It's one thing to write a hero in an entirely out of character manner. It's something else entirely to re-write their entire history in what can only be described as an attempt to systematically annihilate any goodwill from fans. For Xavier, this massive act of character assassination came in the form of X-Men: Deadly Genesis, which proceeded to do massive parts of his life and the very way in which he treated his students. Retconning one of their classic adventures where the original team was trapped on the living island of Krakoa, Ed Brubaker re-wrote the entire affair with Xavier suddenly displaying an almost sadistically ruthless streak. Taking another group of young mutants being trained by his former lover Moira MacTaggert, he proceeded to bombard their minds with a crash course in fighting, brainwashing them into thinking they were his students. Hurling them at the island Xavier proceeded to get the majority of the group slaughtered in his failed rescue mission, just barely recovering Cyclops. He then promptly erased all knowledge of them from the distraught minds of Cyke and Moira alike, the former having just learnt that one of those apparently killed was his long lost brother. As a result of this, Xavier's previous characterisation comes of as little more than a poor facade, a performance put on by someone to disguise their true nature and hide their true persona to better take control of the various X teams. Thanks to Deadly Genesis, everything from God Loves, Man Kills to the Onslaughter Saga reads as if it were a lie, a fabrication about a character readers never knew truth behind or saw his true nature. Things would only become worse in later arcs, following this same line of thought in an attempt to emulate the Ultimate Universe's interpretation that Xavier was no better than Magneto. In the face of this, Xavier's death in Avengers Vs. X-Men can be seen as something of a mercy killing. Did we fail to miss a potential great which failed to meet audience expectations? Please leave your own suggestions and thoughts in the comments below.
A gamer who has played everything from Daikatana to Dwarf Fortress. An obsessive film fanatic valuing everything from The Third Man to Flash Gordon. An addict to tabletop titles, comics and the classics of science fiction, whatever media they are a part of.
