If you could rebuild the X-Universe back to prominence who and what titles would you build around?
Who is the core foundation of the X-Men?
If you could rebuild the X-Universe back to prominence who and what titles would you build around?
Who is the core foundation of the X-Men?
Cyclops and the X-MEN
Storm and the X-MEN
The agreement also provides Disney with the opportunity to reunite the X-MEN with the Marvel family under one roof and create richer, more complex worlds of inter-related characters and stories that audiences have shown they love. It only makes sense for Marvel to be supervised by one entity. There shouldn't be two Marvels.
Professor X, Cyclops, Storm, Phoenix, Wolverine, Iceman, Kitty Pryde, Rogue, Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Magneto. These are the iconic X-Men.
"We come into this world alone and we leave the same way. The time we spent in between - time spent alive, sharing, learning together... is all that makes life worth living." - Jean Grey
The X-Men don't feel like the X-Men without these 4 around:
1) Wolverine
2) Jean
3) Storm
4) Cyclops
I think these would be the 4 pillars.
Cyclops
Jean Grey
Storm
Wolverine
Nightcrawler
Rogue
Colossus
If you go with these, you are good.
"We come into this world alone and we leave the same way. The time we spent in between - time spent alive, sharing, learning together... is all that makes life worth living." - Jean Grey
iirc Kitty wasn't in proper X-Men books pretty much from the mid 80s to the mid 2000s, since the creation of Excalibut to Whedon's Astonishing.
For me the most important X-Men are Cyclops, Wolverine, Storm and Magneto. The other characters are at least a step below those 4.
Its been stated numerous times over the years by various characters and creators that Jean Grey is the heart and soul of the X-men and I'd agree. It died when she did and hasnt felt the same
She was never a focus then because she was too busy carrying another book, Excalibur. She remained busy.
But her most iconic years were probably from her debut to Excalibur, to which Whedon and then post-Bullet writers keep building on. After all, she became the leader of several X-teams and then was one of the few X-Men to venture into a non-X-book in recent years, namely the Guardians of the Galaxy.
To put it another way, we know Jubilee has her fans thanks to the Jim Lee era, cemented by the cartoon. Other writers don't think that because that wasn't their introduction to the X-Men, but when you talk to people who were introduced to the X-Men or to comics through the cartoon, Jubilee is often mentioned just as much as any of the other X-Men who weren't Wolverine or Storm. Now go back 10 years before that, and Jubilee was that era's Kitty Pryde, but more so, many of today's writers grew up on 80s comics (like Whedon and Fraction), with the next wave of 90s kids only starting to get into the Marvel bullpen. And there are very few heydays in comics like the X-Men's 1980s run.
Oh, and to reply to the thread:
Cyclops
Wolverine
Storm
Jean Grey
Beast
Rogue
Colossus
Nightcrawler
Gambit
Iceman
Really anyone on the blue/gold rosters of old. If you want to narrow to 5:
Xavier
Wolverine
Storm
Cyclops
Jean
Aftet that supplement with smart pairings of the others: Nightcrawler, Colossus/Kitty, Beast/Iceman, Rogue/Gambit, etc.