Grant Morrison's new X-Men - When did it start to decline?

[rutog98]

GM's run started to go down from day 1 as far as I'm concerned. He ruined Emma Frost's character and made her sleazy. She had always been icy, but classy before he came along. He rehashed that tired old "Phoenix Force" thing again. The artwork was dreadful and he flooded the book with far too many x-brats. I never cared for x-kids, but these guys were not only brats, but they were weird-looking as well.

[t hedge coke]

No one wanted to write about Jean and the Phoenix Corps because the entire concept was a embarrassing crock.

Then just resurrect her. It doesn't even require a lot of plot build up.

"Oh, we found an egg, wrapped in an old mattress. Look! Behold, the Phoenix hatches!"

"Hi everybody! I'm Jean! I'm keen!"

"We love you, Jean!"

And, Cyclops leaves whoever he's with to follow her around.

Scene.

He ruined Emma Frost's character and made her sleazy.

Made.



Other than her big-sweater den mother period in Generation X (which didn't even last all of Gen X), she's always been a leather domme for whom white panties were daywear. A dedicated teacher and bodyswapper who manipulates, lies, and hurts people for profit.

[MYCMTSC]

Assault on Weapon Plus, definitely. I don't think Riot at Xavier's is as good as it could've been, but the big decline in quality for me will always be AoWP.

[WallStreeter]

I was going to say... Imho, it went downward as soon as they tried to force match the characters/world/story to the movie. So about first issue of New X-Men. I am ok with the movies being different as they are not in the same universe anyway. But changing characters personalities, discarding previous stories and trying to match the movie world/tone...

As soon as they tried to in the comics make the X-Men a school, put them in drab uniforms, and get rid of the X-Men's villains it all went downhill. The X-Men became more about internal drama and moved away from being superheroes. I was okay with in X-Men 1 (the films) as the films were introducing the concept of the X-Men to mainstream audiences. But this was horrible in the comics. And ironically now the films are actually now much more like the comics and focusing on the X-Men as superheroes. Finally post Secret War we see the X-Men as superheroes more.

[WallStreeter]

Then just resurrect her. It doesn't even require a lot of plot build up.

"Oh, we found an egg, wrapped in an old mattress. Look! Behold, the Phoenix hatches!"

"Hi everybody! I'm Jean! I'm keen!"

"We love you, Jean!"

And, Cyclops leaves whoever he's with to follow her around.

Scene.



Made.



Other than her big-sweater den mother period in Generation X (which didn't even last all of Gen X), she's always been a leather domme for whom white panties were daywear. A dedicated teacher and bodyswapper who manipulates, lies, and hurts people for profit.

He did good things for Emma's character. He made her a main X-Man.
If they had resurrected Jean from the Phoenix egg I would have been fine with that with one exception. Do not have Scott leave whoever he's with to get back with Jean.

That's bad for both characters. Both characters needed to move on.

[t hedge coke]

As soon as they tried to in the comics make the X-Men a school, put them in drab uniforms, and get rid of the X-Men's villains it all went downhill.

NXM had Magneto, Toad, Sentinels, Thornn, Feral, Quicksilver, Sabretooth, the Shiar Imperial Guard, Emma Frost, and even a shoutout to El Tigre, a villain who hadn't appeared in forever. That's a lot of classic opponents from every era of X, even leaving off all the new villains. Yes, some of them were redeemed, and the Imperial Guard aren't "villains" so much as just the other side, but there was hardly an New X-Men issue that didn't feature supervillains, or that wasn't deeply and casually drawing from X-history. The contemporaneous Casey/Austen/Claremont runs, as well.

If anything those runs, and the Counter-X just before were the busting up of a decade of stagnating in-fighting without the general presence of proper villains being throttled for being villains.

[motherofpearl1]

Introducing Emma Frost as an X Man was when the entire franchise started to go downhill; she went from Cyclops' squeeze to X Leader in five minutes and just about every other female character in the X Men was shunted aside in favour of the Ice Princess.

[WallStreeter]

Introducing Emma Frost as an X Man was when the entire franchise started to go downhill; she went from Cyclops' squeeze to X Leader in five minutes and just about every other female character in the X Men was shunted aside in favour of the Ice Princess.

This is very true. Things didn't change until Disney bought Marvel and decided to put female characters in prominent roles again.

[WallStreeter]

NXM had Magneto, Toad, Sentinels, Thornn, Feral, Quicksilver, Sabretooth, the Shiar Imperial Guard, Emma Frost, and even a shoutout to El Tigre, a villain who hadn't appeared in forever. That's a lot of classic opponents from every era of X, even leaving off all the new villains. Yes, some of them were redeemed, and the Imperial Guard aren't "villains" so much as just the other side, but there was hardly an New X-Men issue that didn't feature supervillains, or that wasn't deeply and casually drawing from X-history. The contemporaneous Casey/Austen/Claremont runs, as well.

If anything those runs, and the Counter-X just before were the busting up of a decade of stagnating in-fighting without the general presence of proper villains being throttled for being villains.

The main villain for the Morrison run was SUBLIME, who manipulated controlled Magneto, the U-Men, among others. The other other significant villain was Cassadra Nova, who manipulated the Imperial Guard to fight the X-Men.

Morrison didn't use any of the traditional A list villains (Magneto was a puppet of Sublime and not pursing his own agenda) as powerful villains in their own right.

Thorn and Feral were not used as villains, and Sabretooth just hung out in the Hellfire Club which was reduced to a total strip joint. Sebastian Shaw was just a glorified club owner.

[t hedge coke]

The main villain for the Morrison run was SUBLIME, who manipulated controlled Magneto, the U-Men, among others. The other other significant villain was Cassadra Nova, who manipulated the Imperial Guard to fight the X-Men.

Morrison didn't use any of the traditional A list villains (Magneto was a puppet of Sublime and not pursing his own agenda) as powerful villains in their own right.

Thorn and Feral were not used as villains, and Sabretooth just hung out in the Hellfire Club which was reduced to a total strip joint. Sebastian Shaw was just a glorified club owner.

Sebastian Shaw was always just a glorified club owner.

Morrison used traditional villains, he just didn't use all of them in the traditional way. Magneto, though, was straight up traditional. Talks a good game, gives good speeches, then tries to bully, enslave and divide everyone into tiers and kill some people. That is Magneto.

Magneto was powerful in his own right. The Sentinels were powerful. The Shiar Imperial Guard were powerful.

[Supernature]

Opposed to what? I ask this question seriously, because many people disliked Morrison's run and what I'm wondering is if NXM was bad then what was good because it was certainly better than all of the titles that where concurrent with its initial run, certainly better than anything that came before it for at least four or five years, and most definitely better than anything that's come after it, so then what's the measuring stick for the run or is it merely a preference thing?

Thisssssss !

He shook things up in a big way. ~Oh the horror.

[missingmarch]

So I was over at the Spider-Man thread and someone posted a topic asking what people think of JMS & JRjr's run. It got me thinking about something I used to see often around here. People say that the quality of New X-Men diminished greatly at some point. I've read the run at least two or three times and never noticed a hiccup. When did this decline in quality take place?

Answer: The minute Morrison left.

Morrison wrote the only main X-Book ever worth reading, in my opinion.

[WallStreeter]

Sebastian Shaw was always just a glorified club owner.

Morrison used traditional villains, he just didn't use all of them in the traditional way. Magneto, though, was straight up traditional. Talks a good game, gives good speeches, then tries to bully, enslave and divide everyone into tiers and kill some people. That is Magneto.

Magneto was powerful in his own right. The Sentinels were powerful. The Shiar Imperial Guard were powerful.

Shaw owned Shaw Industries which made sentinels and other weapons. In fact is role in creating the sentinel problem is why Emma Frost took him down and had him imprisoned in Utopia.

Magneto did everything he did in the Morrison run do to influence from SUBLIME. So this wasn't Magneto. He was a puppet of another and not pursing his own game.

[missingmarch]

If anything those runs, and the Counter-X just before were the busting up of a decade of stagnating in-fighting without the general presence of proper villains being throttled for being villains.

Man, Counter-X's revamp of X-Man is pretty interesting stuff. You can see lots of ideas there that Ellis later used in his work. It's a hidden gem of the smaller X-Books, in my opinion.

[t hedge coke]

Man, Counter-X's revamp of X-Man is pretty interesting stuff. You can see lots of ideas there that Ellis later used in his work. It's a hidden gem of the smaller X-Books, in my opinion.

The Gen X changeover had about three good ideas (Paige's google-fu proactiveness, Emma being a badass, Banshee feeling old), but X-Man, and even X-Force just blew up with great ideas. In a way, it's a shame that that was the X-Force run that Milligan and Allred were following, because their run, especially when the old team show up, was really much more opposed directly to the pre-Counter-X X-Force style.

I can't even satisfactorily finish an issue of pre-Counter X-Man, but the Grant stuff was gold.