how would you rate main cast usage in the team books of the current era

[carmoc1234]

now that inferno is almost here and hickmans era is almost done, how would everyone rate the usage of the casts of all the team books. which books gave everyone their time to shine, and which ones focused too much on certain characters leaving others on the sidelines.

[borkbork]

now that inferno is almost here and hickmans era is almost done, how would everyone rate the usage of the casts of all the team books. which books gave everyone their time to shine, and which ones focused too much on certain characters leaving others on the sidelines.

I've only really been following Marauders. DUDE. It's not the Emma Frost solo. Except it is. :|

[Vishop]

I've only really been following Marauders. DUDE. It's not the Emma Frost solo. Except it is. :|

QFT!

10char

[Rift]

Hellions handled it the best, I think. They took a bunch of characters who were fairly obscure to me, and made me really like them. So many characters got development, and those who remained fairly static (Empath, Nanny) still got a lot of scenes to shine and make me like them. I didn't feel like anyone in the cast was a cold fish. Everyone benefited from being on this book.

X-Factor was second-best. Polaris, Northstar and Rachel didn't really do as much as they could. But in Williams' defense, Polaris' story was cut due to cancellation, Rachel's Chronoskimming came back, and Northstar did prove his worth as a leader. But Prodigy, Aurora, Kyle, Daken and Eye-Boy were really cool here. Interesting dynamics, interesting stories, interesting ideas. The Aurora/Daken pairing is the stand-out romance for this era.

Marauders: Pyro, Iceman, Bishop and Storm had a couple of scenes throughout the series. It was like Duggan straight-up didn't want to write about these characters, and only included them to round out the numbers and show them reacting to Kitty's death because they love her so much. Other than that, this book felt like The Kitty Show, featuring Emma Frost. Or maybe The Emma Show, since her and her stuff started to overshadow the whole Marauders premise.

X-Corp: Monet got too much focus and the way she was written made me hate her. But the book made me like everyone else by comparison, soo everyone but her benefited, I think.

I legitimately forget who half of the Excalibur team members are, since only Betsy and Rictor get focus.

Children of the Atom made it very clear that Ayala was more interested in developing Carmen, and that the other members were there to prop her up or round out the numbers. I did like Jay and the fat kid's story though, since they shared a storyline and a combined 2 issues of focus.

[cranger]

Hellions handled it the best, I think. They took a bunch of characters who were fairly obscure to me, and made me really like them. So many characters got development, and those who remained fairly static (Empath, Nanny) still got a lot of scenes to shine and make me like them. I didn't feel like anyone in the cast was a cold fish. Everyone benefited from being on this book.

Children of the Atom made it very clear that Ayala was more interested in developing Carmen, and that the other members were there to prop her up or round out the numbers. I did like Jay and the fat kid's story though, since they shared a storyline and a combined 2 issues of focus.

I only read these two 'team' books with enough attention to make conclusions about. The only things I would add is that I feel less time should have been given to Sinister and more time given to building the relationships of some the rest of the cast with regards to each other or even outside characters. But that is something modern books seem to lack as a whole.

As for CotA, I think it ended up doing what you described but feel if it had gone on it may have balanced out again as the first few issues seemed to give all the characters equal footing.

[Kingdom X]

1. Hellions
2. SWORD
3. X-Factor
4. New Mutants (Ayala)
5. X-Men (Duggan)
6. Way of X
7. CotA
8. X-Force
9. Marauders
10. Excalibur
11. X-Corp
12. Fallen Angels

Didn’t include Hickman’s book because it jumped all over the place. Duggan’s could be higher, but it’s only been 3 issues. Way of X had the benefit of having no defined cast so every character spotlight was a pleasant surprise. 8, 9, and 10 are pretty interchangeable.

[Pumpkin King]

Hellions - top-notch team book. Zeb Wells took a cast that I mostly didn't care about and made them all shine. Some characters have bigger roles than others - Kwannon, Sinister, Alex and Greycrow are arguably the "stars" of the book, but Nanny, Wildchild, Orphan-maker and Empath all had moments where they got to do something significant, or interact with the rest of the team, or just show their personality. Maybe my favorite book of the current era.

SWORD - So far so good. I'm not sure where Ewing is taking the book, and it seems like we are shifting into a Storm focus (okay by me, since she was so under-used in Marauders), but it's definitely a book where it seems like the cast will be put to good use. I appreciate that we had a Manifold-focused issue, and I hope Ewing keeps giving us character spotlights.

X-Factor - Some characters probably weren't used to their full potential, but it genuinely felt like a team book, in terms of interaction and everyone having something to do. It never felt to me like particular characters were being dropped or forgotten.

Marauders - Team-book in name only, should have been titled "The Adventures of Emma Frost and Kate Pryde." I have a love-hate relationship with this book, because I think Duggan really can write excellent emotional moments for the characters that he actually cares about - there were some great interactions between Callisto and Storm. But it's very clear that he does not care at ALL about Bishop, Iceman or Pyro. They will disappear for multiple issues in a row, then show up only in a background shot, or get a single line of dialogue. Then when they do get little scraps of character development, it feels abrupt and unearned, like treating Pyro like comic relief for 19 issues, then giving him an awkward line about how his time with the Marauders feels like "restitution for the old days." Hey, that's great, but there was nothing leading up to that. Storm is also under-used, but she at least gets a few nice spotlight issues. I'm sure Emma and Kitty fans are enjoying the book, and more power to you, but I can't stand how unbalanced it is.

[carmoc1234]

1. Hellions
2. SWORD
3. X-Factor
4. New Mutants (Ayala)
5. X-Men (Duggan)
6. Way of X
7. CotA
8. X-Force
9. Marauders
10. Excalibur
11. X-Corp
12. Fallen Angels

Didn’t include Hickman’s book because it jumped all over the place. Duggan’s could be higher, but it’s only been 3 issues. Way of X had the benefit of having no defined cast so every character spotlight was a pleasant surprise. 8, 9, and 10 are pretty interchangeable.

i mean i gave up on x force because i didnt like the writing but i dont remember it focusing too much on just one or two characters like marauders and excalibur. it felt like everyone got to do something in the earlier parts

[Kingdom X]

i mean i gave up on x force because i didnt like the writing but i dont remember it focusing too much on just one or two characters like marauders and excalibur. it felt like everyone got to do something in the earlier parts

You're right it's a step above the other two but it pretty much cycles between Wolvie, QQ, and Beast atp. Domino had the most compelling story at the beginning but that's been dropped. Colossus story has been dropped until now. Sage, Forge, and Cecilia are all support.

I also struggled with ranking X-Corp because technically each of the CXO members got moments, buuuuuut everyone felt underutilized at the same time?

[carmoc1234]

You're right it's a step above the other two but it pretty much cycles between Wolvie, QQ, and Beast atp. Domino had the most compelling story at the beginning but that's been dropped. Colossus story has been dropped until now. Sage, Forge, and Cecilia are all support.

I also struggled with ranking X-Corp because technically each of the CXO members got moments, buuuuuut everyone felt underutilized at the same time?

yea it sounds like x force dropped the ball later on a as team book.
x corps hard to call a team book. honestly felt more like the monet book but unlike with marauders with emma and kate she was written poorly so it didnt even help it. everyone elses moments felt like more because it was so short (thankfully). hell even duggans x men has used its cast better in 3 issues alone so there's no real excuse.

[NewMutant]

They all should be Emma solos if you ask me.

[Sutekh]

You're right it's a step above the other two but it pretty much cycles between Wolvie, QQ, and Beast atp. Domino had the most compelling story at the beginning but that's been dropped. Colossus story has been dropped until now. Sage, Forge, and Cecilia are all support.

Honestly, I didn't know that Colossus or Cecelia were in X-Force. I remember Colossus showed up in an issue, because Beast was doing some sketchy 'hate the Rusky mutants' crap, but I didn't think he was supposed to be on the team...

Black Tom, OTOH, I thought was, but then, pfft, crops up every three or four issues for a page. Gets less character development than Lockheed.

But I mostly agree with the rankings in this thread.

Hellions was best, eye-openingly so, since I liked almost exactly none of the characters chosen when it started, and now I want to cut the fool who cancelled this gem.

X-Factor was also really good about giving everyone, even people with less traditionally visually dynamic powers like Prodigy and EyeBoy, some face time.

I want to say SWORD has done well, but that's my bias for the theme and pretty, pretty art talking. There really hasn't been enough of it yet to state either way, and, yet, I don't feel like we've seen enough of quite a few of the characters introduced at the beginning.

Marauders is a beautifully drawn breakfast (again, the pretty art seduces me), but it's the Emma and Kate omelette, with a side-dish of sausage over on another table so that you can smell them, but they are frustratingly out of reach.

New Mutants was the Sam and Bobby show, at the beginning, and is now the 'new kids who I literally don't know the names of, and sometimes Dani and Shan and Rahne' show. Sometimes Warpath will wander by in short shorts for, like, no reason, but this should not be misinterpreted as the character having an actual plot, or point.

X-Force has felt like a stew of Beast, Sage (mostly complaining about Beast's sketchy ass), Wolverine and Redundant Omega Telepath Who Isn't Jean (mostly dying over and over, as if his name was Kenny, and this was an episode of South Park), with a bit of Domino at the beginning, and random tiny bits of Black Tom sprinkled around like dried parsley, adding little flecks of color but **** all for flavor.

And X-Corps hasn't done a terrible job of splitting the focus between Angel, Monet, Madrox and Selene, but since all of them are being written wildly OOC, as a fan of three of those four, I kinda wish it was another book about Emma. Thanks to Morrison, she's proven that she can rise above unflattering character portrayals...

[Rift]

New Mutants disappointed me because I was hoping for a rotating cast or something. It wasn't handled too well at the beginning, since we were jumping around too much in each story. But I liked the idea of sometimes focusing on the original New Mutants, and then the newer generation. I was holding out for newer kids beyond the standard Armor and Glob Herman though. (That was kind of a weird time, wasn't it? Where they were pushing Armor and Glob for like 2 years.)

But no. We got the New Mutants, and then Glob and Armor, and then focus on a few of the New Mutants + some kids. And the Shadow King stuff effectively made the kids outside Scout a collective.

[davetvs]

Hellions does it the best, Excalibur does it the worst.

[PyroFN]

I feel as the majority feel. Hellions did the best out of the books in use of their characters.

Duggan is just getting started with his X-Men book, though he is giving most of the characters good moments to shine, so I’m not really judging much beyond I like the three issues he’s done so far. I think his Marauders book is really good in regards to Emma, a bit of Storm, and Kitty, but the others felt a little lackluster, though Sebastian had a great plot, so that may have also contributed to the creativity instead of the other cast. Who knows? Cable though is severely underrated. Duggan made full use of his guest characters and I loved it.

X-Force is…..a hit and miss at times. As far as using the cast, they do so really well (with exception of Colossus, but it seems that is coming), but they way Percy uses some of the characters….not really a fan, to be honest.

Excalibur, I feel, just doesn’t know what it wants to do with it’s characters beyond Betsy and Rictor, which even then is not all that interesting. Saturnyne was interesting. It’s a shame though that she felt more like Emma in her White Queen days instead of her own character.

X-Factor was great for most of their characters, except Rachel in my opinion. Rachel had great power moments, but no character arc. It was a good book though in using it’s cast to their strengths.

SWORD doesn’t really have much in cast moments, but to be fair, it seems the focus of the book is not on the characters, aside from Brand, but overall on the lore of the cosmic aspects and interstellar politics. So, I am not really complaining with the direction, which is odd for me since I usually value character moments, but here I am making that exception.