His sister has fallen into this same cycle: a writer takes them too far, then the next writer has to walk whatever horribleness they committed back, or at least try for some forgiveness. Pietro probably should have more one-shots under his belt, then. From 2008,
X-Factor: the Quick and the Dead #1, "The Quick and the Dead" Written by Peter David, art by Pablo Raimondi.
It's rock-bottom time for Pietro, as he's lost his mutant powers as well as his Terrigen crystal-derived ones--is that a bit of a retcon, because wasn't Terrigen bad for mutants later? The recap page also seems to put
House of M on him, which I had forgotten; but after that,
Son of M, and
Silent War he had burned a lot of bridges. The final straw was catching a beating from X-Factor's Layla Miller, leaving him in jail and twitching through what might be Terrigen withdrawal. (I haven't seen how he used the crystal, but from here I could make a guess...)
Two small-time criminals watch as Pietro hallucinates a little redemption trip, with visits from the Scarlet Witch, Magneto, Crystal, and Luna--all of whom seem to forgive him and want the best for him. They also appear slightly out-of-date, which seems to me how Pietro remembers them. I'm not 100% sure anyone has actually forgiven him anything, either. His final ghost visit is Layla Miller, who is unbothered about his attempt on her life: his heart wasn't really in it, and now that he's hit bottom, he can start coming back up. She advises him to "follow the
butterfly" and he does, seeing a domestic violence incident on a nearby rooftop, with a man about to throw a woman over the side. Since no one there is about to listen to him, it's up to Pietro, and his powers return, first using super-speed to shake the wall down, then racing over to save the falling woman.
His speed seemingly greater than ever, Pietro is moving so fast it's crushing the woman, so he drops her off: in Montauk Point, a couple hours away from Manhattan. Tear-assing around the world, running across water, Quicksilver contemplates his folly, thinking he knew God's will, but in his high spirits accidentally overshoots off a mountaintop! Glancing off a passing plane, he takes a pretty big fall, skipping across the water this time, then sinking. While now at peace, knowing he was loved, Pietro isn't done just yet, as he's fished out by a passing cruise ship. A sailor promises "clear sailing from here on in" and Pietro can only hope so.
I thought this was maybe to bring Pietro closer to his MCU incarnation, since the last page seems to resemble
Aaron Taylor-Johnson, but this issue predated either of his movie versions. (Duhr, there's an ad for the first
Iron Man on the back!) Has Quicksilver since crapped all over this redemption? Sadly, that would be in-character as hell...
4 comments:
Good point, we never really did see how Pietro used those crystals to get his powers back. I mean he did probably inhale the steam, so yeah, really doesn't leave much to the imagination does it?
For some reason, I feel like he incorporated the crystals into his body. I know that up to this point in X-Factor, he didn't have super-speed, he had the ability to give mutants their powers back, via the terrigen stuff. Sometimes the mutants had a bad reaction, but Pietro brushed it off as being like God's will. They were either worthy of this gift, or not.
I think Pietro sort of recruited Rictor (between this, Cable in X-Force, and Apocalypse in the current Krakoa era, Rictor really falls for violent messianic figures), and when Rictor turned against him, Ric's powers came back and he maybe vibrated the crystals out of Pietro's body? I don't think I have those issues of X-Factor any longer, so I can't be sure.
And I have no idea if Pietro ever reconciled with Luna, who knows Pietro lied about stealing the Terrigen crystals (in a Realm of Kings tie-in of all things) and says she's lost all respect for him. But that was like, 2009, so who knows? Didn't they reveal he and Wanda weren't mutants, but something created by the High Evolutionary 6-7 years ago?
Mmm, I did see something later where Pietro had them embedded in his chest, like someone loaded them into a shotgun and "peppered him up nicely."
Like a lot of mutants, I think Pietro would take the dramatic reveal/retcon like water off a duck's back. You could show him the receipts that he and Wanda were really the children of Dutch windmill farmers, and he'd just sigh and accept it.
Personally I think he would actually prefer that they really WERE the children of Dutch windmill farmers compared to the various retcons over the years.
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