In this day and age, Shawn, the biggest favor you can do for a character you love is to turn them into a murdering badass. Once the character you love is willing to "cross that line," you've made him or her into someone the fans can love as much as you do.

One of the scariest things I have ever heard from any creator anywhere was said by Mark Waid as he was leaving a Q&A session at a convention. He had somewhere else he had to be, and the fans still had tons of questions to ask him about the upcoming "Threeboot" restart.

Waid assured the fans, "No one loves the Legion more than I do!"

I really don't think "love" is the missing element in modern comics. Storytelling itself maybe. Craftsmanship. Respect, certainly, which is a very different emotion than love.

"Love" is too extreme. Too many egregious behaviors can be excused or justified in the name of "love." Waid made Colossal Boy, formerly a human farmboy exposed to a meteorite, a giant from a planet of giants whose super-power was that he could turn "small," or in other words, the same size as everyone else in the Legion. He wanted to be called "Micro Lad!" Funny, right? Phantom Girl who hails from an interdimensional world kept talking to people "back home" while she was having conversations with her fellow Legionnaires, because she was really in both places at the same time. Funny. Supergirl wound up in the 30th Century at one point and convinced herself the whole ongoing experience was just a funny dream she was having. Issue after issue of Supergirl laughing about how the people in this dream were all so funny and wondering if she would wake up soon...

None of these are outrightly terrible things, but they do show a sort of irreverent lack of respect for the conventions of direct storytelling and the characters as they had been portrayed at any point previously. Hey, the LSH could take a little lightening up after some of their draggy, bummer incarnations, right? And it's only kidding around. You can do that with people you love...

Except now everyone's stuck with a sort of halfway "bwa-ha-ha-ha" tone to the characters from then on, in amongst all of the torture and planetary genocides required of modern comics. Colossal Boy's just a one-note joke with the "wrong name." Deal with it. Hey, it was only done out of love!!

I don't know. "Love," especially the kind we see these days, doesn't seem like the right approach.

Easy enough to say. I could say I was a devout Christian. Wouldn't make it so, tho, would it?

MILESTONE: 80,000 posts

^ And suddenly, my imagination is running wild at the thought of:

JB Presents The Bible: Secret Origins

I get the feeling that creators use the word "love" as a quick and easy way of reassuring fans that they won't be doing harm to a character.

After all, Sam Raimi said he was "a fan" and "loved" Spider-Man, and we saw where that went. Just because a creator says that they love a character does not mean that they understand the character, or know how to write him/her.

Actions speak louder than words.

After all, Sam Raimi said he was "a fan" and "loved" Spider-Man, and we saw where that went. Just because a creator says that they love a character does not mean that they understand the character, or know how to write him/her.

••

"Love", of course, often carries an unspoken "but I can do it BETTER!"

The White Queen romance seems to me to be just another iteration of a Claremont theme done again and again in the book, and that's the attempted reformation of villains by having them join the team.

The X-Men's history of this goes back to making Wanda and Pietro sympathetic characters readers wanted to switch sides. Later, Banshee and Changeling both joined the team. As for Claremont's use of the theme, once it worked with Rogue, he seemed willing to take any villain into the mansion and try to "spin" them into a conflicted anti-hero/ "noble on levels you couldn't possibly comprehend" warrior.

The villain usually faces potential rejection and a lot of suspicion ("Aren't you going to invite her in?" "If it were up to me, 'Roro, I'd cut out her heart.") before ultimately proving themselves to their team-mates. Once their worth is demonstrated they either stick with the team or strike out on their own, their own particular set of moral and ethical issues proving incompatible with Xavier's "goody-goody" Dream...

The White Queen's romance with Mr. X-Men himself simply allowed for Morrison to write those standard X-Men conflicts on another level as well. While I don't approve of the whole "Jean would have wanted it this way, Please, by all means, use her gravesite as a motel bed..." approach to the storyline, I don't see it as the "jump the shark" moment many others do, given Scott's previous infatuation, marraige, and abandonment of Madelyne Pryor/ The Goblin Queen. Scott's been poorly written for decades now. The White Queen insanity is at least interesting from a lurid, tabloid-y perspective...

Besides, Claremont had been "softening" Emma for years prior by having her truly love and want the best for her Hellions and her school. Whatever she was at the time of her inception, Claremont had long since "complicated" her into being no worse than other villains who've joined the team, such as the at-one-time psychotically sadistic Rogue and the "I knew Anne Frank personally" Magneto...

The X-Men's history of this goes back to making Wanda and Pietro sympathetic characters readers wanted to switch sides. Later, Banshee and Changeling both joined the team. As for Claremont's use of the theme, once it worked with Rogue, he seemed willing to take any villain into the mansion and try to "spin" them into a conflicted anti-hero/ "noble on levels you couldn't possibly comprehend" warrior.

+++++++

The inherent difference with Wanda, Pietro, and the Banshee, of course, is that they were not established as cold-hearted villains from the start, unlike the White Queen--or Magneto!

Wanda and Pietro were clearly uncertain of Magneto's grand, evil plans, but still felt obligated to repay him for saving their lives. And the Banshee was being forced to commit crimes by Factor Three, who made him wear an explosive headband.

After reading the entire original X-Men run in order a while back, and seeing just how evil Magneto was, it's annoying to know that one of Marvel's greatest villains was made "sympathetic" later on.

Doctor Doom, while somewhat tragic, is not exactly sympathetic. But his code of honor makes him fascinating.

The Red Skull represents the most evil aspects of Nazism--he's totally irredeemable.

Magneto is the next step in the Skull's direction--he was a kind of super-powered Nazi, who wanted to rally his "master race" and enslave all of humanity. Magneto represented exactly what the X-Men were created to fight against. In the mutant age, Magneto represents a sort of escalation of the Nazis' mad plans for conquest.

He wasn't merely an ideological rival to Xavier (a Malcolm X to Xavier's MLK, so to speak)--Magneto was a megalomaniacal monster!  Softening him and giving him "noble" motives diluted the whole point of the X-Men's existence.