Seriously, comics. I go away for two days, and you let [Name of Character Who Dies in Avengers Vs. X-Men #11, Voided In Case It's A Spoiler Still] die again? Just join me under the jump so we can talk about this, okay?The death of Professor Charles Xavier is one of those things that might have had more impact if it wasn’t one of those things that keeps happening and never seems to stick; presuming that the intent this time is for it to stick, longterm readers – who, these days, are a significant portion of the audience – have been through this at least once before, and are probably already expecting there to be an out somehow (My guess? Xavier has projected his mind inside his son David’s, and will become a supporting character of sorts in the relaunched X-Men: Legacy series). It’s also something that feels somewhat less meaningful than it should given Xavier’s relative lack of prominence in the X-Books over the last few years; knowing that he was headed for the big Mansion in the sky, you’d have thought that he would have made some more appearances in recent years, coming back to a position of importance within the franchise before his big finale.
And, yet… As much as I like the character, it’s hard to fault Brian Michael Bendis’ assertion that he has more importance/value dead these days, especially when Bendis is bringing the original X-Men to the present day – Stranding them without their mentor (and with one of their number responsible for his death) is a great set-up to explore, and one that’s so logical that it only makes sense that he wouldn’t be around for the start of All-New X-Men. I find myself wondering what will happen to the rest of the characters if his death sticks and his legacy is actually explored, and find my interest in the X-Men franchise slightly rekindled as a result. Despite my traditional cynicism, could this be the big comic book death stunt that actually… gulp… works?
September 14th, 2012 at 8:16 am
I think it’s more than just “big death” fatigue in this case. I think the fact that Marvel undid the big moments in “Fear, Itself” just a few months later undercuts the end of AvX #11.
September 14th, 2012 at 8:26 am
I’ve been trying to articulate this for a bit. I know these are just characters, but when the writers and editors talk about Xavier having more dramatic “value” dead, or him dying as a story beat; well, he’s not a character anymore then, he’s a cog. And a cog Marvel figures they can do without, until they need him again. Why should readers care about his death, if the creators don’t?
September 14th, 2012 at 10:09 am
I wonder what people thought when Xavier first died in X-Men #42. Admittedly, readership on that title had not yet reached its peak…
September 14th, 2012 at 11:48 am
Has Marvel put out a crossover lately without the big death issue? I dont know…
September 14th, 2012 at 8:32 pm
Not to defend the idea per se … but i think it will stick for a long whole . It’s relatively time to maybe retire the character .
His tenure at the helm of mutant things have been over already for a while , and he’s been as involved than Cyclops in dubious and nefarious choices imo over the past decades ((remember the events of Deadly genesis and his illuminati membership among other things ?) .
Dead or alive , it’s time to see if the vision can live and thrive without his constant input and nagging .
The cyclop era was supposed to show that , but cataclysmic events made it much more about raw survival than the “original dream” to be enough of a good test run
September 14th, 2012 at 11:55 pm
googum, you said it perfectly
September 15th, 2012 at 4:27 am
“I wonder what people thought when Xavier first died in X-Men #42.”
Well, it really hadn’t been done before – that was the first time Marvel had killed off an established major. Grieving letters appeared in subsequent issues’ letters pages.
I don’t think anyone noticed that Roy Thomas had left a way open to bring him back.
September 15th, 2012 at 12:48 pm
Bendis’s rationale for killing off Xavier feels a bit hollow when one realizes that Xavier had been sidelined for years anyway – what exactly is the point of killing him off when he was largely absent to begin with? We’ve already been seeing a world without Xavier for the last several years, and seen what characters Marvel has chosen to push into that role instead (Cyclops, Emma, and Wolverine, mostly). Pulling the character out of mothballs just to kill him off reads as dramatically weightless – a desperate and failed attempt at injecting narrative significance into a crossover that’s been on the verge of incoherence for some time.
While taking Xavier out of the picture entirely and forcing the characters to deal with his death (again!) may seem like it might have some dramatic possibilities, it’s not nearly enough to make up for the fact that the X-titles in general are broken, and really have been since M-day. The X-Men aren’t relevant in a world where the mutant population isn’t big enough to fill a high school gymnasium; all those grand arguments between Xavier and Magneto about the future of mutantkind are beside the point when mutantkind has no future. Without a larger mutant population to represent or fight for, the last several years of X-men stories have become plodding exercises in rehashing a sort of Gilligan’s Island plot – everyone’s stuck in the same miserable status quo and looking for a way out, which will never arrive. Is it any wonder that the X-books are being gradually swallowed by the Avengers line – a series of comics as directionless as the X-books, but anchored to a successful film series, and the cynical-but-winning premise of “here are all the popular characters, all in one place”?
September 15th, 2012 at 5:23 pm
Mr. moose n squirrel’s comments are a beautiful example of someone who has read ABOUT the stories but not the stories themselves. Nothing he/she says holds an ounce of water if you’ve actually read the comics in question. And ideas like “the X-books are being gradually swallowed by the Avengers line” are so bonkers and childish I don’t even know what to say.
Having said all that, if I hadn’t read about it in the news I wouldn’t know that Professor X was supposed to be dead. Can’t they put him in the same Phoenix healing chamber they put Hawkeye in a few issue ago?
September 15th, 2012 at 6:41 pm
“We’ve already been seeing a world without Xavier for the last several years, and seen what characters Marvel has chosen to push into that role instead”
Not really imo . like i’ve said we have mostly seen people SURVIVE without Xavier’s help … not so much them dealing with the dream of cohabitation with humankind .
Whenever potential inways were made , like the whole move to San francisco and Utopia , something major was always on the horizon to distract them from addressing truly living and evolving without Xaviers guidance .
And gratuiteous or not , Xavier death is at least a good deterrent from constantly falling to him for help .
The problem with Xavier is that shunned and left depowered after Deadly Genesis , they could and should have left him depowered , so we could truly see a world without Xavier’s influence .
The only time we truly did so far was the Age of Apocalypse .
September 15th, 2012 at 8:39 pm
“like i’ve said we have mostly seen people SURVIVE without Xavier’s help … not so much them dealing with the dream of cohabitation with humankind .”
But that’s just it – Xavier’s dream, just like Magneto’s opposing viewpoint of mutant dominance and inevitable race war, became irrelevant after M-Day, once there weren’t enough mutants for peaceful cohabitation with humanity – or war with humanity, for that matter – to make any real difference. Professor X, for better or for worse, was always there to represent the grander themes and scope in the X-books – and that scope becomes necessarily smaller when the comic goes from being about the future of humanity to being about a couple dozen random people holed up on an island trying to survive.
So in that context, of course Professor X is going to be sidelined or killed off – he’s a character who’s all about the future of mutantkind, and when mutantkind quite explicitly doesn’t have a future, there’s nothing much for him to do. The problem is, there’s nothing much for the X-Men in general to do, either. Do they go back to Utopia and sit around in survivalist mode? Do they go back to Wolverine’s mansion and try training “the next generation of mutants” – y’know, the one that barely exists? Do they just turn into Avengers who wear X’s on their costumes?
September 16th, 2012 at 7:12 am
Imo we will only truly knows where they can go from there , once they get rid of xavier (in death or otherwise) for good (well at least for more than 3 months) .
In the Cyclops Era they didnt really get rid of him , they made him comeback to the sidelines to help with any kind of crisis . Hell they even found a way to involve him further with the illuminati .
The “cyclops era” and “no more mutants” era was full of great stories imo . I love what was done with the X universe in the past years and the new energie it brought .
But it’s time to see the X-men truly without Xavier , and we finally get a serious chance for that imo .
September 16th, 2012 at 5:02 pm
“Xavier’s dream, just like Magneto’s opposing viewpoint of mutant dominance and inevitable race war, became irrelevant after M-Day, once there weren’t enough mutants for peaceful cohabitation with humanity – or war with humanity, for that matter – to make any real difference.”
Huh? I’m not quite sure why fewer mutants means NO FUTURE. Nothing you say makes any sense.
September 17th, 2012 at 10:43 am
Evolution of the species has been done in SF a bunch of times; people have to deal with the evolution of the species as a whole, in addition to the evolution of individual people. That means ordinary people becoming the minority and eventually dying out. If mutants are forever a persecuted minority, they’re not the face of evolution. They’re not the future.
SRS