Rachel's fate

what do you think will happen to rachel. she said that her throwdown with mesmero have side effects and she's seen battling her team mates. on one of the previews it is said that rachel will lose everything and there will be unexpected villain alliance.

Top of mind, i think there's a possibility that mesmero planted something on rachel's psyche that would unleash her dark side. She might team up with mesmero.

something that would be most unexpected team up would be dark Rachel and emma. the vision rachel saw might happen on the mothervine story arc.

As long as they do something interesting with her and stop putting her to sleep in every issue I guess I'm ok with it.

I do think she would make a great villain for the Xmen though but it would have to be done right. And who knows if they could even pull off anything like that these days.

They are just about stupid enough to just try and kill her off though.

also, one of the previews said that the most powerful sentinels are coming. maybe lydia nance and ahab would team up. there is a chance that rachel's hound visions are bacause she'll become ahab's hound in this timeline. But rory/ahab and rachel know each other. there must be a reason for him to start hating mutants. he might be related to the british ambassador to the united nations that nova killed in x-men red.

@darthphoenix: that would be quite a bit to develop in these next few issues especially since it would be more about Rachel and we all know Guggenheim is not doing that if takes the smallest inkling of spotlight off of Super Kitty.

That said I thought Ahab or Rory was already injured in this timeline...maybe something further happens like you mentioned to set things in motion, a merge with Bastion gone wrong or some other type Sentinel, or some kind of brainwashing by Mesmero or others to turn Rory into Ahab and thus push Rachel over the edge

I think it's going to end with a Jean vs Rachel fight...I doubt it.

*Walks in...*

lets stop making this thread over and over so i can stop thinking about different answers.

*walks out with tear on cheek*

i still LOL when some fans want a all summers/grey family book, yet marvel tries there hardest to keep them apart........i think it has to do with so the writer doesnt have to keep explaining jean is nathan's adopted/step/clone of a mother LOL or where the heck is nate grey from

@hopesummersforthefuture: The Summers family stuff is do fukked up. It's ridiculous

Space and Phoenix Echo.

I'm a man of consistent tastes.

@hawk2916: Too True. Were it not for my misgiving against Jott, I’d totally wish for a legitimate Summers child. Not that I’d get rid of Cable or Rachel, though I would much rather we keep only one of three of the Summers children (preferably Rachel), but why avoid giving them a child so much in a “if only” way like how One More Day went.

@pyrofn: yeah. I don't know exactly what I'd do but I'd have to change something. Maybe Rachel would be the test tube kid and I'm not sure if Cable would even exist in my continuity he's such a convoluted mess ...not that Rachel isn't

@hawk2916: I think I’d choose Rachel over Cable too. (Lucky you @koays) I find it bittersweet to see her either interact with Jean or Scott. It’s a situation where she sees her parents, even though they aren’t really her parents. A reminder of what she lost, but leaving won’t do any good because it would be like losing them again, not to mention what she has built with the X-Men as it is. Meanwhile, Cable has not really integrated himself with the X-Men beyond Jean and Scott. Most associate him with Deadpool more than the X-Men.

@hawk2916: @pyrofn: in Cables defense, he spent a LONG time in his stories in the 90s crossing over with the X-Men and establishing that even though he was raised in the future THIS is his time line. To be honest his story isn't that complicated (Engineered kid sent to the future returns as hardened warrior to kill the guy that tried to kill him), so much as it's already been completed, so it has alot tacked onto it. People who explain Cable ten to explain 30 years of Cables diary instead of just the 7 years of story that explains his introduction plot.

There's so much X-force and Cable stuff that features heavily with X-Men plots, that the only reason I think Cable is associated with Deadpool is because someone thought it was funny to keep pairing them up.

@koays: These days, people value comedy more. Otherwise, Teen Titans Go! wouldn't have still been around.

X-MEN RED #5

TOM TAYLOR (W) • MAHMUD ASRAR (A)

Cover by TRAVIS CHAREST

HEADSHOT VARIANT BY TRAVIS CHAREST

MUTANT HATE IS AT AN ALL-TIME HIGH…

• …and Jean Grey is caught right in the middle!

• CASSANDRA NOVA’s plan is finally revealed….but to devastating consequences.

• And just because JEAN GREY’s team finally knows what’s going on, doesn’t mean they can actually stop it.

• Someone close to Jean is about to become Nova’s latest pawn…but who? And why?

The fact that they've only been in the same place 4 times in all of comic history makes us Rachel supporters more concerned for Storms safety then for that of my wife.

@koays: well, almost every x-man is close to jean but rachel has been havin thoughts of fighting the x-men =( maybe nova is working with mesmero

Rachel's fate is to be forever remembered as an X-Men character who was only remotely interesting in 80s/90s Excalibur. Unfortunately.

@cattlebattle: I will fight you.

@darthphoenix I sincerely doubt that considering how Gold is directed.

Prove me wrong tho.

@koays: I’m impressed. Apparently, in X-Men: Gold #24, Rachel knows Hans-to-jams combat, easily taking down prisoner thugs. Apparently, she was trained by Wolverine.

Reminds me of her mother going into hand-to-hand combat a number of times.

@pyrofn: Prison thugs are pretty low on the rung of threats, though.

Guggenheim is really terrible. I mean straight garbage.

she was great pre-Excalibur too.....hater

She was in like 15 issues of X-Men where she complained for most of her tenure. She was only sort of neat when she tried to murder people but still, that made her seem a bit unhinged and unlikable, even Wolverine thought so as he impaled her.

@cattlebattle: pfft.. lame ass wolverine tried to impale a person so she must be unlikable. Smh irony.

I'd accept whiny as a complaint but she was definitely instant awesome in her X-Men tenure. Even my bias aside you know she made her present felt in every X-Men seen she was in before the excalibur switch.

@gladeusex: Perhaps. Still quite a step up from no feat of martial arts.

Well, she did steal the X-Men's "essences" or some crap like that and tried to murder people because she had the power to giving some of the X-Men PTSD to when the last time they knew a red head who was super powerful and decided to give into to her darker urges but forget all that character stuff, Wolverine is a big meanie am i rite??

I'd be lying if I said Rachel was completely irrelevant during her time with X-Men, however, she was the most remembered for her time with Excalibur. Even her look during that time with the sexy mullet and the Phoenix fire bird construct she used to always use is essentially the default for the character.

Am I the only one that finds it lame that Rachel, Kitty and Ororo beat down these thugs without even a slight sweat when Callisto got the beat down from Crazy Maize so badly she was hospitalized? I've been away from Marvel for a while, so maybe I have missed something on Callisto's fighting skills being downgraded?

Also, time travel makes my head hurt. Cable and Rachel's backstories always become a hot mess because every writer adds some new "but it's an altered timeline" twist in that the next writer forgets or ignores.

@csg_cl: Probably not. Though Callisto never really stuck out, so I doubt there’d be anyone that cares entirely about Callisto being upstaged. Also, I’m pretty sure Storm should still rank above Callisto in hand-to-hand, but that could be me misremembering. Either way, Kitty does have impressive martial arts abilities. At one point, she called herself a ninja even. Given the nature of her powers, it would make sense for her to put more emphasis on her physical prowess.

@pyrofn: I suppose every X-Men has some claim to martial prowess, but for me it's just something they can claim but never really prove. Don't get me wrong - in combination with her powers, she can be strike fast, hard and without being seen.

But from what I've seen? She waltzes around in bright yellow, attacks enemies from the front of their awareness, and basically never uses ranged weaponry. They've reduced the meaning of ninja into an edgy coolaid title to reflect an arbitrary martial art badassery. Honestly, everytime they refer to Kitty as a 'ninja', it simultaneously either puts her on the level of dodgy Hand ninjas, or demeans the actual moments of coolness Psylocke has managed.

And now I think about it, Rachel being trained by Wolverine just seems completely convenient to the situation. I'll respect something like Scarlet Witch being trained by Captain America in hand to hand, because the Avengers are based around one team. Best yet, I don't think I've ever seen Wolverine pull off the specific impossibly situational punch plus kick which hilariously takes out two people. I could make a few statements - the first, that dividing your momentum in such a blow would make both of them weak, the other prisoners are pretty bad if they can't grapple counter (let alone any sort of counter) such a move, and in a nearby panel, Storm socks someone in the jaw - likely with enough force to break her knuckles on their skull.

But ehhhhhhhh. What does it matter. Just more martially inept prisoner cannon fodder to make the Gold team look badass, right.

@gladeusex: One look at a Wolverine respect thread says otherwise. Can’t have claws like that and not know how to use them correctly.

Same can be said about Kitty Pryde. She isn’t always wearing yellow. Sometimes it’s a vomit of colors and then there is that blue suit.

@pyrofn: Oh, I don't dispute Wolverine, given his age and cultured past, is an expert or master at martial arts. Even with his own claws being functionally different from most martial art styles, he's pretty much known for melee.

But, for the most part, Wolverine can pull that off because he's got a healing factor and can afford to make mistakes. I hate to devolve this thread into this, but it's just another SJW trope where women are conveniently strong. Even worse, they have to depower background women to achieve it.

It's series like this that makes me root for the pseudo villains to win.

@gladeusex: So when exactly is it not SJW?

Let’s not forget that Rachel could have “downloaded” various fighting skills and techniques from the various martial related X-men.

Yay for telepaths.

@pyrofn: If the prison women actually knocked out a few of them (considering they outnumbered them 4:3) it would have been even-handed enough for me not to have minded.

As it stands though, I can only imagine this to be a female power fantasy of beating up other women with almost zero resistance. Storm gets socked, so it's not totally uneven, but conflict without real struggle is a hollow demonstration of talent.

I think you are pushing that way too far ... especially since it's all women in this situation AND the women who win are claiming training by a MAN ... by your reasoning every male fight in the history of comics is nothing more than a male power fantasy of beating up other men with almost zero resistance (how many villain goons have been beat up in the 80+ years of comics history).

It's not like this particular scene hasn't been done a hundred times. I'd give your argument some credence if Rachel was over there saying "I learned from Psylocke". But even if it is some "SJW" (a garbage term btw, people wanting to see more than just a bunch of straight white dudes in comics isn't a bad thing), what difference does it make?

This set up just seemed like a very standard situation where the writer is trying to create a threat in order to create a little drama and probably set up some "respect in the yard" for the heroes in a subsequent issue. This scene could have replaced Rachel, Kitty and Storm with Peter, Scott and Bobby and the scene would have played out exactly the same and still not have been any better.

@csg_cl: I’d replace your example of Psylocke with Elektra or someone random female super with great hand-to-hand. (Considering how much time Rachel has spent with Psylocke in House of M and the all female team run, I would totally believe Psylocke at some point off-panel trained Rachel)

Your point was made and understood though. Just a minor nitpick my brain wouldn’t let go for some odd reason.

@gladeusex: It was pointed out in the issue that they were feared as the top of the food chain in the issue, though I guess some proof could’ve integrated that claim I guess.

@csg_cl:

Well, this is the Comicvine X-Men forum, where the only thing to do is to push things way too far.

You're not wrong, but you're missing the point. Yes, the male power fantasy is the bread and butter of heroic comics. If you're saying it's hypocritical of me to invalidate female heroics because of male heroics, you'd be right. However, that wasn't the point I was making. In the last issue of Gold, Nightcrawler and Piotr do basically the same sequence. The exception is being Nightcrawler is one of the established acrobatic fighters of the team, even without teleporting. And Colossus (despite being drawn Juggernaut sized) is still a heavy hitter without his powers.

Kitty being a melee combatant has been established, but the recurring theme is that we've been told she's a 'ninja' instead of shown. It's a storytelling hard and fast rule that has increasingly been pushed aside. DC's 'The Silencer' is not my kind of book, but at least they had a methodical explanation and presentation of how the 'protagonist' has the technique to justify her being a qualified and tangible assassin. In X-Men Gold, Kitty dodges all the things and finishes it with one kick. Rachel manages to clean sweep two of them citing Wolverine training. And I'd actually have no problem with claiming Psylocke trained them - until I realize the Jean Grey book where Psylocke trains her is not something I want to cite.

And the other half of the problem is the potency of your villains. This is a typical problem, and the few exceptional cases where its done right are ... well, exceptional. We're treated to four antagonists for the prison fight, and despite one being presented as immeasurably tall, it's all talk in a typical 'David and Goliath' fight. But they're either talented in hand to hand and we never see it, or they aren't and they're just dumb for trying to take on the X-Men.

To address what you've said, though... the good old "people wanting to see more than just a bunch of straight white dudes in comics isn't a bad thing" is a pretty common neutrality point. That statement in a vacuum is all fine and good, but put it into context and application and I'll have to disagree. I'm all for more heroes, more backstories, more powers, more teamwork, more identity, and more character interaction. For the most part, the X-Men has been the melting pot for a diverse cast of characters despite being an American centric book. What Marvel has done however, is replaced all the 'white male' leadership in a few strokes, and shoved the large majority of white male characters to the wayside.

My opinion on the matter is that the best form of diversity is to mix and co-operate; blend the old with the new. For the most part, DC has done this pretty well, though largely on the back of their tried and true Justice League. For the X-Men however, all the main color books (Red, Gold, Blue) have put the typical 'white man' out of the leadership position. Cyclops is gone, Wolverine is in the wind, Xavier is sort of back? Magneto is basically a lone wolf. The one exception is Cable, who actually had a fun team for a while. Rogue and Gambit was a nice mutual story with a great emphasis on character history.

But X-Men Red? That's Jean Grey's vision, so I can't fault them for that.

X-Men Gold? It's effectively Kitty Pryde and the X-Men.

X-Men Blue? This one's a little harder to pin down, but it is basically a second Teen Jean Grey book.

This has been a long rant, so I'll wrap up the last of the points. I'd have more respect for the prison brawl if the legit prisoners actually brought shivs and improvised weapons. At least it would make the fight more interesting. As for Cyclops, Peter and Bobby getting into such a fight, Adult Cyclops is dead, Peter would basically carry the team, and Bobby... well, he's trained by Wolverine too I guess.

@pyrofn:
You mean the four prisoners being the top of the food chain? I honestly only thought of it at the end of this post, but wouldn't the top of the food chain have shivs and improvised weapons? I don't pretend to know anything about prison life, but yeah, that entire thing rubbed me the wrong way.

You'll know we've come circle if they talk about improper incarceration at some point, though.

she was trained by nightcrawler too. rachel was able to mimic kitty's ninja moves just by watching her

I think the problem we are having here is that you've made a blanket statement that the entirety of the reasoning for this scene is some SJW driven decision making process on the part of the creators. The scene itself shows nothing of the sort. The entire comic is driven by Kitty at this point (now that decision might be what's being driven by consumers wanting more diversity). However, I would argue that the X-Men has long had female and diverse leaders, well before any kind of pressure to be more inclusive had any impact on the actual creation, so this is well within the standards of X-books since at the least the 80s.

Honestly, I don't see this anything more than people wanting interesting characters. Straight white dudes get pretty boring after a while because there are literally hundreds of them falling within every comic, every power set and all across the spectrum of wolds (futuristic, mythological, historical etc..). I don't much care to be honest, but it is nice when you get a break from the standard Tony Stark / Bruce Wayne / Clark Kent / Steve Rogers etc ... style hero. I'm not a big fan of the tactic of dumping these guys in favor a new person like we've seen with Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Spider-man and god only knows how many others, but I do enjoy seeing a different take on a team dynamic such as we're seeing with the current X-books.

Back to the original topic though, I just don't see the scene in question being driven by the fact that the characters are female, I think it's just another example of sloppy writing/storytelling, which was my point about Bobby, Piotr and Scott; you could have easily replaced the 3 women with 3 white men in this scene and it still would have been sloppy.

One last note, I'm not a giant fan of Kitty in general so all this "super Kitty" crap isn't my favorite, honestly ... they have Storm on this team, not having her as the team leader is just silly. I much prefer Kitty as a brainy kid with attitude. But then I also never liked when writers just increase power levels of characters just to make everything some cosmic level threat, but that's a whole other conversation :)

@csg_cl:

That would be right if that was truly the case, but it isn't. My first remark is that women (Rachel, Kitty and Storm in this scene) become stronger when it's convenient. Conversely, the woman who is drawn a few feet taller to identify her as a physical threat has basically no threat in a few pages. Secondly, the crux of my second point was that in a situation they should have struggled in, they didn't. Thirdly, I had to back up my entire line of thinking, so thanks for reading that.

On to your point, I think you're exaggerating my argument to make it seem more absurd. I never said it was the entire reasoning. I'm pointing out a trope - something that gets used ever more frequently which makes me pause on why it's in there.

And I might have yell "Hold It!" You make a claim that consumers want more diversity, yet argue that the X-Men have had female and diverse leaders. That's two complex results from multiple reasons, so I'll break it down simply. X-Men has always been diverse. Maybe not based on arbitrary skin-color, but from backgrounds and nationalities. They've worked well for so long with such multiple layers of multi-faceted diversity that I don't believe anyone truly looks at the X-Men and believes it needs to be more diverse.

So then one asks who and why has there been a call for diversity? And the answer is a vocal minority that values surface values and altering the superhero formula over solid writing or characterisation. If you can nail solid writing, characterisation and identity politics in one fell swoop and it sells, that's powerful. But since Marvel has tried quantity instead of quality, sales reflect that.

As for 'straight white dudes' being the central feature of the heroic trope, isn't that the natural progression of western entertainment? The superhero genre grew to power due to fanbase in America. Sure, it's overused, but its almost an innate expectation. Hell, China has it's own Chinese martial arts subgenre but still find 'straight white' movies like Avengers and other overhyped blockbusters to be highly popular. On the other hand, The Last Jedi bombed in China. I might be cherry picking movies and country here, so feel free to pick your own.

I do sorta think the scene in question is driven by something. I think they could have made the scene way more tense by just having an up close stand off so the actual threat has time to sink in, but as it stands, I do firmly think that there's no point beating up background characters unless they're a shown and illustrated to be a viable threat. While all sorts of wiki's will tell me Kitty is a master expert hand-to-hand fighter, Storm is skilled, and Rachel ... errr, is ... well, Wolverine certified, it doesn't feel like it. I know they have to pack that sort of fight into a minimal amount of pages so the other plot has room to be resolved, but the ebb and flow of the fight sequence still erks me. Kitty dodging everything and finishing it with one kick with Rachel blocking everything and knocking out two people ... I dunno, maybe it's just the art.

As for Storm not being the leader, that might be a byproduct of her leading the X-Men during IvX. I do think Storm should be advising Kitty way more on how to be a good leader, but Kitty's great at everything and all.

And yeah. character power level fluctuation is a topic for another day.

So at the end of the day I think we agree that this scene is poorly executed. I just don't think it has anything to do with the sex of the characters, just poor writing and visual execution. Ultimately the problem here is exactly what you state above regarding the skill levels and threat levels etc... I see no point in arguing about any of that as we obviously agree.

I'm latching onto the whole "SJW" concept in some of the earlier commentary, I'm not intending to exaggerate your point, so apologies if it's coming across as such. IMO that's not what's going on here. Regardless of how an individual feels about increased diversity (and why it's happening) this is still and X-book and you outlined in your commentary above all the reasons why it works in this context and has for a very long time. I'd be more inclined to agree with you if this was happening in a comic that was historically non-diverse and suddenly they switched it up ... obviously there are lots of examples of that too.

I'm not sure I understand what your are saying when you say "isn't that the natural progression in western entertainment" ... the whole argument the "anti-SJW" opinion seems to have is that western entertainment is pushing away from straight white male leads in everything and that this is bad. I think at this point it's clear that female lead action movies can be huge earners at the box office. China is a hard marketplace to use as an example of what is successful and what isn't ... with all the government regulation on what is made available to who and where it's not as straight forward as box-office revenue = consumer interest. By this linear model Wonder Woman was on par with Winter Soldier, and outperformed the Hobbit in China and Black Panther is crushing box-office all over the world (including China), which shouldn't be the case if diverse cast is the issue. But maybe I'm not understanding what you were saying here.

By natural progression, I sort of mean that 'straight white male' has been so ingrained with the superhero culture that it's part and parcel with the superhero identity. Most of it takes place in America, and really can be seen as an aspect of America solving or creating problems. Everything from the Avengers, Justice League, even stuff like the Incredibles, Watchmen, and the low budget stuff aimed at kids largely play off a caucasian America.

Now obviously, superhero comics can be diverse in normalcy to great effect, as Wonder Woman and Black Panther have demonstrated. I suppose by natural progression, we've moved from cheesy thought boxes to cinematic heroes. Maybe Black Panther and Wonder Woman are highly successful outliers in terms of diversity, but when it matters it's all cool when popularity and box office performance send a good message.

But at least we can agree on something. Namely, that good writing and diversity are good when done well. And sweeping overhauls of iconic characters is an unlikable proposition. Perhaps over-diversification is the natural progression of the comics subculture. Perhaps over-diversification works for movies, but not for comics.

I suppose what I'm saying is that the greater world expects straight and narrow white superheroes like Superman, Batman, Captain America and others, though now that I think about it, I suspect I've compared relatively niche comics to movies made for a far broader audience.

Gotcha ... I see your point. Of course it makes me wonder how much missed opportunity comics have because there are such broad audiences for the movies

@csg_cl: Sorry that I haven’t gotten back to you. Been busy. Will address your points sooner or later.

No worries ... we all have lives outside of forums

I actually would have preferred her as the leader than Kitty in the X-men Gold run

Well, after the Dark Rachel Saga (Which was only two issues), I gotta day, who exactly was surprised at the lackluster execution? Because practically nothing happened. Thank goodness we are saying sayonara to Guggenheim. And the sad thing was, people were hoping for Gold to be better than Blue when it was first announced, actually, they were confidant that it would be better.

Jean is gonna stomp her,lol.Poor girl,can't catch a break.