At least part of this strip is from me playing
Contest of Champions for years: the characters are classed out, and each class has an advantage over another. Mystic over Cosmic, Science over Mystic, Skill over Science, Mutant over Skill, and Tech over Mutant. A side effect of this is that a lot of characters you wouldn't think of as having a problem with mutants, have the advantage fighting them, like Iron Man or War Machine. I currently use Punisher 2099 a lot, for fighting mutants. Makes me feel like the Mutant/Tech conflict is almost engrained.
While the real answer is, "as many as the plot needs," I wonder how many Sentinels could reasonably be produced, and how quickly; versus how quickly mutants can resurrect their numbers up. Both sides could be doing more, honestly; but Marvel still hedges a bit that the world wouldn't get real fascist against mutants real quick.
Kurt isn't as mad at Bastion as you might expect, because he doesn't consider Bastion to be anything more than a murdery chatbot, not capable of actual feelings or even thoughts.
Not a lot of jokes in this one, but plenty of solid points made.
ReplyDeleteTo use a bit of Stark Trek lore I know you love, this would be like Kurt's version of the Kobayashi Maru right? A true no-win situation for Kurt, except there's no reprogramming this particular test. You could conceivably reprogram the sentinels, but then they'd just be re-reprogramed again.
I'm curious too if a scorched Earth Sentinel policy would ever be enacted. Before it probably would've been due to evil legislation being passed that had gotten out of hand a la the DOFP storyline, but nowadays, it'd be a perceived invasion from both Karakoa & the recently-terraformed planet Mars, especially if somehow all the other superheroes were incapacitated.
Speaking of, The Days of Future Path is pretty much as close to the endgame as possible, as we've been led to believe, even though it's a possible future & not a sure thing. But who knows. Marvel's certainly not afraid to keep going back to that worn out well time & time again, so who knows.
Ok, attempting to blow up the sun certainly is a TRUE comic book-y thing to do. How exactly did they expect to do this? They'd melt if trying to do it physically, and wouldn't most nukes blow up before hitting the sun if they went that route? Maybe a shit ton of nukes would overload the sun? I'd imagine more likely it'd heat up the sun so much, that Earth would burn instead. Maybe capture beings who could survive being in the heart of the sun like the Sentry? Somehow they capture him & shoot him bullet from a large gun-style into the Sun? I'm just spitballing here.
Is Cosmic over Tech? Because otherwise, that game's a bit unbalanced.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Jen on this one- there's a possibility of something (nice Andy the Awesome Android ref, by the way) happening with AI of that level. Machine Man at the very least counts. I still don't trust Bastion but it's a bit ... flesh-ist, I guess (don't know what the term for discriminating against non-carbon-based life forms is) of Kurt.
I've seen references to the Sentinels planning to blow up the Sun. I think it was plot from when Roy Thomas was writing the X-Men, so pre-Claremont days. Yeah, I have no clue how they were gonna pull it off. I assume try to destabilize the balance in the core, the expansion from the fusion of hydrogen that's matched by the inward pull of the star's gravity, but again, how the hell were Sentinels gonna pull that off?
ReplyDeleteI was thinking along similar lines as H about AIs showing sentience, although I thought of Vision/Jocasta and the like. I guess they're different since they were based on an organic being's memory engrams, but it does seem narrow of Kurt, given the stuff he's seen. For that matter, what about Warlock? Aren't the Technarchy AIs of sorts?
On the other hand, "AIs don't count as living beings" is consistent with Krakoa's policies. They have that "kill no human" thing, but there was a story in Hellions where they erased a bunch of AIs programmed to hate mutants, but were at that moment altering their programming after a conversation with Havok to maybe not hate mutants. The AIs didn't count as "alive", so it was fine to off them. Not sure I love the X-Books having the ostensible heroes using the same logic people like Gyrich and Trask used for creating Sentinels ("they're a threat to us, and they don't count as human anyway, so kill 'em").