On the main X-Men series
Best: Claremont, Morrison, Carrey
Worst: Casey, Austen, Milligan, Fraction, Rosenberg
On the main X-Men series
Best: Claremont, Morrison, Carrey
Worst: Casey, Austen, Milligan, Fraction, Rosenberg
Bringing back the old, killing the young: that's the Marvel way
Worst: Fraction, Bendis, Guggenheim
Best: Claremont, Kyle & Yost, Soule, Brubaker
For the best- I love Morrison's run. It's one of my favourite books ever. Also Remender's Uncanny X-Force is just great too. The current X-titles are the best they've been in years and Hickman's run may go down as my favourite when it's all over.
In terms of worst, well I read some of Austen's but I'm going to be honest, it doesn't seem like the worst for me. I'm going to give that to Daniel Way who wrote probably the worst Wolverine run and the worst Deadpool run.
Edit. I will also point out that I didn't care much for what Bendis did either. I found it extremely boring for the most part
Last edited by FFJamie94; 03-10-2021 at 02:50 PM.
Austen
Loeb
PAD
Bendis
Rosenberg
These for top 5, all equally bad. lol
The best? Claremont of course, on his FIRST run. Frankly I'm not sure there's another run on any book period that compares, certainly not any that I've read (though some have come fairly close). Sadly his later runs were but pale shadows of what will likely always be considered the GOAT of comic writer runs. I also really liked Lobdell and Fabian Nicieza and thought they both had a really good grasp of the characters coming off of Claremont's run (The Gambit/Rogue thing aside, which actually became a good thing over time) both of their runs really focused on characterization almost more than action, and there was quite a bit of that too. Mike Carey would likely be fourth place for me, his run on X-Men/X-Men Legacy was very enjoyable.
Worst? Chuck Austen. Second isn't even close. I'm not a fan of Bendis but he starts series off well, but then he just bendisizes everything he does (totally underwhelming finish to a run, totally OOC moments for everyone that's not his "star" player, to the point they all have the same damn voice.) But Austen. Wow. In over 30 years of reading X-Men that is the only time I ever considered dropping the flagship book. I didn't because I'm OCD with being a completist, but the run was trash. And not in a campy good way but a totally cringeworthy way. Looking back I really don't like Morrison's run, his ideas are always so blatantly weird for the sake of being weird to me, but being that his run and Austen's was running at the same time it make Morrison's run look so much better at that point in time than it does looking back.
I wasn't a fan of Morrison's ideas in general; no matter how well they were executed, I wasn't going to warm to them. But at least I could appreciate that the craft was there (for the most part; a few just went off the rails). Austen had ideas that actually sounded pretty good on paper when he was giving initial interviews - bringing on Northstar, a human's view of the X-Men, exploring Kurt's parentage - and, excepting Juggernaut's arc, every one of them was executed terribly.
The only idea Morrison had remotely decent was opening up the school and bringing in new students.
The rest never was "X-Men" and just a combo in weird shit and stuff that made no sense. Stuff like Cassandra and Sublime. Then the most convoluted mess that is Fantomex.
I still think in theory Austen had some decent ideas like redeeming Juggy. Though yes execution was bad. The problem was stuff like Nurse Annie, Paige/Warren, and some of the Draco was so bad. The werewolf mutant stuff too.
Even Rosenberg tried to use different characters and had some ideas that could have worked. Without all the pointless killing it could have worked but editorial never gave him the chance.
Guggenheim definitely stinks but like Lemire it can mostly just be forgotten.