I Can't Imagine Everyone Got The Cool Powers

Something I'm not clear on when AvX, is the new mutants. Are they simply all the people Wanda depowered in House of M, reset to their status prior to that story? Are they entirely different folks who didn't have the X-gene, but do now? Is it a mix of the two?

I tend to think the easiest thing would be to say Hope just undid what Wanda did. There were millions of mutants on the planet prior to that, so it would be easy to introduce any new character you want as a repowered mutant, because it's entirely likely the X-Men wouldn't have run into them before. It's a big world, and with all the crises X-Teams routinely face, they wouldn't have time to make a recruiting speech to every mutant.

Regardless, there are certainly a few people with powers now that didn't want them. Maybe they had a lousy mutation. I remember a guy in Rucka's Wolverine run, he needed alcohol to stay awake, but if he drank, he got drunk. There are people with legitimately dangerous mutations, to them and others, who probably didn't want them back. Say your mutation was sweat that's a corrosive agent. Summer would be hell, because you couldn't do anything with your clothes, shoes, the pavement, the walls of the pool, whatever, melting around you.Might have been glad to be rid of that problem.

Other people might not have minded their mutations, but they've settled into a new life without them. Not necessarily better than the old one, but not worse either. They get their powers back, and in the apparently heightened (re-heightened?) anti-mutant climate, that life is upset. Maybe they lose their job (though I'd think being a mutant would be protected under job discrimination). Maybe they grew to be 8 feet tall, and 900 pounds of solid granite, so that 4th floor apartment isn't going to work any longer.

While I'm sure there are plenty of people glad to have their powers (and we'll discuss them in a few paragraphs), there's likely to be a decent percentage who aren't happy about it. We could use this as another thing to bash Cyclops over the head with, that he never bothered to consult these people before unilaterally going ahead with his plan to repower them, but this isn't so much about Cyclops, though it may involve him. It's a question of what those people do.

Are they angry? Do they lash out? If so, at who? How much does the average person in the Marvel Universe understand about what just happened? Would they point the finger at Cyclops, attack his prison in an attempt to exact vengeance? It'd be interesting to see how he reacted to that, given his current position seems to be "I did horrible things, and I have to pay for them, but I believe they were worth it." Would he feel bad? Would he not care, tell them they were taking one for the team, so to speak? Would their attempt to confront him enable him to escape, so we have Cyclops dodging the authorities and lynch mobs?

They might go after Hope, reasoning, that since she gave them these powers, she can remove them again (depending on how much people know, they might turn to Wanda for the same reason). Reading discussions of Generation Hope, it seems she can exercise some sort of control over the Five Lights, make them do what she wants. Could she do that with these people, and if so, how many at once? Would she use the ones she could control against the ones she couldn't, or take a different route entirely? I think she tried to do the best she could with a situation she didn't ask for, so maybe she'd work to help the unhappy ones.

There are a lot of ways one could go with it. You could see people struggle with it for a bit, but resolve to carry on with their lives like before. Other people could abandon their current lives and try to start anew. Still others could give up entirely and take their own lives. There could be increased interest in a mutant "cure" from people who'd gladly take it. Obviously the potential for abuse of such a thing is considerable, but if it can be developed, should the people who want to take it be prevented from doing so? Some could decide to hire themselves out as weapons or simply rampage, angry at the world and eager to take it out on anyone. We could have newly repowered people who love it fighting with the ones who don't, with humans as allies on both sides, as well as on their own sides.

Among the people who are glad to have powers, there's a lot of ground to cover. Beyond people using them for good (would the Avengers get swamped with people trying out?), for ill, or just for kicks (the skies are full of people just flying around whilly-nilly!). Would some of them start to worship Hope? It could be new fashion trends. All her followers would wear green-and-yellow spandex with a ragged cloak on their shoulders. What does she do if she finds herself with an army of devotees? There's potential there, if Hope doesn't carefully weigh what she says or does, for things to go very wrong. Would people try to influence her as way to use those followers to their own purposes? What if they simply get out of control on their own, doing things they think Hope wants, without bothering to check with her first? And, of course, Hope could always let the power go to her head.

There could religions that form around the Phoenix (which they did in Ultimate X-Men, but I'm not sure about the Marvel Universe). That could just be an interesting background thing, it could tie into Hope's situation (since she harnessed the Phoenix' power), or they could be a serious problem. Say they want to bring the Phoenix back, and someone in the group starts muddling about with mystic forces, trying to speed its, what, resurrection, recoalescing, but releases something else? Or they do, by force of will/focusing or giving of their life energies/mystic handwave bring the Phoenix back full force. Then what? Is it really angry, confused, just ready to get off Earth and never come back?

This is thing about Marvel events. For as much as I frequently don't like the idea behind them (usually because it makes the heroes behave like jerks towards each other), they do, on occasion, set up a status quo with the potential to be interesting. Or reestablish that status quo in this case, I guess. The question is whether Marvel will stick with it long enough to get anything out of it.