And now it's time for Good Thing, Bad Thing

Good Thing: Northstar is featured in one of the stories in X-Men: Divided We Stand#1!

Bad Thing: ...no, wait, my mistake, that's a Skrull who's taken Northstar's place.[1]

...I heard about it beforehand. The only other person in the world who loves Northstar as much as I do ranted about it at great and very articulate length in the relevant X-Axis comment thread. I said to myself "but it can't be that bad!" I read the story in the shop: it really is that bad.

To be fair: the art is very good-looking, and Anole is written well, and it's nice to get some acknowledgement of how fucked-up the recent events surrounding the younger mutants have been, even if it's just a token nod in the direction of sanity that's not going to have any long-term results. What frustrates and infuriates me is not just how utterly unrecognisable Northstar is in this story, but what a wasted opportunity it is. If Skottie Young had taken the time to get to know Northstar a little bit -- and it needn't have taken that long; just reading any of his appearances prior to the zombie mind control arc would have done it (because, lest we forget, during the zombie mind control arc he was under mind control and therefore his actions were deliberately uncharacteristic) -- he would have been able to write a story that had much the same effect in terms of the overall plot arc (insofar as a teensy little vignette like this has a plot arc), but would have actually, you know, made sense as something that Northstar would do.

I'm not even going to talk about the dialogue. Northstar once had a very distinctive voice, back when John Byrne was writing the original Alpha Flight, and to a certain extent with Byrne's successors on that series. In English, he was quite precise and wordy; in French (er, faux-translated French... you know, dialogue inside corner brackets with a footnote saying "translated from the French") he was more slangy; he swore à la mode Quebecoise ("Calique!" and "Ostie!" being his favourites). His more recent appearances have largely eliminated that voice; Chuck Austen made a valiant effort but ultimately foundered, Mark Millar made him sound like every other Mark Millar character, and Mike Carey... I actually liked what Mike Carey did with him, but, again, mind control; it didn't feel characteristic and probably wasn't meant to. In any case, it's not really fair to bitch about Young's Northstar sounding wrong in terms of his voice when my idea of what Northstar's voice should sound like is largely based on his appearances in the John Byrne Alpha Flight.

The worst thing about this situation is that I still bought the goddamned comic. Because it had Northstar in it, and if I had to restrict my Northstar fix to good stories, I'd never get it.

Such are the pitfalls of being deeply, irrationally, disproportionately attached to a minor Marvel character whom the writers like to use as a punchbag. One day, my friends. One day. One day it will no longer be a sign of masochism to call oneself a Northstar fan. I pray for the hastening of that day.


[1] *sigh* Not literally. Though it would have made more sense that way.