Picspam: Shatterstar in X-Factor Part 2
Hello again, here's the second installment of Shatterstar in X-Factor. Shatterstar was a gay teenage superhero-entertainer created by Marvel in the 1990s who recently got brought back with a Barrowman/"Captain Jack"-based makeover, that was believable given the character's history and that's proven highly popular with the fans. I covered his return and reunion with his old boyfriend Julio Richter here. This is what the guys have been up to since then, including their first argument serious discussion.
WARNINGS FOR MODERATE GORE AND MILD NUDITY.
As I said last time, this story cannot by definition be considered a soap opera, since superhero comic books are obviously meant for boys and can't possibly contain any yucky soap-opera elements which boys hate, in spite of any and all evidence to the contrary. That said, X-Factor is the most down to Earth of Marvel's Merry Mutant not-soap-operas. ("Down to earth" in this context means that while they have people with Daddy issues and people who are batshit crazy, nobody here combines those with the ability to destroy the planet, unlike the Summers clan or Magneto's brood.)
Julio "Ric", "Rictor" Richter is a Mexican-born mutant with humongous Daddy issues who escaped from a family of professional gun-runners with a predilection for hot-tempered mutant redheads (more on that later). He's obsessed with being a better man in every way than his crooked father was. (His friend Terry "Siryn", "Banshee" Cassidy found this side of him really nice when she was pregnant as he was far more attentive to her needs than her own boyfriend.) He lost his mutant powers a few years ago, and he's been slowly learning how to cope.
Shatterstar is a genetically engineered alien gladiator who didn't even know what a "Daddy" was before he escaped from another dimension with a predilection for getting into fights; most people consider him batshit crazy. He's obsessed with being the most successful warrior/entertainer around and the center of attention as this was literally a matter of life or death when he was growing up.
They've had an on-again, off-again relationship for many years, because while they appear to love each other passionately they are completely clueless about relationship maintenance. Ric is especially bad about not talking about his feelings. He's walked out on 'Star twice with little to no reason given, and 'Star's fallen apart each time. The second time he ended up back in his home dimension, Mojoworld, from which he made a very dangerous passage back to Earth just to be by Ric's side once again.
There's another escaped gladiator-slave from Mojoworld, the luck manipulator Longshot. Genetic testing has shown that he's probably Shatterstar's sperm-Daddy, but the two men have never discussed this fact. Bred and reared for short, violent lives spent killing to entertain the masses, family is a concept alien to their upbringing.
Currently the three men work for X-Factor, Jamie "the Multiple Man" Madrox's all-mutant detective agency, considered a less-stressful alternative to the X-Men. In our last picspam we saw our team visit the mostly-mutant island of Utopia and get an offer to stay for mutual protection. They pass on the offer because it's really not that bad for mutants, is it? Surely the X-Men are exaggerating the threat level?
Cue bad guys who want to kill all mutants attacking. Mutant children are the main targets. Utopia, home to all but four of the world's known remaining mutant children, bears the brunt of the attack, but they dispatch a mop-up detail to take care of X-Factor. After all, how much trouble can half a dozen D-level mutants be?
They fire up their computer simulator and punch in "frontal assault".
Maybe not.
They decide to lure X-Factor into a trap instead. Plan B appears to work well.
But appearances can deceive.
The funny thing about those scanners is that they can't distinguish between a nonmutant and a depowered mutant like Ric. (Note Ric is smiling. That's only happened twice before in the last six years, and never this big.)
Plan B soon enters FUBAR territory.
The mop-up detail gets mopped up.
It's not like this never been done before. Vicious anti-mutant attacks are an unfortunate fact of life for "out" mutants on all-mutant teams. Most of the X-Factor personnel have been dealing with attacks like this one literally since they hit puberty. (There's a reason why their benefits package includes on-site living accomadations. Jamie didn't even think about taking on more employees until he could house them in reasonable safety.)
After weeks of running about X-Factor gets a simple case that leaves the team with lots of downtime.
Rictor and Shatterstar finally have some time to spend together, and come face-to-face with exactly how much they've both changed over the years.
Later
That's "Rahne, Ric's mutant werewolf Fundamentalist Christian ex-girlfriend who ran out on him a few months ago when he wanted a commitment." (Remember, this is not a soap opera.)
(Some people consider what Shatterstar said as an invitation to a threesome, but it may have been simple confusion over "public space" and "private space". What Shatterstar said would have been completely appropriate if they'd met in a public space like a street corner or office. Yes, 'Star is that culturally clueless.)
Born the illegitimate daughter of a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher and a prostitute who died in childbirth, Rahne's always had a difficult life. Oftentimes only her deep Christian faith has gotten her through. When they first met shortly after he came to Xavier's School the 15yo Ric and the slightly older Rahne began an intense but platonic relationship, and he comforted her after she could not be with her One True Love (more on that later). Then she left the school and both moved on to other people, Ric finding Shatterstar. Before Shatterstar returned Rahne tried to comfort Ric in the depths of his depression, and ended up having pity sex with him. When the desperately needy Ric pressed her for a commitment she fled, leaving a note that Ric burned unread. (This is not a soap opera.)
Rahne's had an especially bad time since she left Ric and X-Factor. She's been working on the X-Men's secret wetworks team, which has been fighting Bastion and the bad guys mentioned above for months prior to thelarge-scale attacks. Bastion kindapped, drugged, and brainwashed Rahne into betraying her friends and murdering her scumbag father.
While recovering from these traumas, she got some unexpected news.
Hrimrahi the wolf-lord is Rahne's One True Love. Previously he lived in Asgard with the other Norse deities, where they couldn't be together. Now Asgard is (temporarily) destroyed and he's on Earth. Hrimrahi gets Rahne pregnant, but strain of carrying a half-Asgardian fetus is killing her. Hrimrahi tricks the Norse Death-Goddess Hela into claiming his soul for the means to save Rahne and their unborn child.
Now alone, pregnant, and severely traumatized, Rahne returns to the closest thing she has left to a family: "foster brother" Jamie (Jamie used to be the handyman for her adopted mother when the X-Men arranged for the 13yo Rahne to leave the legal custody of her abusive father after the first time Daddy Dearest was caught trying to kill Rahne.) and ex-boyfriend Ric. But due to the supernatural element of her pregnancy, she's much further along with it than she would be if the father had been human.
Remember, this is not a soap opera.
Madrox has just found out his client used him to recapture her runaway slave.
Back at HQ....
(They're asking about one of Jamie's split-personality duplicates (or "dupes") because that's how Terry got pregnant. Once again, this is not a soap opera.)
Jamie suspects Rahne isn't being entirely honest, but can't figure out the details. He leaves Ric and Rahne to talk things out, and pulls all the able-bodied crew (including Shatterstar) in on the Vegas job.
Sorry to leave y'all at a cliffhanger, but that's about all the pictures I'm comfortable posting in one go. The trip to Vegas and Ric's conversation with Rahne will be in the next picspam, up in about a month. Here's some teaser pics from Vegas:
The stories of X-Factor's trip to Utopia and the anti-mutant attack are collected in X-Factor: Second Coming. (To see the battle on Utopia read X-Men: Second Coming.) I don't know yet what the Vegas story will be called when it's collected.
Just remember, this is not a soap opera!
By the way, am I the only one who suspects Hela's playing a deeper game involving Hrimrahi?
ETA: Thatoddowl has summarized this story far better than I could!
WARNINGS FOR MODERATE GORE AND MILD NUDITY.
As I said last time, this story cannot by definition be considered a soap opera, since superhero comic books are obviously meant for boys and can't possibly contain any yucky soap-opera elements which boys hate, in spite of any and all evidence to the contrary. That said, X-Factor is the most down to Earth of Marvel's Merry Mutant not-soap-operas. ("Down to earth" in this context means that while they have people with Daddy issues and people who are batshit crazy, nobody here combines those with the ability to destroy the planet, unlike the Summers clan or Magneto's brood.)
Julio "Ric", "Rictor" Richter is a Mexican-born mutant with humongous Daddy issues who escaped from a family of professional gun-runners with a predilection for hot-tempered mutant redheads (more on that later). He's obsessed with being a better man in every way than his crooked father was. (His friend Terry "Siryn", "Banshee" Cassidy found this side of him really nice when she was pregnant as he was far more attentive to her needs than her own boyfriend.) He lost his mutant powers a few years ago, and he's been slowly learning how to cope.
Shatterstar is a genetically engineered alien gladiator who didn't even know what a "Daddy" was before he escaped from another dimension with a predilection for getting into fights; most people consider him batshit crazy. He's obsessed with being the most successful warrior/entertainer around and the center of attention as this was literally a matter of life or death when he was growing up.
They've had an on-again, off-again relationship for many years, because while they appear to love each other passionately they are completely clueless about relationship maintenance. Ric is especially bad about not talking about his feelings. He's walked out on 'Star twice with little to no reason given, and 'Star's fallen apart each time. The second time he ended up back in his home dimension, Mojoworld, from which he made a very dangerous passage back to Earth just to be by Ric's side once again.
There's another escaped gladiator-slave from Mojoworld, the luck manipulator Longshot. Genetic testing has shown that he's probably Shatterstar's sperm-Daddy, but the two men have never discussed this fact. Bred and reared for short, violent lives spent killing to entertain the masses, family is a concept alien to their upbringing.
Currently the three men work for X-Factor, Jamie "the Multiple Man" Madrox's all-mutant detective agency, considered a less-stressful alternative to the X-Men. In our last picspam we saw our team visit the mostly-mutant island of Utopia and get an offer to stay for mutual protection. They pass on the offer because it's really not that bad for mutants, is it? Surely the X-Men are exaggerating the threat level?
Cue bad guys who want to kill all mutants attacking. Mutant children are the main targets. Utopia, home to all but four of the world's known remaining mutant children, bears the brunt of the attack, but they dispatch a mop-up detail to take care of X-Factor. After all, how much trouble can half a dozen D-level mutants be?
They fire up their computer simulator and punch in "frontal assault".
Maybe not.
They decide to lure X-Factor into a trap instead. Plan B appears to work well.
But appearances can deceive.
The funny thing about those scanners is that they can't distinguish between a nonmutant and a depowered mutant like Ric. (Note Ric is smiling. That's only happened twice before in the last six years, and never this big.)
Plan B soon enters FUBAR territory.
The mop-up detail gets mopped up.
It's not like this never been done before. Vicious anti-mutant attacks are an unfortunate fact of life for "out" mutants on all-mutant teams. Most of the X-Factor personnel have been dealing with attacks like this one literally since they hit puberty. (There's a reason why their benefits package includes on-site living accomadations. Jamie didn't even think about taking on more employees until he could house them in reasonable safety.)
After weeks of running about X-Factor gets a simple case that leaves the team with lots of downtime.
Rictor and Shatterstar finally have some time to spend together, and come face-to-face with exactly how much they've both changed over the years.
Later
That's "Rahne, Ric's mutant werewolf Fundamentalist Christian ex-girlfriend who ran out on him a few months ago when he wanted a commitment." (Remember, this is not a soap opera.)
(Some people consider what Shatterstar said as an invitation to a threesome, but it may have been simple confusion over "public space" and "private space". What Shatterstar said would have been completely appropriate if they'd met in a public space like a street corner or office. Yes, 'Star is that culturally clueless.)
Born the illegitimate daughter of a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher and a prostitute who died in childbirth, Rahne's always had a difficult life. Oftentimes only her deep Christian faith has gotten her through. When they first met shortly after he came to Xavier's School the 15yo Ric and the slightly older Rahne began an intense but platonic relationship, and he comforted her after she could not be with her One True Love (more on that later). Then she left the school and both moved on to other people, Ric finding Shatterstar. Before Shatterstar returned Rahne tried to comfort Ric in the depths of his depression, and ended up having pity sex with him. When the desperately needy Ric pressed her for a commitment she fled, leaving a note that Ric burned unread. (This is not a soap opera.)
Rahne's had an especially bad time since she left Ric and X-Factor. She's been working on the X-Men's secret wetworks team, which has been fighting Bastion and the bad guys mentioned above for months prior to thelarge-scale attacks. Bastion kindapped, drugged, and brainwashed Rahne into betraying her friends and murdering her scumbag father.
While recovering from these traumas, she got some unexpected news.
Hrimrahi the wolf-lord is Rahne's One True Love. Previously he lived in Asgard with the other Norse deities, where they couldn't be together. Now Asgard is (temporarily) destroyed and he's on Earth. Hrimrahi gets Rahne pregnant, but strain of carrying a half-Asgardian fetus is killing her. Hrimrahi tricks the Norse Death-Goddess Hela into claiming his soul for the means to save Rahne and their unborn child.
Now alone, pregnant, and severely traumatized, Rahne returns to the closest thing she has left to a family: "foster brother" Jamie (Jamie used to be the handyman for her adopted mother when the X-Men arranged for the 13yo Rahne to leave the legal custody of her abusive father after the first time Daddy Dearest was caught trying to kill Rahne.) and ex-boyfriend Ric. But due to the supernatural element of her pregnancy, she's much further along with it than she would be if the father had been human.
Remember, this is not a soap opera.
Madrox has just found out his client used him to recapture her runaway slave.
Back at HQ....
(They're asking about one of Jamie's split-personality duplicates (or "dupes") because that's how Terry got pregnant. Once again, this is not a soap opera.)
Jamie suspects Rahne isn't being entirely honest, but can't figure out the details. He leaves Ric and Rahne to talk things out, and pulls all the able-bodied crew (including Shatterstar) in on the Vegas job.
Sorry to leave y'all at a cliffhanger, but that's about all the pictures I'm comfortable posting in one go. The trip to Vegas and Ric's conversation with Rahne will be in the next picspam, up in about a month. Here's some teaser pics from Vegas:
The stories of X-Factor's trip to Utopia and the anti-mutant attack are collected in X-Factor: Second Coming. (To see the battle on Utopia read X-Men: Second Coming.) I don't know yet what the Vegas story will be called when it's collected.
Just remember, this is not a soap opera!
By the way, am I the only one who suspects Hela's playing a deeper game involving Hrimrahi?
ETA: Thatoddowl has summarized this story far better than I could!