Originally Posted by
Grunty
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.