You are telling me that if you were a mutant, you wouldn't mind Xavier coming into your mind willy nilly and doing whatever he wanted in there ? You are saying that mutants must be monitored by someone else because they are special and not capable of choosing right or wrong for themselves??? You are saying that because they are "special" that they basically cannot have the right to privacy that everyone is guaranteed the right to under the constitution?That because they are "special " that they are less than the humans who have every right to expect a modicum of privacy in their own heads?? Excuse me... am I hearing this right?
I am sorry... that doesn't work for me. Yes, they have powers and yes, ethics of using the powers as well as the ability to control them are the heart of the courses at Xavier's... but invasion of the psyche, even if benevolent, is right out! You are assuming that because these kids have powers that their brains must be monitored by someone like Xavier???
You gotta be kiddin'!!!
these kids have the same rights as every one else and the right to their own thoughts and the privacy thereof is paramount...otherwise NO ONE is safe from Big Brother Chuckie prying. Oh, he WOULDN'T DO THAT!!!??? Or would he? He does it to those kids throughout the series... and the only person who has the moxie...or possibly the partial immunity... to know what he is doing and complain is Logan!!! Get outta my HEAD, Chuck!!!
Yes, I assumed by your post that you are a Byrne fan... and that is OK...your choice. but let me tell you this. the only person Byrne has to blame for his generally bad rep and woes is HIMSELF! Of the two quotes thrown at you at the con, I can tell you the story behind at least one of them..the latter. the one about ",,,if you put enough lines down ONE of them has gotta be right." that little tidbit came from his board. A direct quote. And it was the backhanded slap he directed at a piece of Dave's art a person posted on his website. Well, on Byrne's board, I understand, you can only talk about Byrne... and onlyin glowing terms, at that. A recent happening there was that some longtime loyal fan of Byrne's had the temerity to say he admired the writing of Alan Morre...a hugely acclaimed writer in the comics genre...and Byrne's response was, I am told... cuz I don't really go there to Byrne's board... "You are disrespecting ME... get out!" and he chucked this long time loyal fan OFF the board... just for SAYING he LIKED another writer's work!!!!! The gall of that overweening asswipe!
In any event, going back to the "lines" remark... A fan, knowing that you can only talk about or post art with connections to his godhood, posted a piece of Dave's are he had acquired. a very unusual page of uninked pencils...with Kitty Pryde on it. Now the fan, knowing the rules, made sure they had been followed by pointing out that Kitty Pryde was Byrne's creation... well... he did the visuals, Claremont did her personality and development over the years... so taking credit for all of her is somewhat overblown, don't you think? In any event, this fan posted the art because Dave was in the news as being very sick... which he was... and near death... which he was... and a Tribute book was being done by an old friend, Cliff Meth... as a thank you for all Dave did for the industry... and a monumental get well card. It actually spiraled outta sight when scores of people came out of the woodwork to laud Dave...to his great surprise, by the way. Anyway, Byrne admitted these were what he called "unusually tight" pencils and then made the backhanded slap of "if youput down a thousand lines one of them has to be right" ...or words to that effect. In twenty five years, Byrne has, to my knowledge, never lauded another artist or writer without levelling a backhanded, or snide remark in the next breath. And he followed suit this time. when it was called to my attention, I had had enough of his arrogance, devoutly wished I had not saved his life some twenty five years before, and promptly called Cliff and told him the Byrne piece in the Tribute book was OUT! We didn't even know if Dave would survive to see the tribute book at the time, but if he did, I didn't want it sullied by Byrne's hypocracy... and I made no bones about it. Byrne's version was, of course, that i was mad that he took over Uncanny from Dave and was getting even after all these years... which was so ludicrous it boggles the mind. I just got tired of him getting away with lies and disrespect for anyone in the industry but himself.
Byrne has bounced back and forth from Marvel to DC for twenty five or thirty years... and you know why? Because he and his arrogance and mouth so disaffect people at one company that they tell him to get lost. So he goes over to the other company with his fan base and worksTHERE until he pisses someone important enough at THAT company and gets the boot there... then he goes back to the other company... who has by this time forgotten how Byrne can BE...and the dreary cycle starts all over again. And this has been going on for close to thirty years, now...
Now, I hear Byrne has been doing very lousy pinup drawings of the X folk and his fans are flooding the net with, saying Wow...aren't these great? And shouldn't Byrne be back on the X Men?" Which means that Byrne got tossed by DC... which apparently he just did with the cancellation of the Atom book...probably for badmouthing the movie and not shutting up about it when DC told him to cease and desist. Which he didn't do.
Consequently he is now unemployed and wants to gt back into Marvel. But Byrne burned his bridges at Marvel by sneering at Joey Qusada's grief when his parents died...and Joey was CLOSE with his parents...and from what I hear, and understand, Byrne will get back in Marvel over Joey's cold and rotting body!!! And rightly so! You cannot display that kind of arrogance and insensitifity to everyone else and get away with it forever. What goes around comes arougn and Byrne is overdue for a comeuppance...and the whole industry knows it. Hence the disrespect and snide remarks tossed at him or about him. He has earned them. He badmouthed Chris Reeve after his death and at that time I wondered why he was still working at DC. Everyone and his dog loved Reeve for not laying down and dying and fighting for quads everywhere and stem cell research to help those like himself who have lost all movility below the cervical vertibrae. And there are a lot of people, adults and kids, who would benefit from the things he was championing. He was a real hero... a real SUPERMAN... and Byrne badmouthed him, sneered at him and generally showed what the great God Byrne was made of...total shit. But it was no surprise for those of us in the biz that Byrne acted in such a cavaliere manner... it was Byrne as usual.
I basically don't care about his highness...he really doesn't exist for me except as he affects those I love... like Dave, Claremont and Magneto. and then... he attacks any of those...aTHEN he deals with ME! he is ALWAYS badmouthing Claremont ,whom he is wildly jealous of...and he is on my SHIT list... and you do NOT want to be on Paty's shit list! I have an unerring kill instinct and the bloodthirstyness to cut you off at theknees when I am angry. I'm not a nice person when I am angry... no... WAIT.. that's the hULK...
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAAA
But you see what I mean about Byrne shooting himself in the foot with his big mouth. He sends his fans out to fill the airways with his praise... just to get what he wants or push for something.. he has done this for years...and people who keep watch on his board and movements within the industry know when something is up with him because of how his fanboys suddenly flush the net with Byrne crap.
The first quote was that...someone compared Byrne's contribution to Marvel as second ony to Jack Kirby's.. which is a laugh and a half. He created a fraction of the characters Dave did. And the ones he created were mostly shallow and not used very often...Kitty Pryde being a notable excpteio... and the recent stories with Northstar being another exception, as well. But Byrne didn't develop these characters into the interesting people they are today... OTHER writers did..notably Chris Claremont. whose idea Kitty probably was to begin with... Byren's fantasy world aside...
The thing about it is, that Byrne has been warping real history in his own favor so long, that some people have gotten to saving some of his more outrageous statements so that when he avers something diametrically opposed, later, they can toss his own words back at him... and then he promptly delets the thread and lays low for a while and then starts all over again with a new batch of fans. Personally I was not aware of this, since Dave and I are relative newcomers to the net... but I am assured this has been happening for close to a decade now...and from what I personally know of Byrne, I believe every word... especially when backed up by hard copy... which people have sent me to substantiate their Byrne horror stories.
I assure you, honey... Byrne's woes are of his own making. You are free to enjoy his work...but if you ever met him, you would probably hate the man himself....most people do.
And that is unfortunate. Because of his high profile, he has been a template for a whole lot of people entering the business in the past decade. As a result we have writers and artists who think THEY are gods, too. And this is where we have a disrespect for the characters, for canon, for the shared universe and the importance of the core characterizations of the characters that make up that shared universe. And that is why things are such a mess at Marvel right now.
OK.. that is a bit of a simplistic explanation, cuz there is a lot more office politickingh going on than meets the eye... but I think it is a valid observation for all of that.
I was not sanguine about the Superman movie. I do think Bryan Singer dropped that particular ball. The guy who played Supes was great, though. I had issues with Luthor, his portrayal and superman's interaction withhim. It should have been a great movie and it wasn't. and that is too bad. I actuallyhope there will be another superman movie...hopefullyNOT directed by Singer, though.
I did not mind what Singer did with the first two X movies, My one caveat was the I wished they were in their "colors"...and especially Magneto. but I think the black costumes were used bcause they wanted the audience to take these characters seriously, and the only superhero movie... shor of the original Superman movie, that had been successfully done, was Batman... and he dressed mostly in black... so the theory was that to be taken seriously, you had to dress superdoops in black... which the first spider Man movie shot to hell in a breadbasket. the FF fmovie, too...LOL...so we got a little more color in the third movie, thank goodness. they are working wtwards the yellow spandex...maybe...LOL...
I thought the characterizations were pretty good, considering you had to introduce complex standing characters to a whole audience who didn't know them from adam. Everyone knows Superman and Batman... but these X Men... who are they??? so you had to introduce not one but half a dozen characters, to not only the fans who knew them and would jump on any diviation... but to hundreds of thousands of citizens who didn't know these characters and needed to be won over to them in two hours! A daunting task... and i think Avi Arad and Singer handeled it well, given the problems they faced. The third movie I found choppy in itls pacing and some of it's logic, but enjoyable if only for Magneto... who was FINE!!!... but then, I am somewhat Mags-centric... LOL... so you see my bias, don't you? LOLOL
But why,might I ask, is Magneto wanting mutants to explore their powers to their full potential insane? That is basicaly what Xavier is supposed to be helping his charges do. So why is it insand if Magneto wants the same thing? He wanted Jean to be taught to use and control her budcing Phoenix power as it grew within her... a logicalway to approach it. Charles felt she was out of control at that time and supressed the power... something Mags knew wouldn't last, no matter how big a cork Xavier put in it... and sooner or later it would blow, be really out of control and mad to boot. That was a scenerio for disaster and Magneto knew it. Xavier thought he could control it... but Mags knew better. And, as we saw, once again, Magneto was RIGHT!
It is amazing how often Magneto is right...
Paty