OK, just to clear things up a bit:

And this is not a reckon. This is the original, take no substitute X-Men # 137. The Phoenix force is already being mentioned as something different than Jean. JB took this concept a little further in order to have Jean return. The Jean whom neither he nor Chris wanted dead in the first place. 

Of course, in X-Men #125, Chris writes something close to what the guys above described (before dying, she achieved her full potentioal as a psi, became pure thought and transformed into Phoenix). But, those thoughts were Jean's, which maybe considered false thoughts for a number of reasons.

The words in the pages above are spoken by an authority in such matters, the Watcher, and so these words carry a whole lot more weight.

I'm of two minds here. I liked and enjoyed JB's work on the X-Men and I like and enjoyed GM's(1) as well.  There's almost no 'other' sustained runs on the X-men [after Stan & Jack] that I like as much, and which *within the run, are good and consistant character-driven stories*.

The trouble is, I think, the baggage.

CC&JB produce a clear run of consistant characters, but they're beginning from a relatively clean 'starting pallette'.

By the time GM begins he inherits a LONG run of inconsistant rubbish.  Is Scott honourable or a loser who looks second rate to Wolverine, runs to a Jean look-a-like as soon as she's dead, then dumps her when Jeans alive again(1), and is prone to run off in a strop?  Is Magneto a) Hitler or b) Malcolm X.

He also isn't helped by editors, admitting later that he thought Sage really did have a computer brain, and wrote her accordingly. Since the title (so far as I recall, always shipped to schedule) there should have been time to amend this is script, if the editor was keeping an eye on X-men continuity.  Personally, reading it without knowing anything about Sage, it worked fine for me.

GM's run is trying to cut the Gordian note of heavy nigh-incomprehensible continuity. This isn't mind reading he says as much in the manifesto/statement of what he wants to do, that is printed in the hardcovers/softcover collections.

If every 'event depicted' in the X-books between JB's leaving and GM's arrival was recalled and 'harped' on at every point in GM's run - and then subject to detailed retconning - it would be as unworkable as if characters in soaps realised that 'their street has an incredible family-happiness destroying curse on it' given the rate of divorce/death/murder/drama over the real world, or if there really was [UK TV reference] a group of villages called Midsomer where the murder rate is about 4000% the UKs largest city, but everyone finds each new murder to be rather surprising.

Q "what's phoenix?"  About 5 canonical answers seem to have come or gone over time.

A(1) Original, Jean further mutated (secondary mutation already established note) from Marvel Girl.

A(2) Jean replaced by an alien powerful psychic force. Because it copied her exactly, its actions were hers.

A(3) An effect Jean displays when using very powerful TK

A(4) An alien consciousness that may replace Jean if she uses very powerful TK

A(5) As A(4) but the consciousness is still in some sense Jean's 'outside time' 'in the white room'.

GM's run whizzes quickly through A3 to A5 of these.

I think GM *did* do violence to the original character of Scott, but other posters seem to have forgotten that the 'damaged' Scott and the 'reformed' Emma were the starting characters he was given. 

By contrast I like how he pretty much restored Magneto to 'traditional psychopath/murderer'.  This is swings and roundabouts.

GM also left in enough 'trapdoors' and get outclauses.  [The drug 'Kick' being 'That Which Survives' in a new-affect-Mutants-form, the alleged 'extinction gene' in humanity being its 'abandonment of them for the mutants'] to explain the aberrant behaviour of everyone who tried it - including off stage Emma, who comments she's tried it to understand the effects on the students.]

When people did like his changes they cry foul, when they like them they go yay! but the quality of each individual change looks to me like a good use of the 'illusiory change' we've often said we wanted, while also cleaning house of a lot of dead wood. 

There's also a fair amount of selective recall, ie 'Scott cripples students'. Re-reading this I find he uses disabling force on suspected murderers of humans, who are actively attacking humans, after a clear and unambiguous warning, and knocking one out.  They chose to attack him after his warning.

(1) Not always the case.  The end of his Doom Patrol run is a ghastly travesty of The Chief, after he himself has written him very strongly elsewhere, and some of his work I find insubstantial on a re-read [The overpraised Invisibles, and the nigh-incomprehensible Filth]. Conversely I thought his JLA very good, although I can understand how annoying his take on Orion must have been when Orion was a main character in, aand 'owned by' the JK4W title and JB.

(2) If I recall 'correctly, Madeyline Prior turned out to be some sort of inccubus-clone in 'Inferno' but Scott didn't know that when he ditched her.

Simon BJ

A few points

1. cott did not go running to Maddyline Pryor when he saw her. He was actually hesitant, because he feared he was only attracted, because of her appearence to Jean.

2. While he did leave his wife and son after Jean returned. I think he gets a pass because of the situation. His dead lover had returned from the grave. If I recall (and I could be wrong.), didn't Scott and Jean get engaged before the final battle? By the time he attempted contact, they had disappeared.

 
<<Morrison always leave certain things to be interpreted by the readers. IMO, that's one of the parts that I found enjoyable about his writing.>>

Agreed that he does that.  That's why I liked to read his interviews.  Sometimes I'd see 3 different Morrison supporters say that he was trying to say 3 different things with a particular story.  He tells you in his interviews what he's saying.

What Planet X came out, I saw some say that he was portraying Magneto as sympathetic, a pawn of Sublime.  His take on Magneto was posted here.
I don't see where he finds him sympathetic at all.

His level of openendedness, let the reader fill in the blanks, isn't really my favorite, but to each his own. 

<<Though I agree, would that have made any difference in your dislike of the handling of Scott?>>

No, absolutely not, but that's not the point being addressed.  I mean in this specific plot point.  We're addressing the certainty with which you blamed this on Apocalyse's survival of the fittest philosphy and whether or not it could reasonably be ascertained
in the actual text.

<<IMO, most of the great runs in comic book history share similar traits, that being one of them. They always engender some negative reaction, but the reason they are memorable is because they dare to do something different. Even though I didn't liked NXM really that much, I prefer it to the years of stagnation and dullness of the runs before it.>>

NOTHING is universally liked.  I've yet to see the comic
that this was the case with.  The creator who didn't have some dislike of his run.  If they had the net in the 80s, I think you could have found some detractors
for Byrne/Claremont.

Put me down for dullness and stagnation over character assassination any day of the week.   
I recall a Peter Sanderson column about Identity Crisis.  Someone had said something like, they may hate it, but they can't ignore it.  Sanderson's thought was I'd much rather someone be indifferent to what I write than hate it.

Well, that's Quesada.  You may like it or you may hate it, as long as it gets a reaction.  Maybe I'm in the minority, but when I'm outraged I drop books.  Not that I'm agruing with his track record.  Not my cup of tea, but he's not paid to just please me.  His regime sells comics.  

<<I found it to be generally very well received. As I said, Whedon is an expert in manipulating nostalgia.>>

Really don't know his stuff.  Never watched an episode
of Buffy or Angel. 

<<I also find it difficult to reconcile it with his run, but I believe it was more about Morrison trying to recreate the daring and excitement of the CC/JB run.>>

Perhaps that was his meaning.

 
 <<I don't think I said always. But it had a precedent. That's what I meant. I know you had already said it was different discussion, but I still consider it relevant when it comes to how Scott has been written during his history. Then there is his brief fling with Psylocke in the 90's. I know it was kwannon's influence there, it wasn't really his fault, and maybe neither was when he fell for Madelyne Prior. But it's not such a leap to say that perhaps, his love for Jean wasn't as absolutely strong as it seemed.>>

Please, you've got better than Psylocke, right?  Not that he ever actually did anything, but I recall it being heavily implied, at the time, that she screwed with his head. 

Maddie was when Jean was dead, 30 issues after.  Now, I disagree with him marrying anyone in the space of 6 issues, certainly someone who looks just like Jean Grey.  With Claremont, though, there are a crapload of great Cyclops issues to go along with the bad.   I never said Morrison's Scott is the only time I ever thought he was mischaracterized. 

We can line it up, the percentage of times he's been screwed up versus not and I know which I think will win. 

<<I was referring to Scott/Ugly John and ascribing intent that may or not be there. 
 
 
I asked because I considered it two different things. In that case, it was my interpretation of the story, based on what I knew about Apocalypse and Scott's comments about his influence. In the case of Magneto, yeah, I was merely mindreading. I don't know if Morrison hates or likes the character. Or it is possible that he had a vision of the character as it was before Claremont added to it, and thought his actions inexcusable.>>

If he wants Magneto to be a rat bastard, there is precedent for that.  Although this is a whole other level of evil.  He plans on exterminating every human on the planet.  Check that, keep a few around for cleaning sewers, IIRC.  No 90s version, who many view as a return to evil, did that.  Silver Age Magneto, maybe.

He didn't stop there.  He made him ineffuctual, a bit of a parody, something that should be put out to pasture.  He believed the Magneto/Xavier dynamic was tired and old and it showed in his writing. 
I still don't think that necessarily means malicious intent.  It's how he views it.

<<Sure, just like we have already said, we accept retcons and interpretations of the characters that are in line with how we view them, and reject those who aren't. In the case of Magneto, it could be argued that it was how he was originally portrayed it, and Morrison acknowledged his 'honorable' side in the Xorn masquarade and the internal conflict during Planet X. Which was defeated by the evil, terrorist side of Magneto.>>

We agree 100% on how retcons are viewed.  And we all bring our personal interpetations to the characters. That's how some fans of the same characters can see them differently.

 <<Indeed. I saw many of those comments.>>

Every criticism I've made, in this thread, I saw staunchly defended by Morrison supporters.
Over 3 years.

 
 <<My take is that Scott wouldn't necesarilly feel as strongly about it as Jean. Didn't he defended himself by saying it wasn't real, or something like it? But it is to Jean. Could the same be said if neither were telepaths as you suggested?>>

Emma said it's just thoughts as well, to encourage him to keep doing it.  The catfight issue has Scott saying it's just thoughts, but then saying, why does it feel so wrong?

We still disagree in that it's not ambiguous relative to Scott/Jean.  Scott shouldn't feel that way except that he's treated like a novice in telepathy instead of someone who has had, on some level, a telepath in his head for some time.  In character, he should know what a betrayal Jean would view it as.

It can still be ambiguous without the telepath in the couple.  The guilty party justifies it as thoughts and the cheated upon spouse feels cheated on.  Neither has ever had the experience previous to this to judge it against.  Scott has.

This is exactly what I meant before.  Openended.
2 people take it different ways.  I would bet money that Morrison wouldn't say that he was trying to say it was even worse where Jean was concerned.  Guess we'll never know for sure.

<<That's what I'm saying. I don't think he showed a side stronger than the other.>>

I thought you said that, for Jean. he's trying to convey that the pschic sex was worse.  Guess I should go recheck.  IMO, he's definitely not saying that psychic is worse.  The question for the reader , is what they're doing really cheating?

Don't misunderstand, in the Marvel Universe, I think it is even if it's only the third party that's a telepath.
World class telepaths make you think or feel anything just like it's real.  With Jean/Scott, I don't think it works as ambiguous at all for the reasons I stated.  

 <<No, but I believe it's the most effective, and most apt, given the storyline.>.

And we still disagree, fundamentally.

 
<<Still, under is officially retconned, it can be argued that the characters refered to her as a manner of speaking. (though I faintly remember that Morrison said that, for him, the real Jean was the one who died in UXM #137)>>

I can think of 3 different times she was referred to as that character.  For me, that takes precedent over what he might have said in an interview.  Emma referred to Jean as the person who attacked her in the DPS.  That's pretty black and white, not personal interpretation.

 <<The way I understood it, Weapon Plus was the name of the mother organization which created the several Weapons. Kane was a member of the part of it that created the tenth weapon. Just as Isaiah Bradley was an earlier testing of the super soldier formula which was part of the first weapon.>>

I had stopped buying by the time of the second referencing. I have the first Fantomax issues.  My recollection is, that initially, each individual experimented on was numbered consecutively.

If I get time, I'll look at those issues again.  I'm willing to concede here that my memory may be faulty.

<<I believe you, but in my case, the experience was very different. There was heavy criticism in the boards I frequented, where most of the praise was drowned.>>

Believe me, with both Sins Past and Avengers Assembled, the haters were willing to scream a whole lot longer and a whole lot louder.  However, sheer numbers wise they did not dwarf the stories' defenders. 

 <<IIRC, Sins Past did made ASM drop in sales. Nothing as dramatically as, say, the recent Flash relaunch, but enough for any other writer to have been removed from the book. But the sales were helped by the never ending line of stunts that followed.>>

But where did it drop from?  The story itself gave a sales spike, then it dropped.  Did it drop lower than it was before Sins Past began?  I don't think drastically so.  Like Morrison.  His detractors can say he lost 40,000 readers at one point.  Yeah, all the readers he gained initally .  Actually, not all of them.

Needless to say, the new Avengers book that followed AA, is a sales blockbuster.  Noone at Marvel is going to regret that story.  Okay, noone may be a stretch.

<<Also, Sins Past is probably the only thing that had made Quesada imply that maybe was a mistake, and it was quickly buried.>>

I remember him saying a couple things that I thought may have been tongue in cheek, never any outright admission that I recall.  I'm going mostly by his Newsrama q&a.  Has any of it been retconned yet?
That's when we'll have had a real admission. 

<<The later, obviously, especially because the internet message boards does represent a fair sample of the comic buying public. Not the praise or criticism, but the amount of talk about a particular title.>>

Yep.  Too many different opinions from too many different people.  The only objective measure of what the majority want is sales.  I've seen low selling books that were loved on the net.  Books like Priest's Black Panther.

Jaysis christ, can't you guys sum up your friggin points instead of addressing every sentence of each other's posts?

<<By the time GM begins he inherits a LONG run of inconsistant rubbish.  Is Scott honourable or a loser who looks second rate to Wolverine, runs to a Jean look-a-like as soon as she's dead, then dumps her when Jeans alive again(1), and is prone to run off in a strop?  Is Magneto a) Hitler or b) Malcolm X.>>

30 issues is not as soon as Jean is dead, but as mntioned earlier, a mistake.  Not a mistake in line with adultery, though.  Not, IMO.

Early X factor is a mistake, but Scott hasn't been written that way in over a decade.  You're only compounding the original mistake.  Making it worse, actually.

I think Peter was written terribly during much of the Clone Saga.  Bad enough you did it then, don't compound it by doing it again.

<<He also isn't helped by editors, admitting later that he thought Sage really did have a computer brain, and wrote her accordingly. Since the title (so far as I recall, always shipped to schedule) there should have been time to amend this is script, if the editor was keeping an eye on X-men continuity.  Personally, reading it without knowing anything about Sage, it worked fine for me.>>

Of course it did because you know nothing about Sage.  Did an editor admit to this mistake?  I recall Morrison admitting to screwing up Shaw's powers.

Sage is then appearing regularly in one of the X Men's core titles and Morrison wants to use her.  Seems to me that that's on him to know how her powers work, not his editor.  Am I wrong here, JB?

Something more obscure, I can see being on the editor.  What's the status of so and so who hasnt been seen in awhile.  For example, I don't think it's necessarily his responsibility to know that Unus was dead.  To know Sage's basic personality and how her powers work?  I think that's on Morrison.

Let's be clear, I don't much care one way or the other about Sage.  Not a huge problem with his run, but someone he definitely got wrong. 

<<Q "what's phoenix?"  About 5 canonical answers seem to have come or gone over time.

A(1) Original, Jean further mutated (secondary mutation already established note) from Marvel Girl.

A(2) Jean replaced by an alien powerful psychic force. Because it copied her exactly, its actions were hers.

A(3) An effect Jean displays when using very powerful TK

A(4) An alien consciousness that may replace Jean if she uses very powerful TK

A(5) As A(4) but the consciousness is still in some sense Jean's 'outside time' 'in the white room'.

GM's run whizzes quickly through A3 to A5 of these.>>

I don't agree.  You don't get to use the woe is me the continuity is too complicated excuse here.  This is possibly the biggest X Men story of all time.  Certainly among the most continuity laden.  Nobody made Grant Morrison do this story.

Do new stories free of this.  That's what Nova was, that's what the mutant populaton explosion was, that's what the U Men were, that's what Mutanttown was.

You are implementing a dramatic change in the last 15 years worth of canon.  Essentially restoring Jean to what she was pre 1986 vis a vis UX 101-137.  He's created a whole new take on what manifestation of the Phoenix is, but its too much trouble to go into detail because the continuity is complex?    Then don''t do stories boggled down in it.

Whatever problems you had with FF 286, it didn't gloss over anything.  Here is what you thought happened, here is what really happened.

<<I think GM *did* do violence to the original character of Scott, but other posters seem to have forgotten that the 'damaged' Scott and the 'reformed' Emma were the starting characters he was given.>>

He wasn't given the Scott from say X Factor 10. He was given a Scott who hadn't been written like that in years and, IMO, wrote him even worse.

Emma I don't care enough to debate.  Most critcism I've seen of Morrison over her was from people who thought it was a regression from Gen X's Emma.  I only care about Emma in what it did to Scott. 

<<By contrast I like how he pretty much restored Magneto to 'traditional psychopath/murderer'.  This is swings and roundabouts.>>

That is more debateble because Magneto has been varying shades of evil before.  My biggest problem was what I saw as the degradation of the character.  He can be evil without you're degrading him.

There is a difference between portraying Luthor as evil and saying that Luthor has outlived his usefullness in the Superman mythos.

<<GM also left in enough 'trapdoors' and get outclauses.  [The drug 'Kick' being 'That Which Survives' in a new-affect-Mutants-form, the alleged 'extinction gene' in humanity being its 'abandonment of them for the mutants'] to explain the aberrant behaviour of everyone who tried it - including off stage Emma, who comments she's tried it to understand the effects on the students.]>>

That's 2 characters, Emma and Magneto.  Hank didn't take it until after NXM 150.  Scott didn't take it.  Logan didn't, Jean didn't, Xavier didn't.

<<When people did like his changes they cry foul, when they like them they go yay! but the quality of each individual change looks to me like a good use of the 'illusiory change' we've often said we wanted, while also cleaning house of a lot of dead wood.>>

Illusiory change????  Jean's dead and Scott's hooked up with Emma Frost.  After you've derided both Xavier and Magneto as old men with  outdated ideas, Logan decapitates Magneto on panel.  There are millions of mutants.  That was undone, but not because of any backdoor Morrison left.  Anyway, this stuff isn't real change?

We have a different idea of illusiory change, I guess.
My idea of illusion of change is something like Peter Parker becoming a teacher instead of a photographer for the Bugle.  Of the X Men, maybe having the mansion destroyed, working out of another enviroment, or on the run.. The trappings change, but not the characters, the core relationships.  Not the intrinsic elements.  I'd say the Magneto/Xavier dynamic and Scott/Jean arguaby qualify with the X Men. 

Reed was trapped in, and influenced by, Doom's armor maybe 5 years ago.   Now, instead of what happened back then, Reed is traumatzed by the experience embarks on an affair with Elektra.  Sue dies in battle and Reed takes up with Elektra leading the FF.  That reads as a whole lot more than illusion of change to me.

<<
There's also a fair amount of selective recall, ie 'Scott cripples students'. Re-reading this I find he uses disabling force on suspected murderers of humans, who are actively attacking humans, after a clear and unambiguous warning, and knocking one out.  They chose to attack him after his warning.>>

I didn't agree with cripple either.  He broke legs,
Still, were these children any worse than may of the villains that Scott has encountered in the past?  Have we seen him break peoples' legs often?  These were children, not even experienced fighters.  Children high on kick.  I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that Scott is experienced enough that he might have stopped them without breaking legs.

This is something else I'm not inclined to argue strongly.  He didn't cripple them for life and he did try to talk to them first.   

I can see both sides of the argument here.

<<(2) If I recall 'correctly, Madeyline Prior turned out to be some sort of inccubus-clone in 'Inferno' but Scott didn't know that when he ditched her.>>

Ditched her seems to be the point of debate when it's argued ad nauseum.  In any case, he didn't know she was a clone until Inferno.

Victor, they weren't engaged while Maddie was alive.
Maddie died in X Factor 38, Scott proposed to Jean in issue 53 and she turned him down.  They weren't engaged until late 1993, IIRC..   

<<Jaysis christ, can't you guys sum up your friggin points instead of addressing every sentence of each other's posts?>>

Dont worry, I'm just about argued out. 





 

It's not just Magneto and Emma Frost. It's also a thing that found purchase on TV. We had both Byalar Krais and Scorpius on Farscape being adjusted from lunatic bastards to  quasi-sympathetic anti-heroes with bad habits who nonetheless thought they were doign the right thing. There was Xena the Warrior Princess who went from a sadistic murderer to world saving heroine. Star Trek when it came back from Oblivion sought to reform the freaking Klingons into decent but hard to live with neighbors.

The cheap, quick and easy redemption of villains is a fairly wide spread element of entertainment. It's still kind of distasteful though and usually requires an absurd level of revisionism or outright dissonance with the previous tone of the show or book. I'm halfway expecting the new Doctor Who to intoduce us to good anti-Daleks who run around shouting " Preserve! Defend! Enlighten! Encourage Progress! " in a soothing voice.

Larry my question was Jean and Scott being engaged before the final battle with the Imperial Guard in Uncanny. I have not read the issue in a while. But regardless, Jean and Scott were closer than any husbend and wife could possibly be. So him leaving his wife and child temporarily is understandable. He did try to contact Madie before X-Factor #5.

It was out of character. But I think the importent thing is, that Hank, Bobby, Warren and (most importently) Scott himself knew it was out of character. I think that makes a big difference.

Also Larry, this is the best comics discussion I have seen in awhile. Taking a pissing match and turning it into a fun discussion about the characters and years worth of stories.

Hooking back up with Jean in say X Factor 3,

****

Did they? I have to confess my means of reading comics is scattershot, as I aquire most in backissues. By the time I was on issue #5 he was freezing Jean out and seemed more concerened for Maddie and Nathan.