The X-Men comic thread

[El Chuxter]

I don't know if there's anyone out there still reading this, so this may very well be a nostalgia thread of sorts. I was looking through the new X-Men Encyclopedia and a few comics at the store a few days ago, and some of the events of the past decade (since the death of Colossus and the whole Onslaught debacle caused me to swear to never buy another new X-Men comic) astounded me:

1) Juggernaut is a good guy. Juggernaut! Now I know Magneto is an on-again, off-again baddie and actually led the X-Men for a while, and during the sales-hungry period known as the early 90s, Sabretooth ended up on the team briefly, but isn't Juggernaut some sort of arch-villain?

2) Speaking of bad guys turned good. . . A new title called Weapon X looks basically like Marvel's mutant take on the old DC title Suicide Squad: bad guys doing good things. Members include Sauron (another fellow I never expected to be on the good side of the fence), Wild Child, and (IIRC) Mesmero.

3) In the Encyclopedia, I learned that Psylocke died some time ago.

4) Wolverine has a full origin now, and the early years don't match at all to the cool tidbits we used to get. (Like his being the son of a chief, kicked out of the tribe because of his short stature and taken in by wolves.)

5) Domino and Strong Guy are not mentioned in the Encyclopedia at all. However, it appears that the rumors of the Multiple Man's demise were greatly exaggerated.

6) Professor X can walk again. . . this week.

7) The name "Cable" never shows up in the Encyclopedia. "Nathan Summers," however, does. Apparently The Artist Formerly Known as Cable is now a Matrix-esque suited guy who works with the X-teams. The more or less disavowal of all things Cable must especially suck for Rob Liefeld. Cable was the only thing he ever created that was worth anything.

[James Boba Fettfield]

That doesn't sound like the X-Men I remember. Professor X is walking. That's like Superman not flying.

[Dr Zoltar]

Thanks for the recap, El Chuxter. I haven't picked up an X-Men title since Onslaught as well. The huge gap in continuity really drove me nuts, as well as the fact it took the X-Men 2 years -- 2 YEARS! -- to search for Prof. X after he disappeared. That didn't make much sense. I also used to love Gen X, but the artwork got so poor that I could barely follow the storyline anymore. X-Men and Spiderman were the 2 Marvel titles that really liked to make a story arc last forever with no closure in sight. So I dropped all things Marvel in the 90's and haven't looked back. Well except for the new Captain Marvel and Punisher. Those titles have been pretty solid so far...

[Patient Zero]

Strange!!! I haven't read any of them since around issue 225 or something. What are they on now?

[El Chuxter]

I have no clue, Jonna. I think Marvel's "reset" all their titles to #1 about fifteen times in the last decade. I stopped reading shortly after #300, IIRC, and that was about a decade ago.

So you stopped at #225? Arrrgh! You missed Jim Lee's stellar run, as well as the introductions of Jubilee and Bishop, two of my favorites! (On the plus side, you missed everything with that cornball Gambit, too, so it balances out.)

My biggest problem with Onslaught is that it completely screwed up Portacio's original (and obviously hinted at) story that Gambit was (or might become) the traitor who killed the X-Men. The squeezing of fifteen lines of explanation about Professor X going bad into a split second of static from the original tapes Bishop saw in the future--that was as ridiculous as they come. It's about as disrespectful to previous writers as the entire Spider-Clone fiasco (which made me stop reading that title as well).

JBF, I'm pretty sure Professor X was able to walk for a few years in the late 80s and early 90s, when he was off with the Shiar, but that may have been due to alien technology. . . .

[Patient Zero]

Well I just checked at the official site and it stated that UNCANNY X-MEN is up to #421. So I guess it has been awhile. Is X-factor (I think that is what it was called) still around?

[Dr Zoltar]

Originally posted by El Chuxter
It's about as disrespectful to previous writers as the entire Spider-Clone fiasco (which made me stop reading that title as well).

I got sucked into the Spidey Clone garbage too. It dragged on for so long that I dumped the title. I think I stopped at the "Trial of Peter Parker." I couldn't stand the Parker clone with long hair and bizarre puffy outfit. The only plus side from having those issues is that an artist that worked on them lives locally so I've gotten him to sign them.

[Bel-Cam Jos]

I left X-Men after the Inferno/Fall of the Mutants crossovers (I think it was around #250 or so), which was late 80s/early 90s. I was always more of a Spiderman fan, but Wolverine was cool until he became the Ice Cube of comics (first hard core and mysterious, then in sit-coms and comedy films). I left because of the "Get the Limited to Only 7 Trillion Copies Special Edition Bronzed With Play-Dough Cover" period. Ugh.

[James Boba Fettfield]

So he could walk before. I saw him doing it on the cartoon with Magneto, but I didn't know he had spent some doing it in the comics.
You guys should have stuck through all of that clone mess, there was nothing like seeing Ben get by the Green Goblin. It was a messed up issue, but still, they killed Poochy, I mean Ben Reiley.

[Eternal Padawan]

Wow. I can't believe we ALL left Marvel at the time of the SpiderClone/Onslaught/Heroes Reborn(renumbering) fiasco.

X-Factor got cancelled didn't it?
And Generation X?
Then they had Mutant X which was Havoc in an alternate dimension, but then he came back and is in a coma and that got cancelled.
X-Force reached 100 issues (much like its predecessor New Mutants) before getting cancelled and turning into a parody X-comic titled X-Statix or something.
Uncanny X-Men is still around.
Jim Lee'sX-Men got renamed New X-Men after a hundred issues or so (when it was no longer new...)
And then There's the third X-Men title Extreme X-Men...

Apparently the cohesiveness of Claremont's work for 16 years has been trampled into chaos in the ensuing years and nothing makes any sense in the books anymore, but it's okay because it won't matter when the next artist/writer takes over in six months.

I tried picking up a few issues here and there and reading them but it just doesn't interest me like when I started. To me, the peak Golden Age of X-Men was from the Mutant Massacre up through Inferno. The X-Men were on their own without Xavier, living in the Australian Outback. The original team was "hunting mutants" and both teams were headed for a confrontation of epic proportions. After that, the glitzy Cable showed up, teams were realigned into a harder edged fighting unit, X-Force, the govt sanctioned X-Factor, etc. The X-Men wandered throught the seige perilous. It was controlled Chaos that was entertaining to look forward to every month wondering "When will it all stop?" Then the Age of Apocalypse happened (which was a cool story) but after they came back, everything seemed....different. It was as if the popularity of the X-Men (cartoons, upcoming movie, etc) had morphed the whole idea of the X-men into a reflection of itself that was designed to appeal to the mass audience that it had created. It seemed flat and prepackaged and it was missing what had made the X-Men cool in the first place. Now the whole thing has been coasting ever since....


Don't even get me started on Spider-man and his clonage. not only was it a lame storyline, it wore out it's welcome and stayed waaaaaaaaay too long. Wasn't it ongoing to two years or more? It was like a marathon of waiting for an excrutiating root canal to be over and the dentist keeps drilling and drilling and drilling....I gave up. I don't even care if the Jackal made Spider-Man or the Green Goblin never really killed Kane or whatever the heck else was going on at the end. Then they killed Aunt May (fine...no problem) and BROUGHT HER BACK. <------Last straw.

I started reading Strazynski's ASM recently and I love the dialogue. Vintage wisecracking. it's like the Spider Clone thing never happened.