Where did it all go wrong?

[iacobusleo]

I've been reading the original run of X-Men, which was the most schooly of the entire run before the Morrison run, and they aren't doing algebra. Other than their blue/gold trainers, they don't have uniforms. Their primary pursuit is learning to control their powers in the Danger Room. There may have been slight allusions to regular course work, but it has never been shown in the first 40-odd issues I've gotten through already.

In all of Claremont's run, the NM(in their own book for the most part) are the most schooly the concept goes. Sure, Kitty has to do homework inbetween missions, and even Piotr might have had some too, but for the most part, Claremont's X-Men are superheroes. They even spend a good chunk of his run NOT at Xavier's. I like the X-Men first and foremost as an action-adventure/emergency response team, attuned to world-ending events, and as search/rescue for mutant-centric missions. They sold their most issues doing that, not in stuffy Harry Potter uniforms, writing research papers. Xavier's School has always supposed to be a bridge to the outer world. Jean was taking college courses in the original run at Metro University. Beast and Ice-Man went off to school at various points too. Xavier's should be the mastery of their mutant powers, first and foremost, so they can interact with baseline humans without accidentally hurting them/being able to actually do good in emergency situations.

You make it sound like having a school just means they are stuck doing algebra with no opportunity to train their powers, but that isn't the case. Both New X-Men and Wolverine and the X-Men showed that algebra, english etc etc is just a small part of the curriculum. A large part of their classes involved Danger Room training, psychic defense, outreach programs to those in need, field trips to alien empires...Basically what the X-Men and New Mutants were doing during Claremont's era, just not in a school setting because there were less students.

In addition, many mutants have mutations that make them unfit to be in a human school, and thus the only place they can learn everyday skills like algebra is in a place like Xavier's. So why not have everyday coursework at a school that was already built to be a refuge for these mutants? Not every mutant has the power to be a superhero nor would some of them want to be, so they need to be better equipped with the skills necessary to find a job in the real world. The classes to train their powers are still there for those have the ability to fly rather than walk.

And it says something that Claremont has again and again gone to stories that actually put young teenage characters in a setting with a close resemblance to a school. Sure, the focus isn't on the everyday math coursework aspect of it, but it was pretty clear that off panel the characters were writing assignments about world history and geography and all the rest. The expanded school since Morrison's run is merely an evolution of that concept. For me, it was pretty explicit in Claremont's text that the X-Men mythos isn't fully X-Men without stories about teenagers growing up in a school setting, and because the Uncanny X-Men had moved so far away from that, he wanted to create a second line to fill that gap. The New Mutants after all were NEVER supposed to be superheroes in their initial run, they just happened to keep falling into superheroic hijinks.

However, what I'm getting from your comment is that you prefer if Xavier's School was just a school training the mutants in the use of their powers, and real world education can be left to real world schools. I'm fine with that as long as it is made mandatory for the students of Xavier's to go to real world schools as well to at least learn the basics of living in human society, ala X-Men Evolution. But again, it would be so easy to accuse that version of Xavier's School as being paramilitaristic, because as we have seen, the training exercises designed to help mutants control their powers have been very combat oriented.

[yogaflame]

You make it sound like having a school just means they are stuck doing algebra with no opportunity to train their powers, but that isn't the case.

However, what I'm getting from your comment is that you prefer if Xavier's School was just a school training the mutants in the use of their powers, and real world education can be left to real world schools. I'm fine with that as long as it is made mandatory for the students of Xavier's to go to real world schools as well to at least learn the basics of living in human society, ala X-Men Evolution. But again, it would be so easy to accuse that version of Xavier's School as being paramilitaristic, because as we have seen, the training exercises designed to help mutants control their powers have been very combat oriented.

In regards to your first point:

How many minutes of film(in the X-Men movies) depict mutants in classroom settings, taking notes from a teacher who is giving a presentation, or walking in the halls/variously traversing the grounds?

Now, how many minutes of film depict the mutants being taught specifically in the use of their abilities, and working together as a team to defeat increasingly difficult opponents in the Danger Room?

You will see that the balance is significantly favored towards the normal boarding school scenes, with only one actual Danger Room scene(that was taken over completely by Wolverine, not allowing the students to learn and grow in X3), and a minor training scene in X1 with Scott and Jean playing with skeet [and Jean almost killing her classmates in Apocalypse with her bow and arrow(but that was actually just a deleted scene)].

Unfortunately that set a precedent followed in the modern comics. The kids don't get to progress, they are just a nondescript background noise(and cannon fodder), getting in the way of the main characters(Wolverine et al) progression.

In regards to your second part: Xavier's mission has always been paramilitary, and has always utilized child soldiers in very dubious and ethically-shaky grounds. The earliest issues are quite overt with this, as the X-Men work closely with the military and the FBI(particularly Fred Duncan who shares the database of weird happenings with Charles). Of course, the very genesis of the X-Men comes from Charles, and Charles himself was born of a military scientist, and served in the Korean war, and was seriously shaped by those events(not only the carnage of battle in general, but the specific events with Cain in Cyttorak).

However, as shaky as these grounds are, they are also very pragmatic. First of all, Scott was Charles's first recruit after a long period of isolation in his mansion. It was because Scott's powers went off, he blasted a building, a camera crew just happened to be there and catch it, and then he lets off another blast to stop the debris, and everyone is panicked and running, and then a mob goes after Scott. That's the start of 'the mutant menace'.

Scott ran away from his orphanage and into Jack Winters and was used as pawn by him, until Xavier helped Scott escape and took him in. He gave Scott a place to live, an education(in a full spectrum), a visor to help control his powers actively(he already had the ruby quartz glasses from the orphanage optician*later Sinister), and eventually, a mission. And so it was with the rest of them.

Mutations fire off at puberty, but they usually take a few years to come in strong. It just so happens that it is teenagers who need this protection and training. Xavier didn't set out to create an army of them, it's just what was required of them [to live, survive in a hostile world]. Just like young soldiers being drafted into a war not of their own creation. Obviously Charles realizes there are dangers in the world(first Juggy(magical), then Shadow King, then Magneto, and even Lucifer(extraterrestrial)), and that they will have to be met by force, but he does long for the peace time yet to come. That is his Dream.

Charles was also not all that older than the 05 in the original stories. That's 1963, just 18 years after WW2. Just 10 after Korea. Charles was only supposed to be in his early 30's, and Iceman was the youngest at 16, making Warren, Scott and Jean 17, and Hank 18. A whole year goes by in just the first 7 issues, and they are officially graduated(diplomas and all), and only then does Scott become field leader(and he's now 18, along with Angel and Jean, and Hank is now 19). Even Bobby officially turns 18 before the run is over. You have to understand 14 year olds were in WW2(unofficially, as the age of enlistment was 18, but they lied and they did it anyways).

You have to grow up sometime.

[iacobusleo]

Unfortunately that set a precedent followed in the modern comics. The kids don't get to progress, they are just a nondescript background noise(and cannon fodder), getting in the way of the main characters(Wolverine et al) progression.

I don't think that's true at all, the kids being background noise and cannon fodder. Wolverine and the X-Men had the spotlight squarely on the kids, and so do tons of books focusing on the young X-Men (Generation Hope, Young X-Men, Kyle and Yost' New X-Men). They only feel like background noise because they don't go on to become full fledged X-Men, but that's more of an issue with character popularity and the sliding timescale which keeps them stuck in being permanent teenagers/students. And that doesn't refute the fact that the school has been a lot more than algebra and coursework. Combat and training to use their powers is still a huge part of the curriculum.

However, as shaky as these grounds are, they are also very pragmatic. First of all, Scott was Charles's first recruit after a long period of isolation in his mansion. It was because Scott's powers went off, he blasted a building, a camera crew just happened to be there and catch it, and then he lets off another blast to stop the debris, and everyone is panicked and running, and then a mob goes after Scott. That's the start of 'the mutant menace'.

You have to grow up sometime.

Yes, but the O5 was a different time, back when mutants was a very very very small minority unknown to the general populace. Now (barring a decimation), there are millions of them all over the world, with the legacy and history of superhero mutants hanging over their heads, a precedent set by the X-Men. Some mutants would want to take up the call and carry on the X-Men's torch, some do not. Plus, their reception by human society has become much more nuanced. Not everyone hates and fears them like they did back during the O5 time, particularly for the young, some of whom would find them hip and cool. It is no longer a question of pragmatism because the world has changed, it is a question of choice. It is similar to the fight for civil rights in the real world. How people fight for civil rights will change over time. For gay people, it used to be about their basic right to live and not be imprisoned or sent to the aslyum for who they are, then it became about marriage equality. That fight's won, and we now go onto more nuanced fights such as representation. Some would want to continue fighting for their rights, some would just want to live their lives in peace.

For mutants, it used to be about being seen as good guys and to defend themselves from all sorts of threats. But now that there are so many of them, and so many want to be superheroes, the fight can now move to giving mutants a choice about how to live their lives.

That said, this is all in the context of a world where they are not in danger of extinction. Decimation, the Terrigen Mists.. I have no problem if they have to become militaristic. That's pragmatism because there is an immediate threat hanging over their heads. But when things are relatively peaceful i.e. Morrison's run, the few years after Avengers vs X-Men, they should be allowed to have a choice, while still not neglecting their ability to defend themselves.

You have to grow up sometime, but you don't get stuck in the past and grow up like how your predecessors grew up. That's the entire purpose of the X-Men, to fight so that future generations don't have to.

[yogaflame]

The war's not won yet.

The X-Men were never set up to accommodate millions of students. They were to be the elite peacekeepers/world-savers. X-Corporation was one of Morrison's ideas that really should have been explored more before Decimation. That sort of decentralized, global franchise was the only reasonable way to address the huge mutant population Morrison took things to.

How many mutants are there even nowadays? They were down to just 198 there for a while, then came the 5 lights, and then after AvX they started popping up again, but how many? Are they even back up to millions? That would be a large proportion of the worlds teenagers to turn mutant all of a sudden.

[seccruz]

Look, I get it, if you can fly, you should also know how to walk. That's fine. But you should also freaking fly. And fly to the fullest extent of your ability. While his best ideas were used in The Ultimates, Mark Millar's Ultimate X-Men had some cool ideas in it too. Like when Jean used her telepathy to learn how to become a [pioneering, advanced] surgeon to save Beast's life. Should she not have used her powers, which are a god-given birthright to her, as natural as eyesight or manual dexterity, to learn this skill and save her friend? Should she have taken years and years to do it the human way? That would be a waste of her abilities.

I've been reading the original run of X-Men, which was the most schooly of the entire run before the Morrison run, and they aren't doing algebra. Other than their blue/gold trainers, they don't have uniforms. Their primary pursuit is learning to control their powers in the Danger Room. There may have been slight allusions to regular course work, but it has never been shown in the first 40-odd issues I've gotten through already.

In all of Claremont's run, the NM(in their own book for the most part) are the most schooly the concept goes. Sure, Kitty has to do homework inbetween missions, and even Piotr might have had some too, but for the most part, Claremont's X-Men are superheroes. They even spend a good chunk of his run NOT at Xavier's. I like the X-Men first and foremost as an action-adventure/emergency response team, attuned to world-ending events, and as search/rescue for mutant-centric missions. They sold their most issues doing that, not in stuffy Harry Potter uniforms, writing research papers. Xavier's School has always supposed to be a bridge to the outer world. Jean was taking college courses in the original run at Metro University. Beast and Ice-Man went off to school at various points too. Xavier's should be the mastery of their mutant powers, first and foremost, so they can interact with baseline humans without accidentally hurting them/being able to actually do good in emergency situations.

No surprising...when it all.revolved around Cyclops year after year, of course it's going to fall off.

very much this

[FUBAR007]

In answer to the original question:

The Kelly/Seagle run. That's when two watershed events happened:

1) The X-Men editorial office had finally exhausted Claremont and Simonson's dangling plot threads. After Jim Lee left, Harras was able to keep the X-titles on top of the charts by simply having Lobdell and Nicieza continue storylines and character arcs from Claremont's run on Uncanny and Simonson's run on X-Factor. With Operation Zero Tolerance, those storylines and character arcs were pretty well played out. Joe Kelly and Steve Seagle were the first X-Men writers, arguably since Claremont started his run, who had to come up with new stories to tell. And, they did, BUT...

2) ...they were cut off at the knees a few months in by Marvel corporate and editorial. From that point onward, editorial, driven by corporate, set the overall plot of the series and dictated the direction of the main characters. Editorial interference had been a thing for decades (see: The Dark Phoenix Saga) and had been steadily increasing since the mid-80s (see: the launch of X-Factor), but this was to a whole other level. The creative center of gravity for the X-Men books shifted permanently from the writers and the artists to corporate and editorial. The writers became glorified typewriters for hire, paid to turn corporate directives into stories instead of to come up with their own. With the possible exceptions of Grant Morrison's first year on the franchise and--maybe--Joss Whedon's run, it's pretty much been that way ever since.

[Doctor Know]

I voted for "Schism" as the beginning of the X-Men's decline. Schism would be followed up by Wolverine and the X-Men, AvX, Bendis' Marvel Now Uncanny and All New X-Men, All New All Different Extraordinary And Uncanny X-Men, Death of X and soon IvX.

Most, if not all titles since Schism have been mediocre or ok. Nothing great. Bendis just gave up making his story mean something before the end. Extraordinary and DoX have been half-assed, like the writers gave up telling a compelling story. This in turn affects readership. Who would pay to read these books month after month or spring for the compilations?

[Myetche]

Schism. Making the X-Men suffer extinction events is one thing, but seeing them constantly fighting and destroying each other over it is what's really killing them.

[FIGHT]

After the messiah trilogy there was no direction. Some age of heroes books sucked and the line was stagnate, but I say Schism. It was a forced story that broke up the x-men and the beginning of jason aaron's rejects. There were still good stories afterward tho. AvX made it 10x worse and half the time unreadable besides a few stories. Once Kieron Gillen's uncanny ended.....we got Bendis instead. need I say more?