Has the X-Line painted themselves into a corner?

[Zero Hunter]

With the upcoming reshuffling of teams yet again it really seems so. Back before the "everyone is an X-Man" troupe became the status quo when they wanted to change things up a character would just leave. The problem ever since Morrison is that most characters have no where to go because they don't have lives outside the team. It just seems like an endless cycle of shuffle and repeat because there are so many characters just hanging around the mansion writers feel they have to do something with them. If each team had their own purpose maybe it would be better, but so many just seem to blur together.

[Killerbee911]

Nothing is stopping them from writing X-men to leave from the X-men. X-men have had Decimation and Terrigen Mist stuff situations where the mutants existence are on the line those things have stop X-men from just leaving to changing things up. None of the things are in place right now except that another huge xmen world altering event seems to be coming up and needs every to be xmen or protected. When the X-men get back to environment where they have a school and kids can graduate and go home then the numbers will go down. But as long as the write the X-men as world that hate and fear them so much that big crisis is around the corner then you will be seeing bigger cast.

That said bigger cast makes sense whether X-men is school or semi combat unit. One of the best things about the current X-men run is they final utilizing support cast Cece Reyes is doing Medical, Forge is around fixing stuff. And that makes perfect sense that everyone will be X-men but they plenty of roles that could be hand out in terms of support. The biggest problem that leads us to believe that all those students around will be come combat X-men when the reality is that you need Forge,Cece and Beast types. Search and rescue, Pilot, Tech Support,Security,Admin,Teaching and Training, Medical and Oh yeah X-men. Anyways back to main point when I see Cecelia Reyes I don't worry about if she is on team because she has role and can be written into a story. That needs to happen more often stories are allowed to have side characters and minor characters. There is needs to be more clear understanding that these guys are going to be side characters. Clearly having different career paths for students will help that happen. An understanding that Eyeboy is going to be technical support, Rockslide in Security, Cipher will be a pilot and Anole will be x-man makes clear how they will be used in stories.

[DurararaFTW]

When they killed Cyclops when Wolverine, Professor X and Jean Grey were still dead, they basically resigned themselves to years of playing catchup.

[AbnormallyNormal]

With the upcoming reshuffling of teams yet again it really seems so. Back before the "everyone is an X-Man" troupe became the status quo when they wanted to change things up a character would just leave. The problem ever since Morrison is that most characters have no where to go because they don't have lives outside the team. It just seems like an endless cycle of shuffle and repeat because there are so many characters just hanging around the mansion writers feel they have to do something with them. If each team had their own purpose maybe it would be better, but so many just seem to blur together.

I agree with your point that the different teams should mean something. Otherwise it feels redundant and artificial.

But I would argue over the years they've tried to give certain themes to e.g. X-Force style book, X-Factor style book, Excalibur style book, New Mutants/Generation X/New X-Men style book. So there are distinct themes brought out in these teams. Or at least CAN be and should be.

[The tall man]

I think there are far to many mutants affiliated with the X-men. In my opinion the X-men were at their best when they were a small strike force in the 80s both when they were in Westchester and the outback. Also in the 90s when they first developed the blue and gold squads. Additionaly you had X-factor and X-force as their own seperate teams, you would have the crossovers now and then but for the most part the teams did their own thing. Then along came Morrison, the mutant population exploded and the X-men in my opinion things started to go wrong. Xavier outed himself, the team's semi-outlaw status was gone and they became teachers, X-corps branches strang up all over the world and it seemed like every mutant and their grandmother was a X-man. Many loved this new direction for the franchise but I think it did a disservice. It seemed to me that the X-men lost what made them special. When you have tens of millions of mutants running around the hated and feared aspect loses something and the X-men become just another team. Also turning them into teachers takes away their edge, they in a way seem also held back or shackled down. If there going to be students then have a small, limited number. Like when the New Mutants first appeared or Gen-X was at the Mass academy or the New X-men kids after decimation. No more than 6-9 students. In closing break the down in small strike units, 6-8 members max. Divide them up; some X-men proper, others independent teams (X-factor/X-force). And keep the overall mutant population at a reasonably low/moderate level. But if not at least seperate the main X-men team from the school. All the X-men that don't make a team make them teachers/counselors and put them in a school book at a different location. Now is the time for a hard reset of the X-franchise.

[yogaflame]

I think there are far to many mutants affiliated with the X-men.... Now is the time for a hard reset of the X-franchise.

I agree with a lot of this. While I appreciated Morrioson's contributions to a franchise that had largely lost momentum in the late 90s(it was a mess, I stopped reading before the Twelve story really resolved), I do think the large school with millions of mutants all over did over-complicate things, both in the context of the Marvel Universe at large which is precisely why Quesada No More Mutants-ed them just after Morrison left, and in terms of the X-Men themselves.

The X-Men were always supposed to be an elite superhero team. They save the world from evil mutants who would conquer/cause trouble, and anything else they can do to show humanity mutants have a place on Earth other than concentration camps/graves or as weapons/slaves for the military/black ops/underworld. I liked that Morrison also played with mutants as fashion designers, and musicians, and teachers, and engineers, as a corporation, ect. And honestly I would have loved to see a decade of stories set in the universe that he and Claremont were building in that era, but as soon as the population was culled, they were effectively dead in the water.

Saddled with dozens of underdeveloped students, in addition to the core cast of already a few dozen well developed characters(from the O5, ANAD, 90's, and including the various offshoots like New Mutants, X-Factor, X-Force, and Excalibur), and forced in-universe into literal ghettos and tiny islands, shuffled through dozens of writers and series, there was no way you could approach the familial, intimate dynamics that had propelled the franchise into its heights in the first place. People can't have well developed relationships with 200-300 individuals. A dozen? Six or seven? Yes they can. Writers simply can't juggle the variables well, if at all, and the comics suffer as a result. The fandom is fractured, and suffers, as a result.

It will take some bold and creative maneuvering to reconcile things. With the movie rights coming to Disney, I do have a shred of hope Marvel, now sufficiently motivated by integrated licensing and MCU synergy potential, can pull things around. It will take some time to repair the damage that has been done, but it is possible. It could very well be that a third great epoch of the franchise is about to be born(after Weins/Claremont's and Morrisons, first and second, respectively). If nothing else, there is always room for evolution.

[Nick Miller]

Surely a writer can do both, deal with mutants at large, and the intimate team relationship?

It just takes time and effort,

Unfortunately most writers work on multiple books, with different publishers .

I guess they dont get paid enough to craft one book a month

[yogaflame]

The very nature of the industry has shifted, too, since the golden era(s), that is true. The medium is more diverse and the Big 2 books have to compete with a much greater variety of independent books, not to mention entirely new other mediums that weren't a thing in the 80's or 90's. Creators also don't have as great an incentive to put their best ideas in a mega-corporation when they will profit more from creator-owned works.

[Havok83]

No. The X-line painted themselves into a corner with the Utopia stuff and the Terrigen crisis. ResurrXion was an attempt to undo the latter and it worked. I dont see how anyone can look at the teasers for Uncanny X-men and say the X-line has painted itself into a corner again. I look at that teaser and whats been said and see so much potential for where thins can go

[Uncanny X-Man]

I think the Morrison approach was the cleanest possible for a booming mutant population. For the younger mutants, if they weren't part of a story one could assume they were back to being students at Xavier's. For the adult mutants, if they weren't part of an X-Men team or one of the splinter teams they could have been out adventuring with one of the X-Corporation teams around the world.

I do miss the days when a writer who didn't want to include a particular character in their book bothered to write them out with a specific motivation, but I think that's more a matter of editorial just not caring enough.

[Muffinman]

The x-line painted itself into a corner when cyke went military general on utopia and the entire x-brand became a paramilitary race. It’s only starting just now to come back from that. The familial feel will return, hopefully. It’s starting to look like it with R+G getting married, the things that have been written recently in Astonishing, and the teasers for Uncanny.

[The tall man]

I also agree that the utopia storyline was bad for the franchise. What made the X-Men special and distinct from other teams like the Avengers was the close family aspect. Deciding to abandon that and turn the X-family into the X-army was detrimental and began or accelerated the franchise's decline. Having one character giving orders and the rest blindly following goes against what the X-Men are all about. In the past every team member was important and contributed to the storyline/narrative. And there were multiple stores going on or seeds for upcoming stories were planted in current storylines. Utopia and the X-army did away with all that. One central storyline/narrative, one central character guiding the franchise. And its only now that the franchise is beginning to recover. Hopefully the upcoming reshuffling will elevate the X-Men to new heights.

[AbnormallyNormal]

The family feel came from them being written and characterized by one dude for decades... you can't replace that

And getting rid of novel or interesting concepts won't go back to what you miss, it's a false attempt to emulate things.

The issue is different writers working very briefly, and without as much knowledge of the long history or all being on the same wavelength

[Knives]

Weaponizing nostalgia seems a tade gauche no?

No. The X-line painted themselves into a corner with the Utopia stuff and the Terrigen crisis. ResurrXion was an attempt to undo the latter and it worked. I dont see how anyone can look at the teasers for Uncanny X-men and say the X-line has painted itself into a corner again. I look at that teaser and whats been said and see so much potential for where thins can go

I agree though there is a lot that has not worked the current situation of the mutants and the X-mens is probably the best since decimation in the sense that it is possible to follow any direction . Any scenario is possible and that could not happen during the Decimation, Utopia, Schism and Terrigen Mist times because in this scenario the only solution was to increase their defenses and to reunite the mutants in a single place to protect and prevent the extinction of the mutants, a position of confrontation and protectionist. At the moment it is perfectly possible to recover themes and plot forgotten due to the events I mentioned earlier and go back to the times where the X-men fought for the dream, were a family and tried to promote the union of humans and mutants.

Certain concepts can not work nowadays the X-mens can not go back to being a small or secret team because they are well known and have even become a brand. The school seems to be the only place where they care and train mutants in the world which I find very strange.

Do not also understand why mutants do not unite and revolt around the world? Or because it's so hard to see mutants and X-mens having lives out of school? Technically after all they've gone through there should be more radical groups maybe it's time to bring the acolytes or the mutant brotherhood back.

Personally prefer to see how the mutants and X-men try to live in this current world than to see another extinction or event involving time travel but think I am a minority since the same events continue following the same script and seems to work .

We currently live in a world where refugees try to run away of poverty, wars and famine are treated with hostility or are not welcome in many places in the world to the point of even separating arrested parents and childrens when trying to cross borders illegally. Violence between authorities and minority members has also been constant in several parts of the world as well as increased in civil rights and equality movements so material is not lacking for writers.

[Mia]

The x-line painted itself into a corner when cyke went military general on utopia and the entire x-brand became a paramilitary race. It’s only starting just now to come back from that. The familial feel will return. .

So true. I also want to add the entire 'victim mentality' that the team seemed to have adopted. A lot of this had to do with poor/lazy writing where the author either couldn't write a team book or had no idea what made the X-men function or unique. The books honestly were little more than the comic book version of 'Entourage' with Scott Summers as the title character.


The X-Men used to be known for being comfortable with who they were in their own skin and who they were. If the rest of the world didn't like it then (shrug) so be it. But it won't make us from living their lives and serving society. One thing I also sorely miss, is mutants being individuals. They aren't written as a monolithic group of people. Being type-A's they had their own drives, wills, insecurities and demons. They were also susceptible to the vagaries of human emotions. I'm reading one of the Essential X-Men trades right now and the X-men is fighting another group of mutants who don't care about anyone else but themselves and are hungry for power. I'd love to see more stories along those lines.