Cyclops - MASTER OF ASSASSINS

Okay, does anyone out there think that this makes even the slightest bit of sense? Cyclops is ordering people to do assassinations. He's authorizing the use of torture.

Maybe I'm just out of touch, but I'd mostly thought we were past the point of thinking that what was "wrong" with comics is that they didn't have a high enough body count. That it would be be some kind of improvement if every comic book protagonist (at this point, the word "hero" in no sense applies in the modern sense) treated life with absolute contempt.

And the reasons are so . . . creepy. I mean, the whole Endangered Species storyline . . . am I the only person who was all creeped out about that? The problem is that their genetic uniqueness was gone and that they, as a species, were "dying out". So it was okay to do anything to preserve mutants as a "species" because they were "dying out".

Why would I find that creepy? Because, well, first, I don't think that they're a different species. They can breed with "humans", humans largely find them attractive sex partners, blah, blah, blah. While mutants might on some levels qualify as a new species, on others they don't. Indeed, the very word "mutant" implies that they aren't a different species, but merely unusual genetic variations within the larger human gene pool.

Which gets us around to number two. There have often been groups of humans who possess certain genotypes who have been very quick to accuse other people who lack those specific genotypes of being a different species. The best known are the fucking Nazis. And, more generally, any racial supremacist movement you can think of.

So, yeah, I was pretty deeply creeped out about this obsession over the X-gene and it's distinction of mutants into a separate species, one so important that by the time we get over to Messiah Complex the mutants are willing to kill and torture to "protect". The reasoning they use is the reasoning of all the racist nutjobs who think that their "race" is superior to other people's race, and it's being threatened by all those filthy mud people, so it's okay to grab a few of them and burn them alive.

They've become what they hated! Scott Summers has decided not only that Magneto was right, but that he didn't go far enough and has added torture to murder, justified as protecting his "species". This used to be the sort of thing that they fought. It'll make it hard to read the book when these people try to stop someone like Magneto (who has been variously retconned over the years that to find the stuff where he was a laughing megalomaniacal supervillain trying to conquer the world, you've got to go back literally decades - so he's definitely morally superior to Cyclops nowadays) or even Mister Sinister. Cyclops is willing to torture people and kill them to enact his racist agenda, not too differently from Mister Sinister.

But, WOW, the composition of X-Force is even more boggling. I think Warpath is a pretty racist caricature, albeit more gentle than in days past, but whenever the X-writers get near Native Americans it quickly gets deeply stupid. But, still, his participation on X-Force is almost given. And Wolverine, of course.

But then we come up on X-23. Here's this girl - and it is important to remember she's a girl, a legal minor - who has been horribly abused to be shaped into a child killer. Her psyche is altogether crushed, she's almost totally incapable of normal human interaction. She was brought to the school for the specific purpose of getting her away from that kind of bullshit, to learn to interact with humans as friends and loved ones instead of viewing them as obstacles to kill to get to her objective. Cyclops takes this girl and puts her on the team because she's good at tracking and killing. Cyclops has decided that it's okay to destroy X-23's soul because he doesn't want to get his own damn hands dirty.

Which is another thing - this gutless motherfucker is sending other people to do his dirty work. I have trouble interpreting that in any other way than cowardice. He's pretty good at sneaking around, he's got this great tactical sense, huge amounts of experience, and powers that are quite good at killing people. He fits the profile to a T. But, y'know, it's better to let X-23 drown in blood than for him to step up and do the things he asks of others.

Needless to say, I'm not terribly pleased with this. If anyone can make sense of why the writers and editors thought it was a good idea, I'd like to know.