Mutant issue....

Sorry to be blunt but In other words, there has not been one in the 22 issues that I can remember. We have issues that has covered the other origins, but mutants have been under represented as of late if at all. We have had both magic and science covered in Dark Astoria, Ritki War Zones( loved that issue 10 by the way. And no the Lost are not mutants, they are mutates), Menders, and everyone else under the sun including natural(Kheldians) but not mutants. Are mutants again a hot button topic(X-Men) that should be shied away from? Are they just fillers or sidekicks to the other origins? Or is there really no story that can be told without it turning into an X-book?

Everyone in Praetoria is a mutant if you ask me.

And the Rogue Isles too.

Stinking mutants.

I think part of the problem might be that Marvel's so thoroughly dominated the mutant concept for so long that it's hard to come up with mutant-themed story ideas that they haven't already explored. And if CoH even accidentally writes a major storyline that happens to resemble a plotline Marvel used at some point over the decades, it'll just whip Marvel's lawyers into a whole new frenzy.

The way the X-books addresses mutants as a persecuted class, in my opinion, doesn't work very well in a setting filled with other super powered beings. A man born with spider-like powers is a freak, but a person granted spider-like powers by an experiment gone wrong is A-OK. I've long supported the notion that the X-books should be separated from the rest of the Marvel universe so that the premise didn't seem so nonsensical.

Putting that aside, I think there is room for more mutant stories in CoH. Mutations could be seen as randomly putting power in individuals hands (more so than the science, tech, and magic that freely float around the city) without precautions to what kind of person acquires those powers. I could easily see Malta trying to stop a boom in the population of super-powered individuals.

With Malta you run into the whole Sentinels or any other anti mutants group I am sure Marvel has covered alot.

I think mutants as an 'issue' isn't really an... issue? There are so many Metahumans that nobody seems to bat an eye as to why and there's no prejudice against mutants in this society, it seems, that would make them want to rally and make an 'issue' of it. (Sorry about the wordplay there )

LegionAlpha mentions Malta as being the closest thing to the Sentiels, but they're against all Meta's running free. I could see a story arc around a powerful mutant, or group of, like Frostfire and his Outcasts maybe.

I dunno, maybe through Portal Corp. there could be a world ruled by mutants, and wish to subjugate everyone? Even that sounds kinda "MARVEL-y" though, which as a few others have stated, is probably part of the problem.

With the way the CoHverse is set up, I think the most likely chance of getting a mutant focused Issue is if some new type of mutation starts turning people into monsters, or making them dangerous in some other way.

Mutants are really vague anyway. My Blaster is a mutant because he got transformed by an alien species that messed with his DNA...I'm sure that's not an uncommon occurence but probably not going to get sued anytime soon.

Natural and Mutant are probably the biggest catchalls in the game...

Thing is Neuronia, they can do a natural centric story or issue for them is no problem. Revenge stories, and any story of golden age hero stories who used either a gun or their brains can be told with no problems. Hell, we have Council and Nazis for that. Mutants as GG said is a bit harder(not in so many words), but I still do feel mutants do need something to represent them without crossing into M.U. territory. We have mutants already(such as they are), but are under used and useless if not a joke. Elemental mutants? Who deal in magic items and fight drug induced hyped up wannabe trolls? Come on. The Tsoo, a street ninja gang who were a joke for a while there but were upgraded to Incarnate threat level because of DA. Why can't Frosty get his Incarnate power and put an new expanded mutant group on the map?

I could've sworn I made a lengthy post about this in the past... I'll have to dig it up. BRB.


EDIT: Found it!


"Something that I always found fundamentally different between mutants and the other power types is that mutants are your kids, your friends, and your family. The other origins are seen as tools, as knowledge, as something extra that is added to the ordinary man. Tony Stark is a man who has a super suit, Green Lanterns are regular men who are given power rings, the fantastic four were regular people who got zapped into having powers, ect. In all of these cases, the superhero is a regular person who gets something added on to them. Another minor aspect is that these usually involve adults who have branched off from the next and are expected to be all mature and stuff. Superpowers here are more or less considered exotic weaponry.

But not mutants... no, those are the people who are born with their powers, and this is a bit of another primal fear that humanity has: something being seriously wrong with their child. By the mere context of expecting a human and not getting one, it makes mutants despised abnormality. The roles of the family fall apart, the social norms of adolescence are cast aside due to a horrendous power displacement, this is what makes people truly afraid. Now, you can make a case that this segregation can happen with all forms of powers, but you have to wonder exactly how often it is that little Billy is going to ingest a top-secret superserum and become Big Billy Boy Wonder before he gets out of middle school. When contrasted to how often it is that some child has a gene that, through the limitlessly intricate and not fully understood complexities of biology, has given him heat vision, it becomes a mutant issue instead of an all origin issue. No parent would want to send their kid to school with Johnny Storm.

Then there is the hunted issue. While the arcane need some kind of ritual/artifact/umpteen strange things, science needs rigorous and possibly dangerous research, technology needs assembly along with trial and error, and natural is just as its name implies, the mutant is a source of power that just happens. The genome has produced an aspect of power essentially for free with no strings attached. This isn't just "unfair" to the other origins. This is a shortcut to any opportunist who has the will to attempt it. The arcane and the natural want to use the mutant as a tool for their own gains. The science and the technology want to dissect the mutant to learn what makes them tick. The mutant is left segregated because they violate the established social contracts of power allocation, and likewise hunted because that very same power makes them valuable to whatever goal that anyone can have."


And another:


"Outside of segregation, I really have come up with three ideas that could easily be a mutant based story. The one that I called dibs is when an individual amasses a mutant army in an attempt to be the progenitor of neo-mankind. I actually came up with a story like this that I have as a reoccurring theme for all of my mutants. I call it the Bartholomew Legacy, and the story goes that Dr. Adrian Bartholomew some 20-25 years ago discovered he had genetic hotspot that would cause super powers in his children. Long story short he has a big ego, declared himself "the future", then used his employment at fertility clinics and sperm banks to "sow his seed" through the population of California. Next thing we know a bunch of red-haired mixed-race babies with frighteningly strong superpowers are born en mass. Fragmented, segregated, scared, and distrusting of society many of Bartholomew's half-children who didn't turn to heroism began to eagerly await Bartholomew's return from prison. My "dibs" would be if they did this story, the main villain behind it would be Dre. Adrian Bartholomew.

The second idea is quite simple, and it plays off of a biological fear that we have: the swarm. If you see one mouse, it may scare you. If you see 10 mice, it most likely will scare you. If you see 1000 mice, there is no doubt that it will scare you. The idea is basically an individual develops the capacity to manufacture an army out of whatever biological process they have. Maybe they bud out plant life, or maybe they go through mitosis and make multiple copies that way, or maybe they have a messed up reproduction cycle that lays 1000 small eggs that develop freakishly quick once hatched. It could be cool if you make the mission right, and just pack together the spawns and then inflate their sizes but only make them minions. Definition of Zerg rush right there. However... this story is quite similar to Hamidon.

The last idea is yet another biological fear: the plague. Distinct from the swarm in the sense that they are microscopic, the plague is the boogeyman of the modern day. An arc that I had toying around with in my head (I do that a lot, since fully making an AE arc to my perferred specs can take several weeks) is one where a plague has symptoms so severe that it is fully incapacitating the entire population... except for mutants whom are immune (along with other other things such as robots and aliens). The world starts to go gang-land-with-super-powers; organizations like the vanguard and the midnighters quickly find themselves fleeting and paralyzed by an enemy that they can't fight. While organizations fall left and right, the missions in the game would have the actual mission population (NPCs, enemies, all) dwindling really quickly, with most of the streets empty with the odd individual passed out in the streets. The only enemies you find would be that odd boss-level enemy who is a mutant loitering around. It can't be done in AE, but the fun part would be having your character afflicted by the plague, with their stats decreased while inside each of the missions. Enemies would be scaled accordingly. Of course, the source of the plague would be a mutant who produces it (and thus himself is immune to it), and the fight would be heavily based in toxic damage."

So..You like the idea of an all mutant issue? Or atleast a part of an issue?

I'm not sure we need an "all-mutant issue", but some stories about mutants might be cool. I liked Blood Red Arachnid's ideas when he posted them before, and I still like them now.

In the Origin of Power arcs, both sides, you're told that the first mutants appeared after 1938, after humans split the first atom. Sister Psyche says that some people think this is because everything is connected, down to the atom, and that Positron further suspects that all origins of power share some deeper source.

And that was way before the Well woke up.

Out of all the origins you "learn" about on that arc, mutants are the only ones that are actually about the origin of the origin. A new set of arcs to finally figure out what sparked the creation (or increased the occurrence of) mutants, and what that means in the scheme of things (a leak in the Well?) could be interesting.

First of all, it seems like being a mutant isn't as big of a deal in the City universe as it is in, say, the Marvel universe, so it's possible that the Devs just don't see as much story potential in it. However, we do have some fairly important mutants running around: Faultline and Fusionette. The fact that both the current Faultline and his father are mutants is a crucial plot point in the Faultline story arcs, in fact. As for Fusionette, she is one of the Nuclear 90, a group of 90 mutants born in a single year that have natural magnetic fusion reactors for hearts, which they can channel energy from to manifest a variety of super powers. Faultline may be one of the Nuclear 90 too, but I can't find any information to support that.

It might be interesting to see something done with the Nuclear 90. There's a lot of unanswered questions about them. Who are the rest of the Nuclear 90? What phenomenon caused 90 children to be born with such a beneficial mutation? Were they connected or was it coincidental? It's also noted that many in the Nuclear 90 work for the betterment of society, but what about the rest? How many are villains and how many chose to just live normal lives? In the latter case, could they really sit on the sidelines forever with that kind of power?

I think the Nuclear 90 have a lot of story potential, especially in how they came to be. I would imagine that if they wanted to create a mutant-centric storyline at some point, it would be about them.

The problem is people instantly assume 'Mutant = X-men world fear'

This is Paragon City, and the CoHverse. I simply cannot see that being true, not with the long line Super Hero (and admittedly Villain) presence throughout their history. Waking up one day with super powers in Paragon would be tantamount, to my mind, to winning some kind of lottery.

"Oh, wow, mum, I can fly! And I tripped down the stairs and it didn't hurt at all!"
"Honey, come quick, Jimmy's gone super!"
"Ha, that's my boy! Guess you're gonna start living that dream, kiddo!"

Etc, etc, less cheese and more normalism. And, yes, as someone already pointed out the whole X-men premise gets a bit weird when it's only the X-men who are *somehow* the ones to watch with suspicion. Despite, y'know, all that tech, science and magic running around, not to mention natural types.

Any Mutant story stuff should be done as would be fitting of the CoH-verse. I.e. where Mutants are common and accepted (unless, obviously, they go Villain) and anyone specifically against them (i.e. Malta) is the odd-one out, not the other way around. Savvy?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Faultline and Fusionette are Mutants and take a heavy part of the Faultline and Vanguard storylines. Frostfire's also a Mutant, leader of the Mutant villain group Outcasts even, and he's been turning up all over in tips and some of the newer arcs, plus let's not forget Penelope Yin. I think the closest we've had to a mutant-themed zone would be the Faultline remake but that was back in Issue 8 (Holy carp it was that long ago!?), I think it would be fair to say some more Mutant love'd be welcome.

Perhaps a new leader for the Outcasts showing Heroes the true meaning of pain while making a power play in the Isles against Arachnos ("You got an army of soldiers? I got an army of metas!").