Post by Icefanatic on Mar 11, 2024 8:10:03 GMT -5
I'll add this:
We have been dealing with 'Krakoa' and the 'Road-to-Krakoa' for a combined period of well over a decade. Krakoa was the plan in place back when Hickman was still writing Avengers. We got the Time-Displaced 05 from 'some plan that had been floating around the office'. It was Hickman's plan, with certain things built in, like the TD-05 having certain key differences from the OG-05 baked in from their arrival just waiting to be revealed, and other changes that would be made after their arrival. As the person in charge of implementing their arrival in the present and initially telling most of their stories, Bendis got to make decisions on some of that.
Example: Beast
We saw a somewhat near-future with Beast with a horned appearance and a far-future Beast with even more of a demonic form and wielding arcane power. So the TD-05 were never going back in time until TD-05 Beast started experimenting with magic and eventually developed a demonic alternate form. That allowed them in the current era to say Beast was acting evil at various points throughout his history, either by retconning in things that originally never happened or by re-contextualizing benign or good things into something evil.
The 'Road-to-Krakoa' was full of things like that. Changes to characters and continuity just randomly dropped into stories because they had to set up stories that wouldn't see print for years. At the same time they had to otherwise mostly spin their wheels for those years while waiting for Hickman to be free to return to Marvel to write the story they had spent those years setting up.
So you got a lot of wrongness that made no sense and stories that went nowhere, all while fans argued and fought over changes to characters and history while complaining that the stories were mostly retreads and directionless.
Then we finally get Krakoa and it's so fresh and exiting, but quickly politely asks that you must check you brain at the door. We had just went through a 'Schism' where the X-Men divided in part over refusing to follow Cyclops and his council of reformed villains, yet we were supposed to buy those same people would go to an island and be ruled over by Apocalypse, Sinister, Magneto, Shaw, Mystique..? The X-Men abandoning their long-held goal of peaceful coexistence for Mutant Separatism and cultism? It was preposterous! Theories of mass-mind control and it being an alternate reality abounded, among others. And there were even more massive changes to characters and histories.
A lot of fans that had had enough of changes to characters and histories in the 'Road-to-Krakoa' found 'Krakoa' to be a final breaking point, while fans that had bailed due to the stagnation in the 'Road-to-Krakoa' came roaring back to embrace the seeming forward momentum. Some fans saw what was wrong with Krakoa and figured it was wrong for a reason and waited for the reveal, while others thought the wrong was oh-so-right. This, at last, was progress!
And since sales were on-the-whole higher and interest was through the roof, Marvel decided they didn't want Hickman to bring things to his conclusion. First they had him start to drag things out and then they showed him the door and let an assortment of other writers, many of whom were already failing at executing Hickman's vision, to carry things on.
Meanwhile, where some fans had become pseudo-revolutionaries during the 'Revolution' era, fans now became pseudo-militants under 'Krakoa'. Hyper-identification with mutants and their struggles with Orchis had apparently led to desires to go out and plant bombs in Orchis facilities. But since Orchis didn't...actually...exist..., they channeled those thoughts and emotions into their posts on social media and became increasingly unhinged. They caused a lot of other fans to disengage rather than have to deal with them and turned even more fans against the current era after seeing the negative impact it was clearly having on a number of fans mental health.
And the fans who were waiting for answers to the wrongness got tired of waiting and reading stuff they didn't like hoping for an eventual payoff, so they started leaving. And the fans who came back for the forward momentum now found themselves reading some bizarre confluence of stagnation and wrong direction, so they started leaving, too. And even some of the militant fans driven crazy by 'Krakoa' were starting to realize that what they want isn't really compatible with who the X-Men actually are, and getting it was destroying the X-Men if not for themselves then for everybody else. If they weren't leaving they were at least starting to sober up to reality.
So now were are getting a rushed resolution to a mess of an era, 'Krakoa' and the 'Road-to-Krakoa' combined should have taken maybe five years and we are well over a decade combined and still not out of it yet. And Marvel is now crafting something to try and appeal to those who loved Krakoa, those who hated Krakoa, and those who started off loving Krakoa but came to hate it.
Good luck with that.
We have been dealing with 'Krakoa' and the 'Road-to-Krakoa' for a combined period of well over a decade. Krakoa was the plan in place back when Hickman was still writing Avengers. We got the Time-Displaced 05 from 'some plan that had been floating around the office'. It was Hickman's plan, with certain things built in, like the TD-05 having certain key differences from the OG-05 baked in from their arrival just waiting to be revealed, and other changes that would be made after their arrival. As the person in charge of implementing their arrival in the present and initially telling most of their stories, Bendis got to make decisions on some of that.
Example: Beast
We saw a somewhat near-future with Beast with a horned appearance and a far-future Beast with even more of a demonic form and wielding arcane power. So the TD-05 were never going back in time until TD-05 Beast started experimenting with magic and eventually developed a demonic alternate form. That allowed them in the current era to say Beast was acting evil at various points throughout his history, either by retconning in things that originally never happened or by re-contextualizing benign or good things into something evil.
The 'Road-to-Krakoa' was full of things like that. Changes to characters and continuity just randomly dropped into stories because they had to set up stories that wouldn't see print for years. At the same time they had to otherwise mostly spin their wheels for those years while waiting for Hickman to be free to return to Marvel to write the story they had spent those years setting up.
So you got a lot of wrongness that made no sense and stories that went nowhere, all while fans argued and fought over changes to characters and history while complaining that the stories were mostly retreads and directionless.
Then we finally get Krakoa and it's so fresh and exiting, but quickly politely asks that you must check you brain at the door. We had just went through a 'Schism' where the X-Men divided in part over refusing to follow Cyclops and his council of reformed villains, yet we were supposed to buy those same people would go to an island and be ruled over by Apocalypse, Sinister, Magneto, Shaw, Mystique..? The X-Men abandoning their long-held goal of peaceful coexistence for Mutant Separatism and cultism? It was preposterous! Theories of mass-mind control and it being an alternate reality abounded, among others. And there were even more massive changes to characters and histories.
A lot of fans that had had enough of changes to characters and histories in the 'Road-to-Krakoa' found 'Krakoa' to be a final breaking point, while fans that had bailed due to the stagnation in the 'Road-to-Krakoa' came roaring back to embrace the seeming forward momentum. Some fans saw what was wrong with Krakoa and figured it was wrong for a reason and waited for the reveal, while others thought the wrong was oh-so-right. This, at last, was progress!
And since sales were on-the-whole higher and interest was through the roof, Marvel decided they didn't want Hickman to bring things to his conclusion. First they had him start to drag things out and then they showed him the door and let an assortment of other writers, many of whom were already failing at executing Hickman's vision, to carry things on.
Meanwhile, where some fans had become pseudo-revolutionaries during the 'Revolution' era, fans now became pseudo-militants under 'Krakoa'. Hyper-identification with mutants and their struggles with Orchis had apparently led to desires to go out and plant bombs in Orchis facilities. But since Orchis didn't...actually...exist..., they channeled those thoughts and emotions into their posts on social media and became increasingly unhinged. They caused a lot of other fans to disengage rather than have to deal with them and turned even more fans against the current era after seeing the negative impact it was clearly having on a number of fans mental health.
And the fans who were waiting for answers to the wrongness got tired of waiting and reading stuff they didn't like hoping for an eventual payoff, so they started leaving. And the fans who came back for the forward momentum now found themselves reading some bizarre confluence of stagnation and wrong direction, so they started leaving, too. And even some of the militant fans driven crazy by 'Krakoa' were starting to realize that what they want isn't really compatible with who the X-Men actually are, and getting it was destroying the X-Men if not for themselves then for everybody else. If they weren't leaving they were at least starting to sober up to reality.
So now were are getting a rushed resolution to a mess of an era, 'Krakoa' and the 'Road-to-Krakoa' combined should have taken maybe five years and we are well over a decade combined and still not out of it yet. And Marvel is now crafting something to try and appeal to those who loved Krakoa, those who hated Krakoa, and those who started off loving Krakoa but came to hate it.
Good luck with that.