Hello and welcome to Wasted Plotential, where we discuss the wasted potential of our favourite
plotlines.
Superhero comics aren't great at the whole "lasting consequences" thing. Even with big
status quo shakeups, the effects will inevitably be undone with only minor long-term alterations.
One such event was Marvel's Decimation. Long story short, after the mentally unstable Scarlet
Witch was manipulated by her brother into altering reality to make mutants the dominant
species, their father, Magneto (fuck recent retcons), discovered what Pietro had done
and murdered him for it. Disgusted, Wanda reverted reality back to the normal 616 universe
with the declaration, "No More Mutants." After this, roughly 90% of the entire mutant population
was depowered, leaving only around 180 mutants in the US and around 300 worldwide. Six years
later, Wanda and Hope Summers would use the Phoenix Force to restore mutant powers worldwide.
Now, my issue isn't that the depowering was undone, or even the way in which it was undone.
It had to happen eventually to allow for more mutant characters to be made and to bring
back depowered iconic characters, and having the woman who caused it work with the supposed
mutant messiah makes a lot of sense. The issue is the potential of stories told during this
period of time being completely wasted.
This was an opportunity to push less well-known figures in the X-books by depowering a bunch
of the fan favourites and having the more obscure characters step up for the duration.
Imagine if most of the X-Men mainstays lost their powers. They could stick around at the
mansion to teach the remaining mutants and use their experience to assist where necessary,
a la Prodigy from the New X-Men, while the younger mutants, characters who've not been
in the books for a while, and a couple new characters have to learn from them and be
the X-Men.
Depowering also has a lot potential for characters with more unfortunate mutations, like Rogue
now being able to touch people without fear, or Cyclops being able to live without his
visor or shades. And then, there are those who enjoy their mutations, like Nightcrawler
and Iceman, or those who regularly use them and struggle to cope without them, like Emma
Frost experienced briefly back in Generation X, or times when Wolverine loses his healing
factor and is slowly dying from adamantium poisoning. We could have explored the effect
depowering has on these characters in various tie-ins, and their bonds with others could
grow as they all help each other to cope with these life-altering changes.
Instead, what we got was almost all of the major mutants keeping their powers and the
depowering being relegated mostly to the less well-known ones. The most noteworthy depowerings
were probably Iceman and Magneto, and Magneto got his powers back a couple years later anyway.
The real impact of this event is felt with those lesser-known characters. If a major
character like Logan, Kurt or Scott lost their powers, they'd still be remembered by fans
and creatives, so they'd get cameos at least and then be brought back into the spotlight
once the depowering was undone. But with characters from spin-offs like New X-Men, even without
the infamous bus bombing incident that killed the majority of the depowered students or
the subsequent dark period where even more of them died, most of them were too obscure
for most creators or fans to want them back or even remember they existed in the first
place. And it sucks because Decimation interrupted all their storylines, to the point that they
had to release an annual at the end of House of M to wrap them up before this new era began.
I was a big fan of New X-Men at the time, so this hit particularly hard for me. Sofia,
one of the team leaders, got shipped off to New Warriors and dropped off the face of the
Earth once that book ended in 2009. Laurie, one of my favourites on the team, was shot
in the head and her body was used to mask a bio-sentinel in 2010. And then, we have
Brian.
I've been planning this video for quite a while now and it's only in doing some fact-checking
for the script that I learned he was recently resurrected. So, keep in mind that my feelings
on this matter are still steeped in the idea that he was dead and never coming back since
it had been over a decade. Brian Cruz, AKA Tag, was a member of the rival team in New
X-Men, the Hellions. He stood out the least of the team, but he had by far the most unique
power when placed alongside telekinesis, rock man, sand powers, liquid form and decomposition.
Brian could touch a person and turn them into a kind of beacon of fear, terrifying others
around them and compelling them to run away, as if said beacon had just been made "it".
It was a cool and interesting power, and its potential was shown in the Hellions miniseries,
where he gave the series' antagonist an aura that drew people towards him, threatening
to have him crushed under a pile of people. It didn't happen, but it was a hint at what
he was truly capable of. And then, he lost his powers and got blown up in the bus bombing.
Nah, kill off the guy with unique powers but keep The Thing mixed with Arm-Fall-Off-Boy
and Telekinetic #543.
Decimation was a tragic mess that only made the X-books more shallow in the long run,
because Joe Quesada of ruining Spider-Man fame thought there were too many mutants.
Was there a single decision he made as editor-in-chief that wasn't made because Joey-boy wanted everything
to be braindead simple? And remember, this was pre-MCU, back when Marvel wasn't trying
to deny Fox characters by snuffing out the brand, so it's even more egregious that this
event did nothing but shove lesser-known characters into the background to very likely never be
seen again. This event should have propelled a bunch of cool, obscure characters into the
spotlight, where they could remain once the event was over. But they fucked it up completely.
And you thought 2010's Marvel was a disgrace out of nowhere. This goes back a long way,
my friends. A very long way.
If you liked this video, why not subscribe and support me on Patreon like these fine
people here? If not, then make sure to share it with your enemies so they can get depowered
and fall into obscurity.
Today's recommended video is The REAL Origin of the X-Men: Dark Phoenix Saga by NerdSync.
It's a discussion of a much better X-Men event, as told by a guy who puts a ton of work into
his videos. If you're into comics and not already subscribed to him... well, you're
dead to me, Sonny Jim.