Essay Time
Ricochet: an Omnibus Headcanon Exploration
This is an essay concept that has been percolating in the fevered pathways of my brain for some time now, and I figured I should finally let it out. It’s meant to explain how I think Ricochet feels about human-mutant relations in the Marvelverse and how that influences his views on similar scenarios he’s learned about in Camp. It’s also meant to reconcile his place in the Marvelverse ICly, mostly by stringing together best-guess rationales to make sense of what are actually entirely OOC editorial decisions. As with everything I write, I hope this will make something resembling sense.
Background
In the Marvel Universe, mutants like Ricochet are suspected as being the next step in human evolution-a genetic offshoot of baseline humanity classified as Homo sapiens superior, endowed by their respective X-genes with strange powers and abilities. Since they first appeared, mutants have been always feared and often hated by the general public, as an analogy to the real life oppressed minority du jour, despite the leap in IC logic this requires-for some reason, average folks in the Marvelverse are okay with someone who’s gotten their powers from cosmic rays or radioactive spiders, but not with someone who’s just born that way.
Regardless, mutants experienced wide-spread prejudice and frequent discrimination from a wide array of sources-an ignorant populace, fear-mongering politicians, religious fundamentalists, etc.-especially as their numbers grew and it indeed started to look like they would replace baseline humans as the dominant strain of mankind. But then events (and editorial fiat) conspired to bring the mutant species to the brink of extinction-M-Day, where the vast majority of the mutant population lost their powers through unknown forces. In one day, mutants in the Marvelverse went from being a superpowered population numbering in the millions to a group that barely amounted to 200 individuals retaining their powers.
In the wake of M-Day, anti-mutant elements amped up their persecution, killing a large number of both the depowered mutant population and some of those who’d still kept their powers. The US government had just instituted a policy of superhuman registration, and turned the Xavier Institute in New York-the base of operations for the X-Men-into a mutant “reservation,” dumping a large number of the remaining mutants there and preventing them from leaving. The X-Men responded by temporarily disbanding and moving to the West Coast, setting up a new base of operations in San Francisco and issuing an open invitation and amnesty to all surviving mutants-heroes, villains, or civilians-to join them there to make a new enclave.
Ricochet was one of the mutants to come through M-Day with his powers intact, but for some reason or reasons, he neither made his way to the Xavier Institute, nor heeded the X-Men’s later invitation to join them in San Francisco… despite the fact that he was in Los Angeles at the time.
Why?
OOC
The easily explained reason Ricochet didn’t join the X-Men has to do with editorial decisions. Ricochet had been a forgotten character after his first series was canceled in the late ‘90s, and he only reappeared on the Marvelverse radar when Brian K. Vaughn introduced a Poorly Disguised Pilot team of washed-up teenage heroes in the pages of his widely successful book, Runaways. That team included a number of Marvel has-been heroes, and it was hoped that they would be popular enough to spin off into their own series. This eventually happened, but it would take some time-and so the characters that comprised this team were put into a sort of editorial lockdown where they wouldn’t be messed with by other writers until their new series could debut.
This is why Ricochet survived M-Day-Marvel hoped to use him in this new series, so he was selected as one of the mutant characters to retain their powers in the wake of the event. It’s also why he didn’t show up to join the X-Men on either occasion where they were otherwise gathering the world’s remaining mutants to their standard for what was going to be a last stand against extinction-he already had a slot on another team book and he lacked Wolverine’s ability to be in seven different titles every month. Rico would remain a Loner, relatively on his own with only a group of other former heroes in their new book.
Unfortunately, that new book only lasted 6 issues and wasn’t picked up as an ongoing title (despite my best efforts, but hey-I’m only one man, however handsome). Rico dodged the M-Day bullet only to end up in a swiftly canceled series and back in offscreen limbo-no one else had a place for him now, because the team book he was being saved for failed BUT editorial fiat had the characters making up the team kept together in case they got another shot. And sure enough, they did reappear-this time as supporting characters making a cameo as one of their number, Darkhawk, gets a big push with his own title.
So all this editorial wheeling and dealing that has kept Rico out of the X-Men has left me with a fine mess of explaining why one of the world’s few remaining mutant superheroes would fail to answer the call. Most of his species is effectively gone, there are plenty of people out there looking to finish the job, the premier mutant superheroes in the world-a team he reportedly tried to join and was initially turned down from!-are making an all-hands-on-deck, this-is-the-big-one plea for anyone who’s left to come join the fight… and Ricochet doesn’t go.
Fortunately, I think I have a pretty good set of reasons as to why.
Race Relations
Simply put, I don’t think Ricochet believes in the concept of a Brotherhood of Mutants, and this rejection of the typical Marvelverse take on race relations has informed how I play him in Camp.
It boils down to choosing sides, and frankly I don’t think Rico accepts the issue of mutantkind and humankind’s shared future as any kind of “Us vs. Them” scenario. I play Rico as being someone who doesn’t define himself by his mutation-that is, he identifies as a mutant, that he has a mutation, but that genetic characteristic is not who he is. He sees himself as a human first and a mutant second-that mutants and baseline humans aren’t different species, but part of the same species-he’s just a different kind of human.
I feel justified in doing this for a couple of reasons. First, Rico’s never really been a part of the mutant community-he’s never had exposure to any kind of mutant solidarity, never been a part of any mutant-themed group, but rather has always been the token mutant in a group of otherwise superpowered individuals-and he’s fit in there. So he’s never had the insular, “we can only count on each other” sort of experience that so characterizes the X-Men and their affiliates. He’s more of a multiculturalist, who’s had teammates that run the gamut from normal humans to androids to magically empowered beings.
Second, both who he's fought and who he’s fought with should have clearly shown him that neither mutants nor baseline humans have any kind of monopoly on right or wrong or good or bad. In his career, he’s fought demons, aliens, killer robots, a superpowered mafia, superpowered drug traffickers, mutated sewer rats, common criminals, his former mentor, certain misguided teammates, and both mutant and non-mutant supervillains. Further, mutant terrorists murdered his mother, and a brainwashed mutant superhero killed his non-mutant best friend and former partner. He has seen that there are good mutants and bad mutants just as there are good humans and bad humans.
So where the rest of the Marvelverse is choosing sides based on mutant vs. non-mutant, I play Rico as saying, “That’s bullshit.” If he’s going to draw lines and choose sides, he’d much rather do it on the basis of people who do right vs. people who do wrong-good humans and good mutants vs. bad humans and bad mutants. He’d rather judge his friends and enemies on actions instead of genetic characteristics.
There’s a scene from a very good movie, Gettysburg, that I draw on for inspiration in all this-and with Rico being a film nerd, I don’t consider it a stretch to say that he’s seen it, and only slightly more of a stretch to say that it would’ve influenced him as it has me. In the scene, the idealistic (and historical) Union Colonel, Joshua Chamberlain, is talking with his crustily pragmatic (and fictional) Irish sergeant about what’s the measure of a man and what criteria do you use to determine that. The sergeant’s speech, greatly condensed here, is largely what I have Rico going by:
Sergeant ‘Buster’ Kilrain: The thing is, you cannot judge a race. Any man who judges by the group is a pea-wit. You take men one at a time […] What I'm fighting for is to prove I'm a better man than many of them [(the Southern aristocracy)…] There's many a man worse than me, and some better... But I don't think race or country matters a damn. What matters is justice. Which is why I'm here. I'll be treated as I deserve, not as my father deserved.
This is how I play Ricochet in Camp, with the outlook that group membership does not equal value. Mutant is not automatically good; human is not automatically bad. What matters is not genetic characteristics, but justice-right action instead of wrong action.
So that’s why I feel Ricochet wouldn’t have joined up with the X-Men, because at the moment their recruiting drive is based more on what you are than who you are. It doesn’t hurt that the brainwashed mutant superhero who killed his best friend was Wolverine, either, especially with him being the posterboy of the entire X-Men franchise. But even the Wolverine aspect underscores the rationale I’ve developed for Ricochet here-from his perspective, the X-Men are willing to tolerate a mass-murderer on their team because 1) he’s useful to their cause and 2) he’s a fellow mutant. If that’s all it takes to join, Rico would rather be a Loner.
This is an essay concept that has been percolating in the fevered pathways of my brain for some time now, and I figured I should finally let it out. It’s meant to explain how I think Ricochet feels about human-mutant relations in the Marvelverse and how that influences his views on similar scenarios he’s learned about in Camp. It’s also meant to reconcile his place in the Marvelverse ICly, mostly by stringing together best-guess rationales to make sense of what are actually entirely OOC editorial decisions. As with everything I write, I hope this will make something resembling sense.
Background
In the Marvel Universe, mutants like Ricochet are suspected as being the next step in human evolution-a genetic offshoot of baseline humanity classified as Homo sapiens superior, endowed by their respective X-genes with strange powers and abilities. Since they first appeared, mutants have been always feared and often hated by the general public, as an analogy to the real life oppressed minority du jour, despite the leap in IC logic this requires-for some reason, average folks in the Marvelverse are okay with someone who’s gotten their powers from cosmic rays or radioactive spiders, but not with someone who’s just born that way.
Regardless, mutants experienced wide-spread prejudice and frequent discrimination from a wide array of sources-an ignorant populace, fear-mongering politicians, religious fundamentalists, etc.-especially as their numbers grew and it indeed started to look like they would replace baseline humans as the dominant strain of mankind. But then events (and editorial fiat) conspired to bring the mutant species to the brink of extinction-M-Day, where the vast majority of the mutant population lost their powers through unknown forces. In one day, mutants in the Marvelverse went from being a superpowered population numbering in the millions to a group that barely amounted to 200 individuals retaining their powers.
In the wake of M-Day, anti-mutant elements amped up their persecution, killing a large number of both the depowered mutant population and some of those who’d still kept their powers. The US government had just instituted a policy of superhuman registration, and turned the Xavier Institute in New York-the base of operations for the X-Men-into a mutant “reservation,” dumping a large number of the remaining mutants there and preventing them from leaving. The X-Men responded by temporarily disbanding and moving to the West Coast, setting up a new base of operations in San Francisco and issuing an open invitation and amnesty to all surviving mutants-heroes, villains, or civilians-to join them there to make a new enclave.
Ricochet was one of the mutants to come through M-Day with his powers intact, but for some reason or reasons, he neither made his way to the Xavier Institute, nor heeded the X-Men’s later invitation to join them in San Francisco… despite the fact that he was in Los Angeles at the time.
Why?
OOC
The easily explained reason Ricochet didn’t join the X-Men has to do with editorial decisions. Ricochet had been a forgotten character after his first series was canceled in the late ‘90s, and he only reappeared on the Marvelverse radar when Brian K. Vaughn introduced a Poorly Disguised Pilot team of washed-up teenage heroes in the pages of his widely successful book, Runaways. That team included a number of Marvel has-been heroes, and it was hoped that they would be popular enough to spin off into their own series. This eventually happened, but it would take some time-and so the characters that comprised this team were put into a sort of editorial lockdown where they wouldn’t be messed with by other writers until their new series could debut.
This is why Ricochet survived M-Day-Marvel hoped to use him in this new series, so he was selected as one of the mutant characters to retain their powers in the wake of the event. It’s also why he didn’t show up to join the X-Men on either occasion where they were otherwise gathering the world’s remaining mutants to their standard for what was going to be a last stand against extinction-he already had a slot on another team book and he lacked Wolverine’s ability to be in seven different titles every month. Rico would remain a Loner, relatively on his own with only a group of other former heroes in their new book.
Unfortunately, that new book only lasted 6 issues and wasn’t picked up as an ongoing title (despite my best efforts, but hey-I’m only one man, however handsome). Rico dodged the M-Day bullet only to end up in a swiftly canceled series and back in offscreen limbo-no one else had a place for him now, because the team book he was being saved for failed BUT editorial fiat had the characters making up the team kept together in case they got another shot. And sure enough, they did reappear-this time as supporting characters making a cameo as one of their number, Darkhawk, gets a big push with his own title.
So all this editorial wheeling and dealing that has kept Rico out of the X-Men has left me with a fine mess of explaining why one of the world’s few remaining mutant superheroes would fail to answer the call. Most of his species is effectively gone, there are plenty of people out there looking to finish the job, the premier mutant superheroes in the world-a team he reportedly tried to join and was initially turned down from!-are making an all-hands-on-deck, this-is-the-big-one plea for anyone who’s left to come join the fight… and Ricochet doesn’t go.
Fortunately, I think I have a pretty good set of reasons as to why.
Race Relations
Simply put, I don’t think Ricochet believes in the concept of a Brotherhood of Mutants, and this rejection of the typical Marvelverse take on race relations has informed how I play him in Camp.
It boils down to choosing sides, and frankly I don’t think Rico accepts the issue of mutantkind and humankind’s shared future as any kind of “Us vs. Them” scenario. I play Rico as being someone who doesn’t define himself by his mutation-that is, he identifies as a mutant, that he has a mutation, but that genetic characteristic is not who he is. He sees himself as a human first and a mutant second-that mutants and baseline humans aren’t different species, but part of the same species-he’s just a different kind of human.
I feel justified in doing this for a couple of reasons. First, Rico’s never really been a part of the mutant community-he’s never had exposure to any kind of mutant solidarity, never been a part of any mutant-themed group, but rather has always been the token mutant in a group of otherwise superpowered individuals-and he’s fit in there. So he’s never had the insular, “we can only count on each other” sort of experience that so characterizes the X-Men and their affiliates. He’s more of a multiculturalist, who’s had teammates that run the gamut from normal humans to androids to magically empowered beings.
Second, both who he's fought and who he’s fought with should have clearly shown him that neither mutants nor baseline humans have any kind of monopoly on right or wrong or good or bad. In his career, he’s fought demons, aliens, killer robots, a superpowered mafia, superpowered drug traffickers, mutated sewer rats, common criminals, his former mentor, certain misguided teammates, and both mutant and non-mutant supervillains. Further, mutant terrorists murdered his mother, and a brainwashed mutant superhero killed his non-mutant best friend and former partner. He has seen that there are good mutants and bad mutants just as there are good humans and bad humans.
So where the rest of the Marvelverse is choosing sides based on mutant vs. non-mutant, I play Rico as saying, “That’s bullshit.” If he’s going to draw lines and choose sides, he’d much rather do it on the basis of people who do right vs. people who do wrong-good humans and good mutants vs. bad humans and bad mutants. He’d rather judge his friends and enemies on actions instead of genetic characteristics.
There’s a scene from a very good movie, Gettysburg, that I draw on for inspiration in all this-and with Rico being a film nerd, I don’t consider it a stretch to say that he’s seen it, and only slightly more of a stretch to say that it would’ve influenced him as it has me. In the scene, the idealistic (and historical) Union Colonel, Joshua Chamberlain, is talking with his crustily pragmatic (and fictional) Irish sergeant about what’s the measure of a man and what criteria do you use to determine that. The sergeant’s speech, greatly condensed here, is largely what I have Rico going by:
Sergeant ‘Buster’ Kilrain: The thing is, you cannot judge a race. Any man who judges by the group is a pea-wit. You take men one at a time […] What I'm fighting for is to prove I'm a better man than many of them [(the Southern aristocracy)…] There's many a man worse than me, and some better... But I don't think race or country matters a damn. What matters is justice. Which is why I'm here. I'll be treated as I deserve, not as my father deserved.
This is how I play Ricochet in Camp, with the outlook that group membership does not equal value. Mutant is not automatically good; human is not automatically bad. What matters is not genetic characteristics, but justice-right action instead of wrong action.
So that’s why I feel Ricochet wouldn’t have joined up with the X-Men, because at the moment their recruiting drive is based more on what you are than who you are. It doesn’t hurt that the brainwashed mutant superhero who killed his best friend was Wolverine, either, especially with him being the posterboy of the entire X-Men franchise. But even the Wolverine aspect underscores the rationale I’ve developed for Ricochet here-from his perspective, the X-Men are willing to tolerate a mass-murderer on their team because 1) he’s useful to their cause and 2) he’s a fellow mutant. If that’s all it takes to join, Rico would rather be a Loner.