There’s one specific bit to this I want to address, that’s the entire reason behind my post.
When asked if this is the start of putting the X-Men front-and-center again, Lowe said Marvel is always trying to make the best comics they can. Alonso added that questions like this, that presume that Marvel doesn’t care about the X-Men, are kind of insulting to the writers that work on these books — specifically citing the big “Avengers vs. X-Men” series from 2012 that put the team front and center. “We want to make all of our books popular, we didn’t lock ourselves in a room for three days because we’re disinterested in the X-Men,” said Alonso.
This doesn’t jive with Marvel’s behavior.
First of all, accusing Marvel of assigning writers to books and franchises that Marvel is actively trying to undermine isn’t insulting those writers in the slightest. Alonso is trying to play the angle of “these accusations suggest we’re seeing those writers as worse than others,” but there are two elements to this he’s trying to distract from.
The first: the writers don’t get nothing out of the deal. It’s a good way for Marvel to test those writers out before moving them over to the books Marvel actually values and wants to promote. In this scenario, Marvel is not saying those writers are bad; they’re saying those writers are promising, and here’s a chance to prove it.
The second: unlike the Fantastic Four comic book, Marvel can’t immediately shut down the X-Men without significant backlash. They need to take it slow. They know this. Right now, there are about 5 X-Men ongoing comic books… when there used to be 12-14 going at the same time. For that reason, assigning quality writers to the X-Men wouldn’t be a matter of “we think they suck so let’s cast them off over there.” It’d be a case of “we need to look like we still care, so let’s assign this great writer while we keep winding the franchise down.”
Now, moving on from Alonso’s attempted use of writer shields.
Alonso cites Avengers vs X-Men from 2012 as a sign of putting X-Men front and center, hoping that the reader doesn’t notice three things: 1) Marvel was still treating the X-Men as equally big as the Avengers back then, 2) the event was designed to take stuff away from the X-Men and give them to the Avengers, and 3) that event was four years ago.
He attempts to frame AvX like it was a very generous gesture. In reality, it was an opportunity to build up the Avengers as being powerful, excuse Wanda for M-Day (before using the Inhumans as the mutant-destroying scapegoat instead), and make key X-Men characters like Cyclops and Emma Frost look bad. And kill off Professor Xavier, by the way.
Axis continued this pattern. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver underwent a forced retcon to suddenly not be Magneto’s kids anymore, they framed Magneto killing Red Skull as a bad thing (releasing a “hate wave”) so Magneto could look worse, and they hijacked the mutant nation Genosha and Professor Xavier’s brain to use as plot devices that benefits the Avengers books via Red Skull.
In both cases, the mutants were framed as the bad guys or making things better for the bad guys. They got nothing in return for it, while the Avengers had radical new changes in the aftermath (e.g. Jane Foster as Thor).
Lastly, Alonso’s claims that they try to make the most of the X-Men and what they have to offer can very easily be defeated by looking at how they’ve treated Polaris.
During Avengers vs X-Men, they had Magneto, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver interact as family… but kept Polaris out of the mix, letting her serve only as a nameless cameo that Magneto ignores being mentally dominated by Emma Frost (despite Magneto coming to save her from space a month ago). If they really cared about the X-Men franchise and possibilities, they would’ve included Lorna, because she suffered immensely from M-Day. Because of M-Day, Lorna nearly let herself die from a Sentinel to try to reactivate her powers, got brainwashed and turned into Pestilence by Apocalypse, and had to go into space to escape an anti-Apocalypse cult… where she got tortured by Vulcan.
If Marvel truly wanted to address the consequences of Wanda’s actions and use the X-Men well, they would’ve used Lorna. They didn’t.
Meanwhile, during Axis, they refused to use Polaris. They went out of their way to try to make Enchantress look like Polaris, even tinting her hair green and Wanda’s red on one cover. They put out THAT cover months in advance… but the cover for All-New X-Factor #14, where Lorna and Wanda got to interact as sisters, was withheld by Marvel until the Friday before release.
Which brings me to the last detail that comes full circle to the attempted use of writer shields.
Alonso says it’s insulting to the writers to say Marvel is trying to kill the X-Men books. Yet, that’s exactly what they did to All-New X-Factor.
All-New X-Factor was the first time Polaris ever got to lead a team of her own. It was the first time she got to interact with her brother Pietro at length in a long time, and ANXF #14 was the first and only time she got to spend time with Wanda in over a decade.
Marvel didn’t promote it. Peter David had to do all the promotion himself. When Days of Future Past was in theaters, Marvel kept Pietro off the covers of ANXF. Ultimately, Marvel canceled All-New X-Factor after 20 issues, claiming sales were too low.
… But the Scarlet Witch solo is still running, with lower sales despite a lot more promotion. This presents Marvel’s blatant double standard where the X-Men franchise is concerned. For an X-Men book with no promotion, low 20,000s in sales is sufficient reason to cancel the book. For a book about an Avengers character with tons of promotion, upper 10,000s in sales is good enough to keep it running.
If Marvel wants people to believe they don’t have it out for the X-Men (and in my personal case, that they don’t have it out for Polaris), they have to do better than this. Their actions speak much louder than their words.
salarta 