what went "wrong" with these c-d listers?

[Park Slope Pixie]

If Si Spurrier can't rehabilitate Marrow, what hope is there?

Let's not act like some of these characters HAVEN'T been given a significant push already.

Cannonball is all over Hickman's latest Avengers.

[DavidMunroe]

If Si Spurrier can't rehabilitate Marrow, what hope is there?

But he is tho. And he's also in process of making an actual character out of Hope Summers. These two are some of the best aspects of his X-Force.

[Park Slope Pixie]

But he is tho. And he's also in process of making an actual character out of Hope Summers. These two are some of the best aspects of his X-Force.

No offense, but people actually have to read the work before any rehabilitation can commence. And from the sales charts, no one is.

That right there is glaring referendum on the viability of resurrecting forgotten d-listers. The "X-Force" brand used to guarantee boffo sales. What changed? Spurrier got a bit "cute" with the roster choices.

[DurararaFTW]

Cannonball went from X-Force to Claremont's X-Men, to Mike Carey's X-Men to Guggenheim's Young X-Men (sporadically), to Wells' New Mutants to Hickman's Avengers/Avengers World. He has no trouble finding books to be on.

[CraigTheCylon]

But he is tho. And he's also in process of making an actual character out of Hope Summers. These two are some of the best aspects of his X-Force.

Not to mention the wonders he's doing with Fantomex.

Anyway, r.e. the actual list:

Moonstar...let me just say, as someone with only passing familiarity to the New Mutants in general, I have no idea what the hell Dani's power(s) is/are, and that's the kind of thing I should know since I've read double-digits worth of her appearances. I have a vague sense of her personality, think she's got a pretty cool regular costume, and her real name's cool enough that she doesn't need a cool codename anyway. Why she isn't a bigger deal is beyond me, other than that first point.

Cannonball and Sunspot are in Hickman's Avengers - and yes, like everyone else there who isn't Cap or Iron Man, they do have to sit out a lot of issues or settle for wallpaper appearances, but they've had some great moments in the sun, what with Sunspot buying off his own AIM mole, the teased friction between the two over Smasher's affections, and even their hilariously shallow reasons for joining the A-team in the first place. They're in safe hands and reaching a wider audience than they'd ever find in any X-book now.

Cypher never struck me as having much of a personality and there are plenty other X-types with machine-sensitive powers, many of whom have stronger histories or bring more to the table.

I'd really like Wolfsbane to be more popular because she's Scottish and that's enough of a reason dammit but, again, there's plenty of X-types who slot into the 'more animal than man' fold and she just doesn't seem to get the luck of the draw.

Monet spent a long time tied to Generation X which, while popular in its day, was deemed laughable by many for years afterwards (and still is by plenty), as with a lot of the '90s X-books. Her current role in Adjectiveless is rehabbing her to a degree but she feels like she needs a single specific hook to attract fans. As it stands her powers are too vague and broad, and her attitude is stuck in that awkward position between too arrogant to be likable but not cocky enough to be amusing.

Haven't seen anyone besides Spurrier treat Chamber the way I'd like, and sadly he can't do every book at once. Not sure how far any of the other crop of writers can stretch 'English fire-breathing guy'. Could say much the same for Frenzy.

Marrow's popularity is directly tied to the current X-Force which plainly isn't being read by enough people. Granted, that first issue was weird and made her personality seem 'off' but she's one of the few stabby-berzerker X-types who isn't just a lazy attempt to one-up Logan and I think that merits attention. But, again, nobody's buying X-Force and we are all living in the darkest timeline as a result.

The thing about Longshot is he's very, very attached to the time he was invented; he's as much a walking embodiment of the 80s as Cable is of the 90s, and as such he's dated badly. Worse, he's attached firmly to the Mojoverse, which absolutely no-one seems to care about anymore. A revamp for Longshot is absolutely possible, and if a writer could find a way to solidify what makes him interesting while divorcing him from past baggage that weighs him down, he might get somewhere. This is actually pretty close to what happened with Domino between the early 2000s and now; she was deliberately separated from Cable, her old X-Force colleagues and, by proxy, their convoluted history and the Liefeld stink, before other writers (Kyle & Yost most notably, though that New X-Men annual from 2001 did some of the work for them, so thanks Morrison) refocused on her core personality and surrounded her with new people to bounce off in exciting ways. The problem with that is, the X-verse doesn't need two luck-abusing sharpshooters active at once, so unless a new writer comes along with major fannish devotion to Longshot, Domino's gain is his loss.

Not sure about any of these others, don't know them enough.

[JackalsIII]

Poor Doug, he was created to prove how much Kitty like Colossus - so once those two broke up, and if you don't have Doug and Kitty date, you just ignored some real story potential there.

[DavidMunroe]

No offense, but people actually have to read the work before any rehabilitation can commence. And from the sales charts, no one is.

That right there is glaring referendum on the viability of resurrecting forgotten d-listers. The "X-Force" brand used to guarantee boffo sales. What changed? Spurrier got a bit "cute" with the roster choices.

That's true, be that as it may, but then that's not really Spurrier's fault. As literary obscenities in this medium such as AvX and BOTA have shown, the masses will always monetarily flock to whatever's being lauded as mainstream's next best thing--this is certainly despite the product's lack of substance and effort (subjectivity to opinion be damned) in addition to other criteria by which a quality crossover/event should be graded by. In this case, people are far too invested in the Blue Team's imaginary Revolution to pay any attention to fringe titles such as this...because nothing says compelling like waiting on a Revolution that was supposed to have happened around a year ago and in the mean time watching a couple of dysfunctional 'adults' babble mindlessly babble around doing f all?

?

[gurkle]

I think New Mutants characters have a built-in disadvantage in that they appear in New Mutants collections, which fewer people pick up than X-Men collections. People who weren't around to read the X-Men in their prime will still buy and read the Claremont/Byrne run and familiarize themselves with those characters. Every X-Man who appears in the Dark Phoenix saga or Days of Future Past, except maybe Angel, is always going to get a fair amount of respect.

The New Mutants are talked about less simply because they're New Mutants - not that Claremont's run on New Mutants isn't important, but it's a run most people pick up after they've familiarized themselves with the X-Men classics. If a writer has a certain amount of '80s nostalgia, as Hickman seems to, he may want to use some of those characters, but it's easier for a mutant character to be famous if they're in an iconic X-Men run or maybe even the X-Men cartoon.

[MattPriceTime]

I don't think any of them "go wrong". They are characters that can be molded into whatever the current writer wants. Sometimes this can be interesting, sometimes it can not be interesting, and it depends on reader to reader. It takes enough interest to sell a book or character and sometimes it is really hard for certain characters to catch the big break to "go right".

But sometimes I also stand very high that many cases people set their standards far too high. So as a result they hardly ever give anyone besides their precious elite the chance to become a favorite. And if enough people dot his, a character might as well be pigeonholed. If a person always looks downward, the only thing they'll ever do is tumble down and be a stick in the mud. And seriously what good does that ever do for anyone?

Give your a, b, c, d, e (insert others here) x, y, z listers the chance. The constant putting down of some characters on here is just droll and lame. Anyone on that list could be an awesome character and already may be someone's favorite. Have some heart already.

[Sardorim]

Well, Monet is in X-Men.

[MYCMTSC]

Stacy X should be a villain with a different codename.

Longshot, Cypher, and Magma are a bit awful.

Cannonball has been pushed several times, but he doesn't have a hook to him. He's an occasionally handsome blonde boy with mildly altered standard abilities. He's a nice guy but there's not much else to build upon.

Karma, Moonstar, Monet, and Chamber just haven't had the right hook. These four have distinctive personalities and origins but once again, there's nothing inherent to their stories that makes them first choice to headline a major story arc.