To them, it seems reasonable that jealousy over Diana might destroy their society, but the rest of the Amazons have mostly managed to get past that sort of thing.

I loved this story, and it was the first time I've ever found the Amazons qua Amazons to be really *interesting*.

And I'd rather have more new characters, even if they stink like the Neo. Because sometimes they rock, like Cassandra Nova. How are they ever supposed to get more villains, if no one's making new ones?

And as for Bastion? Meh, there are worse villains to bring back. At least he kicked ass when he first appeared. It's better than a Hawd Boiwled Henwy last-page reveal, right?

Blob - depowered
Acolytes - majority depowered or dead
MLF - majority depowered or dead
Brotherhood - just a mish-mash of mutant villains, see Acolytes and MLF
Magneto - depowered
Sentinels - became bodyguards, but now status unknown
Hellfire Club - which version? most recently run by Sunspot
Selene - running around New X-Men subplot, probably forgotten
Sauron - in the Savage Land or in jail
Mastermind - all three versions dead
Reavers - cannon fodder
Lady Deathstrike - possibly dead
Sabretooth - dead
Avalanche - mia

These are just off the top of my head. Any character, hero or villain, is not inherently lame. I would go so far as to say Bastion has been used in some lame stories (the less said about Operation Zero Tolerance the better), but his origins are quite interesting. Used correctly, he can be a great villain, any character can.

And the problem with "just create new villains" is that it's been done with mixed results. Remember the Neo? Bastion himself was an attempt to create a new villain.

My only complaint about Bastion is that after blowing him up three or four times, you'd think the x-men would lock up the scraps.

The problem with this is, you can only do that so many times before you wind up taking the story somewhere that a) you don't want to go, and b) you can't get back from easily. Which then leads to messy, ugly, kludgy retcons that fans lament because, "Oh, now things are just back to the way they always were," not understanding that they had to put them that way because they'd written themselves into a corner trying to "do something different."

Now, I'm not getting too worked up over Bendis' Avengers run because it doesn't fall afoul of "B". The next writer to do 'Avengers' once Bendis gets sick of the title or the readers get sick of Bendis can clear everything up in about five issues, just like John Byrne quickly wiped away Walt Simonson's run, just like Kurt Busiek hit the ground running after Bob Harras' run, et cetera et cetera. It's the way the Avengers works. As a team book with a rotating membership, clearing the decks is easy. But I still object strongly to the idea that a comic is only worth reading if it advances the metaplot, because ultimately, that leads to a comic that used to be high-octane super-hero action with the stars of the Marvel Universe, now becoming 22 pages of Power Man arguing with his girlfriend.

Exactly what i said to my friend when i read x-force

Internet-mandated disclaimer of non-hostility: I've read a good amount of your writing on comics, and for the most part I think it's good, interesting stuff, so I'm not trying to bag on you. (end disclaimer) That being said, you seem to be saying that comic books should remain largely unchanged in any major sense across a period of ten years. If I dropped X-Men today and picked it up again in 2018, should I be able to without difficulty drop in on a serialized story that had had about 120 installments, give or take, since my last reading? Why? If that were the case, I'd sure feel like a sucker if I had BOUGHT any of those intervening issues!

Apologies if I've misunderstood (maybe you were just noting the change?), but I couldn't disagree more.

Actually this is sort of true. When I did life drawing in high school the easiest people to draw where either really good looking people or less attractive people. Just easier to focus on distinctive features.

That's probably not the reason for the Ghost Rider nurses though.

There's no Cap (they mention he's dead), no Iron Man (they mention he may or may not be a Skrull), no Thor, and the entire issue is a long conversation between Power Man and some woman who's apparently his girlfriend or wife about their break-up, conducted in front of Ms. Marvel, Spider-Woman, and Wonder Man (who's gone back to the "safari jacket" look.)

Not only could I not imagine someone being interested in continuing to read the Avengers based on this issue, I couldn't even conceive of them believing they'd actually picked up the right series. I picture them checking the indicia to make sure there wasn't a stapling error, and the cover to their favorite comic hadn't wound up on an issue of "70s Rejects In Love".

That's obvious. At Marvel, you are either a hot, desirable woman, or you are a worthless, fat cow who needs to have her ovaries removed before you procreate.

In spite of being a product of the dark days of the mid-90s X-Men books, Bastion was a pretty decent villain. He was powerful, competent, and smart enough to attack the X-Men on multiple fronts - with both a new breed of Sentinels and government legislation. He had a decent background that connected him to two of the X-Men's old adversaries from the Claremont era and explained his motivations quite nicely. Bastion's only real failing was that he was intrinsically tied to the Operation Zero Tolerance crossover, which was one of the lamest and most pathetic crossover events in the history of the X-franchise, made even worse by the fact that Scott Lobdell cut out the planned ending so he could leave the books on time. And after that, Bastion's fate was concluding in a couple of team-up annuals which very few people read. I think Bastion is definitely worth another shot, and bringing him back to lead the anti-mutant Purifiers is a perfect place for him.

Let me tell, it didn't end well... not well at all!

Trust me, you don't want to meet their Madame.
(...or is it still called a Pimp if she has a mustage?)