1. Hickman and company continue to hit these books out of the park, if you don't mind the baseball metaphor. House of X (2019) #5 was really good. Surprisingly good. I'd read the spoilers, so was admittedly skeptical of the resurrection plot thread. But it works. And Hickman goes in depth on the science, and the ethics, covering all the bases. The artist and colorists back him up with some stellar art -- some of the best I've seen in the X-men comics. X-men comics have uneven art, it's either amazingly good or mediocre.

This is amazing.


I was per usual blown away by the art, the amount of detail, and thought that went into it. Hickman clearly has thought about it, and all the ethical issues involved. It levels up the comic to speculative sci-fi, asking all those thorny ethical and moral questions good sci-fi asks. And it is so timely -- it is about a disfranchised and severely discriminated against minority that finally decides, frak this, we're going to start our own country. And they go about it in somewhat clever and ambiguously moral means. But we can hardly blame, considering they tried to play the hero route or how to live in hiding and conform, only to get killed, put in camps, and enslaved. This series sort of serves a counterpoint to the dark and gritty and painful X-men television series and movies of the last three decades.

It also intertwines some interesting themes...about what lines to cross to maintain a species, and what it takes for two opposing sides to join together as unified force. It really shines a light on tribalism and the troubling nature of it, yet also why it comes about.

And it works -- it tracks from what came before. We end Rosenberg's run with Cyclops team bedraggled and stating, finally, we're at war with the humans, we always have been. No matter what we do -- they want to end us because they fear we'll take what they have away.

Marvel is in a way commenting, somewhat slyly, on our current political situation.

I love how Hickman jumps from story to expository text. The scientific text that explains in depth the resurrection process, and all the ethical considerations in play. For example? They are very careful about who gets resurrected. The individual has to be confirmed dead, not just missing or presumed dead. But actually dead. For both moral reasons and well, to avoid the confusion of having duplicates wandering about. In addition, no experimentation has been done on people being resurrected in the wrong body. And, Hickman goes out of his way to explain how the resurrection is done, and the fact that the five doing it -- love doing it, and the more they do it, they better they feel -- it's a feeling of fulfillment not euphoria. And they've bonded together on a symbiotic level. It's not a problem. (Making me think that Hickman really did ask all these questions and think it through.) Also kudos for finally coming up with a method of bringing characters back to life that makes sense, and has all sorts of consequences, and ramnifications -- both good and bad. Also that unites mutant kind. One gets the feeling that Cyclops' team's sacrifice was for two reasons 1) to get rid of a threat and 2) to demonstrate how the resurrection process works.

Keep in mind that just about everyone on Cyclops' team has died multiple times. Scott and Jean are almost tied for how many times Marvel has killed them off and resurrected them (in increasingly weird ways and usually by new writers), and Wolverine and Nightcrawler and Angel are similarly tied.
The writers are more or less telling us - hey we can kill off any mutant and bring them back -- this is how, but it can be difficult for Xavier, and we have a lot to bring back. This is a good and bad thing, the bad is that it sort of makes death meaningless...although, if you read through the expository content carefully, not to the mention previous issues expository content, you'll realize that while this works great in theory -- there are going to be problems. For one thing we have a few amoral characters wandering about, like Sinister and Apocalypse and Emma Frost. What's to stop Emma from resurrecting her own Cyclops? OR Sinister playing about? He could decide to do some modifications.
There's all sorts of interesting little stories that Hickman and company can develop out of this.

Look at this books as a foundation or the outline for future stories. They are basically giving us all the schematics for their new world. Or blueprints. A jumping off point of sorts. And it's well done, and fascinating, and compelling -- that's hard to pull of with a foundation/schematic. Using exposition is boring. This isn't.

And often it's dry without a lot of character moments. This has some amazingly good character moments. The interactions between Charles/Eric, Eric/Lorna, Emma/Charles, and Charles/Apocalypse are rather fascinating and give us a lot of insight into Charles Xavier. The other bits that are rather good are Scott/Charles and Scott/Storm, we also are shown Wolverine helping Scott up. Simple little things. The art -- pulls you in and keeps you in the story - or it did me.

As I told a co-worker, when we discussed books at work, the best thing I've been reading lately is an X-men series that sort of redefines comics. I look forward to it. It holds my interest. It's different and outside the box. So much of the books and content out there -- I feel I've read before, it doesn't seem to have anything new to say...just regurgitation. But this felt different. New. Also it exhibited my favorite characters in a new way. Plus re-interpreted all the comics that came before, and the whole story that came before in a whole new and interesting way.


2. Watching Country Music Documentary reminds me of why I don't like a lot of country music -- they can't sing. I'm sorry, they really can't. It's like listening to people singing through their nose. Very twangy or whiny. Also it's not as diverse as much as I'd like -- although it did have a lot of Hispanic Americans and Immigrants involved.

3. Listening to my mother each night talk about my Dad...is difficult.

My father is going to memory matters. But he doesn't like it. He can't do the word games (he never was that good at them, I suck at them, word games aren't about writing they are about well coding...or puzzles and we're not puzzle folks). And he can no longer draw -- which breaks my heart. My father could draw anything. He trained to be a cartoonist at one point and wanted to pursue it. And has delicate water colors of buildings, cats, etc. He was an artist. But now, he can't draw not like the others in the class and feels left out and ...incompetent. That he doesn't fit in. (I'm disappointed in memory matters -- which apparently isn't good at thinking outside a box and dealing with a wide variety of alzthemier and memory/cognitive issues.) His art therapy class is better -- the teacher lets him do what he wants. And he loves it. He plays with color and abstracts -- doesn't have to color within the lines, and they draw from a picture in front of them or transfer from it -- interpret it, which works for him. There's no rules, it's more flexible.

The difficulty with getting older...is you lose the things you loved and have to find new ones.