Morrison VS NEW Claremont

Ohh Uncanny, nobody wants your PC answer LOL

Originally posted by UncannyScott If Morrison were to come back in say twenty years and try to write X-Men that way again we'd no doubt say just as some say with Claremont that he was out of date and too stuck in the past. It's hard to recapture the moment you helped change things years later.

See, THIS is an EXCELLANT point. Claremont didn't come back on X-Men with anything NEW during either of his returns. While yeah, we got a few odd concepts (the Neo, Rogue as a team leader, the "strike force" that X-Treme was supposed to be, a modern XSE), Claremont didn't bring anything new to the table. He writes X-Men like he wrote X-Men.

PAD is a perfect counter-point. His run on X-Factor back in the 90's is pretty legendary amongst us X-fans. Nearly 10 years later he's back on X-Factor, but y'know, it's NEW. A bigger and better cast, different stories, a different tone - while a lot of current X-Factor's characters or story ideas can be traced back to the 90's run, it's a totally different book and it works.

New Claremont

Cassandra Nova is the greatest X-Villain of all time.

I find it laughable that people who read about Psylocke, Magneto, Maddie Pryor, or Wolverine get confused by Cassandra's back story.

I'm going to come back again and say that I don't see where people find Morrison's Emma to be "contradictory to what was previously established about the character"--in any way. Like, people are saying this, but it seems to me that this is just a buzz phrase with very little to back it up. Also, I'd like to remind people that the characterization of Emma Frost as written by Morrison borrowed heavily from Warren Ellis, who wrote Emma Frost in Generation X very similarly to how Morrison would later write her.

What was contradicted? I'm genuinely interested to get some proof out of this pudding. Her behavior? Hardly. Emma didn't end Generation X a nice woman and given her mental state post-Genosha, who could expect a woman like Emma (a highly complex individual, wrapped very much in layers of over-the-top and subtlety) to behave as she "normally" would?

Also, numerically speaking, "too many mutants"? 16 million in a world of 6 billion people isn't that much, for one thing, and I thought it was cool that there were so many mutants--many of which had pointless mutations. Morrison didn't do that to give himself any number of new characters that he wanted, clearly; he was merely establishing that the world in which mutants lived was changing--which was one of the main points of his run. People complain that Morrison "disregarded the past" with a lot of characters (I don't know if I agree) and that he changed things, but I feel like a pretty objective reading of his work will tell you that that was the point.

Anyway, that's just how I've read it.

Ah, okay. I've always been a bit lost in that regard, if only because I've generally accepted that she was lying (or that writers really feel that they can just tack on whatever origin story for Emma that they feel like at any given time).

Originally posted by Kipe The origin story that Emma told Monet, Paige, and Jubilee is different than the story revealed during Emma and Jean's confrontation. That's what people are talking about as far as "contradiction". Of course, Monet's story in that very same issue is a lie. I always figured Emma recreated parts of her past to make her new students empathetic with her. Since Emma tells the story, it's very possible that she fibbed. So really, it's an explicable retcon as opposed to a contradiction. People who harp about Gen X Emma always conveniently forget that she kicked Leech in the face and tried to offer Penance to Emplate in exchange for the rest of her students.

People she did all that to protect her students? She didn't kick Leech for the fun. The problem was that Emma grew in Generation X. Yes she still had did some morally corrupt things and she still did worse things(shooting her sister in the head, for example) but she proved her self as a good guy. Morrison's X-Men made it seem like she was barely reformed. When she talked about her students, she talked about the Hellions, when she talked about her past, there was never even a mention of her time with the X-Men. That's why I harp. Morrison pretended her run on Generation-X didn't exist. It's just how he's always so selective with continuity.

Look at this Batman Incorporated series...It's like he's too good to work with others. He couldn't even get Sage right.

Originally posted by XtremeOne1 People she did all that to protect her students? She didn't kick Leech for the fun. The problem was that Emma grew in Generation X. Yes she still had did some morally corrupt things and she still did worse things(shooting her sister in the head, for example; Grant Morrison's writing Emma Frost's self-presentation in speech as a caricature of privilege and snottiness is more Ellis than anyone else's writing of Emma) but she proved her self as a good guy. Morrison's X-Men made it seem like she was barely reformed. When she talked about her students, she talked about the Hellions, when she talked about her past, there was never even a mention of her time with the X-Men. That's why I harp. Morrison pretended her run on Generation-X didn't exist. It's just how he's always so selective with continuity. Look at this Batman Incorporated series...It's like he's too good to work with others. He couldn't even get Sage right.

I disagree with you on this. Like I said, I feel that his writing of Emma Frost borrowed heavily from Warren Ellis's writing of the character (if you read them side by side, you might get an idea of what I'm talking about). She didn't mention Generation-X among the X-Men often, but given that her colleagues were also acting like she could turn on them at any moment (and a lot of them did up until very recently), does it make sense that she would mention the school the dissolved as a result of her immoral behaviors (and Banshee's drinking)? Emma's a very proud woman; I don't know if she'd flutter around her new gig mentioning her most recent failing so that Jean Grey and Kitty Pryde could (very characteristically) rub her face in it?

Also, I believe that a person like Emma (who is prone to hiding things and wanting to maintain control) would resort to her most common defense mechanism (in Emma's case, being cold, clever, and mean) in response to the trauma that she'd experienced very shortly before her becoming a part of the X-Men proper. I don't think that she acted "barely reformed" in the least; yes, she was not nice, but she never seemed particularly sinister either.

Very few people would display the maturity that Emma developed over the course of Generation X within the span of months after watching everyone around them get ripped to shreds. That's just not even feasible. I'm almost surprised that she wasn't holed up someplace, but, then, holing up (literally) has never been Emma's thing; she's always been more of a concealer than a vanisher.

I think that people mix "nice" and "fighting with the good guys" up really easily, particularly where women are concerned. It could be argued that Wolverine acts "barely reformed" (sure, you can ask "from what", but I think phrases like "reformed from a ruthless killer" might apply here), but there's rarely a question of whether or not he's a hero (except for right now, and even that line of questioning is limited to smaller circles as far as I've found on the internet)--this has never been the case for Emma or any woman. Why is it easier for us to see female characters on the verge of going bad for things that their male counterparts get away with all the time? Wolverine's never been all that nice, but no one's wondering which side of the fence he stands on in regards to his moral code (except that he's a traitor to his kind and a douche).

Edited by InsipidLust - 02-Jul-2012 at 7:23pm

Claremont's Revolution drove me away from 616 X-Men to the Ultimate Universe almost immediately. Morrison's New X-Men (which I read in trade years later) got me back into 616 X-Men. Morrison took it upon himself to evolve the X-Men, while Claremont took it upon himself to stagnate them. It's like night and day.

Edited by Majestic - 02-Jul-2012 at 8:37pm

wasn't just a Morrison thing(he started it) but did we ever get a reaction from Emma over Skin's death? Over Jubilee being crucified? As much as we all wanted to ignore Austen's run, Morrison's run was so self-contained it never once felt like it was part of the 616.

Exactly how is Morrison receiving the blame for this? Did he write Skin's funeral scene? Did I miss something?

Well, Austen didn't write a reaction for Emma in either of those instances. Maybe you should blame him. Maybe you should blame the person who wrote Skin's funeral and didn't bother to have her show, instead of forcing another writer to add a scene into their title that would break their narrative flow to make up for the original writer's inconsistency.

Also, Xavier and Jean never treated Emma as if she would turn on them at any moment. Jean and Emma were actually seen hanging out quite a few times before Jean found out about her psychic trysts with Scott. Sure, Jean still thought Emma was a horrible person and a bitch, but she never acted as though Emma could not be trusted. In fact, when Cassie Nova was laying the X-Men to waste, it was Jean that reminded the boys that they still had an ace in the fact that Emma was running around.

Beast only ever said one thing about it, in the one instance in which it actually did seem as though Emma was betraying them. For someone who thought she was going to betray them at any moment, he sure put a lot of effort and grief into trying to put her back together.

Oh, and let's not forget Emma's actual introduction in the series, when Jean says "she's one of ours". As in an ally. As in somebody Xavier asked to go teach on Genosha. As in that obviously wasn't the first time they encountered her as a non-villain.

I read the first half and ending of Generation X and I read Morrison. I don't have a problem reconciling the two portrayals of Emma.

The one quality i do like about Claremont's run was his honesty that he's just writing a superhero book. Sometimes Morrison, like Moore, makes a mountain out of a molehill so to speak.

That's kind of hilarious, considering there was absolutely no philosophical clout to the X-Books until Claremont came along. He's the one that invented "the dream" and used the X-Men as a metaphor for oppressed minorities.

As for Morrison not getting Sage right, I still contend that his version of Sage makes ten-times more sense than Claremont's ever evolving Sage.

What does that mean, exactly? I'm not following your statement. I'm not saying that it's right or wrong, but what are you saying about the medium versus the way it's presented by these people?