i think traffic scott has crazy issues with his sense of self . i cant defend this at the moment but i feel it in my heart and also depending on how u look at his character i think there is canon backing

Uncanny X-Men #11 is Outright Vile

Women in refrigerators. POCs killed for white people narratives. Anti-vaccinator and pro-suicide messages. Return of FascistCap. This book has it all. So obviously, all kinds of trigger warnings below.

I will not be posting any pages from the Uncanny X-Men #11. Not a single one. At least aside from that first page which reads like a bad joke anyway. Yes, this stuff is an actual page of this book. And I urge others to do the same and not post anything from it. When previously I would find this book to just be awful at this point it has reached levels of being openly mean-spirited and spiteful. While Matthew Rosenberg talks on his twitter how he wanted to discuss serious topics in this issue, dealing with personal experience of self-harm and suicidal thoughts, neither he nor anyone else at Marvel took care to actually warn potential readers the book flat out shows a suicide scene for shock value and I have already heard reports it has triggered people. So I urge everyone to not post these pages less we trigger more people.

Yes, the book has a character commit suicide. The story has a subplot of Cyclops searching for Blindfold, whom Rosenberg claims to be one of his favorite X-Men. And after reading this issue I have flat out said on twitter and I will say it here - could have fooled me. Scott finds her too late, as she already has slit her wrists in the bathtub. So this is what her story amounts too. She dies so that Scott Summers can feel sad. Or sadder, he wasn’t exactly sunshine and rainbows since page one. A character created after 90′s and not popular enough to get resurrected in the next 20 years dies so that people who come back to life more often than Jesus can pretend death in comics still has a meaning. A woman dies so that a man can feel sad. The page above is right. Every X-men story really IS the same.

This is not delivered with any respect whatsoever either. On the previous page, we had Madrox telling Scott where he can find Ruth and to leave her alone and then we get a splash of her death with coloring and art so bad you had to actually study it carefully to realize she is, in fact, not naked. As far as lack of respect goes it is out there with that godawful Heroes in Crisis cover showing dead Poison Ivy, wrists slit, ass up. 

What’s more is that at the end we have a backup story, so-called Last Blindfold Story. Which pretty much explains that she did it because she’s been tormented by visions of her own death and cannot see any possible future in which she does not get killed. And this is very obviously a clear metaphor for invasive thoughts, all the dark scenarios people tend to run in their heads about how everything is going to turn horrible, there is nothing good awaiting us in life, no hope or future, just continuous series of crushing failures, disappointments, humiliations and all-around misery so it is better if we just killed ourselves. I know that feeling, even though I am not diagnosed with anything. I will say even I had these feelings to deal with after coming today from a, particularly disastrous day at work that made me dread my future and indeed made me think of killing myself. And then I’ve read this book and do you want to know how this whole story came out to me? It told me that this voice telling me to end myself is right, that every scenario I envision not only will happen but is inevitable and it is better to just kill myself. Thankfully, being spoiled the contents beforehand made it I reacted to the pages more with anger than getting put into an even shittier mood, I certainly did not need it. 

I do beleive Matthew Rosenberg, just like Tom King on Heroes in Crisis, means well, I really do. I do believe each of them is trying to tell a personal story. But we really need to sit down and talk about how the mainstream comics portray and handle topics like anxiety depression, other kinds of mental illness and disorders, self-harm or suicide because for every book that deals with it with respect like recent Unstoppable Wasp or Mister Miracle, and you notice these are always niche titles, we have a high-profile book that completely botches it for shock value and preserving the status quo. Rosenberg might be working through some personal issues but he does so in a way that doesn’t seem to realize the damage he is doing all around.

Speaking of shock value this issue also casually kills of Loa, one of Marvel’s very few Pacific Islander characters. Worse that scene, in the end, serves nothing, it is there to shock you and does not add up anything. You cannot even say that it was done to push Blindfold to her suicide or to show the situation really is that serious. It amounts to nothing in Ruth’s storyline and the latter is being hammered down through the entire issue anyway, this is completely redundant death done only to get people talking. How am I supposed to believe that X-Men writers and editorial really, as they claim to, care for these characters when they write something that treats them as disposable. Similarly, aging of Velocidad done from overuse of his powers is there only to nod Wolverine more into getting back into the game, something that so many other elements, including his conversation with Blindfold, already accomplish, making it redundant. What does that leave us with, however? Two POC characters killed or alerted beyond saving to show how serious the situation is and two teenage girls killed to make things look bad and grim for our manly heroes? For a franchise that prides itself for being a metaphor for minorities, X-Men sure treat women and minorities as nothing but props for stories about white guys.

When we are at treating other characters as props I cannot help but mention that Captain America, Black Widow, and Winter Soldier show up here to protect a mutant-hating rally from any mutants who would want to start a riot. And even though they tell you they want to protect both sides Cap sure didn’t step in when the mob tried to kill Cyclops for speaking his mind but stepped in only when he started fighting back. He had no real answer to Summers accusing him of protecting fascists either. I do wonder what do Mark Waid and Ta-Nehishi Coates think of their efforts to fix Captain America after Secret Empire being flushed down the drain for the sake of an outdated message of mutant isolationism. They did the same with Phil Urich, making him a coward who refuses to do his job out of fear of public opinion. And topped on some old-fashioned ageism by having Chamber, a Gen X character, go and tell Scott, a Baby Boomer, to give up...while Millenials are sacrificed to prop said Baby boomer’s story. And I don’t care Jordan D. White is ranting on twitter with Marvel sliding timescale O5 are now “true” Millennials, nobody cared for this thing in a long, long time and he comes off as bitter old man trying to pretend he is still young.

Speaking of the said rally we need to address the problem of the whole mutant vaccine plotline. And is it me or does the whole thing comes off as anti-vaccinators propaganda, with evil bigots trying to practice eugenics by forcing mandatory vaccines on kids that somehow work on something genetic? Is this really the way you want to use the mutant metaphor? To equate your heroes with a bunch of idiots who don’t want to vaccinate their kids for stupid and often bigoted reasons like assinine belief vaccines cause autism and they’d rather their kid died than be autistic? Is this really a message you want to be sending? Maybe next X-men will start wearing MAGA hats, proclaim Earth flat and draw comparisons to “blue lives” defenders?

It is not that the story is dark. I like dark stories. I love them even I’d say. But there is a difference between being dark and being pointlessly grimdark for the sake of it. One of the reasons why I read superhero comics and why I am a fan of Earn Your Happy Ending narratives is that I find inspirations in seeing superheroes being knocked down and still raising, still pressing forward until they win against all the odds and prove that yes, there is a reason to fight another day. But so far Uncanny X-Men made it abundantly clear this will not be another day in which I or my generation are welcome. I have no doubt X-Men will win in the end. but it will not be X-men with Blindfold and it will not be X-Men with Loa and it will be not X-Men with Velocidad. It will not be X-Men with any of the characters I care about at all. It will be X-Men that made it clear not only am I not welcome here, the book actively things the world will be a better place if I and my entire generation were gone so that it can relive good old days alone.

But hey, it had two guys beating up mooks on a splash page so it CLEARLY means the franchise is on the right trac /sarcasm.

- Admin