Marvel's Empyre: The Character Assasination of an Entire Alien Species

[Rodan56]

I'm hesistant to really write all of this down because every time I bring it up, I get people saying I'm over thinking it, or they wave it off or what have you. That the creators of the event are progressive liberals and wouldn't do this intentionally. Well, sometimes the most progressive folks among us can make a mistake and unintentionally write something with some problematic implications. And I feel Empyre does this with its narrative.

For those who don't know, Empyre is the latest event from Marvel, dealing with the Kree and Skrulls forming a truce to fight their real enemy. The promotions made it seem like it was the Avengers and that Hulkling, a Kree/Skrull hybrid and former Young Avenger, had gone inexplicably evil. This was not the case, but what happened instead was probably worse. You could get around the problems of Hulkling, one of Marvel's openly gay superheroes, being evil by saying he's under mind control, or being misled, he's brainwashed, or it's an imposter. You can write yourself out of that corner... technically they do that in the book. But the real villains of the story are the problem.

The enemy Hulkling has united the Kree and Skrull against are called the Cotati. A race of peaceful plant people that, a millenia ago, were nearly massacred into extinction by the Kree. The Kree did this after the Skrull came and offered a chance for either the Kree or Cotati to be uplifted and join their ranks. The Cotati weren't interested, but the Kree, fearful of what their neighbors would do if they were uplifted, decided to commit genocide. This act horrified the Skrulls and more or less set off the entire war that they have waged in comics for seemingly forever.

You might wonder, if you haven't been reading the book, why are the Cotati the bad guys in this? It sounds like the Kree and Skrull are joining forces to finish the job. Well, that's the thing. A while back, during John Hickman's run of Avengers, the Cotati settled on the moon. A sort of refugee colony where they could be safe. The Skrull and Kree are coming to Earth to fight the Cotati with Hulkling as their emperor. (He's of royal blood and prophesized to lead the two races, it's a whole thing and not relevant to this discussion) The Cotati call upon the Avengers to aid them, saying that they fear their old enemies are coming to murder them all. The Avengers accept, mostly upon Tony Stark's insistence, and decide to help them fight off their oppressors.

But, and here it is, this where it all goes horribly wrong, the Cotati are lying. They aren't peaceful at all, they've been planning for the coming of the Kree and Skrulls for years now. It will give them a chance to execute their ultimate revenge scheme on "all animal life" for its crimes against the Cotati. They have tricked the Avengers into helping them, tricked them into giving them a colony on the moon to plan, and now they've constructed a killer plant super weapon intent on destroying all meat creatures everywhere. By the time the Avengers have discovered this, it's too late and the Kree and Skrull have suffered massive casualities.

The Cotati invade earth, start turning people into plant zombies by shoving spores into them and making their people wear their bodies as skin suits. This is what they did to She-Hulk in secret in the first issue to plant a spy among the Avengers. Soon she's fighting The Thing when the cover is blown and cackling evily about how their friend is dead, they tricked them and how She-Hulk is just a vessel now for them. (She gets better, don't worry) Tony laments about how he trusted the Cotati, because it was just so naive and stupid of him to trust victims of a genocide. How he should've listened to the Kree and Skrull who have done nothing but conquer, enslave and attack various worlds in their bloody war against one another.

The Kree and Skrulls themselves are presented in a more heroic light suddenly, their cultures as more noble and just, even if brutal. Oh there are some bad actors in the Empire that have to be weeded out, but ultimately all the Kree and Skrull want is peace and it's the Cotati, who dress in Native/Indigenous looking garb, use predominantly magic from their shamans as weapons, or spears if they don't have magic, who are the real evil. They are presented as so unjustifiably monsterous, evil and wicked, that the comics see no reason not to show them getting brutally killed by the heroes because, hey, they're just plants right? And they're a bunch of evil bad guys now who need to be put down, what fools we were for trusting them and letting them inside our borders, ur, solar system.

The Cotati are overall the invaders, the Empire made up of the two races whose actions led to their near extinction are the heroes. While the book has a number of bad Kree and Skrulls that have to pay for their actions, none of them are in relation to the Cotati, who's lives seem to be seen as cheap and expendable. Who are written as so senselessly, ridiculously, monstrous, that it only makes sense for them to be called the REAL colonialists/imperialists in this whole story.

There is an attempt to suggest the Cotati and their leader are led astray by a ressurected Avengers Ally, The Swordsman, but it's really just another Cotati wearing his skin. The Avengers finally defeat the Cotati invaders when Swordsman holds his son, the Cotati's Messiah, hostage and Black Panther is able to kill him. The Cotati all surrender at this point and their Messiah, the former Avenger's Ally Sequoia, is portayed as basically a Scooby Doo villain who, while admiting he was led astray, still believes his father was right and is presented as just crazy. No legitimate greivance here, just a crazy plant dude, put him in chains and lock him in a cell. Apparently that holds true for the rest of the Cotati who are shown imprisoned, incarcerated and jailed. Led away under armed guard by the Kree and Skrulls, no mention of reconciliation or reparations for the genocide committed against them by the Kree, set off by the Skrulls' actions. They were the bad guys, they were evil and they apparently deserve to be subjugated by the noble Empire that conquered them at last.

But this isn't a pro-Imperialist story you see, because Hulkling is gay! You be can't be gay AND an imperialist. Never mind there's no mention of what is going to happen to the Cotati now or what he plans to do with this mass of plant people currently imprisoned by his new empire. No, no, he's gonna marry Wiccan now, we can't deal with the fact he's essentially absorbed the Cotati into his empire as an underclass of potential slaves. We gotta cut the cake already!

If it isn't obvious by now, everything about this set up screams problematic to me. They turned a race of creatures who suffered at the hands colonialism, who were nearly wiped out by an act of genocide, into "always evil." They try to say it's the Swordsman who made them go down this path, but really, it reads consistently more and more as the story goes on that this was always their plan. Always what the Cotati intended. There is nothing in the event that seeks to redeem the Cotati or show how they were led astray, only that they are horrible evil creatures that decieved us all and how naive and dumb the Avengers were for ever trusting these freaky aliens.

Honestly, if you switched out some of the characters, you could concievably re write the story as the British and the Boers teaming up to defeat the REAL bad guys... the Native Africans with their doomsday weapon. Or Cortez and Custard joining forces to fight off the evil Aztecs. Two technologically advanced space faring warrior cultures go to war against a primitive race of plant people who predominantly use magic and mysticism instead of technology. Hell, the more you read that bare bones description the more it starts to feel like a Reverse Avatar! Hell, the Cotati take over the bodies of humans in a sorta freakish reverse of that film's titular element of the story.

Try to understand, i'm not saying the Cotati were the real good guys here. That's dumb, given all the horrible stuff they do in this comic, they clearly had to be stopped. My problem is that this once peaceful race of aliens was turned into evil cartoonish monsters with a ridiculous "Plants vs Animals" motive that makes no sense at all no matter how you slice it. They are given a weak motivation to kill all animal life for the crimes of arguably two and their legitimate greivances are quickly ignored or swept under the rug for the majority of the story. They're never even mentioned again by anyone, except when Tony Stark complains about how dumb he was to trust them.

The whole event reads to me like a Pro-Imperialist load of Manifest Destiny propaganda, masquerading as a more "woke" storyline because it has an LGBT character in a central role. The problem, to me, is that it achieves this by assassinating the character of an entire species just to create a clever twist in the mind of its creators. "Hey, what if it was the Kree and Skrulls who were the heroes, and the peaceful aliens who were the REAL bad guys?" It seems so thoughtless and stupid, like Ewing and Slott just did it cause it sounded cool but they didn't consider the wider implications.

Think about it, the Cotati were allowed to settle on the moon, create a colony for themselves, where they would be safe. Where they could be protected. Where they'd have sanctuary. The Avengers allow this only for it to almost destroy everything and they are chewed out repeatedly about doing this, about trying to help a race of aliens who had suffered greatly at the hands of imperialist forces.

What does this remind you of? Cause it reminds me of a lot of the same fear mongering we hear from very far-right organizations. "Don't trust the other, we shouldn't let illegal aliens have sanctuary cities, we're giving shelter and aid to terrorists and criminals if we just let them in." The story ends with the entire population of the remaining Cotati being imprisoned. We see a huge swatch of them just shackled and kneeling, surrounded by the races who exploited and murdered them, on the very first page of one of the epilogues for the event.

And no one seems to care! No one seems to connect the dots. Everyone just seems to act like this says nothing deeper than "Bad guys lost, good guys won, we get to watch two gay superheroes marry now!" Like, we can just cover up the pro-imperialist messaging and the sweeping the whole genocide thing under the rug, the problematic aesthetic and cultural connections between the Cotati and Indigenous people, because we have a gay wedding at the end of it? COME ON!

I'm sorry if I sound angry, but everytime I brought this up to someone during the run of the book, they told me I was stupid, or reading too much into things, but the more the book rolled on, the more and more it felt like I was right. The Cotati had their race basically character assassinated in a thoughtless manner. Ewing and Slott have written a story that unintentionally says we should've slaughtered more of the Sioux at Wounded Knee because they might eventually do this to us! Annd all because they thought the Cotati would be cool villains and didn't think about the wider implications concerning the story overall. And everyone kept mocking me and telling me off for voicing my concerns and by the end of it all I feel like I was right on the money and no one seems to agree with me at all!

I honestly am starting to wonder if I have read into it too much, but I can't get over the simple fact that all of these elements add up to a very disgusting pro-imperialist message. One that supports genocide, paints indigenous cultures as in the wrong, that they just need to "get over it" and that the real heroes are the civilized warrior cultures.

I just... I need some help on getting some perspective here and I feel like I'm the only one who sees any of this. Like, did I miss something? Anything? Because the more I look at this story, the more I see an entire alien race was turned into monsterous terrorists for really stupid reasons in an attempt to be fool the audience. I need to know, is this interpretation wrong? What do you think?

I'm Asking here because, well, none of you are going to vote me down or send me a million posts on social media to belittle and piss on me about this or that. Sure, I suspect a few people will still say I've overreacted, but at least here I'm able to get this all out in the open without feeling like its open season on me. I don't know, I just need to know if I'm wrong here, if I missed something, if there's an actual response to these concerns that actually answers them, because it's been bothering me for months now and no one seems to care about my issues with the event. They're just happy that Hulkling and Wiccan are finally married, as if that somehow overrides any other problematic elements in the text.

So, what are your thoughts? At this point, I just need at least a few people to actually engage me on this without outright dismissing it all. Like, I don't care if you don't agree. I just want to know what people think about this. Am I crazy for feeling like this event is saying something seriously wrong? Even if unintentionally?

[CharlesPhipps]

There's a lot of stupid Marvel plots sadly.

I remind you, the Colati once animated Swordsman's corpse so they could impregnate Mantis.

[Madner Kami]

Based on what you wrote, it could be read as a story about how you shouldn't blindly trust someone, "just" because they were a victim once. A story about how victims can become offenders.

[Rodan56]

Based on what you wrote, it could be read as a story about how you shouldn't blindly trust someone, "just" because they were a victim once. A story about how victims can become offenders.

That doesn't really answer the issue of switching the script so the oppressed minority is suddenly the bad guy and the people who committed an atrocity are the good guys. And honestly, in 2020, is the lesson of "Don't Trust Victims" really something we need? Especially when those victims are survivors of a genocide!

And before someone uses Magneto as an example, that's ONE person reacting to their trauma in a destructive manner. A manner that even turned him against fellow non-mutant Jews. This is like an entire Reservation of Indigenous people revealing they have a nuke and plan to blow up all the white folk. It's an entire RACE acting like this, not a single individual.

[Madner Kami]

That doesn't really answer the issue of switching the script so the oppressed minority is suddenly the bad guy and the people who committed an atrocity are the good guys. And honestly, in 2020, is the lesson of "Don't Trust Victims" really something we need? Especially when those victims are survivors of a genocide!

There's a distinct difference between "Don't rust victims." and "Don't trust victims blindly." and the later is definitly a lesson that still needs to be learned, even in %current year%. And what script-switch are you talking about?

And before someone uses Magneto as an example, that's ONE person reacting to their trauma in a destructive manner. A manner that even turned him against fellow non-mutant Jews. This is like an entire Reservation of Indigenous people revealing they have a nuke and plan to blow up all the white folk. It's an entire RACE acting like this, not a single individual.

Magneto doesn't identify as a jew, in general. He identifies as a mutant first and foremost. Besides that, who says that there are no Cotati-groups who're not involved in this plot? Also, didn't the Cotati possess the body of "Swordsman" in order to impregnate Mantis? I don't know the intricacies of that story, but there're certain dark undertones there... Just because they were victims, doesn't mean they can't be perpetrators. Don't make the mistake of pretending that victims have no agency at all.

[Rodan56]

Ok, you're making it sound like the Cotati killed the Swordsman, they didn't. They ressurected him. You're also implying that they raped Mantis or forced themselves on her, they did not. So none of that really implies anything dark or sinister about this species. And even so, that does not answer the problem about the messaging of this comic. Mainly that you have a story about a group of refugees, who have fled from the people who nearly wiped them from existence, decide to take revenge on innocent parties and the races who abused them are turned into heroes who's own actions are seemingly absolved of any wrong doing against their victims as a result of this story.

And this colony of the Cotati on the moon are the only remaining survivors of their species. This is the entire population of the Cotati. So no, there is no splinter group, this is the entire collective race of the Cotati.

As to "don't blindly trust victims" I'm sorry, that's still "Don't trust victims." That's still treating a marginalized voice, an oppressed group, with suspicion outright. That's what gave us the current situation at the Mexican-US Border, turning families and refugees into criminals. If anything, the Cotati's Garden feels more like a loose allegory for the percieved dangers of Sanctuary Cities. Tony Stark's reasoning for helping the Cotati in issue zero is framed as "protecting innocents from injustice" and is the source of his guilt because he was naive and stupid to dare think about protecting victims of a genocide.

Victims might have their own agency, yes. And again, you seem to be missing my point. I'm not saying the Cotati were in the right in this story. That's not my argument. My problem is that they were turned into villains for poor reasons and used to create an artificial conflict that sends a really regressive message concerning refugges, immigration and oppressed minorities/victims of war crimes. Again, you are missing my point. It's not about the Cotati being right or wrong, they are wrong. The problem is that they are arbitrary chosen to be villains and it sends a really bad message, one that is seriously harmful right now.

As for Magneto, I've used that response in support of my own argument before. That Magneto does not recognize himself as Jewish despite being a Holocaust Survivor. But again, that is largely beside the point. The Holocaust was not committed against mutants, it was not even exclusively committed against Jews. It informs Magneto's actions, but he's not fighting humanity in the name of revenge for the Jews who died. He's acting pre-emptively to prevent another holocaust against mutants. That's his justification. The Cotati strictly identify as themselves, as plants, who were nearly made extinct by the Kree and extrapolate that crime onto the rest of animal kind. They aren't the same as Magneto, that is my point.

You are reiterating my point essentially. Magneto is a good example of a victim becoming a villain, because it's not really the Holocaust or Nazis he's lashing out against. Nor are Nazis being brought in to stop him or being framed as heroes. Magneto's actions make a logical sense, since he saw the same hatred that caused the Holocaust directed at Mutants. The Cotati, in the meantime, have had their victimization turned into a ridiculously evil scheme of revenge that makes no sense. The rest of animal kind has been nothing but charitable to them. The Kree are the sole race responsible for the crimes against them, the Skrull at worst are an unwitting accomplice. But the Cotati decide all animal life must pay... because. Their motivation makes no sense, is sudden and badly implemented in the story and wider narrative. And, this is the kicker, this is what seperates it from Magneto, their oppressors/victimzers have returned to become framed as the heroes of the story, or at the very least they're presented as the lesser evil. And I'd argue not even that, because again, none of their crimes are brought up and are even hand waved away as the actions of individuals and not their society as a whole.

If the X-Men suddenly teamed up with the Nazis to stop Magneto... THAT would be a really terribly tone deaf story, wouldn't it? That's the problem here. That the Cotati's victimization is retroactively justified, their genocide is made acceptable because of the actions they undertake and their victimizers are absolved of any wrong doing because they are made to be in the right. THAT is the problem. That is why this is a really problematic story. It's like Custard coming back to life to save America from the revenge of Zombie Native Americans. It reads as all kinds of wrong!

[GreyICE]

I enjoyed this event, because Jonathan Hickman gave it all the respect it deserved - all the X-Men writers round robined the plot without reading each other's issues, and tried to outdo each other in how silly they made it. It started with the first writer deciding that the storyline was going to be Plants vs. Zombies (yes really) and ended with...



Oh, you meant moral messages, implications, and greater structure. Yeaaaahh, I thought we got this out of the way back in Civil War 1, this is how Marvel events work:

Step 1: Marvel editors hash out what will be the major consequences for every character, who will live, how the titles will change, etc.
Step 2: Marvel editors decide some sort of plausible villain that will make this all happen
Step 3: They hand it off to the writers with a start point, an end point, and "insert event here."
Step 4: Editorial determines the moral message of the story (independent of what the writers are doing) and the victors, so that the good guys win - no matter what the writers have the "good guys" doing.

Remember how in Civil War one side murdered heroes, had mind controlled supervillains, a prison in the negative zone, and was conscripting children, and the other side had firmly established a no-kill rule that extended to supervillains? And how this was supposed to be a moral dilemma where we weren't sure who was right or wrong and every reader was like "the people sticking people in secret prisons and putting chips in people's heads, that's the bad guy"? And editorial remained super confused?

So just do what I did and read the XMen version, you get to see Magneto drop progressively bigger satellites on someone's head.




I'm not arguing that you're wrong, by the way. Simply putting the "creative" process into perspective here. They need the Kree and Skrulls to be well-intentioned extremists, rather than a group of fascist imperialists who regularly engage in mass murder and are the "good guys" only when the threat is so bad that you need them on your side (Kree) or the bloodthirsty "might makes right" savages who respect personal power, dirty tricks, and killing the fuck out of everyone (Skrulls).

There's numerous disservices to everyone involved in making those fuckers the good guys in anything, of course. The Kree/Skrull war has been the poster child for evil vs. evil since they were introduced, with both of them being genocidal empires. Yes, one is Nazi Germany and the other one is probably closest to Genghis Khan's Mongol empire. So they had the cool idea to portray victims of their genocides to show the effect these people had, and later editorial hijacked them into the bad guys, and that's horrible. I'm definitely not downplaying it, it's just... I kind of expect this shit at this point.

The Kree and the Skrulls are going to be wangsty good guys now, because the movies want to use both of them. This is editorial mandate, enjoy the entire XMen writer's team taking the piss out of this nonsense.

[Rodan56]

I enjoyed this event, because Jonathan Hickman gave it all the respect it deserved - all the X-Men writers round robined the plot without reading each other's issues, and tried to outdo each other in how silly they made it.

You realize this is the X-Men Tie-In... not the actual event I'm talking about. It's probably expected Hickman would treat the story this way given how it essentially ruins a lot of stuff he established in his Avengers run, but that's not really my point. And I have my own problems with the current run on X-Men. One: That it is so friggin obvious something is seriously wrong with Xavier and the X-Men in general going along with this plan. Two: Krakoa is likely planning to eat them all. Three: The Fans are ignoring this and acting like this newfound cultish attitude among the Mutants is perfectly normal. Four: Gwenpool is living among them and no one in the damn X Office is bothering to even use her and it's a friggin waste of a character.

But I digress. While that certainly does feel like how editorial treats events, the fact the creatives barely do anything to smooth out the edges on these mandates more or less suggests to me that this is largely their plan. I'm not saying Editorial doesn't force things to happen, but Ewing and Slott aren't innocent here, they are the people running the event. They're in charge. They're the ones doing this stuff. They're not unwilling subordinates, this is their story.

And frankly, it is rather disturbing to watch the X-Men in this tie-in belittle the genocide of the Cotati as "Big Deal, who cares? We've been there, done that" which sounds extremely insensitive and completely out of character for them. Where's their empathy? Their sense of justice? They're just assholes now and... sorry, off topic.

My problem is the fans ignore these problematic elements, are completely okay with and even refuse to acknowledge it. And when that happens, Marvel doesn't see, they don't acknowledge a problem and it never gets fixed or looked at. It's just generally accepted that what the story says is correct, there is no problematic subject matter and that nothing racist or harmful was suggested. They just take it at face value or outright ignore it because of fanservice, in this case they got a wedding at the end between two gay superheroes so who cares if a whole race of plant people have just been enslaved after being turned into "Actually always evil."

I think the problem is no one has actually confronted Marvel on this, no one has actually tried to bring this up and no one seems to want to talk about it. And I just find that disturbing. This story reads like an anti-Sanctuary City Propaganda piece and everyone is just talking about how Teddy and Wiccan are married now, as if that's somehow ok despite a whole race of aliens being turned into irredemable monsters and enslaved by assholes who are now being treated as honorable heroic figures of a just war.

And whenever I brought this up, people acted like I was the asshole for trying to talk about it. Like I was reading too much into it. You're the first person out of anyone to even entertain the idea that I'm right to be angry here. And I just don't understand why? Why am I the only person who seems to care that Marvel just turned the victims of a genocide into horrible zombie creating monsterous savages that needed to be brought to heel?

I feel like it's because no one gives a shit about the Cotati, so Marvel is getting away with a harmful problematic as fuck message and everyone is ignoring it for very stupid reasons. And I have to wonder if I am wrong at this point, if I'm the only one who really sees it. But I can't ignore what I see either.

The fact is, regardless of the reasoning behind it or the method to the maddness, my problems remain. The story feels hugely problematic to me and I don't understand why no one else sees these dots unless I'm just crazy. Am i making a leap here? Am I wrong to think this poorly about the story? Because I really don't think I am, but everyone else is telling me no.

I think that's my ultimate problem, that everyone thinks I'm crazy to see things this way and tell me outright to go screw myself over it. Honestly, this is the first time anyone has even bothered or tried to discuss this seriously with me at length.

Do you at least see where I'm coming from? Making the victims of a genocide into monstrous villains and their victimizers the heroes is a bit tone deaf? I'm not asking if you agree, I'm saying can you at least see how the dots connect, that this isn't just me making this stuff up and pulling it out of my ass? That's all I need to know, that this analysis isn't completely off base. That it holds some measure of weight and bares an element of discussion.

That's all I'm really asking in the end here.

[GreyICE]

I think the problem is no one has actually confronted Marvel on this, no one has actually tried to bring this up and no one seems to want to talk about it. And I just find that disturbing. This story reads like an anti-Sanctuary City Propaganda piece and everyone is just talking about how Teddy and Wiccan are married now, as if that's somehow ok despite a whole race of aliens being turned into irredemable monsters and enslaved by assholes who are now being treated as honorable heroic figures of a just war...

Do you at least see where I'm coming from? Making the victims of a genocide into monstrous villains and their victimizers the heroes is a bit tone deaf? I'm not asking if you agree, I'm saying can you at least see how the dots connect, that this isn't just me making this stuff up and pulling it out of my ass? That's all I need to know, that this analysis isn't completely off base. That it holds some measure of weight and bares an element of discussion.

Getting angry at you is definitely silly, because it's fair criticism, and sounds pretty accurate. The Cotati are definitely coded as native/mystic/shaman sorts, and making them the bad guys, and the good guys a fascist empire and a conquering, genocidal horde is all sorts of wrong. It's like some sort of historical fiction where the USSR and Nazi Germany stop warring and team up to fight the secret Jewish empire - both horribly offensive, and a "wait, THOSE are the good guys" moment.

You're not the only one who sees it, and you're not making a huge leap. I'm sad to say this happens way too often with DC/Marvel. It's a combination of "the status quo is god", the revolving heel/face door for various factions, their weird way of hitting reset buttons, and the fact that the editorial team is basically the cast from the comedy skit "the whitest guys you know." One of the reasons I'm generally so myopic about what I read in these lines is it's about the only way I can enjoy them. Otherwise I'd have to be completely done with Marvel and DC - and for too many artists and writers I respect and admire, they're one of the few ways to pay the bills.

Minority representation in comics is usually a fucking cringefest. So yeah, I really doubt you're wrong about this one. Editorial is stupid, mean, and perfectly happy to play the xenophobic "other means different, different means bad" card when they need to pull out a reset button.

We're seeing house cleaning from Disney to reset everything, and we're seeing strong signs of sanitizing (even the X-books show signs of editorial meddling to minimize LGBT representation, AGAIN) which probably means around the next movie phase they'll have the comics roughly in line with the movie universe. Then they'll hit the shiny red reset button on the X-events, and comics and movies will be much closer aligned like Disney wants.

And what gets killed every time is any representation of other cultures and minorities, because that's the hardest stuff for them to consistently write, the newest stuff, and therefore the easiest targets for the great reset.

Am I myopically reading the X-lines and Immortal Hulk and ignoring literally everything else? Yes, yes I am. It does give me a limited perspective, which is honestly about how I like it - but I won't pretend it's not limited.

[Rodan56]

Getting angry at you is definitely silly, because it's fair criticism, and sounds pretty accurate. The Cotati are definitely coded as native/mystic/shaman sorts, and making them the bad guys, and the good guys a fascist empire and a conquering, genocidal horde is all sorts of wrong. It's like some sort of historical fiction where the USSR and Nazi Germany stop warring and team up to fight the secret Jewish empire - both horribly offensive, and a "wait, THOSE are the good guys" moment.

You're not the only one who sees it, and you're not making a huge leap. I'm sad to say this happens way too often with DC/Marvel. It's a combination of "the status quo is god", the revolving heel/face door for various factions, their weird way of hitting reset buttons, and the fact that the editorial team is basically the cast from the comedy skit "the whitest guys you know." One of the reasons I'm generally so myopic about what I read in these lines is it's about the only way I can enjoy them. Otherwise I'd have to be completely done with Marvel and DC - and for too many artists and writers I respect and admire, they're one of the few ways to pay the bills.

Well... then at least I'm not the only person who sees the problem. I'm glad that this isn't completely unnoticed.

I still wish there was a way to explain this to fans and make them see the problems somehow. I haven't been able to engage with anyone on this subject without them acting like I'm overreacting.