X-Men Green - Atop the Fourth Wall
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- Опубликовано: 10 сен 2024
- Welcome to Atop the Fourth Wall, where bad comics burn. In this Patreon-sponsored episode, Linkara looks at an X-Men storyline called X-Men Green!
Check out more AT4W shirts at Shark Robot: sharkrobot.com...
Title Card Art by Viga: / vigasartroom
atopthefourthwa...
/ at4w
Originally released July 17th, 2022
ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION: Green is the color you turn after reading this.
#at4w #marvel #xmen
This whole mini series taught me a lesson
Don’t battle CEO’s, battle the guys who have literally no say in what’s going on.
Hell, that's been Magneto's MO for years - but he's still always painted as a tragic figure and given a pass for wanting to commit mass murder.
Ah, the Planetina from Rick and Morty approach
@@alexiaNBC Honestly Planetina should return, if only for a parody of this train wreck.
Or Rick and Morty could end and stop polluting the idea of what """"adult animation"""" should be.
@@louthegiantcookie I mean, I can get part of where he was coming from. His family was murdered out of institutionalised bigotry in the holocaust by people who were just following orders.
But at the same time, you’d think the master of Magnetism would be better at getting in and eradicating those who make the systems that oppress mutantkind.
I'd like to point out that given the numerous anti-mutant organizations in the Marvel Universe, the things Nature Girl’s doing are especially stupid when you realize it's basically propaganda gold for them.
Meh, the X-Men team has been that since they allowed Magneto to join them. What's one more mutant who people might not even know is one going to do when you can point out the former terrorist who once overthrow a countries government with illusion nazi soldiers and attempted to set off a nuke in said country is one of the leaders of Krakoa?
“Wait, she murdered a manager for a grocery store, mind controlled animals into terrorizing the police, stole a police dog, attacked blue collar workers, and caused a industrial disaster? Oh boy! I knew we were right! Execute 50 Mutants by next week and run the News network to let everyone know why Mutants are awful.
They couldn't have ASKED for a better mascot for why mutants are dangerous
Hell, if she wants to attack someone, GO AFTER THEM. I don't like killing but at least it'd make sense for her. In a way.
Yeah, her actions are just adding more to the fire.
I can’t believe that robot chicken sketch about Ted Turner dressing up as Captain Planet portrayed a more effective method of combating pollution by him going right for the corporate executives instead of the blue collar workers and minimum wage retail employees.
That's both hilarious and sad that that is true.
@@andrewowens4421 Indeed it is.
it's also sad that that somehow portrayed the corporate executives better/realistic than just as mustache twirling villains going "THE POLUTION, THE POLUTION NEEDS TO FEEEEED"
At least he accomplished something!
This reminds me that Linkara used a clip from that a LONG TIME AGO in his reviews of Marville (The first one to be specific)
As an intern specializing in sustainability planning, I felt physically ill sitting through this storyline. This kind of heartless, divisive propaganda hurts the cause of sincere stewardship for the planet *FAR* more than any plastic bag or oil refinery ever could. It tries to make innocent civilians look like irredeemable scumbags no matter how remote/nonexistent their true connection to any environmental harm actually is, but all it really succeeds in doing is making all those who genuinely care about the environment look like pretentious hypocrites *AT BEST* and psychotic terrorists at worst.
The whole time through, I was hoping that NG (I refuse to call her Nature Girl, because that would be the worst possible insult to the original character) would face some kind of actual consequences for her BS by the end of the story, and so I was glad to see Professor Xavier finally drag her and Curse back to Krakoa to face punishment (would’ve been better if the X-Men had been more forceful in stopping her from the very beginning, but at least it was something)… but then I felt *DOUBLE NAUSEATED* when NG and company not only got a free pass in the end to continue their murder spree but even received a freaking *REWARD* for their crimes in the form of a power boost! Needless to say, unless the next phase of X-Men Green undoes or at least addresses the *MAJOR* issues in the original, I won’t be reading it.
Major kudos to you for reviewing this storyline honestly and keeping your cool throughout, Linkara. You articulated all of its flaws better than I ever could.
_P.S.: The whole “enslaved animals” thing is BS too, especially with respect to police dogs, service animals of any kind, emotional support pets, and even regular house pets. Aside from instances of animal cruelty, which are already rightfully denounced and punished by HUMAN society (Le GASP!), most if not all pets and service animals LOVE the humans that they live and work with, and would sooner tell NG to piss off (maybe even literally pissing/shitting on her to get their point across) than help her with her murder spree, if not outright attack her in defense of their beloved humans._
I think it's implied she brainwashed the dog.
Power Pack has a similar story in one of their 80s comics with a company dumping trash in the ocean. Their solution: take all the trash and dump it in the CEO’s front yard.
huh, I actually really like that, it target's the people mainly responsible, and it's not overly sadistic/equal to the crime commited
@@christopherauzenne5023 Yeah, and it's more like a "What goes around, comes around" kind of deal. The Powerpuff Girls did it to Princess when she legalized crime.
@@kidprime6863 Huh. I never thought of Power Pack as the Powerpuff Girls of the 80s before.
@@kidprime6863remember that episode. Genuinely brilliant work.
You know what, I stand in defense of Power Rangers Wild Force. At least there, the pollution was an actual problem because it was birthing new monsters. We were even shown one rising up out of scrap metal. Now, the message was very hamfisted and poorly though out, but when the death of all life is a very real and immediate threat, I’m gonna let the heroes vent a little.
At least, the heroes there were calling out Animus' whole human genocide plot even if the writing was incredibly simplistic. I feel like even Cole would be looking at Nature Girl in disbelief at what she did given everyone including humanity falled under his heart principle.
@@BigAmericanGirlFan Also true. The rangers looked Animus in the face and said "we're actually trying here, and you're just complaining, so come off it and give us our guns back." And it worked.
Pollution is a problem in real life but I think you mean “a problem” in terms of relevant to the central plot
@@GambeTama The Wild-Zords are people and I think framing guns as necessary to the defense of nature could be heavily misconstrued
Fun fact, your average gas powered car these days, thanks to advancements in exhaust filtering and designs, actually produces very few emissions. Unfortunately, the improvements there are offset and then some by coal burning. I could go into a rant about Joe Manchin here, but instead I’ll just point out that this is the problem with too many environmental stories. They are either too ignorant or too cowardly to go for the jugular, that’s it’s primarily corporations and special interests caring more about their McMansions and donor money than the actions of individuals who tend to be at most, ignorant of the tools they use.
Yay! An unambiguously truly bad comic. I enjoy and support Linkara’s more nuanced reviews and even reviewing okay to good comics, but it’s comforting to know that truly bad comics are still being made.
Yeah. It is sometimes refreshing to know there are stuff we all agree and enjoy roasting said bad stuff together
Definitely. I admit all of his reviews are good, but it seems lately that Atop the Fourth Wall is less where bad comics burn and more where good comics are paid to be praised. I kind of miss hearing "This Comic Sucks."
If nothing else, it means that our favorite reviewers will truly never run out of material.
@@LovlyHorror Any society that does not produce bad art is just not trying.
Horrible execution on a green aesop, but interesting story of a character being driven mad by her powers in her "Start of Darkness."
It would have been very funny if Nature Girl asked the dog if it agreed with her killing the manager and the dog responded primarily with confusion.
Dog: "Are you going to eat him?"
NG: "No."
Dog: "Was he a danger to you or your family?"
NG: "His carelessness caused a sea turtle to die."
Dog: "This 'sea turtle' is your family?"
NG: "Not exactly... but it's a part of the natural world! It should be protected!"
Dog: "Whatever. It seems like you're really wasting your time. I'm going to go kill and eat those pesky squirrels now."
Even if they gained the ability to communicate, normal animals aren't going to care about "nature" as a whole. They'd care about themselves, their immediate relatives (depending on species), possibly a human if they are a domesticated animal like a dog, and food. All animals are NOT on the same team.
I heard a fan theory that Nature Girl isn't empathic, no can she speak to animals, just that she can control them and her psychosis makes her think the animals are on her side.
That makes more sense than anything officially canon.
Sorta like the flouronic man in Alan moores swamp thing run
“The Council of Important Mutants” sound like good ol’
“We Should Do Something!
Should We Do Something?”
in mutant form.
To be honest, I didn't expect a group that call themselves "Important" (and allow Charles Xavier to wear this costume) to be that useful
Harumph! Harumph! Harumph!
"That's over there's problem!"
Well, if you give Mr Sinister a vote don't expect things to get done and have positive effects. Ludicrously enough the guy is not even a natural mutant and other artificial mutants are not allowed to enter the island.
Magneto & Storm: We’re gonna DO something!
*cuts back to Mars to the other mutant council*
“WE SHOULD DO SOMETHING!”
“Should we DO something?”
Ya know, if Marvel ever decides to retcon this arc, how much do ya wanna bet Nature Girl was "corrupted" by some evil parasitic nature thing or something along those lines?
I mean, she’s already looking like she’s going to become the Mordeo from Crypt TV. Would make sense.
Ah, the good old Hal Gordon parallax method! See this character can't face consequences for their actions, they were mind controlled!!
It's the swiftest way to resolve bad character writing and while I understand why it can be annoying, the truth is that it's an attempt to correct a mistake while building on the story that was told so it doesn't completely invalidate it. Sure, characters can be sent to prison... but with the sliding timescale of comics, years could have passed in real world time and they'd only be on the first two months of their sentence, meaning that serving their time will never be accomplished. Thus the corruption by evil method to resolve situations much more swiftly.
@@AT4W Exactly. Could be a compelling story but it’s really just damage control
@@thatonea-hole I mean, if it's that or keep the character assassination; I'd pick the cop-out.
It's a pity that Magneto the White didn't face Sauron, since he literally named himself after the Lord of the Rings.
Also, you know, Ian McKellen.
That sound like good writing, and Good writing is not allowed to exist in X-Men Green
It's also ironic to put Sauron on Nature Girl's side, since - if you recall - Sauron had a mind of metal worse than Saruman.
R.I.P. Nature Girl’s character, you will be missed by like the five of us who cared about you.
They didn’t even bother to give her civilian or superhero clothes, for some reason she was still wearing her school uniform.
and now she's actually dead after they fully made her evil
@@EmilySuzuki-me4ki Wait, what? When?
@@DuelaDent52 some time after this comic
oh and her friend died too and the goddess Gaea rejected her because even SHE knows how much of a psycho she became
Also, if Nature Girl cares so much about animals, why is she constantly willing to put then in danger just to facilitate her own escape?
She claims she's ASKING them to help and not forcing them and as I said in the review - apparently every animal on earth is on her side.
@@AT4W so all the animals are also psychotic. Suddenly I don't feel so bad about them dying.
I would insert a clip from that south park episode about how the rain Forrest sucks. But I'm too lazy.
@@AT4W
Though she probably killed thousands of bees since when bees sting people, they usually die! So Nature girl is basically *MAJOR HYPOCRITE!!*
@@AT4WCurious of what she thinks of certain ants, specifically the ones that outright enslave other ants.
@@somethingclever4297 I mean on that topic... apparently all Animals are like South Park's Forest Animals.
Suddenly, Animal Farm feels far more accurate! :P
In fact, It seems like Kraven the Hunter and his lot are the true heroes of the marvel universe as long as they hunt dangerous animals. They are actually protecting humanity from a psychotic monsters that act like their friends when they are kept as pets!
Nature Girl’s horns look like one of those novelty headbands that make it look like you got an arrow shot through the middle of your head.
I know, she'd look more serious if she wore one of those horse masks
Such a dumb idea for a mutation. I think it wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t stick out so far. No way she wouldn’t have massive balance issues with those
Seriously, I just want to call her Bullwinkle
They could just make them that and characterize as fun quirky girl who talks to animals but no, psycho 💀
Yeah, I can see it.
when you get to the oil worker scene it reminded me of the Rick and Morty episode where Planetina killed a bunch of miners because she snapped at the environment being damaged. She was attacking innocent blue collar workers who were just trying to make a living while the corporate masters who were actually behind the operation were safe and sound thousands of miles away. Even the nihilistic edge-lord universe of Rick and Morty had the integrity to show that this was a BAD THING TO DO, but this comic is painting Nature-Girl as the protagonist?
It's Embrassing
Ah, but you see that that would imply one corporation (CN and by extention WarnerMedia) acknowledging that they’re bad and that it’s Corporations at fault for ruining the environment
"There's only one solution to Earth's pollution!" (proceeds to destroy coal mine killing every low wage worker and causing more pollution form the coal fire)
@@alexiaNBC That has me think the solution to pollution is destroying the planet. Can't pollute it if there's nothing to pollute.
Good point I am surprised that Linkara did not mention Planetina from Rick and Morty during the review ruclips.net/video/-MLTktFliLg/видео.html
So fun fact I've learned recently, Las Vegas is relatively environmentally friendly as far cities go.
They get shit for all the excessive everything the city projects, but they are incredibly good at water management among other things.
Those giant fountains that put on water shows all the time, undrinkable sea water.
Magneto turned to villainy because he was a holocaust survivor who saw the worst evils known to man and the experience taught him that the human race will always be cruel and unkind to "the other". Nature Girl on the other hand became a supervillain because a turtle ate a plastic bag. Truly the perfect entry point into the current world of mutant-kind!
additionally, magneto was treated as the villain because in the end he was wanting to destroy humanity and be just as cruel as those humans, the same monster but in a different coat of paint. here nature girl as some type of badass hero (i would say anti-hero but It doesn't even feel like the writers view her being slightly in the wrong) that's doing what must be done but, in the end, makes the punisher look like a levelheaded, rational individual who makes fair judgements
The only reason this comic wasn’t burned is because A) it’s an online comic and B) if he did then Nature Girl would slaughter Linkara, his team, and everyone who watched this for ‘supporting pollution.’
What’s worse is that fire is a natural part of the ecosystem. It burns old trees and grasses so new ones can grow, it’s it’s the way giant sequoias germinate, as the fire breaks the casing in the seeds and allows them to grow
Linkara also hasn’t burned a comic since Holy Terror
@@skibot9974 I don’t think literally burning bad comics was ever really a thing he did. Sure, he did it for truly atrocious works like Holy Terror but it’s mostly just a tagline
@@SorowFame it was a regular thing early on
@@skibot9974 really? I don’t believe I’ve watched many of his earliest.
I'd happily read a series about Sauron just going about his business, buying groceries, arguing traffic tickets, and turning people into dinosaurs.
I bet he could find a non trivial number of volunteers for dinosaurhood.
@@FuelDropforthewin Yes, but since they want to be dinosaurs Sauron would do the evil thing and not make them into dinosaurs.
@@jordanloux3883 I bet he also doesn't wash his hands. Because he's evil.
@@FuelDropforthewin No, he'd do that. Scientists understand good hygiene.
Hey, look on the bright side. Even if Nature Girl is ruined as a character, in 20 years, we'll probably get a really epic mythology expanding retcon about how Nature Girl was possessed by that plastic bag. Even introduce a whole spectrum of pollution spirits. Plastic Straws! Bottle Caps!! AOL Trial Discs!
Is it bad that I actually like the concept of pollution based cosmic horrors and would be totally down for that? As goofy as Hedorah was, it's still one of Godzilla's most dangerous enemies and seeing something similar in Marvel would be kind of cool.
@@mikegates8993 So almost like a cousin to The Rot from the Animal Man comics... yeah that would be cool. The manifestation of civilizations' acts of self destruction.
It's baffling how villainous Nature Girl is portrayed, and yet it seems they want us to root for her. Yikes.
Such is the way of bad writing!
@@thatonea-hole
Seriously, she became an environmental terrorist. Why?
Why would they make her that?
Congrats your sense of morality is not twisted. The ones who made this thing on the other hand, not so much.
If Frank Miller could get away with it with Batman, I suppose the X-Men writers could too.
She was originally introduced as a pacifist!
They immediately wrote that manager (not owner) as stawman too.
Most managers I've known would have shifted the blame.
"Ma'am, I do not have a say in what sorts of bags we use, not what the customer does with the bag once it is sold."
As someone who has worked in grocery stores for years, you’re right.
i mean is that even really shifting blame? that's straight up just the objective fact on the manager having no major control on the situation
@@christopherauzenne5023 passing the buck?
*Point* of blame?
You are correct, but I need a verbage turn of phrase.
@@tyrant-den884 gotcha, sorry about that
As environmental heroes go, Nature Girl seems to be several steps down from Poison Ivy back when Ivy was unambiguously still a villain.
True, Ivy tended to only go after the big wigs or fat cats as opposed to regular people.
@@andrewowens4421 I mean she made Robinson Park into a sanctuary for Orphans during No Man's Land.
Ivy's motivated by utter hatred of people as a whole. Heaven help us if readers find that heroic.
@@lexofexcel886 Ivy used to be that way, but between the fact that her desire to fight major polluters is seen in an increasingly popular light combined with the fact that she's really hot has led to her character shifting away from straight up misanthropic villain to mildly misanthropic antihero.
@@Macrochenia It's a case where the world changed around the character to somewhat legitimize them, but it still rubs me the wrong way. Superheroes and their allies should not see humans as scum.
And any creator who holds misanthropic views has no business making superhero fiction.
Another thing worth remembering, Gaia is an actual character in the MU and she has stated that she considers humanity her children. It's hard to believe Nature Girl's claims of speaking on her behalf.
My guess is that later on, they will claim she is being possessed by some dark/evil nature spirit or some shit. Basically pull a Hal Jordan Parallax.
@@bluesnake4626 Sadly, I don't think that will happen since Nature Girl is, to be generous, a D-list character and doesn't have many fans who would be as upset as with Hal.
@@mikegates8993 Fair
@@bluesnake4626 I REALLY hope that happens. I want the sweet girl that volunteers to babysit opossums in her spare time back.
@@bluesnake4626 SURPRISE! They just retconned it to being where Curse turned Nature Girl into this by wishing she had her as a friend. Then to undo the wish, they kill her off.
Yay....
Now that you mention that part of Nature Girl being made a murderer, and her fans potentially not liking they made her suddenly so cold blooded or violent... keep in mind this has happened to a lot of X-men during this era. While these new runs in general have been great, many of the characters have had their assholery dialed up to 11.
Suddenly I wish Squirrel Girl was included to be the deus ex machina in whipping her ass
Getting Flanderized or villainized, the X-Men has seen it all and always will. And the fanbase isn't exempt from doing those themselves.
I mean they already character assassinated at least one founding X-man, who cares about the new kids amirite!?
Ugh. For the past several years, any time I read X-men material, it frustrated at best.
@@LupineShadowOmega Agreed, I can't count at this point how many douchebag X-Stans have tried to justify the shitty actions of the current X-Men to me. From justifying Xavier mind raping Reed Richards to trying to soften the fact they offer asylum to killers and madmen, and even offer them positions of power. Everything the X-Men do is above reproach and criticism and if you point out anything morally questionable or even wrong about Krakoa they call you a racist. Their attitude, more than the book itself is why I've quit reading X-Men altogether. And honestly, I just want Gwenpool off that island at this point because nothing good can come of her being stuck there with them. The only thing that could get me to read an X-Book at this point, now or in the future, is if it involves her and even then it's a question of what capacity they use her for.
Look at what they did to Moira McTaggert and Beast
If the animals understand her and understand complex thoughts, she could've just telepathically told the marine life "hey, there are these things called plastic bags that kinda look like kelp, if you try to eat it you'll choke and die. Be careful and spread the word."
But no, Marvel needed another character who's an unrepentant murderer who faces no consequences for their actions. As if that's not 90% of comic book villains (and a decent chunk of "heroes") nowadays.
Anyway, thanks for the video, and looking forward to the next one!
Sea turtles eat plastic bags because they think it’s a jellyfish.
@@gentlemanlygeeky4088 So, the turtle died cause it was trying to kill another animal. . . you think Nature girl realized that before or after her murder spree?
@@jessejacobs9697 Thats not even the worst some animals do to each of these other. Some species of Wasps paralyzed tarantula’s and lay there eggs inside them while they are still alive and the have literally each from the inside out, and some species of ants raid other ant colonies and steal there young and basically turn them into slaves for there enslavers colony.
yeah, whenever comics try to deal with environmentalist issues or the like there is always some part of my that feels like in universe this shouldn't be an issue. Like DC has once or twice in comics tried to tackle global warming/climate change and im like "dude, you have 50 fucking villains with freeze rays or the like, I feel like you could easily make one/borrow them and spend a good week in the poles and the issue would be over for a decent time" same goes for any character that can instantly grow giant plants
@@brandonlyon730 don't even get me started on dolphins, frankly, sharks are the nice ones out of the two
Nature Girl has been around since 2014, but had gotten basically no storylines or character development. She was a background character up until, well, now, basically. This is her first actual big story.
And what a big Break for Nature Girl :
Suffering from a psychotic breakdown, going down on a murder spree, being enabled by a child and choosing to dress in a Hela Cosplay...
So yeah, no the best solo debut.
Then she should have stayed in the background. And that Curse kid needs to stay in whatever Krakoa has for a looney bin.
Staying a background character would have been preferable to this.
I mean, in terms of a first appearance in the starring role, there's nowhere to go but up, at least.
@@Kaltagstar96 That's true.
WE HOPE YOU ENJOYED "NO MORAL" THEATRE
This comic may be one of the most bizarrely written things I've seen in a while. Is it an environmental message meant to deliver catharsis for those mistreated by corporations? Then it focuses on all of the symptoms and honestly just makes things worse.
Is it a story about a character going nuts? Okay...? Then it's hardly interesting enough to really lean into it, to wallow in someone breaking. It still seems concerned with justifying the characters' beliefs instead of really exploring the impact it has on others.
Is it, god forbid, deliberate or inadvertent propaganda to paint people who care about the planet as crazy? I don't /think/ it is, since they don't /really/ frame the workers Nature Girl offs as truly sympathetic, and shows that they're still (at least part of) causing harm.
We're really looking at a masterpiece of poorly conceived and executed stories here.
Yeah, I can't really wrap my head around what the comic is trying to convey and that is what really pisses me off. I'm looking for a deeper meaning but the comic keeps stopping short of what that deeper meaning might be.
I really love how she literally says in the comic "I can't just sit in *_our paradise_* while they burn the rest of the planet to ash!" Like, damn. Your perfect, isolated paradise where the island is literally alive and spawns food and guitars, versus the rest of the world who has to deal with starvation, hunger, child mortality, industrialization and actual guitar production.
If there is a Moral to this story, it's "Never listen to Curse. That kid's nucking futs."
@@louisduarte8763 And you know what's frustrating? All I know about these characters is from this comic, but I could see some fantastic potential to it!
You have Nature Girl, a character whose /whole thing/ is empathy; both with the planet and with animals. And you've got Curse, a kid with the messed up power where she either has to curse people or have that energy build up and hurt her.
There could BE something here. Perhaps Curse finally seeing what she considered a viable outlet for "only hurting people that deserve it," and trying to convince Nature Girl to go along with it. And Nature Girl would really have to wrestle with the idea of whether or not she's doing enough to help the world, recognizing how Curse feels, and how her innate empathy fits into it.
Or Nature Girl could just go stupid-crazy and serial kill a bunch of blue-collar workers. That works too, I guess.
It's not an environmental message. Nature Girl is not a hero in this story. This is her path to villainy story. She will not be forgiven in the end.
Something tells me that even Gamera would respond with, ‘Lady, my purpose is to LITERALLY maintain ecological balance on earth, and even *I* wouldn’t pull this garbage!’
Gamera is literally a friend to children so seeing something that would make children cry would infuriate him.
Gamera would probably also be looking at Sauron and thinking "That is the smallest Gaos I have ever seen, I had no idea they made bite-sized ones."
@@richmcgee434 Well, technically the Gaos started out small and grew bigger as time passed.
@@TF2Fan101 Valid point, although I'm not sure Gamera ever encountered any Baby Gaos to know that.
honestly if that were to happen, all I could picture is gamera taking a good look at the situation/what nature girl's doing and him just slowly lowering his foot on her & curse, scraping it then clapping his hands together and saying "ok lets actually try and address/solve the problem"
X-Men Green is, broadly, the story of a psychotic break. Nature Girl spirals, and Curse just reinforces her loop. The sequel stories just further veer into absurd of the quest X-Men Green undertakes, and it does read like crazy people doing crazy things.
They actually gave a sequel to them?
@@ianr.navahuber2195 Issue #29 onwards, yeah.
@@matteomonellini2345 Its scary the kinds of people at Marvel that think that this is a person we should be rooting for.
@@LegendPurpleDragon152 Here's the thing: I don't think they want us to root for her. They want us to be engaged in her story, but isn't the same thing. A story about an otherwise normal girl going on a murderous rampage with superpowers, a dinosaur man and hunted by Wolverine? Honestly, it's kind of enjoyable if you see it purely on a narrative plane if you disregard theme and intention. I think they don't actually want to push a message, environmentalist or not, but instead are using that known theme as a springboard for the story.
@@matteomonellini2345 The ending of the first comic seems to vindicate them as they’re being let go by the island, told their hearts were in the right place and didn’t do anything ‘morally’ wrong, even rewarding her with a magic staff. Admittedly I dropped the title as soon as the first one was released, but really seems like they want us to root for Nature Girl.
Admittedly I’m a bit more pessimistic about comics, especially so called environmentalist stories which don’t actually offer helpful solutions and just either wag their fingers in people’s faces, or encourage retaliation against people with no power to change things to avoid pointing fingers at themselves or other powerful figures.
But come on, there was a recent comic where *Static* was used to support riots as a form of acceptable protest. A character who’s mother was murdered in a riot. Can you blame me there?
You know, Marvel also had a book called Classic X-Men, which reprinted X-Men stories, which was later renamed and renumbered X-Men Classic, because people at Marvel are a bunch of idiots who like to make readers confused!
It's really a miracle how superhero comicbooks have managed to survive for this long, considering the sheer amount of incompetency of everyone involved into it.
Fun Fact: There also used to be a book called X-Men Unlimited. While a rotating cast of writers and artists. It was still better than this.
I always thought of it as one of those kind of industries that got significant cultural and monetary capital from huge brief spikes that they manage to stay together through sheer momentum through the longer periods of stagnation and bad decisions. Like the huge spike in the speculator boom followed by the collapse of the market from basic economics and short-sighted decision making, but they just managed to muddle through until the MCU happened and brought comics back into the larger cultural market.
@@maxcloud753 That's more a recent problem with the industry, and almost entirely because of incompetent management on Marvel's part in the 90's and to a lesser extent poor business choices on Image's part. Before that, comics were far more stable. Sadly, not only is Marvel repeating many of the same mistakes they made in the 90's, but DC is doubling down on them as well.
I find it funny how Nature Girl uses Bees to fight for her.
You know the fragile insects vital for the ecosystem?
Real Big Atler Brain Move there.
Also the framing of the ending made me almost suspect that Krakoa is somehow responsible for all of this, like it killed the sea turtle and brought it to the shore to motivate Nature Girl into becoming an eco terrorist.
Actually depends on what sort of bees, which is a fun fact that people always forget when Bees are brought up. We never make a distinction between the natural and oft beneficial ones vs the invasive species.
Also, bees are a weird choice because of all the animal species humanity uses, bees are the one that is completely there by choice. If you have an apiary and mistreat your bees, *they will leave* . They allow us to take some of their honey because we built them an amazing hive that's right next to resources they need. It's as win/win as possible.
Not to mention the fact that they ... You know... Die when they sting people. Really showing how much you value animals there, nature girl.
its like she was supposed to use WASPS instead
About the only way I'll forgive the BS the X-Men have gotten up to in these stories is if Krakoa was manipulating everyone in a bid to gain more power and overtake the whole world's ecosystem for itself. That would be a solid twist and once everyone's free of its control, things fall back to normal: Xavier and X-Men heroes fighting for unity and cooperation with humanity; Magneto and the Brotherhood fighting for mutant independence and eventual dominance over humanity. There's a stronger reluctance on both sides because of their time together on the island, but ultimately their ideals reinforce the conflict.
I think the story would be improved if instead of a moral crusade its frame as nature girl losing control of herself.
Like since she’s so connected with nature the damage humans are making is literally hurting her both physically and mentally, not letting her think clearly.
That’s why she kills the workers instead of the CEOs who are really responsible, she lashing out like an animal in pain, attacking whatever is directly causing the pain at that moment, unable to see the bigger picture.
Then this can be more of a tragedy, sure what she’s doing is wrong but she wouldn’t have gotten to that point if it wasn’t for the damage humans were making.
You can still have Curse follow her to drive her to even more destructive paths and you can keep the end, only now Krakoa finds a way to put a barrier in her mind that lets her think more clearly. Now she’s off into new adventures trying to help the environment while still dealing with the guilt of what she has done.
That would have been perfect.
It amazing that a RUclips comment section could create a better story than some people within the industry
@@marcluu2433 In part probably because, while possibly arrogant pricks , including myself here, to a good extent, many here look at it from an angle of "What could make a nice story, how could the character be salvaged etc." Instead of being a writer who thinks "I have an idea for an awesome story! And it's theg reatest thing ever! Everything "Makes sense" b ecause i want it to!" instead of "Does this really suit the characters?"
Edit: And, of course, also the whole "And i need to make a political message that is as differenciated, subtle, thought through etc. as a brick to the face!"
(slightly hyperbolic)
Already a better story than what we got!
...damn, now I want to see that..
"I'm not returning to Krakoa. Not until I've changed the humans."
And then immediately after getting away from Wolverine, she's back to Krakoa.
And I know that she really meant that she wasn't going to go back to Krakoa *and stay there*, but it's still amusing.
Changed the humans? She's gonna need a lot of cloth nappies then.
Whoever designed and drew Nature Girl's "antlers" has clearly never ever seen a real life animal with antlers before. What the hell is that? At first I thought she wore on of those Halloween fake-arrow-through-the-head novelty hair circlets made from (oh, the irony) plastic.
The antlers usually look like bicycle handles in the art lol
Girls shouldn't have antlers anyway.
Reminds me of Mantler from the 2000's George Of The Jungle cartoon.
So just to get this straight, this is a story about a girl who is so in tune with nature that the death of a single turtle at the hands of plastic (the true mastermind behind everything in the Marvel Universe) makes her go rage-crazy and turn into a Karen who DEMANDS to speak to the manager, speaks to the manager, murders the manager (in what I assume is a wish fulfillment fantasy for Karens everywhere) and then proceeds to turn into literally the human embodiment of PETA, kills a guy with her antlers, mourns a bee, goes bald, gets punched by Wolverine, has a private trial, is saved by a sentient island and goes off into the distance with the guy who gets more choked up at a turtle's death than at the countless murders he's committed? And Doug Ramsay is just fine with this as well because assassinating one character was just not enough.
Pretty sure the "green" in X-Men Green is a reference to what the writers, editors and everyone involved in making this comic were smoking.
That’s not fair. Don’t blame pot for this travesty lol
The only one of the free Infinity comics I follow regularly is the one with Jeff the Landshark because JEFF IS THE BEST THING MARVEL HAS CREATED EVER!
Sounds Jawsome.
I had to look him up..........and it true.......thank you for your good word.
Nah, Jeff's second place behind Aunt May, Herald of Galactus.
Marvel needs to get both a thesaurus and a better advertising department!
Also better writers and better artists
@@Martynde the art in this issue wasn’t bad but you are right about the writers thing. Or maybe just better editors.)
@@allsuper9268 this art is decent but in general they do need better writers
Imagine being told by Magneto that you need to lay off the terrorism. I mean yeah she’s definitely in the wrong but it’s still kind of ironic.
Yeah, when you get too extreme for _Magneto_ then you know you've gone off the rails.
10:11-10:42 This story makes me really appreciate how Godzilla: KotM (2019) actually makes Lewis' exact argument here in a thematic undercurrent, up to and including having an antagonist give the cliché "humanity as a ravaging virus" speech only to have it blow up in their own face later. Combine "X-Men Green's" stock understanding of ecoterror with its Captain Planet-level-simplistic portrayals of environmental harm on top of its bizarre neutrality towards the hypocrisy of its title team, and I'm left with but one theory to explain this tonally-garbled mess:
The creators just didn't care.
They didn't care about ruining Nature Girl, they didn't care about properly researching or representing environmental topics, they didn't care if the main characters were in the moral right or wrong, they just didn't care about this story. They had a new status quo they were trying to establish--creating a new ecoterrorist-flavored team of mutants, likely intended as players in a future storyline--and didn't care about the details or quandaries that might get raised in how they reached that goal. I could be wrong, but I read this whole sorry affair as a mercenary exercise.
Yeah, this definitely felt like a "We need a storyline that will eventually lead into a bigger one" as opposed to a story that can stand on it's own. And because of that the writers never thought to put any nuance in what they were doing. Just throw any old thing at the whiteboard and see what sticks.
I completely agree. Playing Occam’s razor, it does seem to be the simplest solution.
Cue the "They just didn't care" MST3K clip.
@@maxcloud753 Oh shoot--I coulda made that reference, couldn't I?
Good catch XD
Joel and the Bots: *They just did NOT care* !!!
I read a fanfic where after the Gulf Oil Spill, Namor used the vast riches of the ocean to buy out the oil industry and become the sole head of OPEC, making Atlantis the default seat of the global economy. That was how you write a cool story with an environmental message.
That should have been made into a comic instead of this crap.
@@jturner2577
At least Namor won't respond to the death of a sea turtle with killing an innocent store manager.
Sounds like a cool idea, though a lot of oil industries in many nations are nationalized and are controlled directly by the nations governments like with Venezuela, so unless Namor literally bought out entire nations he wouldn’t be controlling the majority of earth oil supplies.
Aw man, they made Nature Girl angry and gave her a bald scalp and painted half of her head black, and now she just kills people all badass-like! She's just like Furiosa! And everybody liked Furiosa, so that was a totally justified decision that made sense!
At least Furiosa was trying to escape Oppression before deciding to fight it for everyone in that place. If Mad Max Fury Road was written like Green, Furiosa would butcher multiple of the War boys and not even bothering with the Top guys before causing oppression to get worse for everyone
@@Predator20357 Yeah, the point of my comment was that the similarities are extremely shallow, while at any sort of depth the characters are completely different.
@@Shooter__Andy Interesting to hear,
I do like when there are more inhuman designs for mutants as it does help give them that Quasimodo feel but here with Nature Girls transformation it feels more like she is becoming more of a monster which is not helped by the Young Blood’s disease that she has in some panels. The schoolgirl outfit she has doesn’t help her general design either. Also considering the fact that this was supposed to be a more introductory issue for Xmen maybe it wasn’t the best idea to have the protagonist have design cues similar to the main villain of a Marvel movie.
This could have been a better story if the focus was on stuff like poaching or corrupt corporate executives as foes and not have the working class be the main targets of the story. I am sure that there are plenty of villains who are perfect for this story or mercenary types that the villians could use.
On a positive note I do like when characters I don’t know about show up and get some focus on them.
If her antlers were coming in and looking less goofy, that would be one thing, but the changes do seem awfully dehumanizing.
I just assumed that she lost her hair to stress because of the situation she's put her self in
@@Level-iy5ye I would accept that if she did look bald but the fact that the top of her head is a different colour really makes me think of a transformation into evil.
@@archmageeldran2567 and really that's the biggest problem with the comic. the writing seems to want us to think what she's doing is good. however, Curse, her new design, the art, even the actaul narrative of the story is coming off as "future brotherhood of evil mutants character" If they just stuck with her going evil entirely, it would be a tragic downfall of a character and not." oh my god you're an idiot and a hypocrite"
@@stevenhedge2850 agreed and the fact that the well known characters especially Xavier do not approve does not help. Especially for new readers which was apparently the target audience.
Jonathan Hickman's run was probably the best to come out of X-Men since the Grant Morrison era. This story though, can be dragged into the same hole as nature girl and sabertooth.
The only thing that’s good about this series is Sauron.
Hickman left around August of 2021.
X-Men Green came out in October.
What happened to Sabertooth?
@@gentlemanlygeeky4088 Exile
@@harry4716 for what?
When the Sentinels seem like a good idea. You know you've screwed up.
#TraskDidNothingWrong
@@SuperWolsey He really didn't. His creations outgrew their programming and he realized that to the point he died to stop their conquest.
@@jturner2577 Kurt Busiek wrote that one reason why the Sentinels regularly go nuts is Kang the Conqueror fuddled with the first robotic programming to always be super hostile. Basically all A.I. will always go nuts because of him.
@@wdcain1 So the Sentinels being horrible is Kang's Fault? Interesting.
@@wdcain1 But...why can't they reprogram or replace the AI? Can't Tony Stark just, you know, whip up a new one before he takes his morning shower? (Wait, isn't HE an AI right now?) Or Reed Richards? Maybe I'm not understanding to explanation, because that sounds like an easy thing to fix.
My first thought when I started reading this was to wonder how Nature Girl reached her teens without ever buying anything in a store and receiving a plastic bag.
Why didn’t Professor X just use Cerebro to identify her location, then send a teleporting X-Man to apprehend her?
Oh who am I kidding, it’s the same reason Star Trek forgets about the transporters or has them go offline whenever there’s a crisis.
TBF I’m pretty sure this takes place between Trial of Magneto and Inferno, so all of the resources were being put into trying to blow up a satellite in orbit around the Sun.
It’s why ever film in the original X-Men trilogy had Professor X incapacitated before the third act
If I was in charge of naming Marvel's online service, I would have named it "Marvel's Longbox" since its place where comics are being stored digitally.
20:06 "Wait, there's oil in this mountain? I'm rich!" Now I want to see the Beverly Hillbillies style sitcom of Sauron moving to a rich white neighborhood.
Beverly HillSaurians
I can't help but imagine Sauron reading that in the same style as Daffy Duck's "I'm a happy miser!" line.
Have the pilot be about Sauron going to court and trying to sue the oil company.
The fresh pterodactyl of Bel Air
@@skibot9974 More like The Fresh Mutant of Bel Air.
Sometimes it’s nice being a comic nerd who usually picks up old comics . Less confusing . Sometimes . And often goofy
Not far into the episode and I am internally raging over what feels like a new standard for the X-Men comics: treating mutants like they're a separate species from humanity. Other than having mutations, they act like humans and are born from humans. Treating them like they're a different species kind of kills the whole "stand-in for minorities" angle (more than anything that hurt that message already). Now it feels like they're a group of self-righteous aliens.
So… the Inhumans but with personality?
@@christopherbennett5858 Pretty much, based on my limited understanding.
@@christopherbennett5858 No, the Inhumans can actually admit they are fucked up sometimes
@@christopherbennett5858 No, the Inhumans, but even more self-righteous.
@raaabr Especially with Charles seeing all of Moria’s lives
When I saw Xavier wearing that X-shaped helmet, my first thought was that Cerebro got a redesign. I did not think that he'd be wearing it at all times.
I thought he was that Ultimate version of Mr Fantastic who turned into a science villain with a goofy helmet because he stretched his brain that much.
Your first thought is not wrong. That is Cerebro. He just wears it all the time to make constant backups of all the mutant minds for the Resurrection Protocols. Yes. Seriously.
@@ArcCaravan Still around (and also in the 616) when I last checked. Not in this book though, despite probably being an improvement on it.
@@ritatajti799 I know. Heard about him appearing in a big Venom stiryline set in 616. And he'd definitely make this better, even though the pterodactyl did good in that department (until he allied with the "heroes").
I think my favorite thing about Sauron is he calls himself a dinosaur when…he isn’t, on account of him being a pterodactyl.
Also, reminder that the whole “Humans are parasites” thing is an eco fascist dogwhistle. And, on a more minor note, kinda confusing since parasites are kinda important
He also doesn't have telekinesis, so I don't think the writer knew much about him.
@@CrisisComics This isn’t the first time writers have called him a dino though. Really people in general are not aware that the two are different and I just think that’s funny.
I feel like someone who self-describes as "sapiosexual" would probably object to you denying his right to also identify as a dinosaur if he wants to. Also, were he and Black Mamba flirting? That sure seemed like flirting.
@@richmcgee434 The art could've conveyed it a LOT better- like if one or both of them took on a sly grin or raised an eyebrow at the prospect.
Instead, we just get three identical panels, one of which is slightly zoomed out.
@@CrisisComics It's almost like the artist was lazy and the editors didn't reject the work and tell him to do it again better. Which isn't surprising, since those same editors okayed the story on this train wreck in the first place.
I dunno why, every time I hear the "Bees. My God", it fricken kills me. lol
Good lord it sounds like the patron was holding back when they called this awful. This is absolutely abysmal. I have no idea how this made it through the hands of multiple creators. It seems like the kind of story where the creators would claim it’s “complex” when in reality it’s more like disparately & desperately glued together.
One easy thing that confirms this wasn't written cleverly with its message in mind? Marvel has several companies that are unapologetically pollution-friendly, and above all of them is Roxxon, one that usually does bad things in the background and yet are still noticeble, and basically are Captain Planet villains on a larger scale. So you'd think that for a save the environment story like this the writers would make them the bad guys, but NOPE.
Unless the oil pipeline and/or the refinery were their property.
Also, since VTubers were mentioned, insert your jokes about poor Ceres Fauna. She might be a yandere, but she's not evil like in this story.
-Teo
Boy, don't you just love it when stories centered around characters who have powers centering around 'animals' seem to consistently forget that _humans_ are also animals?
It's funny that Aquaman is the only character I can think of with abilities like this that seems to remember that, since he's been shown that his telepathy can partially affect humans and even Kryptonians.
When Grant Morrison was writing JLA, Aquaman defeated a Martian with his aqua-telepathy.
X-Men stories have a real bad habit of writing their characters as bigoted and mean - but framing it as a good thing. ESPECIALLY in the Krakoa arc, where people like Wolverine are having complete character shifts and suddenly "you people"ing their own friends.
It's not like there "friends" ever did anything to help them anyway.
@@mttylerdurden9 True not until the end of AVX Anyway with a few exceptions.
@@mttylerdurden9 Yes they did, they're often portrayed as being kind to mutants and not judging them - but the moment there's Krakoa, suddenly everyone switches to acting like supremacist jackasses and judging people like Captain America for being human. I don't even object to the idea of Krakoa itself to protect them from their enemies, but seeing characters I love act like bigots really stings and makes me not want to read the comics.
To be fair, they'd done the same thing to their fellow mutants as well. Back around and a bit beyond the AvX days, Beast literally created what could have been a massive time paradox over what could have been a sit down conversation between him and Scott or him even being a little bit less self-righteous. And of course that was before he then caused tons of deaths himself, but faced no repercussions.
The X-Men get lots of iffy ethical writing is what I'm getting at. Like yikes really.
It's almost as if ultranationalism is a bad thing and leads to a very "us vs. them" mentality.
I would to point(as someone who seems to love this era of X-men and seems that I am the only because of other comments here), She broke Krakoan law. The second law forbids mutants to kill humans.
Edit: oh they do bring that up. I am glad that I missed this as I only collect the physical comics as yeah the character assassination is off the charts.
Indeed. And it is a big deal in this version of their society, because they are effectively immortal now and they will lock you in the core of the island for that.
@@LupineShadowOmega I personally don't consider that law to be anything done out of any other reason than pure pragmatism. They ressurect. If they kill a human and they'd just go "Yeah, lol. We don't care!" Sooner, rather than later, the rest of hte world would slowly start getting pissed off, with them claiming diplomatic immunity for every mutant... and then take measures which, despite their Power Level, they might not escape. Where a best case scenario for the X-men would be mutual obliteration.
@@LupineShadowOmega Yep. Plus, with their ability to terraform mars within thirty minutes, resources aren’t that scarce.
@@christopherbennett5858 Yep. Also the ability to just create matter and grow bio-technology. Heck even the medicine they have effectively just giving out. Mutantkind's resources fix lots of problems.
She did break Krakoan Law... and Krakoa itself let her go. What does it say about Krakoa as a nation when the island itself can just ignore their own rules on a whim? Say what you will about most nations, usually the land they're built on doesn't facilitate sedition. I'm just saying, that does not bode well for long term national security.
Magneto the White makes me think of Gandalf with a helmet, quite apt given both characters being played by Ian McKellen.
Legitimately I was like "this is just a bad comic what's got people up in arms." Then we hit the ending and I literally felt my face twist with disgust. SHE MURDERED MULTIPLE PEOPLE. THIS ISN'T "oh, she assaulted people in a fit of anger", SHE IS HAUNTED BY THEIR GHOSTS. And then everyone's smiling and happy as their send her back into the world? Are you fucking kidding me?
Honestly, considering the politics expressed by Marvel at the time (cough Storm talking about "Mayonnaise Shops"), I'm not surprised that they expected eco-terrorism to go over babyface, but... fuck, man.
Where's Ghost Rider when you need him? Or heck, make a cross-company call and get the Specter in from DC, murderers are his bread and butter.
"Kid, it doesn't matter whether you feel guilty. You *are* guilty."
… i’m sorry, I am not familiar with current x-Men comics details other than scraps I learn online, storm said WHAT?!
@@Gojiragon Ta-Nehisi Coates has some... interesting... views.
@@Gojiragon In 2017, there was a comic (Black Panther and The Crew) where Storm and Misty Knight are in New York, investigating a potential murder/giving Marvel an avenue to discuss race relations and the police. (A big focal point for Ta-Nahisi Coates, and a particularly interesting idea for a topic for Misty Knight, being both a Black woman and a cop).
While doing so, they have an argument/discussion about gentrification, where the symbol used for it are "Artisanal mayonnaise shops": in the first issue of the series, in a discussion with Storm and some local activists, Misty Knight asks "Don't like the artisanal mayonnaise shop?" as a sarcastic reply to a discussion of how the city is attempting to push the Black community out of Harlem through higher prices and gentrification. (And a reference to a then-relevant-in-NY business that had opened in Brooklyn in 2012, before being priced out of the Prospect Heights community in 2016). The metaphor is reinforced in the conversation by one of the activists ('If [they did kill my uncle] Mayo is goin' be the least of the city's worries"), and she returns to it later in the issue, telling Storm in a private conversation that she believes Harlem is better now than it used to be, and asking 'what's the matter with mayonnaise, anyway?'...mere moments before the robotic private security drones the city is deploying in addition to the police attack her and Storm for being out past curfew, highlighting that obviously the system is not working fairly.
Issue two starts with Storm and Misty now visiting "Little Mogadishu", a fictional slum of Marvel NYC, and Storm says "I see the mayonnaise shops have not yet arrived HERE."
Which makes sense as a continuation of the conversation from issue 1, but, if you're just taking issue 2 out of context, it comes across as Storm calling white people "mayonnaise", so of course many people did exactly that.
@@AllWIllFall2Me Wow someone with sense. Ain't Linkara a progressive? Why are people trying to be CHUDs in his comment section?
Honestly, I don't think for a second Nature Girl is actually empathic with animals the way she thinks she is. A dog with no attachment to a turtle is just going to be annoyed he didn't get a chance to eat it, not upset that it died because somehow it choked on a plastic bag in the middle of the ocean.
It only makes sense if she's actually projecting her own thoughts onto said creatures and using them to justify her own actions. She basically is an echo chamber of one with every animal in her area reinforcing her beliefs.
And based on the comic, it really does sound like we're supposed to be on her side, and that at worst, she's a tragic hero who went about things in slightly the wrong way. If the goal was "both sides have a point", well a) no they don't and b) the comic did a piss poor job of showing it.
Nature Girl is a villain, full stop. The writer is not good at their job.
Also, Wolverine can fight the Hulk and Sabertooth but a BEAR is going to give him trouble? Really?
He killed a bear in the first issue of his original solo book.
He held back because he didn't want to hurt the bear.
yeah, a similar thing happened in Alan moore's swamp thing, where the floronic man was pretty much projecting his own thoughts/viewpoint onto plants and swamp thing jumped in and stopped him, pretty much saying "if you kill all humans/animals, your gonna kill all plants too"
Okay, I thought 90s environment stuff was insane this is very insane.
You see they are trying to one up enviromentals so following their example they care not for science and are even more extreme only to feel good about what they did not even bothering if what they did had a positive effect or not.
"Hey, did you know that Marvel has a digital subscription service that includes *29,000 back issues?"*
My dad knew. I bought him a few months worth of a subscription as a Father's Day present once because he was curious about it, and he wanted to reconnect with the comics from his childhood. If you ever get the chance to, Dad, say hi to Stan Lee and Steve Ditko for me. ☺
7:53 - Hey, feel happy that you see THAT. This is my first time seeing this character, and I either see Bullwinkle or (if she's in close-up like on the cover) some girl with an arrow through her head.
"You've become PETA in mutant form."
How redundant.
"I mean, what AM I supposed to call this thing??"
Crap.
That's something I hate about enviromental messaging nowadays. Like in the Kingsman movie. I don't know if this is the result of some big media campaign by multinationals to elude responsability, like they have done many times before. But the responsability of the problems causing climate change and the destruction of the enviroment in fiction are never put in the hands of the giant businesses eluding sanctions, and doing harm for profit.
It's put on the whole of humanity. And with that, they mean the average Joe that some day simply let a plastic bag fall on the ground. Or the worker of an oil drill platform at most. Falling many times into Malthusian ideas of "how we are too many" that, need to be reminded, where one of the reasons the Irish Potato Famine grew so out of control.
Another thing with such messages can be if they have their "Superior Culture of the day", be it Stargate's Nox, be it Themiscyra, be it Elves, Fairies, "THe People" in general (Artemis Fowl. Basically all kinds of mythical beings) Wakanda or whatever they want to use, be portrayed as better and not having issue X... because they have magic, or stupidly advanced technology or have nature itself just give them everything or have gods helping them or whatever... and they won't share, because "You are not ready!", "No we don'tw ant to give it to you!" but we're still meant to go "They are so much better than us!" even as they go "Hurhur stupid humans!" Or "grr!!! Stupid humans can only destory!!!"
I'll be honest and defend the Kingsman, part, at the very least, the people who wanted to end humanity to save the earth they at least painted the guy as a fricken villain and that our heroes are there to stop him from murdering millions of people for selfish reasons.
That at the very least, says, that not killing everyone is a good thin and not hey we should slaughter the world
Well, we are too many, but not to the point where allowing massive numbers of people to die is something we need to allow. Just stop people from having litters of kids they can't care for. And allow easy access to abortions and birth control.
Well, the answer is kind of obvious. The message is being made by companies on their dime. Having the story attack big business would be a shot in the financial foot.
So it’s easier to put the responsibility of individuals because it shies away responsibility by feeding into the general population’s desire to be the hero in their own stories.
Basically, this is the environmental version of the movie Crash.
Case in point being Doctor Who’s Orphan 55 which literally ends with the Doctor talking about the individuals responsibility to the camera.
Honestly, one of the few things to actually blame corporations in their environmentalism stories is, oddly enough, Archer.
@@undertakernumberone1 It's the Prime Directive principle as discussed by Linkara in his Marvel Team Up review involving Uatu the Watcher
Ah, the times it was popular to have an eco message, even if it was poorly done. I mean, stabbing the manager because of a plastic bag (probably thrown in the ocean by SOMEONE ELSE) ?
Or by a company that exploits any and all anti dumping laws.
It is very much like if Nature girl stabbed Britney Spears because the turtle died after swallowing a shard from a bottle of Curious.
Apparently this was about a year ago.
Could have been that the plastic back simply blew off the back of a waste management truck, fluttered around on the wind currents and somehow ended up several thousands of kilometers into the ocean, meaning nobody was to _directly_ blame.
@@XanthinZarda Yeah. And she kills the manager instead of the CEO.
Also, yeah I know this sea turtle’s death was the straw that broke the camel’s back but really? Not an oil spill or something more catastrophic.
Don't forget, tiny pebbles to the head are dangerous, just ask Injustice Nightwing
I'd ask Goliath.
Sorry if this was stated before but just wanna say... It is very striking that Mobile fighter G Gundam understands that humans are a part of nature better then most nature or environmental focused media stories, comics or otherwise.
That’s probably because in Shinto humanity and what it produces is considered a part of nature whereas in Western religion and philosophy it is often considered apart from nature. At least in colloquial thinking. A smart writer would’ve used this to make some sort of point about our disconnect between ourselves and our environment. But this was not written by anyone very smart.
I also think alan moore's swamp thing handled this well, with it being woodrue/floronic man's own biases and human viewpoint/mentality of the situation corrupting and manipulating the green into thinking this is the right course of action but then swamp thing comes in and says "if you kill all humanity/animals, you kill all the plants, we need each other to survive" and then all his powers just stop
it's also annoying how these stories try and paint nature as so innocent, like "the rabbit and the lion pick gumdrops in the candy cane forrest" type shit, and that humanity is some type of evil parasite and ignore that nature is filled with, you know, actual parasites, disease, plagues, animals that would kill anything in an instant if they could, animals that would do much worse if they could, etc.
@@Mysticist that's actually a really interesting idea to go into, in a lot of western countries Christianity is a major religion and, in that text, it says "god created animals for man" so that may be an almost subconscious reasoning for why western stories view man and nature as separate while like you said Shinto treats them as being a part of each other.
*Pyro* And now, here's Wonderwall.
*Krakoa drops them in a sandpit*
*Edit* Should've watched all the way to the end before making this joke.
Funny enough, Nature Girl killing a cashier over plastic reminded me of a similar story where Florida Man beat-up employees because he had to ask for a straw instead of just simply taking one.
Probably could've saved face with the story by replacing her with a Florida Native.
I'm SO SICK AND TIRED of Marvel trying to be "relevant" when they just keep missing the mark.
How does an episode of Rick and Morty do this concept better?!?!
Edit: Hell, even the musical episode of Rocko's Modern Life does it better, helped immensely by the catchy songs and willingness to not sugar coat things. And this was a cartoon from the 90s!
I don't know but I'm definitely watching that episode as soon as possible. Even though I'm not a massive fan of Rick and Morty.
Stories like this remind me of how anti-smoking commercials are owned by smoking companies thus they made the commercials look bad to make smoking look good.
Ooh first controversial Krakoa era review. Cant wait for a potential fallen angels review.
How would a dog in Vegas known what a sea turtle is?
Nature's apparently magical like that.
And why wouldn't it want to eat it if it did?
14:35 Fuck Wolverine fighting a fucking BEAR, how the fuck does a teenage mutant girl living on an island with no roads know how to drive a motorcycle!? She doesn't have her learners, does she? I feel like Burt Gummer here: Denied critical need-to-know information, and it's killing me inside.
Linkara, can I just say thank you for introducing me to Marvel Unlimited. I switched to digital comics a few years ago to save on space. Only really got the odd trade now and then. But this service has really let me get back into comics proper. I'm catching up on the books I used to be subscribed to and getting so much more on top of that. Tonnes of books I've been interested in but never got round to picking up. And they even list prominent appearances and stories for specific characters and provide reading guides for big event stories so you don't get lost. Tie-ins and all.
Funny thing I found out. Civil War II? The amount of tie-ins it had? The event requires two separate reading guides as a result.
This is literally my first time learning about this Nature Girl character... and this makes me DESPISE her with every fiber of my being. She murders innocent people who are just doing their jobs to make ends meet, allows a child who's very clearly a psychopath to join her, and she believes that all the death and destruction she causes is right and just. And we're supposed to root for her?! I'm assuming before she called herself "Nature Girl", her real name was Karen. Because she's sure as hell acting like one.
It's likely meant to be how empathic she is to nature that she's lost her humanity in a way, which creates that sense of alienation, not unlike the Morlocks potentially, where they have such blatant physical aspects to their mutant powers or mutations that they feel the need to leave human society proper and form their own society.
Her real name is Lin Li.
And if you read her appearances prior to this THING, she's actually very likeable. This story is blatant character assassination.
@@Wright805 While I will agree that this is character assassination, I can only take your word for it on her being likeable before this. This abomination of a comic is so awful, that I don't even want to read any comics she previously appeared in.
@@ShyBiiteVT That's fair enough.
If they had just portrayed Nature Girl as the villain this might have actually been interesting. The Xmen, and probably other characters, all coming together to stop her obvious mental breakdown and possibly some other villain who may have been controlling her or something. I dunno, I'm trying to come up with ideas that would actually fix this mess.
While I didn't like the book myself, you could say she's becoming a villain with "good intentions" yet her methods are wrong and insane.
"It's time for Maximum Carnage."
I dunno, Nature Girl brought about a lot of carnage already...
12:18 Jonathan Hickman loves putting characters in Giant impractical helmets, like the council in his SHIELD series, Babylon in East of West, The Maker(ultimate Reed Richards).
I was actually thinking of The Maker when I saw Xavier's design. Though I forgot his name and just thought "Ultimate Reed Richards".
I feel like this story would be considerably be less awful if Nature Girl felt a hit of REMORSE for the people she killed. It still wouldn't be a "good" story but what if after she killed the first guy in a fit of anger she becomes overwhelmed by guilt and fear and is conflicted on whatever she should turn herself in or go into hiding. Instead of being nonsensical story about a psychopathic eco-terroist, it is a TRAGIC story of a well intentioned hero who has become a murderer on the run.
You read my mind.
That's a good story.
No, Haruka has much better antlers for someone called, "nature girl." Seriously, this kid's antlers are just sad, looking like something got lodged through her skull in some of the covers. And Haruka has vines and plant growth on her antlers.
It's those headbands that make it look like an arrow has been shot through your head
It looks like one of those fake antler headbands
Yeah looking at it, nature girl's horn design fall under the "she's gonna look however the hell I say she looks" category of comic design (aka her design varies wildly with artist). in some version her horns look more natural/cooler looking, I think my favorite version was when she had giant, majestic antlers that made her look like a forest spirit, but yeah here I cannot take her seriously because I imagine every time she tries to "save the planet"/ruthlessly kill she bangs her horns on the doorframe repeatedly, like those videos of dogs that find huge sticks & can't get in the door but have zero self-awareness on why they're unable to get in
I looked this up and the funniest thing is that marvel realized how bad, poorly written and down right ignorant this comic was
Later issues say that nature girl was actually being manipulated by curse to think like this. Ignoring how her dog says she was right, the spirit of the island krakoan, sympathized with her; implying what she was thinking wasn't in anyway horrendously wrong. And overall marvel writers and editors regretting not putting any amount of research into it
Man if i had a dollar for everytime Marvel does something stupid, regrets almost immediately and tries to fix it with even dumber retcons i would be richer than both Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.....not even exaggerating
i for one love the krakoa, mostly because of jonathan hickman being the mastermind behind it. i like the fact that the mutants were putting aside their differences to try to survive against a world that will never accept them. and even taking in some rather..........questionable story choices by writers other than hickman (i wasn't a fan of "x of swords" and retconning franklin richards into not being a mutant anymore was beyond stupid), i have liked a lot of the stories and books that came from this.
that being said, this story was NOT a good way to introduce new readers to the new status quo for the xmen. at this point, not every nation was happy with the mutant forming their own nation, with vastly superior funds and tech to almost every other nation on earth and many of them willfully holding mutants hostage as a resource because they didn't want them leaving. and i can understand the quiet council wanting to handle this quietly due to not wanting to give the rest of the world another reason to hate them but they handled this so damn wrong. and nature girl just getting a pass from krakoa? fuck that noise.
if you want to get someone into this stuff, they should just start with "house of X". this "xmen green" should destroy itself since it's total garbage.
I think Dan Slott was the one who retconed Franklin Richards into not being a mutant. A decision Hickman was pissed about.
"with the mutant forming their own nation, with vastly superior funds and tech to almost "
And that's such a load of shite ocnsidering Stark, Banner, Richards etc. The only reason the muties are allowed, yes allowed, to be advanced is because they are totally divorced from everything else now. They sit on their isalnd and mars, and whatever stuff they come up with only matters to THEM. Having no issues iwth polution? Doesn't matter for the rest of hte world. No hunger? Let people strave! Cancer cured? I guess they also don't like that corporations are allowed to sell smokes, like Wakanda.
Meanwhile Richards and co. aren't allowed to actually invent anything that might solve the stuff, or if they do it gets shelved... because you can't have the world develope ahead of reality.
ANd i personally loath all of this story. It's basically Mratin Luther King going to the black panthers and going "You're right!" and then embracing colonisation (as in one of hte suggested "solutions" to what would be done with freed slaves as to avoid upsetting society. Shipping them off to Liberia where they'd form a US colony. Which was considered a load of shite by the likes of Frederick Douglas, for hopefully obvious reasons).
Dan Slott should never have been given the FF in the first place. I think Marvel editors allowed Dan to change Franklin was because they wanted to give Hickman the finger
@@mttylerdurden9 yeah.... god knows what dan slott was thinking about that
hickman probably had his plans with franklin since the days of his fantastic four run
and then here comes dan slott with his trollish move and suddenly he has to throw away his plans
at least hickman respected that unlike jason aaron's trollish way to write his avengers run where he admitted in the writer's column at the end of each issue that he is writing avengers without any seriousness and just wants to have dumb fun BUT when a writer tries to damage control his dumb retcon of "thor is phoenix's son", he doubles down on his retcon out of spite
@@zemox2534 that was so sad. i wish they gave fantastic four back to mark waid or to al ewing
24:24 Given part of the krokoa status quo is that the X-men found the key to immortality through combining the powers of 5 mutants like egg elixir etc to resurrect the dead I could totally believe that happened at some point
if this comic really wants to make some statement and have us agree with nature girl
have her target CEOs doing damage
Exactly that would have given nuance.
@@jturner2577 Yeah. Like companies who are the lifeblood of whole communities.
Unfortunately, it’s always going to be a problem for a large multi media company to make any message about things like environmentalism and/or capitalism.
@@christopherbennett5858 It's was a problem to make an Anti Drug psa in the early 70s but Marvel pushed ahead and did it without the comic codes approval.
@@jturner2577 Different issue. the Anti Drug PSA was the US Government asking Marvel to do an anti-Drug story and the CCA wanted to be pricks.
Here, they'd be pissing their own legs, because Disney is one such company.
I look at Nature Girl (which is a really generic superhero name btw) and just want to give her the Bullwinkle voice "Gee, Rocky, those humans keep hurting the earth, maybe we should murder them?" "Holy smokes, Nature Girl, you're right!"
"Watch me pull a senseless massacre out of my hat!" "Again?"
For the record she didn't choose her code-name. Eye-Boy called her that and she just went with it.
Can not take Nature girl seriously, because she looks like Steve Martin or Fozzy Bear with gag arrow through the head headband
When the main character of Sweet Tooth looks more realistic than you, you must question your existence and life choices
I thought of Mantler, the man with antlers, from the George of the Jungle reboot Cartoon Network had several years ago.
One thing that bothers me about the X-Men, at least in recent years, is the way they depict mutants and mutant powers as being dangerous to others or even themselves (I can list several incidents in which mutants accidentally killed their loved ones or became disfigured when their powers manifested), then have characters whine, “Humans think mutants are dangerous when they’re not!” (Blinks) I’m sorry, what? It’s a valid point if they say, “Humans think all mutants are bad and dangerous, but most are innocent people just trying to live their lives, so people should educate themselves instead of forming prejudices against a group based on the actions of a few,” but it’s not valid if they depict mutants killing people and destroying property (sometimes gleefully), forming terrorist groups with names such as The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and managing to maim others and themselves by accident and then claim, “Mutants aren’t dangerous! People are just bigoted!”
Recent years? You mean the premise. The premise itself has from the very beginning been that humans demonized mutants for being different and dangerous and yeah right there in the first few issues we have Mags being dangerous and powerful because he's a mutant. This is the premise of the series and was always an underlying problem with the allegory at its heart. Not, that the Marvel Universe's civilian population isn't just dicks too, because they are. They are insufferable assholes, but that doesn't make mutants not dangerous.
It's really always been the case, Cyclops is practically Shigaraki with range, but it's been increasingly difficult to ignore.
Especially since Marvel now just can and does write the marginalized groups X-Men were supposed to represent.
@@LupineShadowOmega "You see, mutants are an allegory for X!" With the exception that in reality, X can't just randomly conflegrate 3 square miles because they lost their temper for a moment...
@@LupineShadowOmega Good point. Maybe it was just less blatant back then. Speaking of the early days, people want to believe that the X-Men were created to be stand-ins for XYZ group. Stan Lee admitted (I think in the forward to an X-Men guide) that mutations were a way to avoid writers having to come up with superpower origins and the “Do you feel like an outsider? Well, the X-Men are just like you!” thing was something that happened after the fact due to fan response.
That also reminded me of the Mad Magazine lampoon of the 1990s X-Men cartoon.
*(The X-Men watch a news segment about mutants causing havoc)
*One of the students (I don’t remember which)- More bad publicity for us! Should we attack the station in revenge?
Professor X- No, I’ve told you revenge is wrong! And if any of you take revenge, I’ll get even with you, just you wait!
@@undertakernumberone1 Yes, that has even been pointed out on the page. I own Earth X right now and there Bruce Banner points out to Cyclops how people always should have been afraid of mutants.
But that's also a point in the premise's favor too. I.E. Exploring that just because you could and should be afraid of something, what does that really mean? What right does your fear give you? People are afraid of tons of things in real life. Does being afraid give you carte blanche to do as you will with the lives of others or other living things?
That's fiction baby. You aren't going to get any perfect allegories, but you are going to get to explore tons of humanity's issues and hang ups in ways that you never could in real life and oft times with a far less hostile audience.
How is the supervillain Poison Ivy better at this than the hero Nature Girl? She goes after the CEOs of companies behind pollution not random people working at stores...
Ivy also isn't a hormonal teenager (thank god)
Our protagonist everyone! The unfeeling sociopath who murders people despite it not being their fault!
Jesus Chuck, what are you teaching these kids!?
The one little girl's power is literally being evil. I'm not sure what he could have done, even if he were still teaching.
@@LupineShadowOmega He couldn't have but someone else could have.
@Mobysimo
I really don't understand the reasoning why she had to kill the manager. Like what Linkara said, she acted like the manager purposely jam the plastic bag down the sea turtle's throat.
As far as I concerned, the manager is just some guy doing this job. It's NOT his fault the sea turtle died.
24:48 The sad thing is this bullcrap line could have been the basis of its own story if this garbage hadn't happened first. Granted, I hadn't heard of the resurrection protocol until now, but now that I know what it is, I see story potential here...or I would have if Nature Girl hadn't already gone off the rails.
Think about it: Nature Girl can feel the planet's pain. What if she felt something the planet truly couldn't come back from? Sounds like an interesting story about trying to find and eliminate the threat, and while that could easily lead into PSA Hell, it could still be a fun one. Besides, in this hypothetical story, I like the idea that pollution is a red herring: it's bad, but it can't cause THAT much truly permanent damage. I'm imagining the true culprit to be something like in The Last Story (spoilers), where a parasite fell to Earth and began eating the planet, causing nature to wither and die across the globe. If you pulled completely from TLS, you could even keep the CEOs are dicks angle: the parasite in that game, the Outsider, had the ability to grant powers and turn islands into floating fortresses. Likewise, make a story where, even in the face of this world ending threat, CEOs see opportunities for profit or power in the parasite, actively resisting the heroes trying to save the world for their own selfish gain.
That chick with the moose antlers like Bullwinkle 🤣
"Hey, Xavier! Watch me pull a murder out of my hat!"
Charles: "...I lost my mobility, regained it, died and back again for THIS?!?"
Erik: "Genosha Forever..."
T'Challa: "HEY!!"
This reminds me of a character i been writing for a while (that i still need to work on her visual design) Inspired in one of my Wood Elve campaings in Total War warhammer 2. She is an Elve Glade lord who is tired with all the war and chaos corruption so her goal is to take the Sword of Khaine (a magic Blade with ridiculous power and tents to drive people mad) and destroy every other faction. Burn the world to ashes, starving Chaos and from those Ashes Nature will rise again.
The key diference is:
- She is an original charact built for the story, consequences and all. Not butchering an already existing character to fit a poorly written message.
- She is allied with Nature itself to take over the other faction locations, spreading their influence and actually, objectively healing the world.
- Its not an enviromental message, Warhammer Old world is all about war between factions trying to get ahead, she just so happpen to ally with Nature Spirits.
- Im planning on showing some Nature spirits Disagreeing with her, insiting conflicts between her an the Nature she swore to heal.
This story is giving me some tips on possible mistakes i could end up making so at least there is one good thing about this comic, right?
What is worse is this isn't how any of these characters act except Wolverine.
Eh, I would dispute that. Other than the Nature Girl stuff, but I never cared enough for her character, I don't see what you think is wrong about the others.
Do you know any good stories with Nature Girl before her character was assassinated?
The piece de resistance is the fact that the comic had to go out of its way during Nature Girl's rampage to make everyone she attacked guilty in some fashion. Like that one oil worker black mamba zapped turning out to be a murderer.
This story highlights how badly one can fumble while writing the X-men and mutants in general. There is a certain amount of nuance required when writing mutants, as they are supposed to be a stand-in for real world minorities, so showing the sweet empath with antlers going on a rampage probably wasn't the way to go.
P.S. Can't wait for Maximum Carnage, as despite everything, I ended up kinda liking it in the end (and there goes my credibility...)
Honestly for me the whole Minority angle fell apart with Grant Morrison's run.
@@jturner2577 GM's run was very innovative which is probably why they went the whole House of M and Decimation route to avoid losing the "mutants as minorities" aspect. Mileage varies on how well that did, personally I felt they were stuck in a rut.
@@COMICSAREAWESOME Yeah. Plus, the whole Krakoa arc does feel like the natural extreme: that after decades of fighting, the mutants would want something to change.
@@COMICSAREAWESOME If they didn't do those events that allegory may have very well been lost for good.
@@christopherbennett5858 for me it mainly feels like Martin Luther King going to the Black Panthers, telling them "Ya know... ye're right! Now let's get back to that Colonisation Idea of the 19th century!"
(for explanation: Colonisation, sending african-americans and especially freed slaves to Liberia, was one of the suggested solutions to the question of "what to do with loads of freed slaves and freemen etc." Frederick Douglass and others DIDN'T like it)
And the ocmics revealed: The mutants are stillg etting screwed over. Which is why the whole "no future seeing mutants get revived!" rule was made, so that nobody could rat them out.
so nature girl is planetina ah parody of capitan planet from rick and morty
Yep pretty much.
Jesus even Poison Ivy would...actually she would do exactly the same thing Nature Girl is doing. Tho she's less of an idiot about it.
I think Harley would reign her in to some degree. I mean in Batman and Harley Quinn, she didn't go through with her and Floronic Man's attempted genocide because Harley was crying.
At least Ivy goes after the corrupt execs that run the actual company and decide to pollute
Not some grocery store manager who probably has guidelines on how they dispose waste instead of the waste disposal company that dumped that bag into the ocean
Also THEY DONT PORTRAY IVY AS A STRAIGHT UP HERO
SHE IS AN ANTI HERO AT BEST
At least writers usually recognise that Poison Ivy is a bad thing
Well, her team up with Mr. Freeze was a bad idea.
The difference being Ivy firmly wants to save plant-life. Not animal life.