Academy X: New X-Men Appreciation 2022

[BobbysWorld]

Hellion's been stabbed soo much, at this point its a turn on lol

Wolverine Family: You hurt laura you get SNIKTED.

Julian: Don't threaten me with a good time.

Daken: Kinky. I like him.


ALso Tanner Buchanan from Cobra Kai is the new Julian Fan Cast.

LOL, I've never watched Cobra Kai but I've noticed that Tanner guy from it seems to get fancast as a LOT of X-characters. Interesting.

Course, back in the day my personal fancast for Julian was Robbie Amell. He had the look, could do the 'jock who is ugh but also can be charming' energy, etc.

[Rift]

How does it feel, knowing characters and stories you created nearly two decades ago are still well-loved to this day?

It’s funny, because we don’t always realize there are still fans. It’s been so long, and we weren’t that well received at the time (And to this day, plenty of fans still hate what we did), so sometimes we just forget that what we wrote had a positive impact on some people.

But then we engage and see the fans who miss what we did. And it is amazing.

And whenever we engage with those fans, we’re also stunned to realize how much we still would love to go back to those characters. Our lives have changed a lot, and we’re not really on Marvel’s radar and writing for them isn’t something we really pursue these days. But still… to be able to revisit those kids and write them again (not these plans per se, but anything)… we’d be lying if we said we don’t think about it whenever we talk about the book again.

The series wasn't well-received? I can't believe there was so much evil in the world back then.

[BobbysWorld]

The series wasn't well-received? I can't believe there was so much evil in the world back then.

I mean, I was an active reader and a poster on the original CBR forums back at the time they were the ongoing writers, and I wouldn't say it wasn't well-received but I do get why they would think that? In those days, there was less direct contact between writers and fans unless they were actively hanging out on certain forums like this one, which I don't recall Weir and DeFillipis ever doing, so it definitely did have its fans, but it also had its vocal, and I mean VOCAL, critics.

In the end I think the biggest enemy of their run was just the timing. They happened to come along in the wake of Morrison but before Marvel realized their Iron Man movie was gonna be a success and the MCU was a viable entity....and so Weir & DeFillipis invested a TON of energy in creating a whole swath of new characters and potential for mutant books.....right as Marvel conclusively decided okay, we don't actually need mutants to be successful in our other divisions, so we're going to go ahead with Bendis' pitch for how we can pivot more to the characters we can milk for movie money, like the Avengers.

I think a lot of people tend to have a misconception about how the film rights thing affected Marvel's decisions about mutants and everything that happened with M-Day. It wasn't about pettiness between film studios, it was about money, plain and simple. See the thing about the X-film rights was that when Marvel sold them off years before....they didn't just sell 'characters who had been X-Men'.....they sold off the mutant concept, period. The film rights were for mutants and included everyone who had ever been one or ever WOULD be one - that's why the provision about sharing Wanda and Pietro hinged on Marvel being allowed to use them in Avengers since they were just as linked to that franchise as the X-books, but required that they make no mention of Magneto, AND their origin in Marvel's movies had to clearly establish them as something other than mutants....ie not just 'people who were inexplicably born with a gene that gave them certain powers.' Its also why even in movies like Days of Future Past and First Class, Fox was able to use characters like Darwin and Angel Salvatore, mutants who hadn't even been created at the time of the film rights sale.

So when old E-I-C Quesada said that M-Day happened because writers were getting too lazy with creating new characters, they just slapped on a power and said this is a mutant, there that's their origin.....nah, that was bullshit. You'll notice that as they immediately turned post M-Day to filling up the Marvel Comics with scores of new characters like the Avengers Initiative, that there wasn't actually a demand for greater creativity in character creation.....to this day, we don't have the faintest clue about the origins of most new Avengers Initiative, Avengers Academy, Inhumans characters, etc....Cloud Nine got hers in some random accident with something something alien. Striker was born with his powers but we don't know why, just that he wasn't actually born a mutant, nuHumans pretty much just ARE mutants with a different franchise-wide explanation for their powers, etc.

The issue was never 'need more creativity in character origins than just making them a mutant.' It was always just that from the second Marvel realized they actually had a viable movie universe on their hands with Iron Man, feeling good about it even before it came out even if they underestimated just how big a success it would be.....Marvel pumped the brakes on the specific characters who would NEVER be able to make them movie profits, since movies and merchandising are where the most money is. (With this also leaking into the early cancellation of Wolverine and the X-Men and the disinterest in any future X-Men cartoons in the ten years since, because Marvel DID retain television rights to the X-Men, they could have made more cartoons, they just....didn't see it as profitable from this point on).

It was 'no more mutants' because Marvel was like, well, there's just no POINT to new mutant characters now, because we won't be able to put them in movies and add them to our MCU, so (with rare exception, at least for a good five to ten years) from now on if we're going to make new characters on ANY level in the comics, they're just....not going to be mutants, because this way if they end up break out hits, we at least have the option of putting them in movies and making movie money off them.

And that was the real enemy of Weir & DeFillipis' run. They got hired to create the foundations of an entire new direction for mutantkind.....RIGHT before Marvel decided hey y'know what, we don't actually need mutants for the future of our company as much as we thought we did.....so pretty much the entirety of their run Marvel was kinda already actively disenchanted with the very possibilities they'd hired these writers to specifically sow.....because they were just like....eh, turns out we don't really care. And then the verdict came down that yeah, we're just not gonna put much effort into mutant stuff anymore and are going to actively cap the number of mutant characters and concept as a whole......and that was the death knell.

All of which really sucks. W&D created a TON of characters, many of which always had potential to break out in a lot of ways - hell, I think its a testament to their foundations that even with their parent company actively OPPOSED to boosting the profiles of most of these characters, so many of their unique visuals and powers and names made them a hit with enough of the writers hired to shepherd what was left of the mutant concept over the years, that we got what we did with Elixir and Pixie and Prodigy and numerous others.

I really do wonder if they were amenable to coming back and Marvel reached out, like, what they could do with a book in this current era where Marvel once again has a vested interest in the mutant concept and they're not likely to run afoul of the same issue as last time. Like.....idk, give them a book about an exchange program between Krakoa and Arakko where teens from both nations spend time on each other's islands, sharing their cultures and swapping stories about growing up in literal war zones.

"Hi, I'm DJ! I hear you grew up in a city occupied by demon conquerors, that's nuts dude! I died when I was fifteen, anti-mutant extremists blew up the bus I was on when I wasn't even technically a mutant anymore. Not a lot of green grass on either side of that fence there huh? LMAO."

[CGAR]

So since we know that Bling, Gentle and Surge are all nominess are we all hoping that we get a good scene of all the Academy kids together at the Hellfire Gala.

[AJpyro]

I wish we had a ttrpg book for the Academy X and Generation X kids.

[Grunty]

I wish we had a ttrpg book for the Academy X and Generation X kids.

Table Top Role Playing Game?

[AJpyro]

Table Top Role Playing Game?

Yeppers. Thats the one.

We can have three eras:

The Academy
Utopia
Krakoa.

[Starfish]

There's the discontinued Marvel Heroic Roleplaying game by Margaret Weis which used the Cortex Plus system. The X-Men sourcebook actually had character sheets for Dust, Elixir, Hellion, Mercury, Rockslide, Surge, and X-23.

I believe there's a new Marvel ttrpg in development, but not much is known yet about it. I doubt any characters other than the usual A-list will be included in the core book, but it would be fantastic if they also released additional X-Men supplements featuring lesser known characters like the Academy cast.

[CGAR]

How many era do you guys split the kids into? I've always been curious because I do it as (and please note Im just using the more popular one or the ones that were featured alot):

Morrisons
Academy X
GenHope
WatXM kids
Bendis kids

[From The Shadows]

I was following these characters as the comics were just coming out in the beginning. I liked Hellion quite a bit but some animosity has been displayed towards him over the years on these boards and I still really dont know why. I liked Wind Dancer too and it just happened they were falling in love too interestingly enough. hopefully someone at Marvel will want to do something for him People are set on him and X-23. I think it would be interesting if they became friends again. Mercury is another character I liked quite a bit. FUNNILY enough I liked QQ too in Morrisons New X-Men. I think both QQ and Hellion can both exist TOGETHER.

*DUCKS* :-O

[Npresh24]

How many era do you guys split the kids into? I've always been curious because I do it as (and please note Im just using the more popular one or the ones that were featured alot):

Morrisons
Academy X
GenHope
WatXM kids
Bendis kids

I usually break it down
Morrison/Academy X [Most if not all of the Academy X kids were in attendance during Morrisons run]
GenHope [Those Six separate]
Any Mutant Child appearing after Zero

[From The Shadows]

Feng Shui Queen.

Give this girl more panel time.

YES!

(Though... damn Comixology/Amazon ;. ; )

[Rift]

How many era do you guys split the kids into? I've always been curious because I do it as (and please note Im just using the more popular one or the ones that were featured alot):

Morrisons
Academy X
GenHope
WatXM kids
Bendis kids

Honestly, I just group them as Academy X post-Academy X. Nothing else has felt as structured and cohesive as the Academy X branding, and many of them never got the focus Hellion's gen did at the time; they were always shooed out as quickly as they were introduced. So I just lump them all into this nebulous "other" branding.

Characters like QQ, Glob and Armor, who existed before Academy X, are just this weird gray area for me. I guess I'd label them Morrison kids, but they don't really have a brand or era the same way the others do.

FUNNILY enough I liked QQ too in Morrisons New X-Men. I think both QQ and Hellion can both exist TOGETHER.

*DUCKS* :-O

They can coexist, easily. For example, Quentin can be Julian's punching bag.

[Sutekh]

How many era do you guys split the kids into? I've always been curious because I do it as (and please note Im just using the more popular one or the ones that were featured alot):

Morrisons
Academy X
GenHope
WatXM kids
Bendis kids

That's a good breakdown. Morrison added quite a few, IIRC, Beak, Glob, Angel Salvadore, the Cuckoos, Martha Johanssen, and Quentin (along with some others that have fallen by the wayside like Basilisk and Slick and Tattoo, and some that never really got a chance to shine, like Keratin, Stalwart, Mentat, Contact, Polymer, etc.).

I much, much prefer the Academy X era kids to the others, but a few from each generation stand out for me, like Goldballs or Shark Girl (just as there are a few from the Academy X era I don't particularly love, but this is not the thread for that!).

Heck, you could make an earlier group, too, the New Mutants / X-Force / X-Terminators / Fallen Angels (back when Madrox was a 'teen!') era.

[From The Shadows]

Honestly, I just group them as Academy X post-Academy X. Nothing else has felt as structured and cohesive as the Academy X branding, and many of them never got the focus Hellion's gen did at the time; they were always shooed out as quickly as they were introduced. So I just lump them all into this nebulous "other" branding.

Characters like QQ, Glob and Armor, who existed before Academy X, are just this weird gray area for me. I guess I'd label them Morrison kids, but they don't really have a brand or era the same way the others do.


They can coexist, easily. For example, Quentin can be Julian's punching bag.

Well, I guess you take what you can get.