What's the deal with Madelyne Pryor?

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What's the deal with Madelyne Pryor?

Post by JephYork »

What's the official word on Madelyne Pryor's appearances in "X-Man"?

The way I read that series, Nate brought her back to life -- but then Warren Ellis came along and "revealed" that she was an alternate Jean Grey. I had always thought that the alternate-Jean came along and killed/replaced the resurrected-Maddie at some point -- like after X-Man #52, when Maddie is severely weakened and teleports away and isn't seen for several issues.

But I've also read that alternate-Jean was "resurrected-Madelyne" all along.

Which is true?

More to the point, I'm trying to pinpoint Madelyne Pryor's last appearance prior to UXM #499, for the Index. Does anyone know what it is?

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Re: What's the deal with Madelyne Pryor?

Post by Somebody »

The story was inconsistent on the matter - in #67, she says that "I replaced your Maddie several months ago". In #68, she claims credit for the "whim" that caused him to make Maddie, and appears to say that it was actually her all along, initially as a sleeper ("From the beginning I was there, sowing the idea of me in your head. You made a dream and I stepped in to flesh it out. For a time I was only what you dreamed I should be. A necessary risk, to snare you. I have been many Maddie Pryors, on many Earths, all with a singular goal. To snare you.")

Frankly, I'm more inclined to go with what she said in #67, since she was trying to break him in #68
- circumstances under which villains have been known to lie, since two panels beforehand Nate was telling her she wasn't his Maddie - and the idea that everything the "fake" Maddie was came from Nate's head, imposed onto Queen Jean's "flesh", doesn't match her appearances in the Cable issues of the period. Which Steven Grant (the actual writer, Ellis had stepped down to a "based on a story by" by that point) admitted he had had no idea about, nor the evidence that she was a psychic construct when she was weakened.

I would be strongly, strongly inclined to say "Queen Jean replaced Madelyne Pryor" at some point, and you seem to have identified a good spot. Especially since, in C2 76 - Madelyne's next appearance after XMAN 52, where she's trying to convince Cable to stay with her rather than "die" with The Twelve - she ultimately says "all I am... is a ghost on the astral plane".

And didn't Fraction say something stupid like "It's the Goblin Queen. Madelyne was consumed by her power and is still dead" in an interview re: Red Queen? EDIT: Found the quote:
Matt Fraction@CBR wrote:In the end, what exactly was the Red Queen? A psychic ghost or what? It didn’t feel entirely clear to me.

MF: Yeah, she was just exactly what Cyclops said. The Red Queen was a psychic ghost – the "Goblin Queen" energy without a physical home. Not Maddie – she's dead – but a devil's echo of what Maddie used to be.
With that I would wonder if Madelyne's soul was split in X-Man #5 - the Goblin Queen part hived off from what Nate homed in on - to explain what Fraction said.
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Re: What's the deal with Madelyne Pryor?

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Somebody wrote:The story was inconsistent on the matter - in #67, she says that "I replaced your Maddie several months ago". In #68, she claims credit for the "whim" that caused him to make Maddie, and appears to say that it was actually her all along, initially as a sleeper ("From the beginning I was there, sowing the idea of me in your head. You made a dream and I stepped in to flesh it out. For a time I was only what you dreamed I should be. A necessary risk, to snare you. I have been many Maddie Pryors, on many Earths, all with a singular goal. To snare you.")

Frankly, I'm more inclined to go with what she said in #67, since she was trying to break him in #68
- circumstances under which villains have been known to lie, since two panels beforehand Nate was telling her she wasn't his Maddie - and the idea that everything the "fake" Maddie was came from Nate's head, imposed onto Queen Jean's "flesh", doesn't match her appearances in the Cable issues of the period. Which Steven Grant (the actual writer, Ellis had stepped down to a "based on a story by" by that point) admitted he had had no idea about, nor the evidence that she was a psychic construct when she was weakened.
Yeah but in issue 67, she adds "You created a phantom, a door for me to walk through. When you made your Maddie, it was because you were waiting for me." I don't see the explanations in issues 67 and 68 as being contradictory. And yes, there was evidence that she was a psychic construct, but nowhere does Queen Jean claim that her "body" wasn't a psychic construct. The Marvel Appendix has a summary of the arguments here:
http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix3/redqueenearth998.htm
Just to complicate matters further, Cable suggests that Nate's Maddie might not be the real Maddie in Cable 44 . IIRC, several readers agreed with Cable. Did Nate really bring her back to life or did he create a duplicate?
Somebody wrote:With that I would wonder if Madelyne's soul was split in X-Man #5 - the Goblin Queen part hived off from what Nate homed in on - to explain what Fraction said.
Except that it was a plot point in X-Man that Nate's Maddie was a lot nastier than pre-Goblin Queen Maddie. And dressed more like the Goblin Queen than pre-Goblin Queen Maddie. Come to think of it, how do we know that the Goblin Queen part wasn't what appeared in both X-Man and Fraction's run?
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Re: What's the deal with Madelyne Pryor?

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Okay, after spending a good part of a couple of days reading a lot of not-very-good comics, the Appendix profile linked and the long discussion on this in Archive 35...
Michael wrote:Yeah but in issue 67, she adds "You created a phantom, a door for me to walk through. When you made your Maddie, it was because you were waiting for me." I don't see the explanations in issues 67 and 68 as being contradictory.
Maddie was a "phantom" from the moment she appeared in X-Man though - her body was destroyed in Inferno, her soul absorbed by Jean Gray until she proceeded to spit it out at a Celestial in X-Factor #50.

The quote goes, in order:
"You created your Maddie, yes. I'm not your Maddie. You created a phantom, a door for me to walk through. When you made your Maddie, it was because you were waiting for me."

She then says on the next page that "I replaced your Maddie several months ago. I've been worming into your head ever since."

Repeat, "I'm not your Maddie." and "I replaced your Maddie several months ago." "Replaced" says Evil Queen Jean needed "Maddie" there to get a way in - and I'll even buy that there may have been some initial push from her to gather Maddie's dispersed essence together - but that dialogue doesn't read in the slightest like EQJ was "always" Maddie to me, it reads like the one was shoved out by the other, who used her "phantom" form as a "door to walk through" into the MU. And MP being weakened (visibly aged) in XMAN 52 could well have been what led to that.

And, ultimately, the later dialogue in XMAN 68 should be read in the context of Queen Jean's line in the opening to the conversation "A Nate Grey does not create, a Nate Grey destroys". She claims there's no way he could, himself, have created someone out of thin air, he merely empowered her to step into his world. It's a way of belittling him, of reducing him to her "perfect weapon".

Thing is though, XMAN 5 wasn't the only time he pulled the resurrection stunt, even if it was the most permanent one - in XMAN 37, he somehow recreates AoA Gwen Stacy - someone he'd never encountered (and nor had the MU Peter Parker, of course - if he was simply drawing on memories when doing that, he should have made an MU-Gwen, not AoA-Gwen). And even if it's true to say "resurrection by gathering the psychic remnants of someone who died is not common practice" elswhere, as Don Campbell said here and is quoted as saying in that Appendix link - which seems to be the crux of both his and the profile writer's like for the retcon - there's at least one recent and unconnected example of exactly that happening in Beta Ray Bill: Godhunter #3, where Galactus recreated one of the Korbinites:
Galactus, BRB:GH 3 wrote:"The people of Korbin have not left this plane. Some spirits are still in this mortal world--trapped... distant... But they resonate faintly. I can see a cosmic thread, and from this Galactus can weave..."

[He resurrects a single Korbinite female]

"Your people are gone no longer. Your destiny is your own once more. Consider yourself lucky. For all my power, Galan of Taa will never be able to say the same. Heralds, Galactus Hungers."
Still not a common event, but there's your second example. The Appendix writer seems far, FAR too hasty in dismissing it, and trying to explain away all the memories that we're clearly shown she had after Tessa (Sage), completely unknowing of her history, went into her mind in X-Man '96/2.

Allowing that it's been proven as a possibility, then, further consider what happened in X-Man #37. Nate temporarily reconstructs Gwen Stacy in such a fashion - but not the MU Gwen, the AoA Gwen Stacy seen in X-Universe #1-2, who neither Nate nor Spider-Man (who was there) had ever had any contact with (and nor, even, did Sugar Man, Holocaust or Dark Beast), and of which there was no record of in the MU. He had to get that from SOMEWHERE, and pulling from an alternate dimension would seem to be no more concievable than pulling from a different planet (cf Jean's purging of Madelyne's personality in X-Factor #50), if that's even a problem.

And, as I said, the whole "new Maddie couldn't have been resurrected Maddie" seems to balance on resurrection by that method being impossible - the Appendix writer seems to use "not common practice" as a synonym for "couldn't happen", and in the Don Campbell quote (taken from a lengthy discussion in Archive 35), he freely admits he doesn't accept the idea to begin with (while getting the writer who introduced it wrong - it was Jeph "Teh Lobe" Lobe, not Kavanagh), although he takes a compromise position that the Index writer (despite claiming to agree with him), implicitly rejects elsewhere in the profile.

And, ultimately, if the real MP was never resurrected, what was that in Cable #76 referencing her earlier C2 appearances? EQJ was certainly more than a "ghost on the psychic plane", and the Appendix doesn't even seriously try to explain how that state of affairs could exist in such a circumstance.
Michael wrote:[Just to complicate matters further, Cable suggests that Nate's Maddie might not be the real Maddie in Cable 44. IIRC, several readers agreed with Cable. Did Nate really bring her back to life or did he create a duplicate?]
Actually, what Cable suggests in C2 44 is remarkably similar to what Fraction said in that interview:
Cable, C2 44 wrote:You're all the misery and misfortune that the real Madelyne encountered, given a semblance of life... all the things that keep Madelyne's soul from being at rest.
And, of course, if you believe what Cable said in that issue, then that's entirely in line with what's being suggested for the "Red Queen" of the Sisterhood stuff. And the appearance of Madelyne's ghost or any significant part thereof would count for an MCP listing...
Michael wrote:Except that it was a plot point in X-Man that Nate's Maddie was a lot nastier than pre-Goblin Queen Maddie. And dressed more like the Goblin Queen than pre-Goblin Queen Maddie. Come to think of it, how do we know that the Goblin Queen part wasn't what appeared in both X-Man and Fraction's run?
Oh, the split-soul part was idle speculation before I reread the pre-CX stuff, nothing really more.

And I don't really see the "nastier" AS SUCH. She's certainly angry towards Scott & Jean - and, by extension, the X-Men - but most of the time she's sane and functional. And she even saves Jean in XM 46.
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Re: What's the deal with Madelyne Pryor?

Post by Michael »

Somebody wrote: Thing is though, XMAN 5 wasn't the only time he pulled the resurrection stunt, even if it was the most permanent one - in XMAN 37, he somehow recreates AoA Gwen Stacy - someone he'd never encountered (and nor had the MU Peter Parker, of course - if he was simply drawing on memories when doing that, he should have made an MU-Gwen, not AoA-Gwen). And even if it's true to say "resurrection by gathering the psychic remnants of someone who died is not common practice" elswhere, as Don Campbell said here and is quoted as saying in that Appendix link - which seems to be the crux of both his and the profile writer's like for the retcon - there's at least one recent and unconnected example of exactly that happening in Beta Ray Bill: Godhunter #3, where Galactus recreated one of the Korbinites:
Galactus, BRB:GH 3 wrote:"The people of Korbin have not left this plane. Some spirits are still in this mortal world--trapped... distant... But they resonate faintly. I can see a cosmic thread, and from this Galactus can weave..."

[He resurrects a single Korbinite female]

"Your people are gone no longer. Your destiny is your own once more. Consider yourself lucky. For all my power, Galan of Taa will never be able to say the same. Heralds, Galactus Hungers."
Still not a common event, but there's your second example. The Appendix writer seems far, FAR too hasty in dismissing it, and trying to explain away all the memories that we're clearly shown she had after Tessa (Sage), completely unknowing of her history, went into her mind in X-Man '96/2.
The Galactus example doesn't seem to me to be the same thing. The Korbinite woman was trapped between this world and the next and Galactus, the personification of the balance between life and death, was able to bring her back. And the "Gwen Stacy" was temporary. "Maddie "was sentient.
Somebody wrote: And, ultimately, if the real MP was never resurrected, what was that in Cable #76 referencing her earlier C2 appearances? EQJ was certainly more than a "ghost on the psychic plane", and the Appendix doesn't even seriously try to explain how that state of affairs could exist in such a circumstance.
Someone's astral form could well be considered a ghost on the psionic plane.
Somebody wrote: And I don't really see the "nastier" AS SUCH. She's certainly angry towards Scott & Jean - and, by extension, the X-Men - but most of the time she's sane and functional. And she even saves Jean in XM 46.
She was a lot saner than she was in Inferno. But at the same time, for example, Maddie never had a taste for bondage-wear pre-Inferno.

Incidentally, Marc-Oliver Frisch has his own comments on the matter here:
http://web.archive.org/web/200309040534 ... s/4227.htm
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Re: What's the deal with Madelyne Pryor?

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Michael wrote:The Galactus example doesn't seem to me to be the same thing. The Korbinite woman was trapped between this world and the next and Galactus, the personification of the balance between life and death, was able to bring her back.

She was dead (and she was, BRB was the only surviving Korbinite), and Galactus was able to pull her spirit back to form. If Ti Asha Ra was "trapped" in such a fashion, there's no reason others (such as Pryor after Jean expelled her) couldn't have been.

It's a matter of power. Galactus is, of course, far more powerful - but he was able to instantly recreate actual flesh and bone to hold the spirit and then forget about her, while Maddie had to leech off Nate for ages before she could stand on her own psychic-construct feet. [And, of course, the Xavier incident in X-Man #10 is another example of him making a physical psychic contruct from a non-tangible source. His ability to make constructs of such a sort is very firmly established.]
Michael wrote:And the "Gwen Stacy" was temporary. "Maddie "was sentient.
Gwen was temporary because Nate turned off the taps when he was being whacked around. He didn't try to turn off the supply to Maddie until she'd built up enough of a power reserve to stick around (with the reserve in question not significantly depleted until X-Man #52, when her physical form significantly degraded as a result, and she was next seen as a "ghost on the psychic plane" in Cable.
Michael wrote:Someone's astral form could well be considered a ghost on the psionic plane.
Key phrase you missed out: "All I am...", as in "All I am... is a ghost on the psionic plane." If someone can manifest on the physical plane, then that's NOT all they are.
Michael wrote:She was a lot saner than she was in Inferno. But at the same time, for example, Maddie never had a taste for bondage-wear pre-Inferno.
She wasn't a Black Rook in the Hellfire Club pre-Inferno. As you well know, that's how they dress their women. She typically wears more outside that setting - even her kind-of-sort-of Goblin Queen attire redux in Cable #44 had trousers and a full cape.
Michael wrote:Incidentally, Marc-Oliver Frisch has his own comments on the matter here:
http://web.archive.org/web/200309040534 ... s/4227.htm
Didn't I mention I read through all the thread in Archive #35?

If you really want me to point-by-point that post though...
MOF wrote:No, that's what I tried to get at: It explains her later comments, in which she states that she allowed the "Madelyne" Nate WANTED her to be to be dominant for a while. What she refers to as "replacement" was the moment when she consciously took control.
That... doesn't make sense. You can't "replace" yourself - you can reveal your true self, shed your sleeper programming, become yourself again, etc; but to attribute that to "replacing" herself doesn't fit with any dictionary I can find.

Or to use an analogy, if I peel the skin off a banana, I'm not replacing that banana with a wholly different object. To make his interpretation make sense, you need to find a way to interpret peeling that banana as "replacing" it.
MOF wrote:> Besides, she's lying on another point of that quote, the very first sentence. She's NOT Maddy Pryor -- she's Jean Grey.

But she essentially a) became Madelyne Pryor in the parallel earth she ruled at the time, and b), as she says, she is the only Madelyne Pryor Nate has ever known.
It's still a lie - she isn't and hasn't ever TRULY (and "true" is the word she uses) been Madelyne Pryor. She even describes her type as Jean Grey ("Do you know what a Jean Grey is?") in XM 70, meaning she doesn't "truly" think of herself as Madelyne Pryor.
MOF wrote:I think it suffices to acknowledge that there are more interpretations of the comment that she's "merely a ghost on the psionic plane" than the literal one. Unless you're of the opinion that it's entirely absurd for a character to claim that they're "merely a ghost on the psionic plane" when they mean that they have temporarily left their body, that's clearly the case, so it eliminates the quote as a contradiction.
Again, "All I am", and the context makes it damn clear that she can't intervene on the physical plane (and his use of a misquote - twice - suggests he hasn't actually read the issue, and certainly doesn't have it to hand to see that context).

Here's the exchange, with a degree of context for the line:
Cable #76 wrote:CABLE: "I have my responsibilities, just as Scott has always had his. I pray I can acquit myself as well as he has. And though I may have denied it in the past... I'm an X-Man, like my father"

MADELYNE: "Is this how you truly feel? You'd rather die here with them [NB: The Twelve] than escape with me?"

CABLE: "Yes".

[Cable and Madelyne look directly at each other. Cyclops is leaning heavily on Nate and his head is bowed]

MADELYNE: "I... understand. Nathan, before all the madness, the hate... you were the best thing to ever happen to me. If nothing else, I'll always have the memory of those moments".

CYCLOPS: "If you feel that way, Madelyne, help us. You don't have to be alone. Free us so that we can stop Apocalypse"

MADELYNE [breaks eye contact]: "I'm afraid that's not in my power. [eyes squeezed shut, head sunk, looks like she's about to cry] All I am... is a ghost on the psionic plane. [Cyclops picks up a broken picture of him and Madelyne with baby Christopher behind the following] I only wanted to give Nathan something nobody else could. Now, all that's left to say... goodbye" [NB: I didn't drop a word there, there's no "is".]

[Cable and Cyclops shunt back into their bodies, in Apocalypse's prison.]
Her whole posture is somewhere between embarrassed and despondent when she admits that she can't do anything in reality (i.e., the physical plane) and it's dragged out of her as pretty much the last thing she says in the whole issue. It's not something she wanted to admit to.

And that's my whole problem with taking EQJ's words in XM 68 literally - it ignores both the context of the scene (where, as I said, EQJ is belittling Nate and trying to break him, to make him accept that all he can do is destroy), and the context of earlier issues which it contradicts (and, again, Steven Grant admitted on an X-Man site at the time that he had no idea she'd appeared in any issues of Cable - which I presume includes the earlier crossovers, but the discussion was on C2 76 in particular. If he genuinely meant to retcon everything to be EQJ, he built the retcon on sand both by contradicting himself and by causing some things from earlier issues to simply make no sense.)
MOF wrote:Because that was during a time when "evil-Jean" was in the backseat.
But (a) I thought the argument for "it was always EQJ" was that her "plans for Nate" that had "taken a sharp left turn" in X-Man #52 must have been EQJ's plan. Cable #76 is after X-Man #52 by any measure, in which case EQJ wouldn't have been in the backseat any more. I consider that to make it impossible that EQJ was in the forefront of any pre-Counter X appearance.
MOF wrote:But that probably wouldn't have been as convincing -- remember that Nate was one of the most powerful telepaths around.
If you want to go that route, shouldn't Nate have torn through all those identity barriers, not just the "fake" ones when he finally does a deep, deep probe in X-Man #25 as he's trying to disassemble her? It's Tessa, the future Sage of all people, orders of magnitude less powerful than Nate, who unlocks her memories entirely by accident in XM@ '96/2. [All Tessa intended to do was a simple mind-probe to find out who this mystery woman was.]

"Mr Powerful", OTOH, tries to probe her in XM 6, after just mentioning "Sinister" has her first angrily slapping him and then panicking, and fails miserably - all he does is pull out a monsterous Havok psi-construct. Surely if the idea was to give Nate memories to latch onto, the history would just... open up for him and him specifically.

And I thought the argument you, Michael, were going with was the Appendix one that the Havok thing didn't prove anything? Now you're pushing one that says the Havok thing was intended to be proof for X-Man's benefit? This all makes more sense if it's genuinely buried rather than an artificially-constructed garden path to walk down.

And ultimately, where exactly ARE Madelyne's memories meant to have come from anyway if it was purely EQJ? They couldn't have come from Tessa - the future Sage was delving into MP's mind because she didn't know anything about her, and shattered all her mental blocks as much by accident as anything else since she didn't know she HAD mental blocks. It's not even as if EQJ needed Madelyne's personal memories to play with Nate, but she remembers things in XM@ 96/2, C2 44 and C2 76 that she simply shouldn't have had access to just from a generalised idea of who this Pryor was.
MOF wrote:I don't think there was a new body. As I understand it, it was Queen Maddie's body all along -- she just allowed Madelyne's eco to take charge of it for a while.
Uh... again, I thought you were pushing the line that it was a psi-construct body that EQJ inhabited, Michael - especially since that the reborn Madelyne was a psi-construct is proven absolutely whichever way you interpret it. This just adds to my belief that MOF wasn't familiar with the pre-CX source material.
MOF wrote:Well, I think there only are inconsistencies if you take everything Madelyne says literally and at face value, which I wouldn't do, and I actually believe that Grant's retcon makes more sense than whatever may have been planned previously.

Yes, but it's inconsistent with the comments in Counter X. In my version -- providing that you agree with the notion that you don't need to take the "ghost" or "replacement" comments literally, of course -- there aren't any inconsistencies.
And as I keep saying, EQJ is inconsistent WITH HERSELF between XM 67 & 68- whatever linguistic gymnastics are applied to the word "replaced" can't change the fact that it can't mean what MOF argues it means. Pre-CX Madelyne, OTOH, was as consistent as anything gets in comics on these matters. Most of the inconsistencies vanish if you allow that EQJ is trying to break Nate during the #68 scene and as such her words there need not be treated as absolute gospel.

Evil Queen Jean replaced Madelyne Pryor, and left Madelyne as a bodiless ghost. Before that, at most she may have prompted the "whim" that led Nate to regather and remanifest Madelyne, and supply her with energy until her psionic construct body could hold together without that umbilical. EQJ could then step in (some time between XM 52 and C2 76), claim that energy to feed her "decimated", "crippled" powers (until she could point Nate like a gun as she intended) and drive Madelyne from the physical plane, and then meet up with Nate "again" (some time between XM 62 and XM 67-70) to dig her claws into through the links Madelyne had formed with Nate. It's considerably simpler and has fewer contradictions than the alternative case.

Again, I don't see the argument that "it was always EQJ" based on the actual issues, outside of unreliable statements by the villainess (who lies constantly, including about her true identity as a Jean Grey from a further alternate Earth, until she's exposed by "questioning" the dead Forge) that contradict what went before, including other things said villainess said. You can make a case ONLY if you take things out-of-context.
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Re: What's the deal with Madelyne Pryor?

Post by Michael »

Somebody wrote:
Key phrase you missed out: "All I am...", as in "All I am... is a ghost on the psionic plane." If someone can manifest on the physical plane, then that's NOT all they are.
Another way of looking at is "On the psionic plane, all I am is a ghost".
Somebody wrote:
MOF wrote:I think it suffices to acknowledge that there are more interpretations of the comment that she's "merely a ghost on the psionic plane" than the literal one. Unless you're of the opinion that it's entirely absurd for a character to claim that they're "merely a ghost on the psionic plane" when they mean that they have temporarily left their body, that's clearly the case, so it eliminates the quote as a contradiction.
Again, "All I am", and the context makes it damn clear that she can't intervene on the physical plane (and his use of a misquote - twice - suggests he hasn't actually read the issue, and certainly doesn't have it to hand to see that context).

Here's the exchange, with a degree of context for the line:
Cable #76 wrote:CABLE: "I have my responsibilities, just as Scott has always had his. I pray I can acquit myself as well as he has. And though I may have denied it in the past... I'm an X-Man, like my father"

MADELYNE: "Is this how you truly feel? You'd rather die here with them [NB: The Twelve] than escape with me?"

CABLE: "Yes".

[Cable and Madelyne look directly at each other. Cyclops is leaning heavily on Nate and his head is bowed]

MADELYNE: "I... understand. Nathan, before all the madness, the hate... you were the best thing to ever happen to me. If nothing else, I'll always have the memory of those moments".

CYCLOPS: "If you feel that way, Madelyne, help us. You don't have to be alone. Free us so that we can stop Apocalypse"

MADELYNE [breaks eye contact]: "I'm afraid that's not in my power. [eyes squeezed shut, head sunk, looks like she's about to cry] All I am... is a ghost on the psionic plane. [Cyclops picks up a broken picture of him and Madelyne with baby Christopher behind the following] I only wanted to give Nathan something nobody else could. Now, all that's left to say... goodbye" [NB: I didn't drop a word there, there's no "is".]

[Cable and Cyclops shunt back into their bodies, in Apocalypse's prison.]
Her whole posture is somewhere between embarrassed and despondent when she admits that she can't do anything in reality (i.e., the physical plane) and it's dragged out of her as pretty much the last thing she says in the whole issue. It's not something she wanted to admit to.
Or it could simply mean that Apocalypse's celestial technology somehow prevents her from interfering. She clearly can affect people in the physical world with her TP, as demonstrated by her ability to yank Scott and Nate out of their bodies.
Somebody wrote: Evil Queen Jean replaced Madelyne Pryor, and left Madelyne as a bodiless ghost. Before that, at most she may have prompted the "whim" that led Nate to regather and remanifest Madelyne, and supply her with energy until her psionic construct body could hold together without that umbilical. EQJ could then step in (some time between XM 52 and C2 76), claim that energy to feed her "decimated", "crippled" powers (until she could point Nate like a gun as she intended) and drive Madelyne from the physical plane, and then meet up with Nate "again" (some time between XM 62 and XM 67-70) to dig her claws into through the links Madelyne had formed with Nate. It's considerably simpler and has fewer contradictions than the alternative case.

Again, I don't see the argument that "it was always EQJ" based on the actual issues, outside of unreliable statements by the villainess (who lies constantly, including about her true identity as a Jean Grey from a further alternate Earth, until she's exposed by "questioning" the dead Forge) that contradict what went before, including other things said villainess said. You can make a case ONLY if you take things out-of-context.
But to assume your argument is true, you have to base it on what she said in X-Man 67, even though you admit she was lying a couple of lines later. Also, we rarely assume unreliable narrators are lying when the writer clearly intends them to be telling the truth. For example, Harry Osborn has a zillion drug and mental problems, but we assume that he was telling the truth when he claimed his father knew all along he wasn't dead, even though it requires us to assume that Norman is so paranoid that he lies even when he's alone on the off chance someone is spying on him. We only assume the narrator is lying if there is no way to reconcile their account with previous continuity that would occur to a REASONABLE reader. A reasonable reader- that's a subjective standard.
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Re: What's the deal with Madelyne Pryor?

Post by Somebody »

Michael wrote:
Somebody wrote:Key phrase you missed out: "All I am...", as in "All I am... is a ghost on the psionic plane." If someone can manifest on the physical plane, then that's NOT all they are.
Another way of looking at is "On the psionic plane, all I am is a ghost".
No, because word order matters. "Not all apples are green" and "All apples are not green" mean two different things - the former says that some apples may be green (and implies that is the case), the latter says that if something is green then it can't be an apple. On the astral plane, EVERYTHING is a ghost - that's not remarkable.

Saying your reordering means the same thing as the original line is directly equivalent to saying my two apple examples mean the same thing.
Michael wrote:Or it could simply mean that Apocalypse's celestial technology somehow prevents her from interfering. She clearly can affect people in the physical world with her TP, as demonstrated by her ability to yank Scott and Nate out of their bodies.
But Scott and Nate are encased in Apocalypse's celestial, power-damping, technology. She can't affect the physical world, but can offer Cable (and Cyclops) a life on the astral plane (or psionic plane, as she calls it) as ghosts like her. She can't free them, or fight Apocalypse (she doesn't have the power to do anything to him). And her whole body posture as she says that she's ashamed by this, and would like to.
Michael wrote:
Somebody wrote:Evil Queen Jean replaced Madelyne Pryor, and left Madelyne as a bodiless ghost. Before that, at most she may have prompted the "whim" that led Nate to regather and remanifest Madelyne, and supply her with energy until her psionic construct body could hold together without that umbilical. EQJ could then step in (some time between XM 52 and C2 76), claim that energy to feed her "decimated", "crippled" powers (until she could point Nate like a gun as she intended) and drive Madelyne from the physical plane, and then meet up with Nate "again" (some time between XM 62 and XM 67-70) to dig her claws into through the links Madelyne had formed with Nate. It's considerably simpler and has fewer contradictions than the alternative case.

Again, I don't see the argument that "it was always EQJ" based on the actual issues, outside of unreliable statements by the villainess (who lies constantly, including about her true identity as a Jean Grey from a further alternate Earth, until she's exposed by "questioning" the dead Forge) that contradict what went before, including other things said villainess said. You can make a case ONLY if you take things out-of-context.
But to assume your argument is true, you have to base it on what she said in X-Man 67, even though you admit she was lying a couple of lines later. Also, we rarely assume unreliable narrators are lying when the writer clearly intends them to be telling the truth. For example, Harry Osborn has a zillion drug and mental problems, but we assume that he was telling the truth when he claimed his father knew all along he wasn't dead, even though it requires us to assume that Norman is so paranoid that he lies even when he's alone on the off chance someone is spying on him. We only assume the narrator is lying if there is no way to reconcile their account with previous continuity that would occur to a REASONABLE reader. A reasonable reader- that's a subjective standard.
I asked a friend about those issues of ASM (I don't read it myself), and his response was that 'we don't get "Norman also knew Harry was alive" because Harry told us so, we get it from a flashback scene.' So there's corroboration there - we notably DON'T get any flashbacks to anything between X-Man #5 and #67 to corroborate EQJ's story.

Here's the thing:
1) What EQJ says contradicts herself at more than one point.
2) EQJ outright lies at least once in that spiel in #67, in claiming to be a "true" Madelyne Prior. That carries no weight.
3) Her #68 "party line" contradicts stuff Nate Grey has done in previous issues OTHER THAN the resurrection of Madelyne - which I've already cited - claiming it to be impossible. As such, it is highly, highly suspect even without...
4) If try to take take her "party line" as absolute truth, this isn't a silent, seamless retcon - it makes nonsense of several issues of Cable, especially #76.
5) Similarly, but on a lesser note, it also makes several issues of X-Man pretty inexplicable for similar reasons, such as the X-Man Annual story where Tessa accidentally removes all her mental blocks. There's no way, if Madelyne's essence/soul WASN'T involved, EQJ could have got hold of the memories of Madelyne Pryor, and the story makes no attempt to explain that.
6) Given the established lies and downright contradictions in her story in #68, it makes sense to treat it as highly suspicious and to look at what she said in #67 again in that light. She says that he "created his Maddie", that she ISN'T that Maddie, that she USED that Maddie as "a door to walk through" (And this brings up the same issues as trying to explain away the "replaced" - Madelyne would only have been a "door to walk through" IF SHE ACTUALLY EXISTED.), the established lie about being a "true" Madelyne Pryor, and that she REPLACED his Maddie (which trying to explain away is like trying to claim, as I pointed out, that to peel a banana is to replace the banana skin-and-all with a new banana that never had a peel).
7) In #68, she's prepared, in-control, has backup and a plan to beat him with. In #67, she was surprised he didn't just "go back to sleep" when she told him to, wasn't quite so prepared, and so didn't have her lies quite in order, and so she told some of the truth.
8) It makes more sense, in light of the earlier issues, to go with her replacing Madelyne by using her as "a door to walk through" (which has textual support in #67), and preventing Madelyne from manifesting a solid body on the physical plane thereafter (preserving authorial intent of Cable #76).

It's not a simple matter of "unreliable narrators", it's a mix of context (both in #67-68, in the Cable issues, and in the earlier X-Man issues), and what involves contradicting fewer stories. There's a valid reading of #67-68 that preserves the intent of earlier stories without wrecking #67-70. Any other reading of #67-68 requires reinterpreting prior issues - and several lines of #67 - to an extent which renders them nonsensical.

I believe that's an objective matter.

[Whereas your reading of the Cable #76 line at the top of this post would not occur to a "reasonable" reader, because it materially alters the meaning of something which she has no reason to lie about, and which her body language suggests is truthful.]
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Re: What's the deal with Madelyne Pryor?

Post by Michael »

Somebody wrote: 5) Similarly, but on a lesser note, it also makes several issues of X-Man pretty inexplicable for similar reasons, such as the X-Man Annual story where Tessa accidentally removes all her mental blocks. There's no way, if Madelyne's essence/soul WASN'T involved, EQJ could have got hold of the memories of Madelyne Pryor, and the story makes no attempt to explain that.
If Inferno happened on HER world, EQJ might have had the memories of HER world's Maddie.
Somebody wrote: It's not a simple matter of "unreliable narrators", it's a mix of context (both in #67-68, in the Cable issues, and in the earlier X-Man issues), and what involves contradicting fewer stories. There's a valid reading of #67-68 that preserves the intent of earlier stories without wrecking #67-70. Any other reading of #67-68 requires reinterpreting prior issues - and several lines of #67 - to an extent which renders them nonsensical.

I believe that's an objective matter.
So, Don Campbell, Per Degaton and Marc Oliver Frisch aren't objective?
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Re: What's the deal with Madelyne Pryor?

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Michael wrote:If Inferno happened on HER world, EQJ might have had the memories of HER world's Maddie.
That's a stretch, with absolutely no textual backup in what we see and hear of her. An absence of evidence that Inferno didn't happen doesn't constitute evidence that it DID.
Michael wrote:
Somebody wrote:It's not a simple matter of "unreliable narrators", it's a mix of context (both in #67-68, in the Cable issues, and in the earlier X-Man issues), and what involves contradicting fewer stories. There's a valid reading of #67-68 that preserves the intent of earlier stories without wrecking #67-70. Any other reading of #67-68 requires reinterpreting prior issues - and several lines of #67 - to an extent which renders them nonsensical.

I believe that's an objective matter.
So, Don Campbell, Per Degaton and Marc Oliver Frisch aren't objective?
I've stated - repeatedly and at length - why I believe their analyses to be flawed. I don't believe, based on what I read in Archive 35, that MOF reread the pre-Counter X issues (and in particular Cable #76, which he misquoted) when making his arguments.

I also believe that PD and DC on that Appendix page (As quoted from Archive 35), take as the starting point the idea that Madelyne's resurrection, as initially depicted, was impossible - DC explicitly states such, and PD lists a slightly-less explicit version of that thought as his second point, while explicitly agreeing with all DC's points when quoting them. I think I've refuted that idea with reference to both BRB:GH and other issues of X-Man. So I think their conclusions, predicated on that point built on sand, are invalid.

I further note that the MOF and PD/DC versions of what happened are not reconcilable in the round - they don't agree with each other. Throughout this whole thread, you've been treating them as interchangeable.

I still further note that the PD/DC version tries to have its' cake and eat it by having Nate Grey somehow regather Madelyne's memories without actually regathering her essence (and if her soul was regathered in any form, then the real Madelyne Pryor should get an MCP listing for XM 5-C2 76 regardless of what you do with EQJ, while EQJ would at most get BTSes for XM 5-XM 52. That isn't the case right now.). Where would he gather them from if not from her dispersed "essence"?

And I finally note that they still don't explain that use of "replaced" - and (in support to my point 7 from my last post), Forge-998 notes that she could say truthful but unhelpful-to-herself things in XM 69, as when she admitted to Forge that she wasn't actually the resurrected QMP.

I would list as such (note - she's currently not listed for the Judgement War issues where she's involved in Jean's body. The BTSes are because it's Jean's body, for the record):

GOBLIN QUEEN/MADELYNE "MADDIE" JENNIFER PRYOR SUMMERS
[...]
XF 38
UX 243
XF 39
**XF 43-BTS
**XF 46-BTS
**XF 48-BTS
**XF 50-BTS
*XM 5
*XM 6
*XM 7
*XM 13
*XM 14
*XM 15
*XM 16
*XM 17
*XM 20
*XM 21
*XM 22
*XM 23
*XM '96/2
*XM 24
*XM 25
*C2 44
*XM 28
*XM 30
*C2 50
*XM 38
*XM 39
*XM 40
*XM 41-FB
*XM 41
*XM 42
*XM 43
*XM 44
*XM 45
*XM 46
*C2 63
*XM 47
*XM 49
*XM 50
*XM 51
*XM 52
*C2 76
[...]

And, as for Evil Queen Jean, I'll allow that the "whim" may have come from her - but even with PD/DC's version it's not her body, and she's dormant between the "whim" and some indeterminate point between XM 52 and XM 67, so she wouldn't even get a BTS for those issues, making her listing (and, frankly, whether she sent the "whim" interdimensionally as I believe, or was dormant inside Madelyne's new body until after XM 52 and then used it as "a door to walk through" or recreated it into her own image makes absolutely no difference to this...):

GREY, JEAN/"QUEEN MADELYNE PRYOR" | EARTH-998 (note: although she's ordinarily resident on E-998, she's not actually from E-998)
XM 69-FB
*XM 5-BTS
XM 67
XM 68
XM 69
XM 70
Last edited by Somebody on Thu Dec 31, 2009 8:01 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: removing unfair comment, fixing typo
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Re: What's the deal with Madelyne Pryor?

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Somebody wrote:
Michael wrote:So, Don Campbell, Per Degaton and Marc Oliver Frisch aren't objective?
I also believe that PD and DC on that Appendix page (As quoted from Archive 35), take as the starting point the idea that Madelyne's resurrection, as initially depicted, was impossible - DC explicitly states such (oh, and gets the writer of XM 5-7 wrong, leading me to believe he hadn't reread those issues either) and PD lists a slightly-less explicit version of that thought as his second point, while explicitly agreeing with all DC's points when quoting them. I think I've refuted that idea with reference to both BRB:GH and other issues of X-Man. So I think their conclusions, predicated on that point built on sand, are invalid.
For the record, I actually DID reread those X-MAN issues before I posted my comments but I did not bother to check who wrote which issues. As I recall, there were some issues written by Terry Kavanaugh that I thought were rather poorly written and when the whole question of whether or not "Maddie" was really Maddie came up, I just assumed that he was the writer of those issues as well. Yes, it was a MISTAKE on my part and I felt quite embarrassed when it was pointed out. Thank you SO MUCH for TWICE mentioning my error and even more so for using it to dismiss me as someone who didn't even bother to read the issues involved...which, by the way, is a mistaken assumption on YOUR part. I guess that invalidates everything you've been posting, right?

Anyway, to be completely honest, I really barely remember the whole discussion. I'm not even sure what my position was at the time. I think I was in the "Maddie was always Evil Queen Maddie" camp. If I recall, the theory was that it was the evil Jean Grey who set everything in motion by manipulating Nate Grey into "recreating" Maddie and then immediately used that form to enter Earth-616's dimension with her own memories suppressed in order to better pretend to be Nate's Maddie. It was only later that evil Jean Grey's personality awoke within her own body (which Nate had been fooled into believing he had created). However, the idea that the Maddie created by Nate had her own existence for a time before Queen Maddie entered/replaced her seems appealing to me. At least, it does now. As I said, I really don't remember what my position was back then. Sorry.

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Re: What's the deal with Madelyne Pryor?

Post by Michael »

DonCampbell wrote:
Somebody wrote:
Michael wrote:So, Don Campbell, Per Degaton and Marc Oliver Frisch aren't objective?
I also believe that PD and DC on that Appendix page (As quoted from Archive 35), take as the starting point the idea that Madelyne's resurrection, as initially depicted, was impossible - DC explicitly states such (oh, and gets the writer of XM 5-7 wrong, leading me to believe he hadn't reread those issues either) and PD lists a slightly-less explicit version of that thought as his second point, while explicitly agreeing with all DC's points when quoting them. I think I've refuted that idea with reference to both BRB:GH and other issues of X-Man. So I think their conclusions, predicated on that point built on sand, are invalid.
For the record, I actually DID reread those X-MAN issues before I posted my comments but I did not bother to check who wrote which issues. As I recall, there were some issues written by Terry Kavanaugh that I thought were rather poorly written and when the whole question of whether or not "Maddie" was really Maddie came up, I just assumed that he was the writer of those issues as well.
Just to be clear, Loeb DIDN'T come up with the "psionic echo" explanation. He hinted that Nate had something to do with Maddie's return but it was Kavanagh who explained that she was a "psionic echo".
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Re: What's the deal with Madelyne Pryor?

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DonCampbell wrote:Yes, it was a MISTAKE on my part and I felt quite embarrassed when it was pointed out. Thank you SO MUCH for TWICE mentioning my error and even more so for using it to dismiss me as someone who didn't even bother to read the issues involved...
I'm sorry about that, I shouldn't have been so dismissive of you or the others in that way (I still disagree with the *substance* of what was posted back then and quoted/linked by Michael now on the matter for all the reasons I've listed, but my tone was out-of-line and I withdraw it & apologise).
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Re: What's the deal with Madelyne Pryor?

Post by Michael »

And I'd like to apologize for setting this whole mess in motion by linking to Don's arguments. Are we all OK now?
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Re: What's the deal with Madelyne Pryor?

Post by JLH »

I have a Maddie trading card signed by Kavanagh. Highest bidder wins! :wink:
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