X-Characters you think have been handled badly over the years.....

[Mungho]

The human ally is all forgotten with Moira death and then character assassination. Very important role.

Yes, that irked me as well. I liked Moira

I'm wondering if I'm just not the audience that Marvel is going for these days.

[Romy134]

Has anyone been truly happy with how an X-Men character has been written is the past couple of years? It seems a lot of characters have been mentioned. But we are a small sample and opinions due vary greatly. Personally I think Magneto seems to be in a sweet spot recently.

[Dementia5]

F9DABA86-4851-4996-B59B-9476FC1045EC.jpg
……….

[bearman]

Oh, it’s Banshee. By far.
Beast has taken quite a beating, too.

[ARkadelphia]

Beast, Beast, Beast. Beast, Beast, Beast. Beast, Beast, Beast. Beast, Beast, Beast. Henry McCoy.




Anyone that thinks Emma was better off as a villain is just complaining because of childhood nostalgia. As a villain, she's poor man's Selene. It's on the side of the good guys she's unique.

Anyone that thinks Hank was better off as a hero is just complaining because of childhood nostalgia. As a hero, he’s poor man’s Spider-Man. It’s on the side of the bad guys he’s unique.

[ExodusCloak]

Umm what? They threw out Emma's worried about controlling her dark side when she joined the X-Men?, That was a central theme to several storylines in the 00s with Emma overcoming it New X-men, Torn, Watsong, Dark Reign.

Hell even the sexism displayed in IvX that Emma lost her way because her anchor/Scott died

---

The way she treats everyone? Emma has had a more realistic build in relations with characters over 30 years. Particularly in Duggans Marauders. But Kitty/Emma, Storm/Emma, even Rogue /Emma have a lot of building since the 00s same for all the original New Mutants. More so then on again off again Magneto

[ARkadelphia]

Polaris for almost her entire character history.

During the Claremont era, she was treated like a punching bag that had no depth beyond being Havok's girlfriend. Most writers since then act like she has nothing to offer besides being Havok's girlfriend, and never bother to look at what she was meant to be when she was created and what actually fits. Because of that, Marvel's repeatedly taken things away from Lorna and acted like they never happened to reduce her to the pitiful perception they have of her. Things she's had ignored or taken from her:

• Second woman to join the X-Men
• More of a feminist personality than other women at the time she was created
• Complex struggle on whether to align with Xavier and Magneto philosophies
• The fact she's existed since 1968, before many characters created after her
• History with Jean Grey and Iceman in particular, back to their O5 days
• Lorna having survived the Genoshan genocide, and having been seen as its sovereign princess in its final moments
• Just in general, that she's done anything in her entire life that wasn't X-Factor

In the past decade, certain people at Marvel with tons of nostalgia for the 90s are very insistent on acting like Lorna didn't exist until 90s X-Factor, and like being Havok's girlfriend is all she's ever done in the franchise. They're basically a modern day Dick Giordano, who looked at Supergirl purely through the lens of "what does she add to Superman," felt she added nothing, and decided to kill her off.

You can see the impact and evidence up to present. Marvel people were apparently surprised that Lorna won the X-Men vote, only had her in half the run, and didn't even have her on the cover for the single issue that put a lot of focus on her.

But what's most damning to me about Marvel is their quiet yet total erasure of Lorna being a genocide survivor. We constantly get to see characters who weren't even anywhere near Genosha talk about the genocide, yet it's over 15 years now and Marvel acts like Lorna doesn't even know what Genosha was. It's incredibly obvious that they're doing it because they don't have a single shred of respect for Polaris and what that event meant for the character, and they prize their oh so precious nostalgia for things they liked 30 years ago over what's actually relevant and appropriate today.

I mean, if she’s been written badly “almost her entire character history” then maybe the character you fell in love with originally is not really who she is.

[Uncanny Mutie]

I think there’s a world of difference between Magneto and the Joker as characters that makes Magneto work while the Joker is….the Joker.

You completely missed the point. My point is, is the X-Men's greatest and most popular villain supposed to just keep on being a good guy for going on 2 decades? I don't think that works AT ALL. In fact, the whole X-Men franchise has been a lot weaker because of it.

[Uncanny Mutie]

Oh, it’s Banshee. By far.
Beast has taken quite a beating, too.

Banshee was my first thought, for sure.

[king81992]

Frankly, X-23.

By and large, she's just plain been written BADLY by most writers. Most writers treat her as a gender-swapped Logan, all growling and snarling. Or worse, having her toss off pithy one-liners. They just can't grasp how to handle an introvert. Furthermore, very few remember how smart she's supposed to be, or that she's a scalpel, not a meat cleaver. Instead she throws herself head-first into fights rather than using the raised-from-birth assassin training that allowed her to put one over on CAPTAIN AMERICA. At thirteen!

Yes, she got to have the Wolverine name, but Marvel didn't let her actually DO anything with it. There's many missed opportunities for stories that could connect her to the larger Marvel universe. Wolverines could have laid the groundwork for a major role in Secret Wars (Destiny predicted that without Wolverine the multiverse was screwed) but she appeared in one panel IN THE ENTIRE EVENT AND ITS TIE-INS. She was the Unipower's chosen heir, and this has never been mentioned since. She was one of Kingpin's favorite assassins, and yet despite a story arc that seemed like the PERFECT setup to bring them into conflict, (Orphans of X: Laura vows to bring everyone who used her as an assassin to justice) it was Emma who got to face Fisk in Devil's Reign. Even when Logan was DEAD she still played second-fiddle, with Old Man Logan getting the multiple team books. Her "big" arcs in recent books pretty much involved reduced her to a prop for Synch to angst over.

Laura has been utterly wasted on the X-books pretty much since Second Coming.

Laura's time as Wolverine was derailed by the ranting of insecure fanboys and Marvel caving into them(usually its DC that bends a knee to whims of certain fans)

[H-E-D]

I wonder if people feel the same way about Magneto, who has been neutered by having his power levels gradually weakened and being portrayed as a "hero" and a member of the X-Men for about 10-15 years straight now. Such a lazy, terrible thing to do with the franchise's greatest villain. It would be like toning the Joker down and making him a member of the Bat Family for 10-15 years.

it's giving Bob Harras forcing Claremont out in 1991.

[JJS]

Colossus.

Been a tough 3 decades in the most part.

[Jackraow21]

Well, he certainly hasn’t had it the worst so I’m not saying that, but of course you know I’m gonna say Cable is a character who has been handled badly in more recent years. Or at least not nearly as well as he could’ve been…

- First of all, it feels like writers have struggled with what to do with him ever since the Messiah Trilogy (Messiah Complex-Messiah War-Second Coming) ended. Since that period, in 2010 when Second Coming ended with Cable seemingly dead, the only real bright spots for him have been the X-Sanction mini and Si Spurrier’s X-Force run. The latter of which was a much better executed concept of what Percy’s going for, with X-Force as the mutant world’s CIA with Cable as its Nick Fury. That was an awesome and underrated run IMO.

- The best periods for Cable IMO were the early years, when he was still mysterious (see X-Tinction Agenda and X-Cutioner’s Song, Cable: Blood & Metal and some of his early solo run) but also the late 90s when Casey and Ladronn made him an intrinsic part of the broader Marvel U and a superhero in his own right, much like Wolverine. In other words, he was a satellite X-man and popped in and out of X-Force, but also had solo adventures where he’d travel to locales like Genosha or Wakanda and run into other Marvel heroes and villains. He was still a “man on a mission” but that mission was broader than just taking out Apocalypse. It was to ensure the future never ends up like his, and just make it better for everyone. A clear goal, and truly the goal of all superheroes. In other words, he wasn’t burdened with unnecessary baggage and the fact that he was raised in the future/is a time traveler was just part of his origin but it didn’t define the character nor did all of his exploits revolve around time travel.

- The Soldier X run built off of the Casey/Ladronn run which better established Nathan as a solo Marvel character in his own right, not just an X-men satellite character/book, but took it in a darker and edgier direction. Then came Carey’s run on adjectiveless X-men with Rogue’s “Supernovas” team, which was awesome! And, of course, that led into the Messiah Trilogy referenced above where they gave him the new mission of raising Hope in the future until she was old enough to return to the present to restart the mutant gene.

- So… having said all that, since 2010 it feels like they’ve leaned too hard into him as a time traveler and “defender of the timeline” or some stupid shit like that, because these current writers felt like he needed yet another dedicated mission… I suppose to replace his original one which was preventing Apocalype and the High Lords ascension or whatever, and then to replace his later mission of raising the mutant messiah. They leaned hard into that in his relaunch in the 2017 Robinson/Pacheco series, which was short-lived, as well as even Hopeless’ ‘Cable & X-Force’ run which saw him having visions of future events that he had to stop to preserve the timeline. Then came Extermination in 2018 where his younger self came back and terminated the OG version, sending the time-displaced O5 back to the past while he himself stayed here in the present breaking his own rules… the stupidest shit ever. And that teen version stuck around until 2021 when thankfully Duggan brought the OG version back and Ewing reintroduced him in Cable: Reloaded and used him in SWORD and now X-men Red.

- That catches us up. Now… how would I better use Cable? Well, Ewing is doing a darn fine job in XMR right now, but that book has so much going on and so many characters that I’d give the man a second book to allow him to spread his cast out and do more with them in both books. Honestly, I’d give him X-Force, or maybe do a new X-Terminators book after this current mini with Dazzler, Boomer and Jubilee ends. In fact, he could merge the characters from Cable’s new X-Terminators team introduced in Cable: Reloaded with some of the characters from X-men Red and maybe even the group from the current X-Terminators series. Why not? I’d read an X-Terminators series starring Cable, Thunderbird, Manifold, Wolverine (Laura), Dazzler, Boomer and Jubilee. In fact, that could be quite rad if done right IMO.

- But, most importantly, I wouldn’t give Cable yet another dedicated mission. He’s been to the future… lots of futures. And he’s jumped around in the past too and done lots of shady stuff in the 20th century. So if you’re going to explore anything, explore that more. Not his future timeline stuff which has been done to death. Make him the X-men’s version of Nick Fury, doing the dirty work and the sneaky spy stuff on behalf of mutantkind, and don’t overcomplicate it. What’s his motivation? To fight for a better tomorrow. Just like all these superheroes. That’s enough. Leave the T-O virus raging out of control stuff in the past too. It’s not that interesting and has been done to death.

My $.02 anyway.

[JB]

More like $1.50 and I enjoyed reading it. Thank you! I always liked Cable but you've made me like him even more over the past few months.

And to answer the thread question: Doop. No one can get his voice right.

[sunofdarkchild]

Has anyone been truly happy with how an X-Men character has been written is the past couple of years? It seems a lot of characters have been mentioned. But we are a small sample and opinions due vary greatly. Personally I think Magneto seems to be in a sweet spot recently.

Magik's usually written well. There are the occasional stories where she's not handled well like Strange Academy, but overall it's been good to be a Magik fan the last few years.