The way i always understood this thread, perhaps a bit overly idealisticly, is that because everyone has some opinion about the X-comics past or present which will be unpopular with somebody else (since we are all human beings who have different viewpoints based social, religious, ethnic and cultural backrounds, aswell personal history), that this is where people can carefully express these opinion and either engange in debate about it, leave them as it, or discuss them with likely minded. As long as nobody is a jerk.
While the school is indeed a fundamental part of their pop culture image, i would argue it always worked best when it was limited to a singular junior team, like the 05, New Mutants, Generation X and how X-men Evolution did it.
Though a singular class might still work too.
If we look at the last 20 years, a larger student body has come with several issues that have not been there as much before. To name a few.
1. It ties the heros down via having an additional responcibility that will always interfer with their main job as super heros.
2. It paints a massive bullseye on any of their backround student and their deaths will be the heros direct responcibility.
3. If the same backround characters beginn to appear frequently or even interact with the heros multiple times, it will often cause the readers to want to know more about them and new writers might want to expand upon them. Resulting in an increasingly bloated list of constantly present characters.
While it's always nice that there is a chance for bit or backround characters to be expanded into supporting or even main characters, in the long run it bloats the junior cast, creates indirect competition for pannel space and just decreases everyone's elses time to be developed or used. Ultimately frustrating those readers who have grown attached to these new characters during their brief pushes.
And there are likely more problems.
Meanwhile a small scale junior team not only decrease the number of wards the X-men need to take care of, freeing them up for their super heroics while still having teacher roles, but also allows each of them to have more development, than if writers constantly switch out their focus characters.
Even a singular class still has a much better chance of getting development, with designated main group and the rest as supporting characters, than a full blown school that is maintained by a small group of super heros with "day jobs".
The X-men running a nation as government and governmental institutions, means that any of the usual problems with such organizations in stories are now the directly fault of the heros themself, which makes them look increasingly incapable to downright incompetent.
They can no longer blame an unseen president or his cabinete for making stupid decessions for the nation or being involved in moraly questionable if not evil acts, because the head of states are mostly THEM. They can no longer blame governmental institutions for attacks on the homeland, faulty intel, crimes or child neglect and bad education because they fill these roles now. They can no longer blame a obviously shady mega corperation for something because it's THEIR shady mega corperation now.
It's like having a Star Trek show where every main character of the past was promoted to be the admirals of Star Fleet and all the usualy mistakes or interferences these types tend to make are now the fault of the once beloved heros.
Which is especialy damning because the whole point of super heros is that they can do what real life people and institutions can't. But instead we now see them causing the very problems that super heros are meant to resolve for the incompetent, underpowered or moraly questionable organization. Even though the X-men resolve these things themself, it's now their fault they happend in first place, rather than some outsider's.
And on top of all this, it's not clear with several of the current writers if this is supposed to be fine or if they actualy want to set up a failing moraly bankrupt nation, both which just damages the image of these heros.
Also by having everyone tied up in the same place and pulling on one string, it also means there is no escape from this status quo in case someone wants a different direction, tone or motivation for their X-team.
With this status quo holding all potential titles hostage, i feel that it harms the diversity of X-men titles and their themes. Everything is currently just a shade of "krakoa" one way or another.
Also with the heros now basicly having any super power the plot demands at their finger tips via every mutant sitting around their island, holding hands and singing how great they are, it either destroys and kind of tension or makes them even more incompetent looking by not making use of their "resolve anything" powers.
Last edited by Grunty; 11-21-2021 at 03:11 PM.
Unpopular opinion, but I actually really liked that version and backstory for Cable.
Another unpopular opinion of mine: bone claws Wolverine was more fun and interesting than the indestructible adamantium clawed version. At least in those first couple of years. Wolverine #75-90 is just an incredible run IMO.
The book was created to avoid the pitfalls and problems of 90's X-men, then brought Kirkman, a self-confessed lover of 90's X-men.
Mind you, even at his best, it was never the greatest book, though it had it's moments. The main problem was probably trying to introduce characters that took decades to appear in the 616 all at once.
I personally think the writers need to find a better niche than "hated minority" for the X-Men to live in in their fictional world.
One of my problems with the krakoa era is the lack of character development with a lot of the storylines. We have had some to be sure but none quite like this imo. Hear me out. Nature girl was quiet and reserved in our times with her previously. She had a connection with nature and that is where she came out of her shell as far as the reader is concerned. What has been established now, and i think it makes a lot of sense, is that her mutant power and connection with nature has left her traumatized and damaged. Feeling all of the suffering from the planet took its toll and she eventually snaps and kills a man who quite frankly did not deserve it. I find myself, and most the mutants, sympathize with her struggle even though her tactics were extreme. We see in the last issue, quentin quire rooting for her even though he did his duty as a member of xforce and helped sedate her to present to the quiet council. I find this ironic because quentin has always been the rebel kid dreaming of doing something the likes of nature girl did. Even when confronted by magneto, she told him mutants were murdering humans by not doing anything about their actions. This was a philosophy that magneto lived by for decades. Little moments like these are awesome for me. At the end of the day, nature girl will never be the same, regardless of who writes her. This is what made xmen so popular back in the claremont era and has since been imitated by all great writers since. These “heroes” go through tragedy and are never the same. This is what makes them relatable to so many people. If they just fight bad guys and win at the end of the day the stakes become comical and the storylines uninteresting. I think what duggan did with this story was a risk and it sparked something in the readers whether it be positive or negative it is hard to read it and not feel some sort of way about it.
Colossus would be much more entertaining to me if the writers ditched the angsty sad boy routine he's been stuck with for 30+ years and instead just made him a fun, dumb, hot, scantily clad himbo.
Clan Akkaba would be better if it had more named characters and acted more as a proper faction and not just those guys who help Apocalypse.
The biggest problem to me with the comics medium is how much development happens off-panel. This is a big part of where the 'this/these characters are acting OOC' complaints stem from this problem. It's not limited to the X-Men or to Marvel. DC has the same problem. To some extent it's a result of the brevity of comics. But other times it's just that something important happened off panel and now the character is in a different place than they were the last time we saw them. For instance, the captains. Most fans would love to see why everyone not named Cyclops was made a captain, what the process was like. We want to see how Gorgon went from Hydra to running security for the Quiet Council. We want to see why Bishop was selected to replace Cyclops and why Kwanon was selected to replace Gorgon. But these developments happen off-panel, and are presented as a fait accompli instead of being given the space they should have.