IYO.... Was making the Xavier Institute a bigger school a bad idea?

[Geek Mangacomic]

New X-Men and Academy were garbage. Way to make the X-Men some cheap Harry Potter knock off(hello, that was a rip off of X-Men in the first place!).

All Emma and Logan clones can go to their proper place:

How did Harry Potter rip off of the X-Men?

[Marvel/DC Fan]

I liked the New Mutants but after that I felt it got out of hand.

[donpricetag]

I was just annoyed on how 85% of the mutant population was suddenly Morlock-level disfigured even though the very concept of the Morlock relied on the idea that that level disfigurement was rare and somewhat artificial ie Mr. Sinister's involvement.

I liked a lot of what followed the "Riot" era of the school. The New X-Men namely Hellion, Murcury, Rockslide, Surge, Elixir, Armor, Gentle, Dust... couple others. Mostly hated all the Wolverine and the X-Men era students. Thought Match was pretty cool, if not over-done in comics (the living flame-guy).

[ChildOfTheAtom]

Poll is still tied hmmmmm

You forgot about Tag. He was repping for the Afro Latinos.. Also dont forget about Shola.

Very cool mutants

Sunspot was the first one.. Roberto is the first Black Male X Man.

I always forget Sunspot.... Maybe because idk he was never a favorite of mine.

[Baron of Faltine]

Honstly i like most of the new mutant created. But i think that they suffer from a bigger issue of MU. There is just not enough space for all new character that author can think of. Not with the "classic" hoggin all the space.
And please stop with this clone bashing is close becoming the "szechuan sauce" of X-men fandom. Let's not fall to that level. We are X-men fans we should be better.

[Master of Sound]

I like New X-MEN & Academy X run.

Me too. We need them back starring their own series

[CRaymond]

Making the School for Gifted Youngsters an actual school was long overdue and felt great. Academy's idea of small teams with mentors was also great. It just shouldn't have been at Xavier's. Emma should've opened the Academy in new Mutant Town, NYC.

[PrezValentine]

Except, as you say in this very OP, the big school with the X-Men as teachers came from his X1. So it's completely relevant to the topic at hand.

Prodigy was the best part of New X-Men/Academy, but he is a poor substitute for Everett, and is no where to be found at the moment... did the Avengers take him, where is he? Didn't he lose his powers too?

He's in the America book, so he was made into one of the many cheerleaders for the writer's self-insert. A fate worse than hell, if we're being honest.

[FIGHT]

But after Kyle/Yost's culling it was nearly perfect. There were about 25 kids at this point.

Yep. Was good.

[Mackandal]

They should have introduced and kept new characters as wallpaper. There's nothing wrong with wallpaper; it completes the room. The problem is so many mutants have been featured in books and fleshed out that when they inevitably fade back into the background or get mishandled, their fans get upset.

But it definitely makes more sense and is more interesting as Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters (or whatever it's called this week) than as Professor Xavier's Creepy Exclusive Club for Youngsters I can Easily Take Advantage Of for Whatever Purposes I Deem Important. You have to wonder what parents would send their kid to a boarding "school" sometimes halfway across the world with less than 10 students and 20+ random unqualified adults that also live there. It also meant that it very much was Xavier's personal child army (such as when he deemed Doug's power unimportant so he didn't tell him he was a mutant or reach out in any way while Emma with her Actually Functioning School tried recruiting him.

The plot possibilities of a superpowered boarding school are vast and have been explored previously. The X-Men just need to learn not to put all their eggs in one basket and to actually hire education professionals, and the writers need to stop giving everyone a complex backstory, so that the institute becomes a real school and not just a death trap or character Limbo.

[JustAnotherFan]

I have hard time choosing what to vote on the poll since I'm of two minds when it comes to expanded school idea. On one hand I love a lot of the teenaged Young X-Men/New X-Men characters (Hellion, X-23, Surge, Mercury, Elixir, Triage, Stepford Cuckoos, Armor, etc.) and would like to see even more of them. Much more in fact. Also, the idea to expand the school by filling it with teenaged mutants and making it an actual school for young mutants was a logical and natural step.

But then on the other hand the expanded school was a really poor idea in the long run because all it did was add to the already unmanageable cast of the x-books to the point where books are now filled with an army of characters who have many fans who due to limited panel time are forever confined into cameos and brief guest appearances in random books whenever those random books happen to be written by (a) writer(s) who happen(s) to like that particular character. Not to mention it also resulted in us getting such fan favorites as Glob Herman, Goldballs, Shark Girl, Nature Girl & Eye Boy (just to name a few). To me that is probably the biggest downside to the expanded school.

Another slight downside is that the student body somewhat limits the amount of crazy adventures X-Men can go on. They can't leave the school or be thought dead for a long time while they travel the space & other dimensions because they have to return to the school steadily since they have a responsibility of the young students. Sure, you can have the X-Men disband the school and the team or have a team that operates away from the school but you always have to go to those lengths instead of just being able to have some outside force come and take the whole team away for an extended period. And whenever you do disband the team/school you will just have to reestablish the school when you reestablish the team since otherwise it would make it look like X-Men just abandoned all these kids they are responsible for. So there is that problem too. But at least a writer can work around it if they want to so it's not really the biggest problem. Especially now that we tend to have 2 or 3 separate X-Men teams at any given time that usually operate completely on their own from each other and so only the main team is usually saddled with the responsibility of staying at the school while the other teams can go on extended adventures all over the planet, space, dimensions or timelines.

But when taking into account all the pros & cons of the expanded school, my personal opinion is that the expansion of the school shouldn't have happened or if it absolutely had to then the least the x-offices could have done was to make sure that writers wouldn't be allowed to introduce massive groups of new main student characters all at once and most of the students should have been kept as background cameos whose names, powers & personalities wouldn't have been fleshed out in any significant capacity other than occasional one here or there for any specific story writer wanted to tell using a student character. And once the story was done the student should have been shipped off either by killing them or having them graduate & possibly join one of the x-teams or leave the school eventually or something like that. So basically I wish they would have kept a tighter leash on writers and their ability to introduce new students who are actual characters. But now that genie is long out of the bottle and there is really no way to put it back in again without doing something drastic like having a ton of fan favorite students be shipped off to limbo or killing them all off and which ever route Marvel would choose it would make a ton of fans (myself included) annoyed at the very least so they are stuck with this unmanageable cast of characters.

[xhx23x]

This is kinda hard. I liked the concept if X-Teachers and X-Students. But recent books have proved that no writer can really handle this concept well these days and to be honest the school gets in the way most of the time cause half of those "kids" should be full fledge X-Men or just written out at this point. Morrison was the best era. And while I liked New X-Men, I didn't really love it till after the cast was cut short by Decimation and they had actual stakes to their stories.

I think it would probably be best to return to an era with a smaller trainee group with an X-Man or two mentoring them. I don't hate what was before, but I definitely hate the concept now. And those stupid as hell uniforms.

[Chaos Reigns]

Defilips and Weir were excellent in their new mutants series. Other than that the rest can kick rocks.

[DragonsChi]

I like Bishop but confess that because of the guns it was a while before I understood what his power actually was. Same with Cable.

Regarding Spyke and skateboards. From the Jay and Miles X-Men site: this letter from Dwayne McDuffie, an African-American comic writer, is a 100% satirical take on the black teens on skateboards thing, and it was written 12 years before X-Men Evolution aired.

LOL! Is this for real? Did Mr. McDuffie really right this?

What funny/interesting is all of reminded me instantly of Static Shock cartoon on the WB. With being the creator of that character I wonder if the WB took liberties with the show to make fit more with their definition of black boys. I read the original graphic novel of Static a long time ago and there where major differences from the tv series.

As to the topic though......really most of the students now just seem like "Red Shirts" for easy drama and stories.

[Paleo_Rage]

Tag, with the silliest power ever, who was depowered and blown up? Who could possibly forget such a character..

Shola wasn't created at the schools. Lord Claremont made him in Excalibur.

Nope he was, but he came around that time frame. He was also made by CC during the Mekanix #1 limited series.. Its hard to believe I use to like Kitty. The Kitty, Karma and Shola in Chi town was so cool.