Do the best women of Marvel come from the X-Men brand?

[Crimz]

[stormphoenix]

Short answer: YES. To a great extent thanks to Chris Claremont.

What this guy said.

[Captain Nash]

Absolutely. To me there are a total of 3 extremely well developed females outside of the X-Men: Invisible Woman, Scarlet Witch, and Wasp. Possibly Mary Jane as well. The next well developed non-X related females are Black Widow, Captain Marvel and She Hulk. You have the same level of development just within the X-books alone with Storm, Jean, Rogue, Mystique, Emma, Psylocke and Kitty (in no particular order), and personally I think all of 7 of them have the higher well roundedness that IW, SW, and Wasp have. In other words half of Marvel's really well developed female characters come from the X-property and the level of development over all skews to the X-Women.

Mind you I'm not saying that other female characters aren't well developed, just that these are the most well developed overall. Certainly Mockingbird, Squirrel Girl, X-23, Jubilee, Polaris, Karen Page, Elektra, Enchantress, Deathstrike, etc etc are not just cardboard cut outs. But to me they're not on the same level of development as the 14 in the first paragraph. I guess though, I could give credit to both Ms. Marvel (Kamala) and X-23 as having an impressive amount of development in a comparatively little bit of time. I think both of these characters will eventually be in Marvel's top tier females.

Now in terms of popularity that's something different, but that's not what we're discussing here.

Also I definitely put almost all of the credit of starting the process with these characters on Claremont. Before he came along Jean and Polaris were not that well developed at all. They're big feature was "they're the female of the group" or "second female to join".

[LifeIsILL]

Easily. I don't even care about the rest of the Marvel ladies besides Susan Richards.

[Electricmastro]

Claremont probably created or help developed the most interesting X-Men-related females. Evangeline Whedon is a lesser-mentioned creation of his I found rather interesting.

[WebLurker]

Grace Rdndolph once said the best women of comics comes from the x brand. this is one of the few times she was right. this is another one of fox x-men movies failings. they had all these female characters and they just put focus on mystique because Jlaw was a big star

Kate Bishop and Jessica Cruz aren't X-Men characters, though.

[CoCoBandz]

Why does everybody have to be a bad bitch these days? Do good bitches not exist?

The lack of representation for them bothers me.

[Snoop Dogg]

The best woman in comics, Maria Hill, is going to sneak past all the mutants and steal their Krakoan chicken sandwiches.

[Beaddle]

Kate Bishop and Jessica Cruz aren't X-Men characters, though.

But Rogue, Kitty Pryde, Jean, Storm, Emma Frost, Dazzler, Psylocke, Jubilee and Domino are. Even their female villains Selene, Nova, Dark Phoenix, the red queen and Mystique are still among the best of the best.

[CoCoBandz]

The best woman in comics, Maria Hill, is going to sneak past all the mutants and steal their Krakoan chicken sandwiches.

Maria Hill is the first fictional villain that made me want to punch my fist with their face. That lady is work.

[Snoop Dogg]

The dark reign of the Cebulski Shogunate has robbed us of many things, but no loss is as painful as my neocon waifu being cursed to limbo, unable to respond to the mutant rebirth and getting into bullying contests with Magneto. Alas, woe is we!

[WebLurker]

But Rogue, Kitty Pryde, Jean, Storm, Emma Frost, Dazzler, Psylocke, Jubilee and Domino are. Even their female villains Selene, Nova, Dark Phoenix, the red queen and Mystique are still among the best of the best.

Fair point. Heck, my favorite female superhero is X-23. Thing is, I just don't think that X-Men has a monopoly on the best female characters. Heck, they don't even have the most iconic female superhero at all. That would be DC's Wonder Woman, who doesn't really have a rival.

Kinda interesting that Marvel never really got their own Wonder Woman, the way they have Spider-Man as an answer to Superman (although maybe they can leverage the success of the Captain Marvel movie to put Carol Danvers there?). On the X-Men, Wolverine is the only one who's had great success as a solo character.*

*Granted, X-23 is primarily a solo character or small team one, too, but, despite standing on her own two feet as her own character, I don't think she's quite hit superstar status yet and is seen as a Wolverine spinoff.

[Kitty&Piotr<3]

Oh, indubitably. Best women characters in comics.

[Dark-Jacket]

It depends what you intend by saying "best" I'm sure we'll have different meaning for it.
To me, though the X-women have been proeminent, they aren't better or worst than the other characters.
Monica Rambeau, She-Hulk, Sue Storm just to quote a few are amazing characters. Spider-Girl, Spider-Gwen, Ms. Marvel (Khamala) and Jane Foster had lenghty solo run more than any X-Women.

For Carol, I'm a bit sad because I loved her under busiek but I guess writers have generally no clue on how writing her without making her either bland or either a jerkass. :/

[Riv86672]

The fact that 90% of the posts like that are about comparing the X-women with Carol just shows how the push for her was actually successful lol.

^^^very true!

Thing is, female mutants are going to dominate any best AND worst, and any other Marvel female-centric list because there are just so MANY of them.

It’s like asking who the best hockey players in the NHL are and pointing out white men are the dominant demographic.