Can we talk about this? Can we talk about how it derailed almost all momentum for the New X-Men and added almost nothing of value except killing off another Academy X character? Thank KYost, Liu (controversial), Carey, Fraction and Gillen for basically ignoring it and carrying the team to Schism.
I re-read it real quick as part of my ongoing re-read of X-Men post-Messiah CompleX and it really is just a garbage pile of a book, with horribly out of character dialogue (oy, the New Mutants interactions) and just ridiculous plot holes. Anole and Cipher just spending issues hidden for final page reveals was cheap, and the whole bit with the number of Mutants not adding up is so amazingly dumb when they can just work it out.
Almost every new character introduced was bad and there's like 10 mysteries introduced that never got solved because the book was cancelled. On that note, it's hilarious how there's a THINGS TO COME page at the end of the first arc and only one out of four scenes teased actually happened in the book lol (two other things were dealt with in X-Infernus/New Mutants v3).
But I would love to see the decision-making behind breaking up Kyost/Young at the top of their game. Did Kyost no longer want to write the book along with X-Force? Were they too busy with WatXM at the time? Why introduce an entirely new book and lineup when your current book is selling well? Why did the book's assistant editor like this 12 issue suicide note so much that he put Guggs in charge once he had failed upwards to X-Men co-group editor? Was this Alonso's worst mistake during his reign of terror as X-Men executive editor?
Moonstar beating the **** out of Blindfold (who is, y'know, blind) and calling her a bitch lol.
It was already good but New X-Men really started firing on all cylinders once Quest for Magik hit and the students were finally being integrated into X-Men history. The funniest plot line that Guggs tried to sell was Cipher being the reason Blindfold talked weird. Like????? Carey and Spurrier tag-teamed that crap out of continuity. Also, Surge was staying with Dani at the time but, at the same time, I’m sooo glad Guggenwuggen didn’t write her.
It’s telling that Ink and Graymalkin only had “impressionable” appearances when Guggs was on board.
Graymalkin's origin issue was like...the only good issue of Gugg's X-Men career (and it had Ben Olivier art I think!). I kind of loved it even if they gave the poor guy overused powers.
Also, Magma nearly murdering Dust and not really caring??? Wolf Cub gutting Sunspot and then stopping Rockslide from killing Pierce because “X-Men don’t kill” only for the real Cyclops to kill him months later???? Genius. He died for no reason. I’m guessing Young X-Men was supposed to be a much bigger book by banking on getting that New X-Men hype but it was missing more than half the cast and the fluid character interactions that Kyle and Yost brought to each character. I don’t care for Ink and there was nothing redeeming about him. He was uncomfortably racist against both Dani and mutants (and unlike Cannonball and Elixir, he wasn’t even a mutant) so I wouldn’t be surprised if he had Leon draw a certain symbol on him just for the fun of it. I’m hoping he gets left behind when Hickman works his magic. I wouldn’t be mad if Graymalkin took the place of Loa or something but I think Cipher and Jonas can still be redeemed with a really good writer.
I think Chris and Chris were trying to tackle both X-Force and New X-Men, but couldn’t do it so they just went with X-Force thinking the latter was in good hands. But like good parents, they eventually scooped up the missing kids in X-Force and still told much more interesting stories.
He’s super fine with knocking out defenseless women and joining anti-mutant hate groups just because “uwu im so lonely and lost so i shouldn’t have accountability for my actions.” There is no reason Cyclops shouldn’t have kicked him out as soon as they reached SanFran. How did he even get out of him coma?
Oh, and why didn’t Logan ever adopt Pixie or Surge
I mean....Nori’s dad disowned her from her entire family and Megan’s dad is Mastermind.
Logan constantly referring to Pixie as “girlie girl” in Fraction’s run was demeaning at best and predatory at worst.
oh wow I forgot how much Fraction really pushed Pixie into that Kitty role except she got aged up like five years and was drawn by Greg Land. and was basically a completely different character. hmmm maybe Fraction's run on Uncanny was a mistake.
Yeah, Pixie was stated to be 14 in Children of X-Men and in Fraction's first or second arc it's stated she's old enough to drink in Canada. Indra was also definitely drawn much older than in NXM where was 13.
I reread Fraction's run and can confirm it is still the worst. The only thing in its favour are its "ideas" but they're so haphazardly introduced and treated with such little care that they don't measure up to the OOC-ness, the complete destruction of Scott and Emma, the "darlings" and "babes", the casual sexism and the infamous Magneto kneeling and Nightcrawler's funeral issues. It was before my time but I heard Fraction's run almost destroyed CBR. The best of times, the worst of times...
I hated Fraction's run when it was originally coming out and considered him to be the worst writer on the core books but his run reads better in retrospect. Its not as bad as I originally thought