Guys, it’s time. It’s been 20 years. The nostalgia wave has come. The kids who grew up reading that stuff are old enough to be working at Marvel themselves.
It’s time to deal with the ‘90s. I mean, really, honestly deal with them and what their legacy is. What worked. What didn’t work. What wouldn’t work now. What positives we took away from them as readers and what negatives.
What? You don’t believe me. Well, it’ll be clear that the spirit of the ‘90s is alive again soon enough. I’ve noticed there are more storylines from that era coming out in TPB. Fleer is releasing a new set of X-Men trading cards this summer (yes, really). The producers of the Fox X-Men cartoon series have released a book detailing the development of the show. There’s even an artistic trend making the rounds on Twitter with the hashtag #MarvelSwimsuit2018.
But I get it. Amid the highs of popularity, there were some real artistic lows. I’ve been reading the early issues of X-Force for the first time and boy are they rough. But I also read the entirety of Fatal Attractions for the first time and remembered just how deeply affecting stuff like the death of Illyana Rasputin was (sorry Magik fans).
So, let’s deal with what still works and doesn’t work.
For one thing, the storytelling style doesn’t really work anymore. Back then, ‘90s X-Men books played up long running subplots and serialization to the point it was like a daytime soap opera on steroids. Sometimes there would be “mysteries” that would go on for years. It’s just not feasible these days.
What I think does still work: the characters that became prominent at that time. Cable, Domino, Deadpool, Shatterstar, M, Chamber, Husk, Penance, Bishop, Gambit, Jubilee, etc. I think the whole lot of them have potential (yes, even Maggott). Granted, some of them went through some rough spots. Bishop in particular seemed to be all over the place. And Jubilee, God bless her, finally seems to have evolved into a more grown-up character but she sure took one hell of a weird path to get there. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from looking at the rest of Marvel and the way they’ve revived characters like Star-Lord, Luke Cage and Carol Danvers is that you should never count a character out completely.
But I’d like to know what other folks think. What is the legacy of ‘90s X-Men either good or bad and how do we embrace one over the other?