Last time we were introduced to Carmilla Black, a young woman with poison powers who'd returned home after her adoptive parents were killed by AIM where she was forcibly recruited into SHIELD to take down a top AIM terrorist: Monica Rappaccini, Carmilla's biological mother. But while in Madripoor, Carmilla received a note from her mother and managed to slip her SHIELD handlers in order to meet her. Today is Amazing Fantasy #10-12.Previous >>154263408
I'm not including the Vampire by Night backups since they're not really important.>Jonathan GlapionOh hey, that's the inker currently talking about how Marvel hasn't been paying him.
Issue 11
Issue 12
Oh look, it's Dick Cheney. 'Member George W. Bush and the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina and watching this drive?
That does it for Carmilla's story and truthfully I'm not surprised that this seemed to get the least attention so far. Carmilla could kind of be the first example of these that would be a failed character although I'm not really sure why. Her look and powers are cool and I thought this was a fine Bush era spy action-thriller story. Monica and even Khanata would wind up seeing more use than she actually would.Anyway, there's still one more story to go.
So for Amazing Fantasy #15, Marvel decided to debut a bunch of new characters in short stories. Only one of them would actually stick, though, so we'll be reading the debut of Amadeus Cho.
Unfortunately this is about the most we'll see of Cho in this series because I don't plan on storytiming Incredible Hercules, but I figured it'd be good to at least throw this in anyway.Next time it's back to Xavier's for New X-Men: Academy X #1-4.
Bump
>>154278406Well when your mom is a hot and a splashable named member of A.I.M., it isn't that surprising.
So are Carmilla and Rappaccini actual names? I can only think of the vampire and and a story about a poisonous daughter respectively.
>>154286108There might be people NOW named Carmilla but I'm pretty sure it comes from the story, same as Rappaccini coming from the story Rappaccini's Daughter. The Rappaccini reference is intentional and I assume the Carmilla one is as well (since Carmilla here is beautiful, mysterious and dangerous like the vampire).
>>154278406There is no way she benefited from being named Scorpion. I feel like she is the more interesting one between her and Arana from their stories, but I guess being an additional spider-hero makes you easier to reuse. Despite the term "biological parents" on the last page, only Mommy is actually stated here.Monica's got a very good showing here. You can pick out the parts of her that were recycled from Viper, but she's modified to A.I.M. ideology well. The setup of "daughter of the leader of a global crime organization raised in the United States by subordinates to have a clear name to extend the parent's goals, adoptive parents die when she becomes a woman" feels like a different character, but since Scorpion's character trajectory is the exact opposite and she was aware that she was adopted the whole time, I don't think that was an intentional reference.
>>154278669God, Cho is such an insufferable little twerp, combined with bad storytelling (a prime example being this issue) how did he have any popularity?
>>154277378cute trees here
>>154289738His creator used him elsewhere and he slipped into a Rick Jones-like role. After that, he had inertia.
>>154291868Yeah but Rick Jones is actually interesting and has things going for him.Cho is just one of the prime examples that writing "smart" characters is quite difficult and you can't just wing it.
>>154289738He was helped massively by being Herc's sidekick in in Incredible Hercules and being the straight man to play off of Herc's boisterousness. But that series was co-written by Van Lente and Cho, even when written by Pak, has never been as good so it makes me wonder if if Van Lente was doing the bulk of the actual writing for that series compared to Pak.
>>154289738Who knows.
Previously, Dani Moonstar had recruited or managed to bring together a group of young students though one of them, Kevin Ford, eventually decided to leave. Josh Foley, a former Reaver, had been abandoned to the school by his parents but using his healing powers had managed to awaken the comatose Magma as well as restore Rahne Sinclair's powers though she lost control and attacked him and was driven off by Laurie Collins, who'd developed a crush on Josh after he'd saved her life. With electricity controlling homeless mutant Noriko Ashida waking him up, Josh was able to heal himself but turned his skin gold in the process. Donald Pierce tried attacking the ruins of the school after Magneto's attack but was stopped by the original New Mutants and Dani seemed to be developing something with Pierce's nephew, an FBI agent named Justin.Today is New Mutants: Academy X #1-4.
>>154297955Noriko blue herself
>>154297988Early version of Pixie flying in the top left?
Issue 2
>>154298355Nah, seeing as that's a boy. You will see Pixie's first appearance today though.
Issue 3
You'd think a relaunch would mean making sure the book had a consistent artist but no, it continues to suffer from the same issue New Mutants had and that magically got solved once DeFillipis and Weir were replaced. It makes it seem like this was a really low priority book for editorial and that they didn't care because the writers were virtual nobodies IMO.
>>154298833Blue Glob
>>154299155Cykes dressing down is so powerful she basically loses her edgier persona from the previous issues.I've never been able to wrap my head around what they were trying to do with Rahne does anyone have any info from the creators?Losing her mutant powers & becoming edgier feels like something that should be a long running sub-plot/character arc/status quo (y'know like getting stuck in werewolf mode in the early 90's) for a variety of reasons (exploring not often seen part of her personality, how hard would it be to just go back, etc) but this basically ends it.And if you want to say that she is a secondary or satelitte character, well than you shouldn't have made that big of a switch in personality in the first place.The only thing that this does is it leads to getting her powers back (something that could have been done in many other ways, even offscreen ,without much issue) and setting up the romance with Josh (which it doesn't really do enough to justify)
>>154277267sentinel was the first in the line? didnt know.all these books were great desu
>>154299078>Cykes dressing down is so powerful she basically loses her edgier persona from the previous issues.>I've never been able to wrap my head around what they were trying to do with Rahne does anyone have any info from the creators?>Losing her mutant powers & becoming edgier feels like something that should be a long running sub-plot/character arc/status quo (y'know like getting stuck in werewolf mode in the early 90's) for a variety of reasons (exploring not often seen part of her personality, how hard would it be to just go back, etc) but this basically ends it.>And if you want to say that she is a secondary or satelitte character, well than you shouldn't have made that big of a switch in personality in the first place.lmao surge wtf is that look
>>154299221Beyond adding soap opera drama, I think the whole point was to emphasize that Rahne was at a low point and just getting her powers back didn't fix all the issues she'd had since the end of the original New Mutants so she was still fucking up. She's still a teenager (albeit barely) in this case too.Of course if they intended to do more with her that was derailed by PAD being allowed to yoink her for X-Factor which I think is another indication that this was viewed as a low priority book by editorial while DeFilippis and Weir were on it because she and her storyline were a major part of the book.
>>154299299I'm 50/50 on PAD taking her for X-factorShe was definetely on the back burner for the first year, then when he seemed to kick her sub-plot into high gear she got yoinked by x-force (something wasn't pleased by, bery obvious if you read her departure issue) but when he got her back, I actually liked the story he wrote for her (yes the baby-trap one). I know I'm in the minority on that one but I'll defend it.I guess I just don't know where Filips & DeWeir were taking her story & what they wrote with her was a bit too OOC for me. Maybe it could have been good (PAD had the same issue for me but when he got her back he somewhat stuck the landing), maybe they would have too.
>>154299471Btw will you be doing the Yearbook issue?
Issue 4>>154299410I don't blame PAD for taking her if she was available, I blame editorial for making her available in the first place. Like you said, she was just kind of there in X-Factor for a while anyway so it wasn't even like she seemed to be a priority and if he wanted another NM he could have used one that nobody was doing anything with like Magma.As for Rahne being OOC... well, that's kind of the point. Again she spent most of her time after New Mutants being tortured in Genosha, stuck in her werewolf form and brainwashed into loving Havok. Then she lost her powers and Moira was killed and all this while still a teenager. Rahne was an incredibly messed up person who'd gone through a lot of trauma and was acting out. Probably she would have worked through it more if she'd stayed in the book but she didn't.
>>154299558Yes, I'll throw it in after the House of M arc since that was published afterwards anyway and is more or less the actual send off to this run.
Oh hey, it's Lockheed.
>>154299610I think he took her instead of another NM because he likes her. I mean his first X-men story that he wrote (Rahne of Terra) had her as a protagonist, she was important in his OG & second x-factor runs, showed up to Rick's wedding. To put it another way to only X-men series he wrote that didn't feature her was X-factor 2014, and since Doug was there, if it wasn't cancelled I bet he would have brought her back.I think she might be in PAD top 3 X-men characters (with Madrox & Quicksilver,) (she might be neck-a-neck to Guido, though).Ad for the latter half of your comment, I think it''s OOC precisely because she was through so much during New Mutants & X-factor (including losing multiple loved ones) and she didn't break, after x-factor 100 & during her Excalibur stint she was basically fine. I know she would be very saddened by losing Moira, but that resulting in switch a drasting change? ehh.
Originally I was only going to do four issues but it's 15 issues before the HoM arc so I think it'll be easier to split things into five issue blocks instead for this.
Issue 5
This was setting up what was intended to be a romance between Jay and Dust but obviously that went nowhere once the new writers killed Jay.
Here are the first appearances of Pixie, Loa and DJ. That may be Network with Loa since they'd be on the same squad or it could be Preview or it could just be some random girl, I don't know.
I appreciate that Nori is presumably pissy about Julian bringing her situation up to make his point despite her being in that situation because Julian was an asshole who told her to get lost.
>>154300447Kinda wish the paragons got more focus, they weren't main character material but their powers & personalities were fun and could work as a secondary group. I guess most of them did survive the school buss massacre so there's that.Also remember when Pixie committed suicide by bigot? Krakoa was dumb.
>>154300511DeFillipis and Weir wanted to do either a miniseries or story arc focused on settling the Magma/Nova Roma stuff once and for all and considering she was the one in charge of the Paragons at the time I would assume they would have played a major role in it. It's a shame HoM and then getting replaced meant we never got to see most of the other squads doing things.
That's it for today. I'll stick with Academy X for the moment and next time will be New X-Men #6-10.
>>154300585I think I read about miniseries for all squad but I found only 3 interesting (New Mutants, Hellions & Paragons) I mean one squad was basically just the Cukoos (god for such a downright insane concept, such nothing burger characters, what was Morrison thinking?)The Paragon mini seems to have been about trying to unfuck Magma's lore which I'm 50/50 on. She isn't a bad character, but she didn't have a moment or dynamic or trait that made me click & become interested in her.
>>154300680I wanted to see more of Alpha Squadron because I liked Victor, Loa looked cool (and I like her a lot but she was background fodder up to that point) and going by the Yearbook I think Network had a lot of potential as a character.
>>154300790I would say some of the other squads had 1 or 2 interesting characters (like Quill) but not enough for me to see them as viable for even a mini.
>>154300861It really just depends on how they're developed. Look at the Hellions, most of them were fairly generic until the Hellions mini gave them more characterization. In general I feel like there's a lot of weird and wrong statements regarding this run and the Yost/Kyle stuff by people who probably didn't read it because it wasn't an action series. The Hellions had the more actiony powers so they get held up as having been "more interesting" but it doesn't really track at all when all the ones who weren't pre-existing characters had been fairly one dimensional until the near very end of the run. Same with the latter action heavy run "making it more popular" when the sales numbers you can get for New Mutants, Academy X and the Yost/Kyle run don't really back that up. What it did was make it more popular to the more traditional base which translated to a couple thousand more sales but it wasn't some huge spike once the initial sales jump settled back down.
>>154277267bump
>>154302036Samefagging here but in the interest of autism, here are the sales numbers gathered from Comichron throughout the run of this generation of mutie kids. First is New Mutants vol. 2.
>>154304246Next is Academy X (including the Hellions mini).
>>154304264Finally is Kyle/Yost.Was there an initial sales bump for the new writers? Yeah but it was a sales bump coming out of an event and major linewide shakeup. Eventually it settled down to slightly above where the book had sold under the previous writers, usually around 2000-5000 more so it's a bump once the new car smell wore off but not a considerably huge one. The spike during Quest for Magik is because of the Endangered Species backups which were the prelude to Messiah Complex and ran through every X-book for a few months. The sales spike at the end is because of Messiah Complex and the story's structure meant that you had to buy each book to read it so those last three months it's really an event book, not a New X-Men book (same with the other X-Men books).Could a simple retool with the DeFillipis and Weir have given similar sales to Kyle/Yost? Maybe, because I think the more actiony/darker nature drew at least a few readers who were probably put off by the soap opera nature of the book previously but who knows? The real takeaway is that from across all iterations the sales were consistent. It was roughly a guaranteed 34-40k readers no matter what which is pretty damn good, especially because other new character books that were bigger with the critics and "cool" fans sold way less. So there was a solid and consistent fanbase who was incredibly loyal to these characters and Marvel pissed it away by dumping them after Messiah Complex for failures like the Generation Hope and Schism era characters and the shitpile that was Young X-Men.
bump to read later
>>154299270>>154299299>boss that was hands off about his work>job that was low risk and isolated>place to sleep and engage in hobbiesDamn, Kev really had it made. I don't know why he let Emma sweet talk him into it.
>>154300326>that third panelI imagine implying that mutants aren't above the law would piss off most of the current X-Men fanbase as opposed to being seen as common sense.
Reading bump
>>154304478Do you think the Kyle/Yost run might have had an editorial push ?My question is why did the Weir/Defillips one end up so low on the totem poll?
