The Ravens Nest

The Question Answered

I came across a TikTok video with responses to this one guy walking around asking “Who let Gen-X off the hook?” and the responses, well, they were pretty interesting and entertaining and I’d like to post it here for you, dear reader.

Personally, I’d like to put it in terms of comic books. By the way, Alphacore #1 Covers A and C are here and I’ll be reviewing it as soon as I’m done reading it but I digress.

Generation-X are the product of the Baby Boomers and we’re now realizing that much of what was available to that generation will not be there for us. Some of us were even straight up warned by Boomers that it wouldn’t and it was the equivalent of being told “Hey, what you have right now. This is as good as it gets. Sorry, kids.” and when it clicked, we were pretty angry about that. Many don’t understand our fascination with self-reliance, creativity or our casual approach to authority if we even recognize it at all.

We had to do some thinking about how this was all gonna play out. We were all raised outside, drank from garden hoses, did our stupid shit without being able to document and post it for the world to see. Many of the things that some of you in Gen-Z are doing right now, not only did we do it first, we did it best because, when we got banged up, we got up, wiped the tears from our eyes, dug the pebbles out of our flesh, caught our breath, walked it off, realized that gnarly scar that we were gonna have was a cool as shit story to tell and got on with life. We had very little supervision and we don’t care much for micromanagement by people who waste it. We show a deep disdain for anyone who thinks they’re able to micromanage us without serious repercussions because we will give you what you want to the letter and let you suffer the consequences, the headaches, the frustrations, etc.

Meanwhile, you can’t get mad at us. We did as we were told. There’s a lady in there that mentions that we will fuck you up and we’re not the bigger person. No lies detected.

Let’s get to those comic books and I’ll show you. We had a Superman that took bullets and missiles to the chest. Yours takes balls to the chin. When I was growing up, we had the Comics Code Authority and still managed to get this classic called the Barry Windsor-Smith Weapon-X story which served as the origin of how Wolverine got that adamantium infused into his skeleton. I don’t think your generation can handle that one these days. It’s really violent and that movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine glossed over and sugar-coated it for you. We realized that, due to the intense violence, there can never be a faithful adaptation to screen. Wolverine kills so many people in that particular book in the most brutal and feral fashion ever seen at that time and then goes out into the snow in extreme cold wearing little more than a brainwashing device and shredded cut-off shorts…that’s it. Not only that but it’s a real story of body horror and personal invasion as Wolverine was straight up kidnapped and knocked out to have this done to him both unwittingly and unwillingly. It traumatized him to the point where it mentally broke him and that’s why he has trouble remembering things.

We read that. I recently re-read it and, in my 40s now, realized just how violent and visceral it is. These days I’m not the kind that embraces violence like I used to, I prefer a more reasoned approach to things. That isn’t to say that I wouldn’t employ it if engaged. I would rather be the former warrior in the garden than a gardener in a war is what I’m telling you.

So when another person says that we don’t hurt faces, we hurt feelings, that is another absolute truth. Consider the fact that we watched Artax die and Atreyu try to save him in The Neverending Story or the Skeksis shrivel a very small mystic to nearly nothing in The Dark Crystal. Those were some pretty horrifying things to lay on a child but lay them on us, they did and without mercy or warning.

When we were growing up, Spawn, Youngblood, ShadowHawk, WildC.A.T.S. and many other titles were coming out and these comics told the CAC to go fuck themselves and published what they liked. Those comics dealt with themes and imagery that was horrific at that time as well.

What do you have, Gen-Z? Self-inserts, your heroes aren’t out there saving people or making a difference. They’re nihilistic and terminally online. You didn’t make yourselves the heroes of the story, you dragged down the heroes and just wrote yourselves. Congratulations on the do nothing, go nowhere approach.

Now, in the 90s, the comics I mentioned sold really well. Sure, it was a niche hobby but let me tell you. You may think that the comics were shit and I’ll admit the overprinting did not do them any favors, some of the character designs were done more for cool factor than function and yes, some were blatantly ridiculous but they sold and they appealed to a crowd that didn’t care whether the character was black or white (Ex: Stormwatch, Spawn, Blade) or who the character’s were sleeping with. Hell one character even had contracted HIV during one story arc. Our heroes didn’t always win at some point. Sometimes, the villains gained the upper hand.

Final example here. There was a comic run called The X-Cutioner’s Song. The story focused on a storied rivalry between two characters. In the story, Professor Xavier delivered a speech during one of Lila Cheney’s concerts and was shot. Everyone thought it was Cable that had made the assassination attempt on the Professor here but it was revealed that Cable was aboard his orbital station at the time, having withdrawn from the conflict between mutants and humans. If he didn’t do it but everyone saw him do it, then who did it? His clone, Stryfe. Stryfe was an exact duplicate of Cable with high-level psionic abilities but he didn’t have the Tekno-Organic virus that was causing Cable to become half machine. Cable had to use his psionic abilities to keep the virus at bay. Stryfe had, out of sheer boredom, become a mutant terrorist and just sought to watch the world burn. It culminated in a battle on the moon where Cable had rigged an explosive charge. Keep in mind, this is the child of Scott Summers and Jean Grey…Cable, that is. In that battle, Stryfe was straight up fucking Cable up and calling him names like “Half-Life” the entire time. An embattled Cable finally did gain the upper hand by getting his hands on Stryfe and holding him over the explosive, screaming at Scott to push the button to detonate. Scott was conflicted and couldn’t do it until finally he did. This was X-Force #18, in case you’re wondering.

Watching the best and worst aspects of your own child do battle with each other until the best part screams out that killing him is the only way to be sure to eliminate the threat he poses, that’s deep shit. That’s good storytelling. It was raw, edgy, taught some harsh life-lessons and made some of us realize that the world outside doesn’t play by the rules set forth from before. In my childhood bedroom, I was safe and I could read those things but outside…that was a different can of worms.

We also didn’t have therapy. We got our asses whipped when we didn’t do things right. Some of life’s harsher lessons were painful and we learned from them very quickly. While pain can teach us much, it also has this weird ability to make those lessons stick. With that can come with experience and with that comes wisdom and it all stems from poor judgment.

So if some of us seem to have that thousand-yard stare and a fuckload of wisdom, it’s a good idea to listen and not fuck with us because we’re taking the sum total of what we had to learn through a metric fuckton of pain and impart it to you without you having to go through it yourself. We’re not interested in being The Bigger People. We simply try to help and when it goes unheeded, we withdraw because we don’t like askholes and we are trying our best, in this really stupid world sometimes, to just be left alone and that’s the one piece of advice that’s one hundred percent correct. Don’t fuck with us because we come equipped with enough smoke to make your precious Climate Change a reality for you.