Generation Hope #16

All I can say is – it’s about damn time! For months now, Hope Summers has been walking around like she’s god’s gift to the mutant race and like she can do whatever she wants since no one can stop her. And she really crossed the line when she took physical control of Kenji to defend herself from Laurie that was the last straw completely. Being Cable’s daughter, and therefore Cyclops’ granddaughter, doesn’t really carry much weight when you treat your grandfather like garbage and challenge his authority at every turn. It’s really no wonder that things came to a head the way they did in this issue.

It’s been no secret that Laurie hasn’t had fuzzy feeling for Hope for quite some time now so it made perfect sense for Kenji to go to her first. I was even excited to see the return of some familiar faces from the X-men foes gallery, in the form of Dragoness, Random, Litterbug, Erg and Bliss, to torment and question her high and superior attitude, but I never expected to see such a full scale mutiny against Hope, especially not by half of her own team. What did she really expect though? She holds Laurie against her will, makes Gabriel use his life threatening powers at her whim, forcibly control Kenji’s very body, and even lies to the one person who still trusts her, Sebastian Shaw, when he asks if she knows about his past. Something I am sure Cable tried to teach her, in their travels through time, was the importance of earning and keeping trust. So why does she feel she is above such pleasantries? Why does she feel like everyone, even the people who aren’t directly under her control, need to simply accept her doing whatever she wants at any given time? And unless she changes her attitude, and quickly, I could easily see a future like the one Kenji envisioned where all new mutants are enslaved to her will. Seems like a major disaster waiting to happen.

The big shock for me was Emma Frost in this issue. I knew she wasn’t Hope’s biggest fan, but I never expected her to go that far to bring her down. I’m glad that someone was finally willing to say what we’ve all been thinking since Hope appeared “the Phoenix could be lurking inside this wretched girl waiting to kill us all”. OBVIOUSLY! I wouldn’t be surprised if we found out that Hope was somehow (possibly even unconsciously) preventing Scott from seeing the danger surrounding her. I suspect that Scott will be furious when he wakes up from his enforced siesta, but he will eventually see that whatever happens next is for the best and no one’s fault but Hope’s. I can only imagine what she said to Magneto to get him to join in this rebellion, but he is the only other senior team member present during the last page’s debacle.

I think that Hope had this coming and deserve whatever she gets at this point. She just swooped in after Cable died and expected everyone to bow to her every whim and that was before she really understood her powers and mutant messiah rap. She expected everyone to adapt to her methods, which were earned in one war torn future after another, rather than try to acclimate herself to her new environment and fit in with this timeline’s inhabitants. If Cable were still around he would tell her to stop being such a brat and grow up already, but unfortunately he isn’t around right now…or is he? Only the final issue of X-Sanction will be able to tell us. Until then I can’t wait to see how this mutiny turns out next issue.