When HoX/PoX was out, I was so excited that I tried to read previous runs. Rosenberg was just unreadable to me.
When HoX/PoX was out, I was so excited that I tried to read previous runs. Rosenberg was just unreadable to me.
3/10. That storyline was like the epitome of hot garbage with senseless deaths happening almost every issue
3/5. No bad. Pretty good. Alright.
“Generally, one knows me before hating me” -Quicksilver
I definitely lean towards the hard to judge side- he was given an express mandate to make things feel as depressing and hopeless as quickly and as totally as possible ahead of the Hickman revolution and I feel like many of the (valid) critiques of the run lie there.
Like are we counting Astonishing and New Mutants in this run? Because that changes things dramatically. I'm also characterised by only having read it after it was all finished and after HoX/PoX had come out: so many of the more distasteful parts of the run are so clearly characterised by an attempt to invoke feelings of consequence in a run that is plain not allowed to have any such consequences.
So I don't feel like it's fair to compare it to other runs and rate it in the conventional sense- rather than the Claremont's, Morrison's and Hickman's I think it would have to be considered separately against, say, Lemire or Seagle/Kelly. The latter I have yet to read so can't comment on, but I at least preferred Rosenberg to Lemire (a run I still consider below Austen's).
That said I don't intend on revisiting it anytime soon. As others have said, it is possible to write good stories under bad conditions and there is little value in what that run delivered. UNLESS we count Astonishing and New Mutants. Because that changes things dramatically.
4/5. I think there were worse runs. I really enjoyed it when it first started, but it really fizzled out in the end. Plus, what he established just went to the wayside once Hickman took over. I would read it again, especially now that I have given myself a break and went back to read it again.
I did think the way he killed off a lot of the characters and what he did to Magik was rather dumb. And honestly, he did make a lot of the characters look bad, but there were still parts I enjoyed.
“Fleeing through the labyrinths with the hordes of the living dead fast upon them;
Once again they found themselves trapped in front of the abyss.”
This was one of the worst runs in Uncanny's history
In the immortal words of Raven (the drag queen):
BOOT
It's so weird because I enjoy Rosenberg's other efforts. But the basic foundation of his run was terrible and everything else came from it.
X-Men's had periods of bleakness and darkness before, but death was handled so haphazardly that it was like the worst seasons of The Walking Dead. The funny thing is, to me, the X-Men's past periods of bleakness look darker and Rosenberg's looks brighter (the color palate between Fall of the Mutants vs. Rosenberg, for example), but there was just no dramatic weight to anything in the Rosenberg run, too. Too senseless and too numbing to care about.
1/5. Did really need another extinction/mass grave plot? No.
Le Suck it, Dolphin!
-God I am so tired.
SCOTT SUMMERS AND EMMA FROST DESERVED BETTER.
I’m gonna put him about middle of the road. I don’t blame him exclusively for all the death and suffering and torment that he put us through. He just told a story so horrific and soul-destroying that, for me, it became the logical end conclusion of over a decade of genocides, religious persecution, racism from all corners of the 616, terrible publicity (in and out of universe...), repetitive attempts at nostalgia by going back to the ‘hated and feared’ well that was never that big a part of the Claremont era as it became in later ‘nostalgic’/girimgrittydark years, and the X-Men being written as getting the crap end of the stick from every crossover they took part in. And likely, Editorial had told him to feel free to make anyone a possible victim, to kill whoever he wanted as it wasn’t going to matter, soon.
So he did.
He told the ultimate genocide story, and hopefully, it’ll be the last time we see that trope used in this franchise for a good, long while.
Last edited by zinderel; 03-28-2020 at 05:14 PM.