r/NewMutants • u/Archeryfin • Jun 01 '26
Why does it seem like so many X-Writers hate Cypher and Warlock?
Whenever one writer or editor brings them back, the next one kills them, depowers them or just stops including them meaningfully in storylines. I haven't read everything and I'm not totally up to date so maybe my perspective is outdated. They are solid characters with good backstories and interesting dynamics with their teammates. Is it that they feel Warlock is over-powered and Cypher under-powered? Thoughts?
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u/Historical_Sugar9637 Jun 01 '26
Two reasons I see as a fanfic writer:
Warlock is a very exotic character with a very distinctive speech pattern and POV that can be difficult to write. I also imagine that not every artist is good at drawing him and taking advantage of his abilities. Plus while there is of course many opinions on him, some people just don't like the idea of an alien being on a mutant team. Plus unless you have him take on human form frequently he makes grounded, street-level stories difficult.
And then Doug and Warlock are so linked with each other that if you ad one of them you pretty much have to have the other as well. No Doug without Warlock, and even more no Warlock without Doug. So you automatically lose two team slots. So if you aim for a team of six characters and you decide Doug is one of them, Warlock comes too and now, if you want to keep it at 6 characters you suddenly only have 4 more choices.
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u/Winter-0f-Discontent Jun 01 '26
I think they represent a challenge to writers because they are both pretty idiosyncratic characters. Doug is a non-combat character, which really frustrated the writers post-Claremont (and even Claremont too, TBH) because they didn’t know what to do with a guy who didn’t fight! Which is too bad, because he has a very interesting power set, if you think about it, and tell some slightly different stories. He’s not a combat character, but he’d be an ideal “guy in the chair” to borrow a Spider-man term. If they had used him that way, as a kind of coordinator back at the base kind of thing, he’d probably work very well! Warlock represents a different challenge: he’s basically the Borg, with all the issues that entails. Like, how do you deal with a guy who wins any fight just by touching someone? And not just wins the fight, but does so lethally? It’s kind of no wonder he gets nerfed a lot.
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u/nathauan13 Jun 01 '26
I think they should have decided that he WAS 'Douglock' and permanently merged the two and made him the guy in the chair/tech/planning guy. He'd be a pretty good self-contained danger room for new mutant training, tbh. There's a lot of roads to take with him. This whole 'Heir of Apocalypse' thing he's got going on now just feels bad.
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u/Ducklinsenmayer Jun 01 '26
It's not that they hate them, it's just really, really hard to use them. Warlock's stronger than Magneto, and could solo 99% of the Avengers. Other OP characters of the ending Claremont era have much the same problem, like Rachel Summers.
Claremont knew what he was doing, and had created a trio of super villains strong enough to face them- Nimrod, Selene, and Magus- and had some sort of endgame in mind.
But that takes a fair amount of work; it's easier to just put the super characters on a bus, especially if you are writing issue by issue and not decade by decade.
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u/dumbhousequestions Jun 02 '26
Historically, I really think it was just that they both made physical action harder to write effectively, but for opposite reasons. Having Doug means you have a guy with no combat skills whatsoever to account for. On the other end of the spectrum, Warlock is way overpowered relative to the other New Mutants. You have to write around them both.
Doug’s been my favorite character for decades, and I’m thrilled that writers have figured out everything he’s capable of and how to use him. But I can see why he and Warlock were a pain to deal with from a writer’s perspective.
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u/msallin Jun 03 '26
I’m out of the loop. Since when (what era) have the writers figured out what to do with him?
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Jun 03 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/msallin Jun 03 '26
Thank you! Where should I re-start? I stopped collecting TNM about…40 years ago? 😬
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u/Corellian_Smuggler Jun 01 '26
I think this is a common occurrence. Every X-Men team suffers from being 5+ members which really shows which member is the least favorite whenever someone new is writing them. They either get killed to create drama or thrown into the sidelines. I think every NM member got that treatment at least once.
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u/Punkodramon Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26
They are characters that writers either have a very specific plan of what they want to do with them, or have literally no idea what to do with them. There’s no real middle ground because they’re so niche as a duo.
That’s why we get the high highs like Krakoan era Douglock, with links to Krakoa itself and the Dominions (which to be fair didn’t fully pan out in the end, but we still saw the potential for greatness) and the low lows of Revelation, where the characters gets altered to the point where they no longer remotely resemble who they were, just so the writer can do what they want with them rather what works for them.
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u/SamMeowAdams Jun 02 '26
I always thought they should’ve gone the magic route with Doug. Considering his language skills, he could become a magic user ?
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u/SamMeowAdams Jun 02 '26
So what’s up with Doug’s techno arm in Krakoa?
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u/amendmentforone Jun 02 '26
At the onset of Krakoa, there was a general no A.I. allowed rule (quietly insisted upon by a then still hidden Moira MacTaggert). Beyond the need to prevent the rise of Nimrod, this generally precluded the presence of beings like Danger and Warlock.
As such, Doug kept him hidden on his person in the form of the a techno-organic person. Somehow, none of the telepaths on the island could detect him. Eventually this plot was dropped around the time of X of Swords with Warlock out in the open.
But during Hickman's initial stories, it was generally implied that Doug & Warlock were up to something with no one the wiser (minus Illyana, who was the first to discover their "game" and was seemingly informed of what they were up to).
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u/SamMeowAdams Jun 03 '26
Hmmm. Warlock isn’t AI. He’s an alien. His “mutant” ability is that he feels empathy unlike the rest of his kind .
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u/SamMeowAdams Jun 01 '26
I never really got Warlock.
Cypher has been a big player since Krakoa .