12/10/2019
Greetings Super Fans!
AlwaysAngryJay here and I wanted to talk about the character I brought up in our most recent episode. While I have no expectation of ever seeing him playable, or even as an ally, he still is one of the coolest characters I have ever discovered in all of the many comics I have read in my life.
Discovery is a big part of hobbies. Finding out the obvious and subtle interconnections in the MCU. Finding secrets when you explore in a video game. Encountering new stories and faces in shows, books, and comics that surprise you with their creativity. It's these things that stand out to us, that we want to share what we think is cool about these universes we dive into.
Fantomex is a lot to take in. When I read him for the first time it was honestly a little overwhelming trying to parse all of his abilities, how powerful he seemed, and how he balanced out the team he was put on.
It's difficult to introduce new characters into comics, try and make them unique, and try to "catch up" on where they fit in the world, why hadn't they participated in earlier events, what brings them into the fold now? etc.
Furthermore it becomes a question of - who is this character for? Are they to attract new readers? Are they created to play off a specific character and build on their story? Can they be made unique enough to be appealing or end up too similar to existing characters and step on their toes?
(If you ever wonder why so many reboots happen instead of just making new material, this is often the stumbling block. Not saying it justifies every reboot that happens, just saying sometimes it's incredibly hard to make a new character when an existing character fits the narrative mold better, and can be shown in a new light instead of bloating an existing universe)
What I really liked about reading Fantomex is that he brought a great deal of uncertainty to the story. While I could mostly guess how Wolverine, Deadpool, Psylocke, and Archangel were going to react to certain situations, (I am referring to Uncanny X-Force, a favorite storyline of mine) Fantomex was a complete wild card. Even to his allies he kept his cards extremely close to his chest, and a great deal of the story is the consequences of his decisions and how it affects the team.
I liked his look, the way he talked, his cunning and humor. I loved his devotion to his beliefs and as you learned more about his true motivations later in the story, it contextualizes his earlier choices when you couldn't get much of a read on him. He was so complex and yet so fun to read as the story went on, and his abilities played so much with the idea of "what is real?" which worked well for a comic book format.
He is one of my all time favorite characters in comics, and I almost didn't bring him up on the show because I felt he was a bit much but at the same time, this is one of the reasons I love comics. If you want to hear more definitely check out our latest show if you haven't, I speak more in length of what makes him interesting, what most of his bizarre abilities are, and there even more I couldn't get to like how he tricked Jean Grey with his illusion abilities just to show which was a crazy way to introduce and demonstrate the capabilities of a brand new character.
While it is hard to find the whole run of Uncanny X-Force, which is by far one of the greatest arcs in comics I have ever read, it's much easier to find "The Apocalypse Solution" which is the first arc in that specific series. Rick Rememder loves to write stories of desperate struggles, tormented heroes, and extremely difficult choices that have heavy impact on his stories at large. I can't recommend it enough.
