Has the X-Line painted themselves into a corner?

[Sundown]

The x-line painted itself into a corner when cyke went military general on utopia and the entire x-brand became a paramilitary race....

Agree. It's still struggling to come back from this.

It also painted itself into a corner when editorial let over a decade's worth of franchise narrative revolve around a single character, shoving most of the rest of the cast onto the back burner. Since then, it's like writers have forgotten how to write a true team book, so a constant feel of underdevelopment has become the norm, building resentment if you aren't a fan of the particular character in the spotlight of a run. Pair that with far too many mutants and it's a recipe for dissatisfaction.

In short, it feels like editorial or a particular writer is trying to choose for readers who is important and worthy of caring about, rather than presenting multiple well developed characters for them to choose from.

[Grey]

I’d be completely fine with a huge whittling down of cast but as bendis pointed out.... every d-list mutant you can imagine has tumblr fan pages it seesms. So many folks attached to less popular characters get genuinely upset wen their favorites don’t have a constant role.

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

Could you elaborate? I personally just see another generic teaser with an unclear vision. What about the info released suggests we aren’t going to eventually end up with a few main teams and a bunch of unused characters once it’s all said and done?

I don’t intend to be negative just to be negative. I’m actually curious what has you particularly optimistic.

[Grey]

Agree. It's still struggling to come back from this.

It also painted itself into a corner when editorial let over a decade's worth of franchise narrative revolve around a single character, shoving most of the rest of the cast onto the back burner. Since then, it's like writers have forgotten how to write a true team book, so a constant feel of underdevelopment has become the norm, building resentment if you aren't a fan of the particular character in the spotlight of a run. Pair that with far too many mutants and it's a recipe for dissatisfaction.

In short, it feels like editorial or a particular writer is trying to choose for readers who is important and worthy of caring about, rather than presenting multiple well developed characters for them to choose from.

You may be on to something with that last statement.

[Ulfhammer]

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 Utopia era was a natural evolution of decimation. It didn't come out of nowhere. The urge to close ranks during an extreme crisis is a verily natural one. I agree that the Utopia era wasn't great but it really grew out of what came before. Let's not forget that the guy driving the x-line at the moment was involved in crafting some of that era, so to say that there's a completely new perspective in the X-Office on all this isn't entirely true.

I actually appreciated White's comments in a recent interview around where he felt the x-line has stumbled. His explanation was that losing the long running saga of UXM and breaking the line into more books that were constantly re-starting with new teams and new themes was where he felt the books had gone wrong. I'm assuming that has something to do with UXM coming back, but he also admitted it's not a problem they can fix overnight.

He also alluded to the amount of "baggage" that had been piled on key legacy characters over the years, such as Charles and wished there was a way to erase some of that. I think that played a factor in the state of the x-books during the Utopia era. Between Logan, Scott, Emma and Charles, the X-Men's heroic image was really starting to fade. With the exception of Emma, these characters had all drifted to various degrees away from having any moral authority.

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.

Being victimized at the scale mutants where means a victim mentality is pretty understandable honestly. What would you have preferred, or rather, what would have made more sense as a response? It's not paranoia if someone is actually out to get you, and basically everyone was out to get the few mutants left at that point in time.

As for the whole "Entourage" thing, well... we've traded a line anchored by a Scott centered book for one anchored by two Jean centered books and a Kitty centered book. I get if you prefer those characters over Scott but let's not pretend the formula has changed at this point. They've just rotated out the leads. So we've come from a place of basically forcing everyone who reads the books to be a Cyke fan, to forcing everyone to be a Kitty or Jean fan... Progress? I'm not sure. More like variety, sort of.

I'm certainly hopeful for the future of the X-Books. I think Extermination and Uncanny do offer a lot of promise in bringing the books closer to their roots by cleaning up duplicates and getting back to (hopefully) more long form story telling. That said we're not they're yet and the X-Office has a lot of work to do.

[Havok83]

Could you elaborate? I personally just see another generic teaser with an unclear vision. What about the info released suggests we aren’t going to eventually end up with a few main teams and a bunch of unused characters once it’s all said and done?

I don’t intend to be negative just to be negative. I’m actually curious what has you particularly optimistic.

its about breaking the X-men down to build it back up. Its currently on shaky foundation but UXM seems to be streamlining things and with all those characters shown, it opens up many avenues for the franchise to move forward. I like that the X-men will be unified and I think what Ive read sounds promising. It'll be spear headed by 3 competent writers I trust so Im hoping it all turns out well

[Sundown]

As for the whole "Entourage" thing, well... we've traded a line anchored by a Scott centered book for one anchored by two Jean centered books and a Kitty centered book. I get if you prefer those characters over Scott but let's not pretend the formula has changed at this point. They've just rotated out the leads. So we've come from a place of basically forcing everyone who reads the books to be a Cyke fan, to forcing everyone to be a Kitty or Jean fan... Progress? I'm not sure. More like variety, sort of.

Agree that is what they're doing, but no, I don't see it as variety. Variety would be pushing teams of characters forward, as in crafting a team of 5 to 6 core characters with 3 or 4 rotating supporting ones and actually developing all of the core cast. It's not that hard. To see a team book done well, look at Excalibur. Not a single one of the core 5 felt more important than another to the story. Early ANAD Claremont/Byrne was the same. Readers got to know them all as individuals with varied personalities and motivations. Readers had a choice on who to be interested in.

To use X-Men Red as an example, the developed core should be Jean, Kurt, Laura, Gambit, Storm. The rest of the cast should be supporting. Rotate focus in the core cast and bring in stories for each of them regarding their point of view, how they feel about what they're doing, etc. Get in their headspace. Develop supporting in a rotating focus. That would be a team book done right, in my opinion.

[SanityOrMadness]

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.

Thing is, that becomes part of the problem in that it "locks in" mutants to the X-World. WTF was Darkstar on an X-Corp team (other than as convenient cannon fodder)? Why has Firestar gradually become an X-clusive character? It wrecks other groups - other plot engines, if you like. (For a non-X-example, see the treatment of Ursa Major over the past decade, frequently being brought in to stories because LUL TALKING BEAR with no connective tissue)

There's significant value in characters being simply "off the board" for a while, so they can be brought back in as fresh to the world. It's the same problem something like Ultimate X-Men ended up with - you had characters who appeared just to appear (e.g., Wolfsbane as a carnival freak), rather than giving later writers a chance to bring them in with an "adaption distillation" backstory.

[Uncanny X-Man]

Thing is, that becomes part of the problem in that it "locks in" mutants to the X-World. WTF was Darkstar on an X-Corp team (other than as convenient cannon fodder)? Why has Firestar gradually become an X-clusive character? It wrecks other groups - other plot engines, if you like. (For a non-X-example, see the treatment of Ursa Major over the past decade, frequently being brought in to stories because LUL TALKING BEAR with no connective tissue)

There's significant value in characters being simply "off the board" for a while, so they can be brought back in as fresh to the world. It's the same problem something like Ultimate X-Men ended up with - you had characters who appeared just to appear (e.g., Wolfsbane as a carnival freak), rather than giving later writers a chance to bring them in with an "adaption distillation" backstory.

There's hardly any mutants left that aren't locked in to the X-World... I'm fine with the X-books having full control of all the Marvel mutants to be honest, I'm sure the Avengers office is not exactly screaming to get Firestar back LOL

[Ulfhammer]

Agree that is what they're doing, but no, I don't see it as variety. Variety would be pushing teams of characters forward, as in crafting a team of 5 to 6 core characters with 3 or 4 rotating supporting ones and actually developing all of the core cast. It's not that hard. To see a team book done well, look at Excalibur. Not a single one of the core 5 felt more important than another to the story. Early ANAD Claremont/Byrne was the same. Readers got to know them all as individuals with varied personalities and motivations. Readers had a choice on who to be interested in.

To use X-Men Red as an example, the developed core should be Jean, Kurt, Laura, Gambit, Storm. The rest of the cast should be supporting. Rotate focus in the core cast and bring in stories for each of them regarding their point of view, how they feel about what they're doing, etc. Get in their headspace. Develop supporting in a rotating focus. That would be a team book done right, in my opinion.

Variety in the sense that you can now get X-Books in two flavors instead of just one. I wasn't suggesting true variety of character focus within teams was going on.

Excalibur benefited from Claremont still being on the top of his game and Davis being able to carry the ball. The team dynamic wasn't much different than what we saw in post DPS UXM, and I see it, and the Outback era, and to a lesser extent X-Factor, as the ultimate examples of balanced team based writing. This is the era I really got into the X-Men and are exactly the kind of X-Men stories I like. It's not enough to simply shift focus from character to character. These books created relationships that made sense between the characters using intertwining perspectives. One that will always stick out for me is UXM 251. Mostly a Logan story, the way Claremont wrote parts of it through Jubilee's POV makes the moment she connects with Logan so much more powerful, and really let's Jubes personality shine through. That's how you develop a new character in my opinion.

As for Red, or any current book, I really wish they would find a way to return to this formula. You're suggesting they develop five core characters. Honestly I'd be happy with two or three genuinely focused characters. They need to walk before they can run. And frankly, the execution is just as, if not more important than the variety of development or perspective in a given book. Work needs to be done on that front as well. Regardless it's not really possible to properly manage this in a 20 or 30 issue run IMO. Until Marvel finds a way to provide creative teams with longer term commitments, I think it's unlikely we'll see much of this in the future.

[Muffinman]

The Utopia era was a natural evolution of decimation. It didn't come out of nowhere. The urge to close ranks during an extreme crisis is a verily natural one. I agree that the Utopia era wasn't great but it really grew out of what came before. Let's not forget that the guy driving the x-line at the moment was involved in crafting some of that era, so to say that there's a completely new perspective in the X-Office on all this isn't entirely true.

As for the whole "Entourage" thing, well... we've traded a line anchored by a Scott centered book for one anchored by two Jean centered books and a Kitty centered book. I get if you prefer those characters over Scott but let's not pretend the formula has changed at this point. They've just rotated out the leads. So we've come from a place of basically forcing everyone who reads the books to be a Cyke fan, to forcing everyone to be a Kitty or Jean fan... Progress? I'm not sure. More like variety, sort of

Correct that the utopia era was a natural progression for cyclops, but it was not a natural progression for every x-character. The way they all followed in line right behind the all dictator was a little absurd, especially given how many strong personalities are in the x-family. There were too many x-characters that were just made into weapons for Scott to play chess with and lost their voices completely. The entire x-line became x-force and x-force became a blood bath.

Now at least you DO have choices. If you don’t enjoy kitty (and really, with gold being the way it is written I don’t know how you could enjoy her) you can chose to read another book with another mission. The books themselves are now starting to have voices where it was just several books carrying out whatever military campaign cyclops was ordering at the time. Heck if you don’t like kitty or jean at all there are still books you can read to avoid them while still being in the x-verse. You get glimpses of the other characters that are at the “head” but they aren’t steering the book necessarily as it was.

The utopia era did some real damage to the x-family to prop up one character. People had great power moments, but it was all in the name of one individual which I think was the largest problem when the message sent to all the followers was seek, destroy, and defend the island.

[Ulfhammer]

Correct that the utopia era was a natural progression for cyclops, but it was not a natural progression for every x-character. The way they all followed in line right behind the all dictator was a little absurd, especially given how many strong personalities are in the x-family. There were too many x-characters that were just made into weapons for Scott to play chess with and lost their voices completely. The entire x-line became x-force and x-force became a blood bath.

Actually this kind of behavior is quite natural, in humans at least. During natural disasters and wars, monolithic organizations form swiftly because everyone recognizes that in extreme situations many of the personal liberties they otherwise enjoy must be sacrificed in the name of survival, or the survival of ones way of life. Democracy works best with time and space to debate and discuss. When one is under siege, the luxury of time and space are nonexistent.

More than that, only the few are truly capable of leading in a crisis situation. Most are happy to have any voice tell them what to do because most would rather place their faith in the systems and structures that exist to protect them rather than spurning that authority to try and survive on their own. The vast majority of government and organizations accept that a single leader must lead but that is especially true in times of crisis, and that leader must have the obedience of those to whom they lead. Of course a support system exists to support that leader with counsel and differing opinions but at the end of the day the buck must stop somewhere. Imagine the paralysis that would have existed if each member was allowed to question every decision until agreement was reached.

This of course doesn't mean the leader is infallible, or even competent. In such a case where a leader is ineffective, it is the duty of those who follow that leader to recognize the key moment and replace the leader. That is their duty, and therefore, if the leader is still the leader, it follows that they still have the faith and trust of those they lead. Obviously in Scott's case this came to a head with Schism, but I still think that was the wrong hill to die on.

As for your comment on the X-Men becoming chess pieces, well that's exactly what they were. If a leader can't order those they lead in battle, to fight, and even to die if necessary, they are ineffective as leaders. This is an enormously difficult burden that carries with it a high psychological price. Regardless, it's required. If you must blame something, blame the situation that forced the x-men to such a desperate place.

The true problem with Decimation and everything that came after it was that it changed the X-Men status quo from a series of skirmishes into a full on war for survival. Wars need leaders.

Now at least you DO have choices. If you don’t enjoy kitty (and really, with gold being the way it is written I don’t know how you could enjoy her) you can chose to read another book with another mission. The books themselves are now starting to have voices where it was just several books carrying out whatever military campaign cyclops was ordering at the time. Heck if you don’t like kitty or jean at all there are still books you can read to avoid them while still being in the x-verse. You get glimpses of the other characters that are at the “head” but they aren’t steering the book necessarily as it was.

The utopia era did some real damage to the x-family to prop up one character. People had great power moments, but it was all in the name of one individual which I think was the largest problem when the message sent to all the followers was seek, destroy, and defend the island.

Well given that Gold, Blue and Red are the flagship titles of the X-Line, what you're suggesting is that one should settle for reading in the margins. The big stories are revolving around mostly Jean and to a lesser extent Kitty. If we want to stay informed of what's actually going on, we have to read these stories. Skipping them may be an option for some, but I don't count myself among that group. I want to know what's going on with the characters I love.

As for the books having other voices, I don't see it. Blue has been outright dominated by Jeen. Hank got a crappy arc that did nothing good for the character. Tyke's been as effective as a wet tissue and he's but a dim shadow of his former self in force of personality. Bobby and Warren might as well not be present for all the development they've had. This trend is just as strong, if not stronger in Gold. As for Red, Jean is in full effect. She makes all the decisions of consequence, carries the dialogue to a great extent and expects (and receives) unquestioned loyalty from her team.

Please show me how any of these books are in any way different from Cyke's large and in charge years in Utopia. At least Scott had Hank, Ororo and Logan questioning him from time to time. Kitty and Jean's teams follow them in lock step.

[Uncanny X-Man]

You can (and you should) write team books as real team books - you can still have your lead character/s while giving everyone in the cast their own space/voice/subplots etc. Claremont's always done it. So do Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Mike Carey, Jonathan Hickman and Rick Remender, just to name a few that come to mind. It's clear that many X-writers of late, from Matt Fraction to Marc Guggenheim, really struggle with it on the other hand. But it can absolutely be done and just comes down to the individual writer's ability and interest.

[TheCape]

For me, things started to go sideways after Decimation, it didn't happen overnight but little by little if left to the disaster that eventually became, with AvX being the culmination of it, the next two relaunches barely had any direction since and it has like the Marvel is throwiing everything at the wall to see what stick (to be fiar you couls make that same argument for many other franchises). Even if there is the occasional gem here and there.

So what we need really is a solid creative who is capable of writting great dynamics and had a long term plan for the franchise (and even then this is not fool proof, to br honest).