Wolverine: Man on the street. In the Bronx, New York, an elderly man named Steve Rogers checks his mail on a street full of kids with superpowers playing. Some of them stop to gawk at “the old dude” as he shuffles on down the street.
Strong female characters! A guy as clearly empathetic and good hearted as Bendis just being like “aw yeah, sexy ladies, who cares if it makes sense?!” for so long was really baffling to me. On the Alison show, starring Alison Blair, aka Dazzler, Simon Williams, aka Wonder Man, appears to talk about his hit TV show and also deny rumors that he’s dating Carol Danvers, Ms. Marvel, “the most popular superhero in America,” who attained this fame all despite, as Alison puts it, not being a “…you know…” Ms. Marvel is busy stopping some car thieves, one of which is Remy LeBeau, aka Gambit.
In Cincinnati, Ohio, Kitty Pryde teaches in an elementary school classroom, asking the class who was the first mutant (Prince Namor), and asking them about important things he said in World War II. In a seedy Hell’s Kitchen bar, Detective Sam Wilson confronts Luke Cage, who is not impressed.
Psychiatrist Dr. Stephen Strange sees his patient Robert Reynolds. In Russia, Colossus tills a huge field by himself. And in Chicago…
In Paris, designer Janet Van Dyne works on the dress Ororo Munroe will wear to an event for the House of Magnus. And somewhere else, Wolverine wakes from dreams of the Weapon X program to find Jean Gray in his bed.
And so we know where we are, a world where mutants reign supreme, and, it would seem, Magneto reigns over them. It’s pretty effective scene setting. It’s also kind of crazy to ask the audience to buy a comic that’s nothing but scene setting, but that was the industry in 2005. Marvel produced stories written for the eventual collection, but still sold individual pieces, and whether they were satisfying that way wasn’t always a point of concern, tho’ Bendis was often a lot more cognizant of making sure each issue was satisfying than his peers. Not so much in this case, but often. But where’s Spider-Man in all this? He’s around, that’s for sure. I don’t recall how much of a role he plays in the main story, to be honest. We’ll see. The remit of this blog is getting weirder and more nebulous the further we get into the 2000s.