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Saturday, September 07, 2019 

Screen Rant thinks Heimdall deserved to die at the hands of Bullseye, and doesn't care Scarlet Witch is still villified

Wow, the Screen Rant website's got a writer who's just proven how much they really "love" comic books there, with a column stating that Thor co-star Heimdall got what he deserved in the 2nd Valkyrie series issue starring Jane Foster, where Bullseye's doing to the Norse deity what he did to Elektra Nachios in Daredevil back in the early 80s (and to make matters worse, the word "deserves" is typed in capital on the headline):
There have been too many Marvel characters whose time was cut short by Marvel's Avengers movies, but the sudden death of Heimdall was seen as a bigger missed opportunity than most. Fortunately for fans, Heimdall's death in Marvel Comics is absolutely breathtaking... and his best story is only getting started.

Fans of Infinity War won't find any bitterness here, since Idris Elba's Heimdall was likely never fated for a larger role--and after Thor: Ragnarok, certainly not one as proud or poetic as the comics. The same goes for his final moments, too. When Heimdall is impaled in the latest pages of Marvel Comics, the new Valkyrie Jane Foster is at his side. Embracing her new role as the warrior chosen to carry Asgardian dead into Valhalla, Heimdall is given the death he truly deserves. And it's a scene no Thor fan is likely to ever forget.
It's a scene no sensible Thor fan is likely to approve of either. Why are we supposed to be impressed by the whole idea of turning this into a spectacle where Bullseye, the Daredevil adversary who's been around since the mid-70s, now becomes a god-slaughterer? It's little more than a sensationalized excuse for taking a villain from another book and having him murder a deity in a way that's meant to serve as an "event", and not a very stand-alone one, as the following makes clear:
The lore surrounding the death of Heimdall may seem complicated, but fans won't need to read all of Marvel's War of The Realms to understand it (although they might want to, after seeing this storyline). With Jane Foster having served as Thor already, and with the Valkyrie wiped out in battle, there is only one solution: Jane Foster becomes the new Valkyrie. There's just one problem: the enchanted sword of Brunnhilde, leader of the Valkyrie is missing... or it was, until Bullseye plunged it straight through Heimdall's heart.

It's a tragic scene, made only more heartbreaking by the fact that Heimdall was on Earth strictly to help Jane find the lost sword, Dragonfang. But his death demonstrates why it must be recovered: it turns anyone who wields it into a mighty warrior, obeying their will in fashion similar to Mjolnir, and even calls a winged horse to its rider, as well. It's all the powers and status one would expect of a member of the Valkyrie... and in the hands of a killer like Bullseye, it could turn all the world into one massive bloodbath. Heimdall manages to save Jane from Bullseye's finishing swipe, but is run through yet again before finally falling to certain death.
Ah, see? They did it just to serve as a means for boosting Bullseye from simpler level of a mercenary with considerable accuracy to a crazed man wielding a science-fantasy weapon far more advanced than anything he'd used before. It's little different from Norman Osborn being elevated to a government operative in Dark Reign. The most laughable part of this is when Heimdall's ghost rises from his body and Jane tells him it's time for a "journey into mystery", a nod to the title of the anthology Thor took over when he debuted in 1962.

And that's not the only irritating article they've written up of recent lacking respect for past contributors' hard work. There's also this article about House of X #4, which glosses over an allusion to the time Brian Bendis turned Scarlet Witch into a madwoman:
The X-Men have battled enemies across time and space in the name of defending Mutants from hate, violence, and betrayal. But it's an Avenger, not a supervillain, who gets credit for one of the greatest crimes ever committed against Marvel's Mutants.

That's a sizable group, considering the number of government figures, military zealots, maniacal Mutant-haters, and religious fanatics who have targeted and killed Mutants. The arrival of Sentinels on the Mutant homeland of Genosha will never be matched, as the attack killed literal millions of innocent Mutants. But if comic book fans have ever wondered about the second most destructive act, or villain... that honor belongs to Wanda Maximoff. Also known as the Avenger Scarlet Witch.
It's clear from the sugary tone they have no issue with this, movie adaptations or not winding up embarrassed by this dreck. The following is most truly ghastly:
In the House of X issue that sees the shocking deaths of multiple X-Men, the canonical numbers of Mutant victims are finally set in stone, singling out the two "extinction-level events" that have driven Mutantkind to their current situation. Take a look:

The actual numbers confirmed by the issue are staggering. The Genosha genocide of over 16 million Mutants forever changed Marvel Comics, but the population on Earth still held steady at almost 1 million (986,618 exactly). It wasn't until Marvel's "House of M" story line that Scarlet Witch was driven to her breaking point, ultimately restoring reality and uttering a single spell: "No more mutants." The result was known as 'The Decimation' to the world (a name the MCU used for the Thanos snap), but more importantly as "M-Day" to any Mutants who managed to survive. After Wanda spoke her infamous spell, the total population dropped to merely a fraction of that original: just 198 living Mutants.
My my. This is far worse than turning Moira MacTaggart into a mutant herself. I think Jonathan Hickman's just given everyone a very valid reason to avoid his X-reboot like the plague. If he's taken one of Bendis' worst stories and brought it to the fore as canon again, along with Grant Morrison's New X-Men story that saw many mutants pointlessly wiped out to boot, he's only compounded one of the most gigantic problems with superhero comics today - an over-the-top emphasis on massive deaths, violence, shock value, to say nothing of making heroes the villains. What are the odds SJW advocates won't complain how a lady who became one of the Avengers' favorite members has been turned into cannon fodder for cheap denigration, maybe because Wanda happens to be so attractive a girl? They sure never seemed concerned when Bendis was doing it, so we shouldn't be surprised if the same is so here. All that aside, it's press sources like CBR's affiliated site which enable these offensive stories by gushing over and failing to criticize them.

Hickman really must think everyone's too stupid to realize what wrongs he's etched out, or must think X-Men fans won't care since it's an Avengers member he's tainted. Not so. All he's doing is insulting everyone's intellect. Don't pay money for his X-books if that's how he's going to treat Stan Lee's creations from any series. And before I forget, this is further proof just how much value C.B. Cebulski places on the MCU's cast of characters.

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When the reviewer says that Heimdall got the death he deserved, he means that he was given a death worthy of a hero, not that he did something rotten and deserved punishment.

What have you got against deaths that prove you're worthy to go to Valhalla?

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