Never realized "Moira" was short for "Mary Sue."

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Steve De Young
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Posted: 09 August 2019 at 1:19pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply

Ignoring the mess not being an option?
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 I agree that this would be the best option, JB, but I don't know if the handful of people still buying monthly X-Men comics (at the relatively much higher average age than your FF readers of whom I was one) would let him get away with it.
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Dale E Ingram
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Posted: 09 August 2019 at 1:24pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

This graphic* from the book might clear up what is happening, or it will confuse matters even more.

I really don't think that Hickman was telling us that we've been jumping from one timeline to another. I think that he's telling us that although we have been seeing one timeline all along in the comics, Moira has lived through nine others that we were unaware of previously. 

*Editing to add: Writer Jonathan Hickman sure does loves infographics in his comics.






Edited by Dale E Ingram on 09 August 2019 at 1:29pm
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Eric Ladd
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Posted: 09 August 2019 at 1:28pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

Adam, thanks for the reviews. I disagree with them because of how much this borrows from Groundhog Days/Edge of Tomorrow mechanic. The concept reads like a What If book. The art looks nice, but if X-Men continuity needs fixing that is a big red flag to me.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 09 August 2019 at 1:28pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

I agree that [ignoring the mess] would be the best option, JB, but I don't know if the handful of people still buying monthly X-Men comics (at the relatively much higher average age than your FF readers of whom I was one) would let him get away with it.

••

Are they going to come to his house/office and threaten him at gunpoint?

Current writers seem also to have forgotten that the FANS can also be ignored.

Never give the fans what they think they want. -- Stan Lee

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John Byrne
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Posted: 09 August 2019 at 1:29pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

…Moira has lived through nine others that we were unaware of previously.

••

And we seemed no worse off for this lack of knowledge.

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Shane Matlock
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Posted: 09 August 2019 at 1:31pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply

It does seem like a lot is still getting ignored and not mentioned, like how Moira's first in continuity death was written off as her being replaced by a Shi'ar golem. Shades of Alica skrull there, whoever came up with that. I still think this timeline is an alternate one but he doesn't want to say so because the readers will think it doesn't count or something. For one thing Professor X is acting particularly odd and it doesn't seem like a case of Bendis, where he just doesn't know the character and writes him badly off model, and Xavier got the knowledge of Moira's past lives fairly early on in this time line, which isn't the case in the X books of old. Or never seemed to be the case anyway. I'm curious why the one life was not shown and was skipped over.
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Adam Schulman
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Posted: 09 August 2019 at 1:33pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply

Marvel got along for decades without a "multiverse".

***

Did it? It all started with Roy Thomas's Squadron Supreme story in THE AVENGERS in the early 1970s. And then all the WHAT IF? stories (again, Thomas initiated this) in the mid-70s. And those stories weren't clearly treated as "imaginary stories" of the 1950s/60s Superman and Batman variety, if I recall correctly.

I do find the existence of a Marvel multiverse a bit annoying -- I like DC having a multiverse, but -- aside from "Hypertime," which is essentially the Schrodeinger's Cat idea all over again a la Marvel -- DC's multiverse is simple. 

Gardner Fox laid it all out very simply in "Flash of Two Worlds." Different universes "vibrating at different frequencies," dating back to the beginning -- or near the beginning -- of existence. Easy to understand. No "branches," aside from possible future stories which are only...possible. (And which I can always just not read -- no DC character from the future has hung around in the present a la Rachel Summers, and thank...um..."the Voice" or whatever "God" is named at DC these days.)


Edited by Adam Schulman on 09 August 2019 at 1:34pm
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John Byrne
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Posted: 09 August 2019 at 1:34pm | IP Logged | 12 post reply

Shades of Alica skrull there, whoever came up with that.

••

Tom DeFalco.

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