Board 8 > X-Men Draft Round 1: Gold Division

(+) Yeah! (+)

I'm the wrong guy to ask I just want Cyclops and Beast as the war advisor would probably be better than Cyclops. No one wants Summers drama

Maybe you could take a combo deal of some sort.

Domino is fun. Your team could use some fun!

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A couple of people have pointed out that my team is very fight oriented and, well, yeah. I don't think my pitch is terrible for what I built but, when I was building, I figured if you wanted to win fight or pitch you have to go all-in on one. I will be punching up my pitch for the next round and possibly every round hence, but in my mind winning both was never in the cards for any of us (and that was probably the point). Even though I don't see much chance to win pitches with my team, don't think I'm not going to try.
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Eddv posted...

But, and call me crazy, you shouldn't want you book to be building to a dramatic everyone vs Vulcan shitfest but since that's where you're taking things anyway, why not beast, the massive disparity in power is actually somewhat compelling.

Yeah, this is where I needed to word my pitch better, I waited until the last minute since I wanted to read all those issues & my walls of text didn't capture the change sufficiently and everything's probably come across more malevolent than it should be. My book is played totally straight, everyone on the team agrees with Vulcan's assessment in the end and it goes full-on authoritarian in the "ends justifies the means" kind of way. That's what the "Righteous" really represents, in the team name.

But the starting premise is Vulcan isn't straight-up madman evil anymore, he's a more, uh, developed person in this story. More learned and introspective than the mania he previously descended into. Or the joke they brought him back as in X-Men #1 recently.

The key difference is he (stick with me here) values and appreciates life now, and wants to protect it. But if there's one constant that he's noticed, whether in Shi'ar or Earth history, is that conflict among intelligent species, both inter- and intra-, is constant throughout history. Typically a fight for resources, or fear of the different. So he comes to the conclusion that the only way to truly have peace between mutants and humanity, is to force it on them; and it's not just the humans and mutants on earth that deserve it, fundamentally all life in the galaxy does... they'll just start with Earth.

Vulcan wants to rule not because he's power hungry, but much like his hero Julius Caesar, he sees himself as the only capable leader for the people, and to improve their way of life (historians plz no rebuff, just roll with this). Cyclops does totally buy into the "Lawful Neutral" assessment which is where he comes on board. X-Man is exactly the same way, so when scarlet asked "Why wouldn't X-Man just wash his hands of this immediately?", it's because he's already on board with protecting life and making the world a better place. Couple of pics I hung on to: https://imgur.com/a/pywlgyl

And so he's on board (and Gaia would have the same heaven/hell assessment after her own Earthly travels)

I assume there's no rule against "Vulcan isn't an evil madman" being part of my pitch so will try to establish that more clearly! Especially now that I know the max pitch length I can achieve based on the other posted pitches...

In the end I tried to craft a team that could work on both 'Fight' and 'Pitch' fronts and if both fail then so be it, no regrets. But when I hear "Vulcan for Sabretooth", I think that's a bit too Pitch-y for me...!

MartinFF7 posted...

My book is played totally straight, everyone on the team agrees with Vulcan's assessment in the end and it goes full-on authoritarian in the "ends justifies the means" kind of way. That's what the "Righteous" really represents, in the team name.

Then your book is gonna get canceled 4 issues in. There's nothing interesting going on here at that point

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Because the ending's different? I was referring to the "played straight" at the end, rather than it culminating in Everyone vs. Vulcan. It still starts the same way - secret plan behind the public face of the team, gradually getting people on board, moving chess pieces into place. I think there's some interest in that journey and the development of characters along the way but maybe that's just me, fair enough.

Eddv seems to hate the most powerful teams/characters without exception, and there seems to be no way to convince him to not hate on such characters/teams. But, from what I've seen he votes honestly when it comes to team fights, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt in pitches. Obviously he has at least a little bias, but he's not voting for teams to win fights they can't, and story is so subjective you can't really call people on it. Don't get twisted on one guy's vote, this is your story, your team, do you. Do you the best you can with what you have.
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Ultimately I think the disconnect here is that you need to jump through a lot of hoops of character development for the teaming to make sense, and the problem on its face is how does it actually last long enough for that character development to feel organic and not a case of what would happen if these guys were literally forced to team and not implode for X amount of time.

Like when Eddv says "this gets cancelled after 4 issues" he might not be too far off the mark off the primary beef-- the beef being that if the team is written in a way that makes sense the team disbands itself within 4 issues and there's not really a way to rationalize otherwise without going beyond the scope of this project. You basically need to go beyond the level of pitch and outright write the path of character development.

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Exactly what I am getting at.

Martin's project requires like 8 issues of people giving it a chance for this to be a successful title. It's gonna take that long to get all the moving pieces into place. But Cyclops as a drawing card REALLY only gets you so far. It just has to go so far beyond pitch and unless you have like Dan Slott or Kurt Busiek or another all time all star on this book no fans are buying this long enough to find out.

And in contrast to the other two titles that took a villain-first approach (Lopen and Snake) there's just nothing fun happening here. We have no domino providing some comedy, we have no just over the top theme driving it home. You're asking us to watch a fairly paint by numbers villains being villains book played totally straight where all the villains and antiheroes are these dour or otherwise dramatic characters. Your only source of lightness in here at all is Gaia and shes just not a strong enough character

Worse since its played straight you've written out the ONE THING this title had going for it in my view - the dramatic tension between the principals. Without it this is just dour and uninteresting in my book.

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Eddv posted...

Exactly what I am getting at.

Martin's project requires like 8 issues of people giving it a chance for this to be a successful title. It's gonna take that long to get all the moving pieces into place. But Cyclops as a drawing card REALLY only gets you so far. It just has to go so far beyond pitch and unless you have like Dan Slott or Kurt Busiek or another all time all star on this book no fans are buying this long enough to find out.

And in contrast to the other two titles that took a villain-first approach (Lopen and Snake) there's just nothing fun happening here. We have no domino providing some comedy, we have no just over the top theme driving it home. You're asking us to watch a fairly paint by numbers villains being villains book played totally straight where all the villains and antiheroes are these dour or otherwise dramatic characters. Your only source of lightness in here at all is Gaia and shes just not a strong enough character

Worse since its played straight you've written out the ONE THING this title had going for it in my view - the dramatic tension between the principals. Without it this is just dour and uninteresting in my book.

In no way is this good,
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I'm still 50-50 on Johnbobb vs. CPU, and I'm torn on rocket vs. banananor.

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Fight
redrocket vs. banananor
Wicklebee vs. ChichiriMuyo
MartinFF7 vs. DeathChicken

and while I obviously can't vote on the 4th, I stand by my reasoning that my match wouldn't be particularly close, even with all due respect to Chamber
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IhatethisCPU posted...

That's fuckin' coooool. :o

for real man
Siryn is such an incredible character and really deserves her own series
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Eddv posted...

Martin's project requires like 8 issues of people giving it a chance for this to be a successful title. It's gonna take that long to get all the moving pieces into place. But Cyclops as a drawing card REALLY only gets you so far. It just has to go so far beyond pitch

You (and Lopen) are both right, of course. I was planning to get really elaborate, that's my own hubris, which fell apart with the pitch length limit. Would've been safer to go with standard characters in a standard series but always like to try something different.

Though I will also say, I wasn't thinking of (theoretical) commercial viability, the pitch criteria was just for "better series" after all. And now I'm thinking of all those great tv series cancelled too soon because nobody watched them, yeah... that would probably be how it ends up.

Fight
redrocket vs. banananor
Wicklebee vs. ChichiriMuyo
abstain
Johnbobb vs. IhatethisCPU

Pitch
redrocket vs. banananor
Wicklebee vs. ChichiriMuyo
abstain
Johnbobb vs. IhatethisCPU

About 30 hours to get those votes in.

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Fight
redrocket vs. banananor - I basically see Rocket X as an x-23 solo title with a bunch of disjointed filler, some of which is stronger than x-23, which is particularly problematic. Not sure I'm huge on Mutant Intent just yet but it does fit the standard of being a team.
Wicklebee vs. ChichiriMuyo - Spy Calibur feels like an actual cohesive team title. Really like this lineup. X-Treme potentially has something there but the pitch reads more like an excuse for certain people with good combat abilities to join forces against an invading force than something I can feel the synergy with. Doesn't mean it isn't there-- with a refined pitch this could do something.
MartinFF7 vs. DeathChicken - Technically Martin's pitch is full of flaws and people have rightly destroyed him for it, but I'd sooner read it (if out of morbid curiosity if nothing else) than something that is led by a character I don't find terribly interesting titled Doop's X-Angels. I feel like straight rosters Doop's X-Angels is much better. Just needs a different direction and title.
Johnbobb vs. IhatethisCPU - I actually like both of these teams. I give the nod to MLA because it doesn't cop-out a 12 episode mini series and I like the roster slightly better. I do actually really like the starting arc, and given some sort of bridge into further conflicts dangled after that one arc, I think Imermutants is likely the better.

Fight
redrocket vs. banananor
Wicklebee vs. ChichiriMuyo
MartinFF7 vs. DeathChicken
Johnbobb vs. IhatethisCPU

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I assume the first bunch there is supposed to say Pitch instead of Fight?
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Yeah first set is Pitch my bad.

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Pitch
banananor
I love X-23. Rocket X would be better as a solo X-23 book. A book that actually makes good use of the roster would be very different. Much more interested in reading the anarchist's quest for freedom.

Wicklebee
Pete Wisdom is the best. Gentle is hte best. Gambit is the best. The pitch is actually something I would love to read, and a very worthy successor to the books I love set in the UK.

DeathChicken
Cheesecake doop fun>>>>lame attempt to take over the world. I also just utterly hate the use of Elixir here, and he's one of the people I really like... so seeing him used in this way just makes me want to not buy the book on principle(this is also how I felt about Avengers Arena for a real comic comparison). Gimme that cheesy fourth wall breaking cheesecake book much more.

IhatethisCPU
This mystery is utterly fascinating and I would love to see it explored. One could argue the limited nature of it hurts but... I'd rather have a short amazing story that ends when it should rather than one which goes on forever because money. Unfortunately for Johnbobb, despite having what is prolly my third favorite pitch of all(It's between him and DeathChicken), he got matched up agaisnt my clear second after Wicklebee's.

Fight
redrocket
Boom-Boom and Darkstar is an evil combo... and I think Marvel Girl can stall Emma/Juggs long enough for the rest to swoop in and end them after cleaning up the scrubs.

Abstain
I'm not really convinced either way here, and my overwhelming love for Wicklebee's team and concept makes it hard for me to feel comfortable making a decision with how similar I find the power levels to be.

Deathchicken
Assassins gonna gank Martin's team to hell and back, because I am very unconvinced that they'll actually work together. This goes back to me not buying the pitch somewhat, because if I was buying into it more, maybe that would overcome my worries of them not working together based on how I read them as people... but as is... I just don't see them being willing to stay grouped up, I see them splitting into many small groups, and then they just get ganked to shit and back and lose over time as their numbers keep going down. It feels like a lowkey horror movie in the making.

Johnbobb
I'm a chamber homer, and I def think he's one of, if not the strongest asset CPU has, but I agree with Johnbobb that between Iceman and Siryn... he's kinda a bit too easy to shut down. Darwin is also a really strong piece that CPU doesn't have a good solution for.
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Fight
redrocket vs. banananor
I could be persuaded here. Rocket has a very cohesive lineup. But for the purposes of this fight I almost feel like Jean and Emma kind of cancel each other out for the most part. If these teams fought ten times, I think Mutant Intent could probably pull out six wins, so I'll go with them.

Wicklebee vs. ChichiriMuyo
The X-Treme lineup is annoying as all get-out in a fight.

MartinFF7 vs. DeathChicken
Cohesion is a problem for Martin's team, and it will continue to be so if some changes aren't made, but I think in this instance he's bringing enough pure firepower that it won't matter.

Johnbobb vs. IhatethisCPU
His argument has even seemingly convinced CPU that he's got the advantage here. And I agree with prof that Darwin is an underrated asset here.

Pitch
redrocket vs. banananor
I'm not in love with either of these, but Rocket X at least feels like it has a clear direction. banananor has the superior lineup, if for no other reason than that Rocket has a couple of really boring big names overshadowing what is ostensibly a solo book, but the pitch is so vague that I can't even really formulate a strong opinion on it.

Wicklebee vs. ChichiriMuyo
I don't think I can add much commentary to this past what everyone's already said.

MartinFF7 vs. DeathChicken
I agree with all the criticisms about the Brotherhood, but I'm really not into this Doop concept at all. I think it obscures a lineup with a lot of potential instead of supporting it. I don't feel wild about it, but if I saw these two ideas in book form sitting next to each other on the shelf, I think I'd have enough morbid curiosity to pick up Martin's first.

Johnbobb vs. IhatethisCPU
Tough matchup in the fight and a tough, tough matchup in the pitch. If CPU had been matched up with almost any other team this round, he'd be the easy winner. This came down to the very nebulous idea of which roster I like better, and Johnbobb's is probably one of my overall favorites in this project.
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Trying out a new and accurate signature.
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Fight
abstain
ChichiriMuyo (m + crusader x seem powerful, plus gateway teleports groups)
MartinFF7
Johnbobb (i like the idea of nightcrawler teleporting around with a laser cannon, but it's not enough)
Pitch
abstain
Wicklebee
DeathChicken
Johnbobb

sorry i can't write up more
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Little more than 2 hours left to vote

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....where the fuck did you get the laser cannon thing from, bananor?
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