the vynsane asylum

Is Sleepwalker involved?

But seriously, why the hell is Sleepwalker on the cover of The Initiative #1?

And what's the deal with all the attention Slapstick is suddenly getting again?

It's that old "you have to use every hero you own every ** years or else you lose the rights to the name" scenario, I'm quite sure.

Slapstick is SO bad....

I'm with EP - I want Hulk to come back and go absolutely fucking apeshit on Tony Stark Marvel Max style.

At this point, I think Marvel could afford to lose a few names.

I'm totally serious. Between Marvel and DC, about 99% of possible superhero names have been used, mostly for characters who are totally forgotten. If they're truly interested in streamlining their continuities, which appears to be the case, maybe it's time to let some of them slide by the wayside.

I love Sleepwalker, but I'd prefer Marvel to lose the rights to the name than keep seeing the dude in inappropriate settings.

I agree, and I think that's part of why they did the "House of M" story (killing off millions of mutants and leaving only 198). The Civil War was likely intended to look after a bunch of background heroes, but I don't recall there being a real tally as to whom exactly was killed behind the scenes.

I think the bigger issue is being sure they can make the maximum amount of money from selling their copyrights (I'm assuming that they'd jump on anyone who tried to use the name "Sleepwalker", for example, and expect payment) forcing them to dredge up the dogshit every once in awhile.

Anyone reading "The Illuminati"? Reed Richards is a crazy fucker, plain crazy.

Does anyone else find it a little... I don't know, wrong, that Captain America is dead; Hulk was shot into space and is coming back to fuck everyone up; Punisher is Captain America; Spidey is back in black after (likely successful) assassination attempts on his family; and Professor X, Iron Man, Reed, and Dr Strange are now officially the biggest pricks in any universe?

It's all fucked up. I honestly feel very strongly about Reed.... he's easily up there in my top 10 Marvel characters (something about the distracted dad/husband I can identify with I think).

The story of the Illuminati is what you'd expect: the Marvel big brains were kind of operating behind the scenes, deciding as a group what action should be taken with respect to the real big issues (the Inifinity gems and gauntlet being the subject matter of issue 2). I like this for Reed, he's assuming (as always) that his intellect will be enough to see him through any crisis.... it's this same overconfidence that will one day have to be his undoing.

And make no mistake - Tony's the prick. Everyone else is just along for the prickish ride.

That's what I don't like about the Illuminati. They are retroactively making Tony, Reed, Prof. X the biggest douches ever. Rereading any Marvel Comic from the last 30 years and knowing that these guys' motives are not as pure is just dumb. If you want to make Tony Stark a jerk, fine. Sales on his book were down, and shaking things up by making him the new facist Marvel bad guy, its not going to be a major loss if Iron Man gets cancelled due to low sales. But preemptively deciding Tony has always been a douche, does a disservice to all the writers who crafted his adventures before.

And Prof X, who has always been portrayed as morally impervious to using his mind bending skills unscrupulously in the past, is now retroactively being made to look like the biggest hypocrite/devious asshole in the Marvel U.


I'm also kinda ticked that this Illuminati/Hulk confrontation has been building for "Years" Marvel U continuity wise, and will be wrapped up in only a few issues. I want lingering fallout from all these shakeups. If Joe Q is REALLY gone break down the whole fucking line up, then quit pussy footing around and do it. Have the Hulk KILL Susan Storm in retribution for his wife dying. Have a permanent schism between the major Marvel Heroes. Wipe them off the field by actually having them incarcerated, or killed. You have access to 5000 characters or so you claim. A good writer can take any character and make them interesting.

Fuck shit up, yo.

Slight change of topic: I found the Xorn figure at WM. Like Banshee and Emma before him, he looked like overpriced horseshit, so I was sad to have to pass on him.

My question has to do with his biography. According to it, Xorn was real, and some unknown force made him think he was Magneto and do all that shit in New York at the end of the Morrison run of New X-Men?

What the fuck?

Is Quesada so dead-set against good storytelling that he has to immediately undo it when, against all his attempts to the contrary, it happens?

the short answer is "who the fuck knows..."

the long answer is... well, i don't know.

Sadly, yes. Chris Claremont undid Morrison's brilliant finale practically the following month when he debuted that horseshit Excalibur series based in Genosha. And then some other writer came along in Adjectiveless X-Men and said that Xorn had a brother who somehow had the exact same powers as the "Magneto" brother who died and he joined the X-Men but was never heard from after that. Basically, by shitting on Morrison's tale and pussying out on killing off Magneto, they retconned themselves into a fucking corner of Whatthefuck.

The whole thing sucked ass. Fucking Claremont.

The Bio on the back of his figure says it all. "Some Unknown Force.."

THAT is shitty storytelling.

That's truly pathetic. Morrison's run on X-Men is easily up there with Claremont's -- Claremont's first run, of course, not the embarassment of any subsequent runs. At first, I found it odd that the X-Men could go months without fighting supervillains, but the storytelling was amazing. I can think of very, very little in the superhero genre that's even close.

Magneto going nuts and exterminating humans, missing out on the irony that he'd been in a concentration camp as a kid and a marginalized citizen his entire life, then killing Jean and sending Wolvie into one of his nastiest berzerker rages ever... that was one of the single greatest issues in X-Men history. In comics history, for that matter.

What's worse, Morrison peppered the entire run leading up to that reveal with clues that Xorn actually WAS Magneto. And the whole "Who shot Emma?" storyline. Everything was designed for his run to end that way. And then PFFFT. A giant middle finger rose out of the bullpen aimed at Grant AND at the readers.

And then they don't even use him after deciding they can't kill him. He wasn't neccassary for the House of M storyline, since Quicksilver turned out to be the baddie (and it was an alternate universe tale) and then they removed his powers and where has he been since?? Anyone?? Where is Magneto right now in the Marvel Universe? Nope. Better for him to have gone out in the blaze of glory that was issue 150. Fuckers.

Looks like at least one book of totally new superheroes from the Initiative will be coming out this summer in The Champions... despite the fact another company owns that trademark.

Fucking Marvel. They've got billions of their own fucking heroes to make lousy stories with. Are they going to stop before they have a lock on every possible name there is? In two or three years, are new publishers stuck with names like "Happy Flower Man" and "The Toilet Avenger" because Marvel takes all the ones DC doesn't already have?