Chris used to call me up and do dramatic readings of the dialog he had
just written for the pages I'd drawn.

************

Man, I wish there were audio tapes of that! Seriously, I bet it would be quite cool to hear these performances.

"Magneto is a mass murderer who, according to his own words, wants to
enslave the entire human race. What, in the real world, would you see as
a "less contentious" example of something that parallels his attitudes and
actions? "

contentious: 1. tending to argument or strife; quarrelsome

I simply asked that you not use 9/11 as an example because the dialogue quickly turns into an emotional argument that is easily sidetracked by sentiment.

"One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." Surely, you can see the simple logic in this statement. The American Minute Men were considered terrorists and murderers by the British. The European Colonizers were considered murders and thugs by the native peoples of those colonies. But the same soldiers were considered heros and the bringers of civilization by their home countries.

Can anyone name me a country, past or present, that would not condone murder, the killing of innocent civilians, if it was in the benefit of that country's interests? And at what number does murder become mass murder? If someone could give me some specifics on that, it would be very enlightening.

For the record, one more time, I think Magneto is a villain but I'm not a mutant!

"As written by Claremont, Magneto is a defender of his race from humanity
and humanity is brutally harsh to everything it comes across.

••

Funny, I thought that was Xavier. . . "

Touche, and I agree. The difference between the two is how they each choose to defend their race.

"Chris used to call me up and do dramatic readings of the dialog he had
just written for the pages I'd drawn. When we did Magneto stories, the
voice he gave the ol' Master of Magnetism made the Wicked Witch of the
West sound like Orson Welles. After his "redemption", I used to wonder if
Magneto still sounded like that in Chris' head."

Morgan Freeman. All narration from now on is officially the voice of Morgan Freeman, who took over from James Earl Jones.

"Get busy living...."

(I've got to get back to work or I'll be made redundant)

Andrew W. Farago wrote: It probably helps her case that Scott Lobdell, Grant Morrison and Joss Whedon have obviously had a lot of fun writing Emma and making her pretty consistenly the most entertaining personalities in whichever book she's in.

Arguable at best depending on which side of the fence you reside.  Lobdell isn't one of my favorite writers.  I thought Morrison's X-MEN to be a total mess.  Whedon played with the cards he was dealt instead of discounting the White Queen's role with the X-Men.  In other words, he did the best with what he had which was, as you write, making the White Queen interesting in the X-Men dynamic.  In any event, I still contend you have to twist her character pretty far to have her teaching new mutants at Xavier's school and act as a superhero in the X-Men.

At the very least, killing Phoenix seemed infinitely preferable to Shooter's torture-her-forever scenario.

***

No doubt. Of course, if the original ending had been allowed, then none of this "event" narishkeit would have come up at all!

I have come to realize that any change that draws a "line in the sand" is wrong.

Ah, good explanation. As a reader for many years, I hadn't ever really considered the damage of change (as opposed to the illusion of change), so thank you for the thought provoking posts.

I usually considered radical 'change' in a book as a gimmick to drive sales, and stayed away.

I don't collect much these days <g>...