Okay. So let's talk about that X-Men Vote.

Yes, I'm going to do a thread to collect my thoughts.

Because while I am typically ALL ABOUT fan involvement and fan voting, this whole setup rubs me the wrong way. (1/?)

If you haven't visited Marvel's website, here's the deal: This year, we are getting a new X-Men team. At the end of XoS, Scott and Jean decided they needed to make, and I quote "a new X-Men team to protect the mutant nation of Krakoa and fight on mutantkind’s behalf." (2/?)

Marvel is hyping this new team as THE FIRST X-MEN TEAM OF THE KRAKOAN AGE, which is kind of weird because there's ten X-Men teams right now. But I guess that was the Dawn, and now is the Age. Or maybe because there was no x-plicit X-MEN team: that book had a rotating cast. (3/?)

So the gimmick is, we're told mutants from all over Krakoa have applied for this team. We readers, as honorary mutants I guess, are apparently able to VOTE to choose the final member of this team. We have ten choices--I'll get to those in a bit. (4/?)

Audience voting in comics is nothing new. Most famously, in 1988's Death in the Family arc of Batman, fans were given a phone number they could call to decide whether Jason Todd (Robin) would get murdered by the Joker.

Fans overwhelmingly chose for Jason to get brained. (5/?)

In terms of politics, I'm certainly in favor of the recipient of the most votes winning the election. But that mindset doesn't really apply to storytelling for some crucial reasons.

You see, all art is political. What that means is all art has a message: a theme. (6/?)

I don't mean art needs to be political in the sense that it needs to be explicitly about human rights or war or the economy, although a lot of good comics are.

I mean that books need intentionality; authors and artists need to be working towards a goal. (7/?)

Whether that's revealing key messages about society (like we often see in my current favorite series Immortal Hulk) or simply revealing key ideas about characters and their relationships (like in a lot of Claremont X-Men), books should *do* something, have purpose. (8/?)

The nice thing about comics is that characters can be tools to achieve these goals.

E.g. You wouldn't write a Hulk story that isn't about rage, or control, or fear, or guilt, or power. Putting Bruce in a story guarantees that a story will move in one of those directions. (9/?)

Likewise, characters build off of each other. We learn different things about Cyclops, for instance, when he's around Emma, or Wolverine, or Jean, or Surge, or whatever. Characters add to each other in ways that build them up. (10/?)

Going back to the purely political idea, different characters also bring different political baggage. In that, I mean characters bring their backgrounds and traumas with them in ways that let writers explore different ideas. (11/?)

The specificity of character backgrounds is what shapes their goals and personalities and is what makes them accessible.

Even if you don't know anything about Muslim girls from NJ, the specificity of Kamala Khan's life, issues, and background makes her feel real. (12/?)

A book that fully ignores Kamala's existence as a Muslim teenager, and her interests and passions and loves, would be misusing the character. Plots, themes, and messages all spiral out of this core. (13/?)

(This is why, by the way, characters are so much more than their powersets, and if you read a comic with Kamala in it, you'd instantly realize that she is absolutely nothing like Reed Richards. But enough about Kamala.) (14/?)

One of my current issues with the Krakoa era is that the books aren't really About anything. This is because characters exist largely because of their powersets, and not because of these core elements of their identities. Take the Five. (15/?)

Marvel Creative was pretty clever to assign the Five their roles: these obscure characters with powers that add together to create something bigger.

But they don't have their cores. They don't have their driving forces. (16/?)

When we last left Tempus, she was rebelling, telling Xavier to get the **** out of her life. Now she's here, and happy to help out, because the book needs someone with time manipulation powers.

We're not addressing the core of her as a character. (17/?)

What this means is we aren't using the character to her full potential. She is a narrative tool, but not a truly functional tool. She isn't taking the narrative towards a meaningful theme or exploration of characters. She allows for the plot to move. (18/?)

Tempus isn't the only example here. With as many characters on Krakoa as we have, characters aren't getting to explore their personal inner conflicts or the "political" themes they can represent. (19/?)

Political like: How does Dani's heritage shape her? Is Mystique's life as a queer woman different from, say, Jean's? How does Krakoa work when racism and sexism are so innate?

Personal like: How can Scott work with Sinister, the man who tortured him? (20/?)

A lot of this is being left on the table.

So fans are being asked right now to choose the last member of this X-Team. Which is cool! I love voting.

But we don't know what themes are going to be explored. We don't know what interactions will exist. (21/?)

How can we, as fans, make a choice that will lead to good comics if we aren't aware of the *intention* of the franchise? Is the book going to explore minority identity? Because then Armor makes a lot more sense to include than Cannonball. (22/?)

How can we, as fans, make a choice that will lead to good interpersonal relationships if we don't know the other members? Is Illyana on this team? Because her relationship with Sunspot is a lot more interesting than her relationship with Polaris would be. (23/?)

This election feels like it's eager to grab attention. And it will! I'm going to vote. I'm talking about it here A LOT. But there's no way we, as fans, can possibly make a choice that would be better than a decision made by a creator with intention and passion. (24/?)

Has anything made by committee ever been as good as something made by artists with a genuine intentionality and passion for their subject matter?

It's been this way for years, but lately, I've been noticing how cape comics seem to be more of the former than the latter. (25/?)

What is Krakoa building towards? What personality traits are we building towards? Why include some characters rather than others? What is being said by the inclusion of one person in a book rather than anyone else? Who else exists in the world? This is what we have to ask. (26/?)

So yeah, I'm going to vote. But I'm still skeptical that this is the right way to proceed, and I'm wondering if this is revealing my bigger problems with the line as a whole.

There's a lot more to think about than just that Strong Guy is my favorite character here. (end)