X-MEN

but that wolverine in japan movie was terrible!

Maybe it would be better to ask this in one of the threads on the comics in particular, but what latter-day X books (like, written after the Morrison and Whedon runs) are worth reading?

no, the wolverine in japan movie was cool

I think the first wolverine movie is supposed to suck, dunno, didn't bother

xpost Remender's Uncanny X-Force is highly recommended as a follow-up to those two runs. I really like Marjorie Liu's Astonishing run. Some of the only Claremont-ian relationshippy X-books of recent years. Paul Cornell's Wolverine stuff is good. Uhhh...trying to think of stuff that isn't mired in X-lore.

wolverine in japan succeeded in having the structure of an actual movie and plot/character development, but felt kind of flat and hindered by the jean flashbacks/dreams

Thanks, OL; I'll probably check out the Liu run first.

Her run comprises like four or five trades that you should be able to find fairly cheap at this point. They're also in the process of reprinting her NYX and X-23 stuff. She's not showy but I really dig her emphasis on the relationships between characters.

she's an excellent comics writer. Monstress is amazing

I've been curious about that since she kinda snuck up on my radar.

Cool; I think my library has most of the Liu trades, and I always tended to read the X series with more interest in character interaction/development than in continuity puzzles, so I'll start there.

If you're looking for BIG X-Men that isn't necessarily new reader friendly, I'd recommend Brubaker's Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar Empire, Mike Carey's run on X-Men/X-Men Legacy (he did some great stuff with developing Rogue), Victor Gischler's Curse of the Mutants (yes, the vampire thing, which I was pre-emptively super dismissive towards but which won me over)...uhhhhh...most of the big crossovers from recent years have been good. Messiah Complex and Manifest Destiny were solid.

Liu is Junot Díaz's girlfriend

Yeah, I just recently found that out.

Peter David's X-Factor is also good on character development but it's also pretty much one ten-year-long story.

Oh, Swierczynski's Cable is one of my favorites from the past decade. Big, crazy action and good character development.

Saw this today and surprised how much I enjoyed it on a big dumb action movie level. There were plenty of plot holes but nothing so egregious that it took me out of the story -- curious to know what Roger Mexico thought was so crazy about it! Like I could've used way more action!

The Horsemen were underused, but I was ridiculously giddy at watching Jean go nuclear.

I liked the Bendis run on X-Men but it's best if you just stop halfway through and pretend he died or something

good christ apocalypse was terrible - easily up there with wolverine origins and last stand as the most risible x-men movies

i was particularly annoyed by the fact that the final, world-shattering battle all took place on about 20 feet of set standing in for a single intersection in cairo, the least inspiring backdrop for a finale i can remember. at least the end of the first avengers film alleviated the obviousnessness of its overpass set with some airborne action!

Any X-Men movie that would cut out its scenes of mutants hanging out at the mall fundamentally misunderstands its source material.

this movie should've been set on fire

20 feet of set comment is... oh god, it's so right

No doubt they used green screen and CGI for those 20 feet, too.

first class wasn't a great film, but it had characters more interesting than anything that'd been done in the franchise for a very long time

it's as if bryan singer saw that the franchise could have some life, threw it in the bathtub with days of future past (the near-future scenes were a boring dirge that approached the lifelessness of his last film, and the past scenes with the younger actors started out fine but quickly devolved into character in-fighting that ended with the barely-understandable final action piece), and then tried to drown it in the bathtub with this one

Any X-Men movie that would cut out its scenes of mutants hanging out at the mall fundamentally misunderstands its source material.

there was maybe five minutes of 'normal life at the mansion' scenes which recalled the spirit of claremont but they got dumped double-quick in favour of poor oscar isaac joylessly teleporting around the world and giving people haircuts which turned them evil

what I got out of this movie is that mutants have powers, and they fight a lot

Bryan Singer does not get the appeal of the X-Men. But his movies make money so this is probably as good as cinematic X-Men are going to get.

(TBF, though, half the people who write X-Men comics don't seem to get the appeal of the X-Men either.)

there are a few angles of appeal and somehow singer made at least two films without finding any of them

A general rule with films like these is if that if I have to have someone explaining to me what is happening on screen with some variation of "in the comics, it is explained that..." which was the case with this film, then the movie can fuck off.

imo additional context makes this one worse

there's so much terribly delivered exposition in this

Rose Byrne gets saddled with some particularly horrifying dialogue

I just remembered that Havok's death was so unclearly depicted that the movie was almost over by the time I realized that he'd actually died.

Is anyone still reading Krakoa X-Men or have we all tapped out

I was deep into mutant stuff in 5th-10th grades and then dropped out. Started following a x-men cover thing on twitter and I'm stunned at how awful some of the 90's stuff looked. Just... ugh. The logos themselves are hideous, and seeing the bastard children of Jim Lee and Rob Leifeld barf barf barf was Slimer from the Ghost Busters in there at some point?

Did it actually get good again?

That was Doop.

Doop is awesome.

I'm reading more of it than I expected, I'll read nearly anything by Kieron Gillen and Ale Wing, and the current crossover (taking the three main titles 10/100/1000 years into a future where Sinister has succeeded in infecting the immortality process so that everyone is Sinister) is pretty wild.

Cow_Art - this is the foundation for the modern X-Men, if it sounds like something interesting - "Mutants can't die" as a foundation stone is at least an interesting start.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_X_and_Powers_of_X

Is Gambit still around? Gambit suuuuuuuuuuucked

First X-men I remember reading was on a road trip with my parents and I got it from a spinner rack in a gas station. I think the entire issue was Cyclops and Madeline (fake Jean Grey?) stranded in the ocean after their plane went down and fighting off a shark. The mix of action and soap opera really got to me.

I read whatever came out till March 2020 and enjoyed it. Then, during the pandemic, I subscribed to a bunch of comics in order to support my local comic store during the "strange times", and finally got them delivered to the house in a bundle sometime in 2021. By that point, there so many of them, it was too exhausting to comtemplate starting them. I have, like, the Jimmy Olsen series, some Ale Wing and Chip Zdarsky minis, the last year of Immortal Hulk, and way too many Hickman Krakoa X-Mens. I'll read them sometime, probably!

My desire to catch up was put off, somewhat, by the news that Hickman left.

Also I find Leinil Yu's work annoying to read!

My desire to catch up was put off, somewhat, by the news that Hickman left.

― Chuck_Tatum, Sunday, March 26, 2023 8:49 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This

Plus there are constantly more and more and more series!

I may wait until this whole direction ends and then trawl to figure out which storylines are best regarded and buy those trades

good luck having those trades still be in print by the time you figure it out obv

Meantime

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv3Ss8o9gGQ