Forge: The Worst X-Man Ever

The title of this post implies far more disdain for the character Forge than I actually have.

Did it annoy me when he constantly said “Plasma coil charged” as my buddy Jordan and I played X-Men: Mutant Academy 2 in college? A bit. Despite Chris Claremont’s best efforts do I remain more or less unconvinced that his mutant power of being able to build cool stuff is of any use in actual combat situations? For the most part. Do I feel that fringed cowboy boots and a ponytail clash with the standard blue and gold X-Men uniform? Y’know what, jury’s out on that one.

But ultimately, I don’t have strong feelings towards Forge, and those I do have tend towards thinking he’s not a bad character with some good stories to his credit—he was awesome in Lifedeath and was actually quite a stud in my beloved Muir Island Saga—and untapped potential for somebody with a good idea.

However, simply observing objectively, he is the worst X-Man of all-time in terms of damage done to the team. Forge makes Dark Phoenix look like a drunk girl who knocked over a drink and then passed out as far as being a plague upon his own allies.

Let’s examine (and to be nice I’m even going to jump right over the part where his entire platoon died in Vietnam and his response was to go nuts, order a bombing of the area, and use a Cheyenne spell to unwittingly unleash The Adversary—I’m glossing over that):

After Tony Stark stopped making weapons for S.H.I.E.L.D. because he was a on a peace kick, Forge subbed in and designed some goodies including a power neutralizing thing meant to be used on Dire Wraiths but that Henry Peter Gyrich co-opted to de-power mutants with. To his credit, Forge wasn’t pleased with this decision—y’know, being a mutant and all—but his good intentions didn’t help Storm when she got zapped by the device trying to protect Rogue and lost her powers as a result. Forge actually attempted to romance the now former X-Man and did a decent job of it until she realized it was kinda his fault she lost her powers. Whoops.

Forge did a decent job making amends in the war with the Wraiths and even got Storm her powers back, but then that pesky Adversary, the Native American god of evil he had freed awhile back—said I wasn’t going to mention it, but just realized it’s kind of crucial—showed up to try and destroy the world. Fortunately Forge had a solution: He could reverse the spell and banish The Adversary, he just needed nine people to sacrifice their lives, and wouldn’t you know it, there were eight X-Men and Madelyne Pryor.

So yeah, Forge totally killed the X-Men. They got better, but it bears repeating: Of all the enemies the X-Men have faced over the years, only one has ever killed all of them and it was Forge.

Being the forgiving types, after they came back from the dead, the X-Men let Forge join the team, but since he wasn’t much good in a fight other than to get them killed or take away their powers, they smartly relegated him to “Mansion Support Staff”—the way you let the scrawny kid be the mascot—where he promptly blew his one responsibility and allowed Professor X and Moira MacTaggert to be captured by Magneto, who just wrenched the room they were in into space while our buddy was out for a stroll.

Years later, long after leaving the X-Men and getting dumped by Storm then Mystique then Mystique again, Forge popped back up as a mentor to some of Xavier’s younger students, like Surge, and the go-to tech guy for the team; it was honestly a great and useful role for him. Of course the poor bastard still couldn’t catch a break and was attacked by Nimrod, who revealed an alternate reality Forge had created him; the New X-Men saved our guy, but in the process he sent Nimrod back in time to menace the X-Men in the first place, creating one of their deadliest foes essentially twice (I think; it was a rad story, but truth be told I got confused at parts).

Somewhat understandably, Forge seemed to want to be left alone after this, probably realizing he was as much a danger to the X-Men as they were to him, but Bishop needed his time machine, so he gave him a concussion and took off with it. After this, our boy went a bit batty and locked himself in his house (literally).

Most recently, a completely unhinged Forge—at least partially round the bend because Storm married The Black Panther—came up with a plan to save the world from an other-dimensional invasion by sending the X-Men on a suicide mission; when they turned down that offer, he nearly blew up the planet by opening a portal, but fortunately Beast shot a big laser through it and ended the invasion threat. There was a big explosion afterward and Forge may or may not have died in what would have been possibly the ultimate mercy killing for both him and the X-Men.

In short: took away Storm’s powers, brought a ridiculously powerful bad guy to Earth, killed the X-Men, got Professor X kidnapped, created another ridiculously powerful bad guy, allowed Bishop to pursue Cable and the potential mutant messiah through time by not paying attention, tried to kill the X-Men again, then nearly destroyed the world before getting killed in an explosion.

Did I mention he killed the X-Men?

Forge: A snappy dresser, but seriously, the worst X-Man ever.

Oh Crystal, you utter hussy...

Crystal's greatest infidelity hits, from the recently-collected Avengers: Vision & The Scarlet Witch - A Year in the Life.

To set the scene, at the time of this series, Crystal was married to Quicksilver and had recently given birth to their daughter, Luna. Let's see what our favorite elemental Inhuman/village bicycle is up to...

Why I never!

For those of you who didn't want to blow up the panels, let me share some highlights from Crystal Rationalization Theater:

***

CRYSTAL - "We've always had to sneak before, Norman -- what with Wanda and Vizh living so close by! But now that they're on vacation--! Oh, it's so perfect!"

***

NORMAN: "If only you weren't married--!" (She knows how to pick 'em!)

CRYSTAL: "Now, Norman, we promised we weren't going to talk about that!"

***

NORMAN: "Let's tell [Quicksilver]! Tell him you want a divorce and stop sneaking around!"

CRYSTAL: "Well...easy for you to say! You don't have nearly as much to lose!" (Norman, you selfish asshole!)

***

CRYSTAL: "It's better I continue to tell [Quicksilver] I miss Earth, take the anti-pollution potion (Science!), and come down for fabulous weekends -- and I do mean fabulous, hunk-o!" ("Hunk-o" is Inhuman Royal Family for "convenient")

***

Annnnnd scene!

All together now...

OH CRYSTAL! (Cue laugh track and closing theme)

You suck, Invisible Woman

Y'know, no matter how many great stories are written featuring her, no matter how invaluable she is to the dynamic of the Fantastic Four, and no matter how many times she wins me over as a character, every time I see this one panel (which I came across again this past weekend while reading the latest volume of What If? Classic) a great disdain for Sue Storm aka the Invisible Girl aka Sue Richards aka the Insivible Woman wells up inside me once more...

Poor, poor Ben Grimm.*

Sue's late 80's/early 90's she-mullet was a crime against humanity as well.

(*=For those of you who aren't fortunate enough to recognize random comic book panels from 1961 out of context, that's Sue guilt-tripping Ben into flying her boyfriend Reed's rocket into dangerous outer space cosmic rays and thus condemning him to life as a freakish orange monster because they "needed to beat the Commies")

Sardath Sucks. Seriously.

"Hate" is such a strong word. You like to think that even when it comes to something like you comic books, you reserve your hatred for those who really deserve it. And you like to think "those who really deserve it" are characters who are shoved down your throat and irritate you at every turn.

So since in this case the subject of my irrational comic book hatred is a Silver Age supporting cast remnant who doesn't even have his own Wikipedia entry, I'm going to downgrade a smidge and say I just strongly dislike Sardath.

Who is Sardath you may ask? An excellent question! Why he's the chief scientist of Rann, noteworthy for his invention of the Zeta Beam and being Adam Strange's father-in-law.

Yes, that Sardath.

So how could a guy who is lucky to be a footnote of a footnote in the history of comics have earned my rancor and more than twenty seconds of my mental consideration? I'm not sure I fully know.

I took a quick sci fi nostalgia trip back to circa 2004 over the past couple weeks during my daily commute, re-reading my trade copies of Adam Strange: Planet Heist by Andy Diggle & Pasqual Ferry and its onstensible sequel, Rann/Thanagar War by Dave Gibbons & Ivan Reis. The first of those two stories kindled (is that a real word) for me an affection for Adam Strange, a character who really embodies everyman wish fulfillment and the thinking man's hero.

However, both of these stories, coupled with recent memory of that Rann-based story from Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing, less recent memories of Mark Waid's JLA two-parter, and having half-followed that Countdown to Adventure book and the several minis featuring Adam Strange that have come since, reminded/reawakened me of/to the disproportonate disdain I have for Sardath.

At some point (I believe in the Swamp Thing story), it was heavily implied if not ouright revealed that Sardath actually engineered the Zeta Beam "accident" that brought Adam Strange to Rann because Rannian dudes are sterile and he was cool with using his daughter, Alanna, as a broodmare. Also, the aforementioned males of Rann are basically aristrocratic pussies (for lack of a better term) and don't want to place themselves in danger against the planet's local predators or extraterrestrial invaders, so they needed an earthman to do their fighting for them (because we rule!).

So to recap: Sardath yanked some poor archaeologist off his home planet, pimped out his only daughter, and manipulated Adam into fighting wacky animals and making babies.

He's a douche (check out some more deets on Adam Strange here).

Aside from that pretty tremendous initial offense (and the fact that he lied to both his daughter and son-in-law for years about his role in manufacturing their seemingly storybook romance), in pretty much every appearance he has made over his 50+ year existence Sardath has been portrayed as a manipulator, an egomaniac, a coward, an opportunist and generally careless with the lethal technology he is able to create. Everybody from Diggle to Gibbons to Adam Beechen to that Moore kid and many more have agreed on this characterization.

And he's (supposedly) not a villain!

In the Swamp Thing story, Sardath regards Adam with the general disadain most Rannians seem to have for the alien who has pulled their collective fate out of the fire time and again. In Planet Heist, one of Sardath's experiments goes awry and Rann ends up on the other side of the galaxy (and he doesn't exactly go out of his way to get word to Adam, who think his wife and daughter got blown up). During the Rann-Thanagar War, Sardath sends Adam off into danger per usual and then while he's gone negotiates with the nasty Dominion, an action his daughter (who has shown considerable more backbone and smarts than her dad ever has) wisely disapproves of, leading him to brush her off while he goes back to dooming their race. In Countdown to Adventure, Sardath gets brainwashed with the rest of Rann (or so he claims) to become a bloodthirsty follower of Lady Styx and, in the process, kicks Adam to the curb in favor of making a stuntman from Earth named Champ Hazzard the new champion of Rann.

Seriously.

And just like Sardath's various writers have delivered a consistent portrait of him as a creepy jerk, the artists who have portrayed him, from Andy Kubert to Ferry to Reis to Eddy Barrows, et al, have found visual agreeance that he's a withered bald geezer with a huge cranium and a brow that redefines the word "furrowed."

Sardath is the father-in-law from hell who doesn't just ask you to shovel his walk, he asks you to risk your life constantly against all sorts of exotic alien beasties. I'm fortunate in that my father-in-law-to-be is a super cool guy, so this isn't any sort of transferrence; if anything, venting about Sardath makes me feel like an even luckier fella.

I've said this before in the past about other subjects, but I can't believe I just wrote that much about Sardath.

Crystal: The Marvel Universe Bicycle

For a guy who reads as many comics as I do and spends as much time dealing with comics as I do, you'd figure by the numbers alone there would be a fair amount of characters I don't like. However, while there are certainly plenty of comic book characters I find to be dull or irritating or whatever, I can't think of too many who when they show up I roll my eyes and audibly sigh in frustration.

There are a few though, and Crystal of the Inhumans is at the top of that list.

I first encountered the "pumpkin-haired bimbette" (as I vividly and fondly recall Diamondback referring to her as in an issue of Captain America--thank you for that, Mark Gruenwald) when she was a member of the Avengers back in the early 90's. Bob Harras' run on Avengers was largely characterized by a greater focus on the soap opera aspects of the team than perhaps ever before, with a love triangle between Crystal, the Black Knight and Sersi being at the center.

Not knowing any history about any of the characters, I assumed the Black Knight had always been the stubble-chinned Gambit lookalike and ladies man I encountered in these pages. He was kinda like a badass Archie, as he had the hot bitchy brunette Sersi looking to unsheathe his sword (BAM!) and the "sweet, innocent" semi-blond Crystal also making a play for him. So my initial "loathing at first sight" for Crystal was simply that she was the lame, uninteresting and sappy corner of this triangular romance, whereas the other two angles were edgy and rad. I also thought it kinda inappropriate for Crys to be pretty blatantly throwing herself at the team's resident bad boy when she was raising a young daughter, Luna, on the other end of the mansion, but that was secondary.

It wasn't until an issue of X-Factor around the same period where young Ben thought to ask himself, "Huh, I wonder where Luna's dad is?" That would of course be because in said issue Quicksilver asks Val Cooper for time off so he can go on vacation with his estranged wife--Crystal!

Whaaaaa?

I actually liked Quicksilver, so the fact that the lame elemental chick over in Avengers was his wife disappointed me greatly. However, what disappointed me even more was reading this X-Factor back-up story where Pietro is trying desparately to get Crystal to take him back and being a gentleman and everything and young Ben is yelling at the page, "Quicksilver, you fool! She totally made out with the Black Knight last month! She's NO GOOD!" and getting funny looks from his parents.

By the end of the story, some dude actually tries to blackmail Quicksilver by showing him pictures of his wife out dancing or something (really?) with ol' BK and Pietro beats the snot out of him but then heads back to the cabin he and essentially telling Crystal to hit the bricks.

That wouldn't be the end of the story, as Quicksilver would show up back in Avengers and make the love triangle into a sorta love square (honestly I just wanted him and Sersi to get together) and then Black Knight ended up in the Ultraverse and I stopped reading comics for awhile.

The lasting impression left on me from the whole ordeal though was that Crystal was a lousy, no good, two-timing skank who didn't even have the decency to act like one on the outside like the fine residents of Melrose Place, instead trying to seem all Pollyanna while she was lining up her next manwiche.

But that was only the tip of the iceberg, my friends. I got back into reading comics in college and actually took some time to learn the history of the Marvel Universe and in the process discovered that this was not the first time Crystal had pulled something like this--in fact, it was basically her secondary mutation to cheat on whatever dude she was with!

Let's go to the history books...

Crystal was originally introduced along with the rest of the Inhumans in the pages of Fantastic Four by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby back during their miracle run on that book. She was essentially the Juliet to Johnny Storm's Romeo; the one girl the smooth operating Human Torch could never attain because her people disapproved, she was trapped behind some impenetrable barrier in Attilan, etc. And this worked. It was neat idea and the sort of human quandary done on an epic scale that made Lee and Kirby's FF sing.

Eventually Johnny and Crys did find a way to be together, with her essentially moving in with him and them living happily ever after. But this is comics, so nobody can really live happily ever after unless you're writing them into limbo or they're Reed and Sue, so eventually, something suddenly came up (I confess to not knowing exactly what) and the happy couple split.

Here begin the problems.

Crystal ends up finding Quicksilver after he got the crap kicked out of him by a Sentinel and nursing him back to health. They fall in love and even get married. It's an interesting enough odd couple since Crystal actually lived up to her billing as chaste and kindly back then whereas Quicksilver was the consumate jerk he always was, is, and should remain. Maybe they didn't need to get married (and have a kid), but they were interesting.

However, to start with, from every summary I've read, it seems like the Crystal-Quicksilver relationship was always played as "She got bored of waiting for the Torch to want to be with her again, so she settled for the next warm body" (more or less). I'm sure this was done with the intention of playing up the starcrossed lovers thing to the next level, but from my point of view, it just makes Crystal seem like a shrew and Quicksilver of all people seem like the sympathetic party.

It gets worse.

Eventually, Crystal gets bored (happens a lot apparently) of hanging out in her hidden city playing wife/mom, so she visits her in-laws the Vision and the Scarlet Witch in the Jersey suburbs and starts an affair. Not with the Vision, or the Torch, or even the Witch, but just with some dude. In Jersey.

Ok, as a proud resident of a Jersey suburb, even I have to say it's incredibly sad that in a Universe populated with chiseled demigods running around in spadex, Crystal settled for some insurance salesman in Hackensack or whatever as her "other man." Adultery is bad enough, but have some standards, lady!

Because of the whole "his wife sleeping with a Jersey shore guido" thing, Quicksilver went nuts and became a villain for awhile. Rather than, oh, try to fix things, Crystal decided to join the Fantastic Four alongside her old flame (HA!) Johnny Storm (who was raising her daughter? I dunno, Triton or somebody...I'm sure she didn't care). Why is she suddenly interested in the Torch again? Because he's married now.

Oy.

After failing to convince her ex boytoy that cheating on your spouse was the hip new thing, Crystal remembered she had a kid and wandered back to the Inhumans. Quicksilver was getting sane again, so to avoid that potential deathtrap of domestic bliss and a stable home life for her child, she joined the Avengers and embarked upon the aforementioned floozying with the Black Knight. Crisis averted.

After that we had Onslaught, Heroes Reborn, Heroes Return...Crystal didn't show up a lot. I think she reconciled with Quicksilver for a speall, but (shockingly) it didn't last. Paul Jenkins did his awesome Inhumans mini and she was in it, but I've never been entirely sure if that story was in continuity or not (and Crystal doesn't get with anybody, so it's not really important for my purposes here).

Recent years have seen a modest resurgance of Crystal appearances and with them the requisite Crystal being a harlot. In the Son of M mini where Quicksilver goes nuts again and steals the Terrigen Mists from the Inhumans, Crystal can't be bothered to do much because she's busy tangling with a new plant-based Inhuman (and by "tangling with" I mean "having sex with").

Then, as if it couldn't get any better/worse, during a New Avengers tie-in issue to Civil War, the Sentry takes a trip to Attilan and we find out that apparently he and Crystal knocked boots back in the day when both of them were married. That's right: Crystal had a retcon affair!

Amazing.

I'm not the high-faluting "I've got the moral high ground 24/7" dude I was back in high school (I was Dan from Gossip Girl), but adultery still gives me the heebie jeebies (as I think it does most people). But with Crystal, cheating on her man of the moment isn't just a plot twist that got thrown in one day, it's what she does. And like I said, it's not that she's just a slut that bugs me, it's that for some reason she's never really called out on it. Every time she shows up, the male characters aren't all like, "Nice! Crystal! Somebody's getting lucky tonight!" She is still portrayed as Polly Pureheart.

For the record, I don't blame any writer or artist for my irrational hatred of Crystal. I honestly believe that Crystal somehow reaches through the page and forces creators to enable her in her ongoing sexcapades. And heck, I've read plenty of good Inhumans/Crystal stories, including the ones where she cuckolds her poor beaus. I've only seen snippets of those original Lee/Kirby issues, but I love the dynamic. The Jenkins mini is one of my favorites. I even dug that Harras stuff in a 90's sorta way.

The latest Crystal portrayal courtesy of Joe Pokaski in Secret Invasion: Inhumans showed promise. Joe did a nice job playing up te family aspect of the Inhumans and casting Crystal in the jealous little sister role to Medusa worked. Going into War of Kings, I'm excited to see how two of my favorite writers, Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, play with these characters. Crystal being put into a forced marriage with Ronan is an interesting twist (heads up to Ronan: she will cheat on you).

So here's looking to tomorrow, Crystal--best of luck in your future endeavors.

I will likely still hate you.