This issue is mostly dedicated to the conversation between Logan and Scott that we were promised last issue, with Logan trying to convince Scott that it's in the best interest of mutantkind for him to convince the wayward members of the Extinction Team to surrender to authorities. As usual, I'm struggling to see Scott's side of the debate. I certainly get his desire to be a martyr, but more because I think Logan's right that he simply wants to die. Scott claims he wants to be a martyr, but never really explains why he would be one. In fact, once again, Scott seems to get the question wrong. He seems to think that he would be a martyr because he was "right" on the question of whether or not the Phoenix Force would reignite the human race. But, everyone else knew that the question, the real question, wasn't a "yes" or "no" question. The real question was whether it was worth risking the world to rekindle the mutant race, particularly since the end of the world would, obviously, result in the end of mutantkind, too. It's still a question that Scott doesn't even bother acknowledging, even though he himself came close to answering it by becoming Dark Phoenix. For him, it was all about rekindling mutantkind. At the end of the day, he saved the mutant race. Period.
The amazing thing is that Scott still doesn't understand that it's more complicated than that. When Logan tells him that the mutant race that he's rekindled is hated and feared even more than it used to be, Scott doesn't even blink. (Heh.) He doesn't understand the point that Logan is trying to make, that the Avengers and the X-Men have to do everything they can to allay the world's concerns over a rekindled mutant race lest every mutant finds himself hunted by Sentinels. Gillen raises interesting imagery with that statement, making you wonder whether Hope rekindling the mutant race is going to lead to Bishop's future, but not because of the Six-Minute War that Hope causes in that timeline but because of the devastation that Scott caused in this timeline. But, again, Scott is so far removed from reality that he sees the actual lives that the new mutants live as a secondary concern. He's beyond caring about Professor X's dream, of addressing humans and mutants peacefully coexisting. To his mind, he's saved mutantkind; how mutantkind lives is someone else's problem.
Gillen manages to convey this point of view in a way that you can tell that Scott has to tell himself these things to live with himself and it's the part of him that truly understands the damage that he's inflicted on mutantkind that wants to be killed. He's left a broken, lonely man hoping someone will end his misery. It's a stark change from what he was and I wonder where we're going to find him at the end of this mini-series. For anyone not reading this series, I would actually really recommend it, because I feel like it is addressing a lot of the questions about Scott's perspective that I know a lot of us had at the end of "Avengers vs. X-Men."
Be nice if in the end Hope faces Cyclops and put him in his place, because the new mutants were like a reward to Hope for making the right choice that was the exact opposite of what Cyclops wanted her to make, since even she was surprised that new mutants were popping up which the Phoenix did by itself. Also, it was pretty much Spider-Man, and not Cyclops, who led her to the right direction by telling her about his uncle and what he taught him, instead of doing the it's your destiny garbage as if she was an item to be used, instead of a person, which is probably why she seems to respect Spider-Man and the Avengers more then Cyclops and the X-Men and wants now a normal life which sounds like she's saying "I QUIT!" to the X-Men when it comes to being the messiah.
ReplyDeleteYou know, that's an excellent point, Anon. I hadn't really thought about the Hope angle, but I think it would be therapeutic for her (and us, the reader) to confront Scott and tell him to stop trying to claim her victory as his own. After all, she didn't almost destroy the world; he did. He didn't save mutantkind; she did. Scott ignoring her entirely when he talkes about "his" sacrifice t really goes to Alex's point that this whole episode had more to do with Scott trying to preserve his self-image than anything else.
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by!