S/D X-Men Runs

That Lapham AOA series had some moments

oh, i had no idea they brought the title back. i was thinking of the Claremont book that ran concurrently with Morrison's New X-Men ten years ago

it would be funny if black Cyclops survived in regular continuity though, because then there would be three Cyke variants running around and other characters could start calling him "nu-Jean"

they really didn't have enough time to flesh out black Cyclops

what do you mean, we know he's black and he's Cyclops, and... um...

Black Cyclops? Maybe I do need to start reading X-Men comics again

we forgot to mention that he's dressed as a Union soldier, btw

Thoughts on Jason Aaron's Wolverine & The X-Men? I'm really enjoying it as of about ten issues in

I think it started great but went downhill somewhere around the circus issues. Had at least a good year/18 months.

That's about right. The recent Hellfire Club showdown is an uptick in quality but not as high as the initial issues.

Agreed. I think I described it somewhere as a half-hearted attempt at rehashing Mojo Mayhem, which might be a bit crude but probably works in big handfuls.

Reading the first Uncanny omnibus. So great, and I haven't even gotten to Byrne yet! Also:

http://i.imgur.com/S3VtNUN.jpg

For those fans of the Claremont/Byrne X-Men, be sure to go and check out Essential Marvel Team-Up Vol. 3. That is a really good Marvel Essential and is filled with Bill Mantlo and Claremont stories with primarily John Byrne artwork. In hindsight, I would think the Spider-man/X-men story in Marvel Team Up along with that Iron Fist/X-Men story should probably be reprinted along side the Uncanny X-men issues. Maybe they will catch those when they re-do the X-men in those new 'epic' trade series Marvel is starting.

It's hard to defend Byrne considering some of the things he said. I know I kind of lost some respect for him back in the 80s when I went to one of the Mid-Ohio cons and he just came off like an ass (and the fawning fans around him was weird), but I still liked his artwork quite a bit. He definitely seemed like a guy that probably thought he crapped gold.

That said, John Byrne had a pretty cool style that seemed to cut the middle between Gil Kane and Neal Adams and I think in hindsight through Byrne's influence through Jim Lee is pretty much become one of the de-facto styles of super hero comic artwork. Those late 70s through mid-80s Marvel comics though are still quite well done. I think in hindsight, you can see even the cracks in the DC Superman run. There are a few issues that are pretty good, but there are some total dogs in there too (like the Big Barda Action issue).

xp lol chuck was such a dick

It's kind of funny reading that panel considering how Ed Brubaker and Josh Whedon kind of went back and really ret-con made Xavier look like an ass.

made him look like more of an ass, or less of an ass?

I think these two stories kind of make Chuck X look quite a bit like a bad guy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Men:_Deadly_Genesis

"Dangerous" (Issues #7–12)
This Whedon arc features a Sentinel attack with a mystery mastermind. The culprit is the Danger Room, which is becoming sentient and appears as a robot called "Danger." Whedon establishes that Professor X imprisoned Danger and made it an unwilling host of the Danger Room, leaving the X-Men disgusted. Whedon also revealed that Emma Frost is aligned with the newly formed Hellfire Club.

Note that this is the same Professor X that threw that temper tantrum, was jealously in love with his student, faked his death how many times...

Prof X and Cyclops were always dicks.

Yeah, the difference is maybe that the more recent stories recognize this and make it a key plot point (almost ad nauseum - I remember just endless Cyclops/Professor X feudery a few years ago), rather than throwing it on the page and leaving you to go "Wait...so is this guy really supposed to be a good guy, or what?"

There is a whole lot of moral ambiguity in the X-men especially from when they opened their arms to Magneto way back in the 80s. You look at how it all developed out, it looks to me more like a weirdo cult in many ways. In the last split of the X-men you had Cyclops pretty much counseling with Magneto, Namor and Emma Frost...not exactly the clean living crew.

Of course the whole Marvel Universe has kind of come ethically unmoored in a similar way in greater levels since the Marvel U has gone all Watchmen/The Authority starting say around Avengers Dissembled.

Diamond was having some crazy sales before Christmas, so I got the Morrison run of New X-Men for $7 as 7 digest-sized TPBs. I'm going to start that when I finish reading Liar's Poker.

I got the Morrison run of New X-Men for $7 as 7 digest-sized TPBs

O_O

it looks to me more like a weirdo cult in many ways

It occurs to me that a lot of Fraction's run on Uncanny could be read that way. Particularly the weirdly optimistic, overly-confident tone it had right out of the gate. But I never felt like he had that great of a grasp on how to write the X-Men.

Whenever I even CONTEMPLATE trying to get back into Xbooks my eyes glaze over - out of the loop since 93 or so, not really missing it

Silvestri was better than many of you think

X-books live and die on how engaging the student characters are IMO

'93 is not a bad place to fall out of the loop. Lots of good places to pick up after, though. Kelly/Seagle era, Morrison's New X-Men, Brubaker/Carey. Assuming you were fishing for suggestions.

Silvestri was not bad, true. We've had much, much worse.

I'd love it if there was always at least one X-book that's pretty much 75% soapy all the time, preferably the X-student book du jour. I'm a few years behind, but the post-Morrison/Whedon WALL-TO-WALL ACTION! style with very little interpersonal drama (particularly glaring in the student-cenric New X-Men, which read like an adolescent mutant holocaust narrative) kinda put me off.

i wasn't fond of the Brubaker space stuff/Warren Ellis Astonishing run that followed Whedon's run and tuned out. all the crazy AvX junk and after makes me want to catch up though

Agreed about the student New X-Men book. A good one in this vein was Zeb Wells's New Mutants which was actually about the old New Mutants getting back together. Involved something of a nostalgia trip, but there was some smart use of old stories, and IIRC the characters were really written as adults, with histories, getting back together, and that was cool. I don't think there's been an actually really good "student" book since the early issues of Generation X.

I think Aarons Wolverine and the X-Men is a pretty good student book.

xpost! I drifted away just prior to the inception of Wolverine & the X-Men, but what I've heard makes it sound like a decent student-centric book.

Re: getting caught up, I was recently idly thinking about picking up the collections of all the X-stuff I'd missed after 3-ish years out of the loop. IIRC, that amounted to approximately a ridiculous 50 trades. Hence my continued out-of-the-loopness.

yeah, i hear ya, the main reason i have slacked off on it

eh there's no real need to catch up, here's all you need to know:

- Cyclops leads a group of outlaw X-Men who are basically wanted by the Avengers for taking over the world and accidentally killing Xavier
- Wolverine leads a mainstream group of X-Men who have gone back to the original remit of running a mutant school
- In an attempt to keep Cyclops from going crazy, Beast brings the original X-Men forward in time to show them what their future holds in an attempt to change it; this ends up breaking time travel and the originals are now stuck in present time

proceed from here

Doc Casino, that re-New Mutants book sounds cool - I may investigate

anybody feel like putting together a list of everything x-universe worth reading that's up on Marvel Unlimited or does that fall to me?

I have no idea what's on Marvel Unlimited

If Age of X is up there, it's worth a look; probably my favorite of the recent crossover stories due to its disorienting beginning and how it spools back into a background thread running through the X-Books at the time

dan, you have a tablet right? You should get marvel unlimited. would save you a lotta money.

question for Dr Casino - a few years ago I think I remember you linking to a blog you and a friend had written where you reviewed the Claremont/Byrne era X Men issue by issue - is this still online and can you direct me to it? (obv if you'd prefer not to link to it for whatever reason then no worries!)

Aww, I'm touched! Yeah, it's still up there, perpetually shaming both of us since it was sorta just hitting its stride when we both got too busy and lost the whole momentum. Here's just the entries for the X-Men project.

Sweet! I'm reading it for the first time right now, that's great timing.

thanks!

Jonathan Hickman's House of X/Powers of X is outstanding, and we're not even halfway through yet.
These Xavier Files annotations are pretty fun to read, I'll definitely be keeping up every issue.
https://www.polygon.com/2019/8/23/20829772/x-men-marvel-powers-of-x-3-spoilers-references-easter-eggs-theories

Would someone not very versed in X-lore enjoy them, do you think? They sound intriguing, but I don't want to be constantly checking footnotes to understand it all.

Most likely, yes, I think. Though it's insanely detailed, the story on its own is pretty follow-able so far. You don't need to read footnotes to understand it, it just adds to the enjoyment and excitement to understand more of the references.

Also it's (sort of? hard to say right now) a reboot/retcon story. It doesn't undo everything that's happened since the beginning of X-Men times, but tries to re-contextualize it, and you see some of those events through new eyes.

I agree the run is excellent so far first time I’ve been excited for new x issues in many many years

Cheers, might have to take the plunge.

i've only seen the first couple issues. seemed wild and awesome and full of potential. it may seem bonkers overwhelming with new concepts and new takes on familiar characters, but my friend who's been keeping up with stuff more regularly assures me that this is NOT a case of it assuming i know a ton of weird continuity from the last fifteen years - - - it's just throwing a whole ton of new things at you, sorta like the start of Grant Morrison's run in the early 2000s. for what it's worth!

Would someone not very versed in X-lore enjoy them, do you think? They sound intriguing, but I don't want to be constantly checking footnotes to understand it all

My partner's been reading them - she knows the characters from the movies mostly, but she digs it and found it really easy to follow.

Hickman likes to make the reader sweat and work out the connections between things, CONSTANTLY, but it's a much more forgiving sort of complexity than "you need to know every character from the past 43 years of continuity, even the bad bits". I got a similar feeling when I read Gene Wolfe for the first time earlier in the year.