What is the purpose of all the different teams?

There are so many X-squads it seems. Uncanny Xmen, Astonishing Xmen, Xmen, Xmen Legacy, WATX, Ultimate XMen, Uncanny X-force, Cable nad Xforce, X-factor etc. What is the purpose of all the different teams? I guess my question is what is each team's mission statement? For instance Cyclops' extinction team was to defend mutants and humans from extinction level threats also to make humans think twice about coming after mutants.

It's for Marvel to make a profit.

Pretty much. X-Force does dirty work, X-treme went into alternate universes, X-Factor was on their own, separate from the X-Men mostly focused on investigations and as for the Ultimate X-Men, that is an entirely different universe.

It's just different ways of pulling up characters from relative obscurity and giving them starring roles in different books. It is a good question though. I would think the Avengers have the same thing going on as well, with Secret Avengers, New Avengers, Young Avengers, etc.

At the moment, my favourite book is the adjectiveless X-Men. :)

I don't read all of the Avengers titles, but I think that is true, though the relative obscurity of characters doesn't seem to be as big a thing, except maybe in "Avengers".

I think there are six team titles with Avengers in the title, but I think only three of them are officially Avengers teams, as New Avengers is the Illuminati, Secret Avengers is SHIELD, and I don't know if the Young Avengers are official members. I could be wrong, but I'm going by what I've heard.

That's what happens when groups like the X Men have hundreds of members, you can't have EVERY X Man in a book, so you split them up in a half dozen books.

Poor state of the franchise.

@hawk2916: Basically, there's so many X-men now that they've split into different teams based on which different members work best with each of the X-men's purposes, of which they've had many.

In X-men, Storm's team represents the more traditional mandate of the team, dividing their time between being superheroes and protecting their school for young mutants.

In Wolverine and the X-men, Wolverine and the staff of the school make it their priority to deal with threats to the school, with special attention paid to some of the more troublesome students.

In Uncanny X-force, Psylocke and Storm work with former villains and fallen heroes on the shadowy path to redeem themselves, which is another classic theme for the X-men.

In Uncanny X-men, Cyclops' outlaw X-men work outside of the system to protect and train mutants who have been discriminated against by various government agencies and draw attention to such injustices.

In Uncanny Avengers, Havok and other former X-men work alongside/as the Avengers to incorporate some of the ideals and perspective of the X-men into the more recognized and trusted superhero team. Really, this team is the Avengers and not the X-men, but it's worth mentioning since the idea of the team is to highlight that, since X-men and other superheroes are often dealing with the same kinds of threats any way, there's no reason they shouldn't be regarded as the same type of heroes.

Then there's All-new X-men, in which the original X-men travel to the present to be introduced to their future histories and the different X-men teams and threats to their dream that are operating in the present. That book is sort of an introduction to the characters and concepts that I think is more designed for new readers, but the interactions between the various characters and factions within the X-men's world are pretty entertaining in themselves.

Most of the other X-books ( Astonishing X-men, X-men Legacy, X-factor, and Cable and the X-force) seem to deal less with the general themes particular to the X-men or their purpose, and more on specific characters from X-men lore having different kinds of adventures within that world. Some might argue that having so many other X-men books dilutes or confuses what it is that the X-men are actually about, but part of what's great about the X-men is really just how interesting all of the characters are, and these books do things that other X-men books don't by giving focus to lesser used or recognized characters, in adventures that don't necessarily tread the ground of more traditional X-men themes.

What is the purpose of all the different teams?

Sell lots of comic books every month.

I really can't tell if people are just being cheeky or if they don't understand the question.

You can't ruin everything about a franchise if you're only writing one series, you need lots in order to appropriately destroy everything good.

that may be true, but why would you think that anyone wants to do that?

@oldnightcrawler said:

Marvel clearly wants to by hiring writers who redefine ineptitude and putting them on X-Comics.

Even the latest Adjectiveless which is being applauded has a genocidal sentient bacteria falling for a teenager (the daughter of a woman he murdered) and asking for help against his sister. He's bacteria, he doesn't have a sister. AND HIS NAME ISN'T F*CKING JOHN.

DOES NO ONE READ OVER THIS CRAP?

Too many characters, too few spotlights.

I don't think you understood my question; it was why would they do that?

Nice breakdown -- only now X-Factor is out of the group. :(

I see! Yes, I think you are right about the Young Avengers -- it's never been stated they are Avengers in the book (granted, I am about two issues behind), plus the idea Loki is an Avenger doesn't makes any sense.

His name is John, and he's really concerned and worried and needs the X-Men's help! Never mind that he is billions of years old and is worried about his angry sibling (who he attempted to destroy all that time ago) and now Earth is in really, really big trouble, buster!

@lykopis: I think some of them were made honourary Avengers at the end of The Childrens Crusade, but I don't know if that counts.

I realised I made a mistake. I meant to say 3 titles, not teams, as Avengers Assemble isn't its' own team, it's just a revolving cast of characters who are Avengers.

I think that would mean that there are only two official Avengers teams at the moment, "The Avengers", and "Avengers Unity Squad", as seen in Uncanny Avengers.

I wonder if Avengers A.I. and Mighty Avengers will be official Avengers teams. I get the feeling Marvel are putting the Avengers brand on as many things as possible to capitalise on the success of the film.

@v_scarlotte_rose:

Thanks for the info -- I am slowly but surely getting my fingers into the Avengers side of things. :)

I wonder if Avengers A.I. and Mighty Avengers will be official Avengers teams. I get the feeling Marvel are putting the Avengers brand on as many things as possible to capitalise on the success of the film.

Of this, I have no doubt.

this....wait, yea this :)

@lykopis: Does the Exiles count as a X-team?

@v_scarlotte_rose: based on the membership, I get the feeling that Mighty Avengers will be less associated with the main team, for people who are less interested in seeing the Avengers as an established agency.

bingo

@oldnightcrawler: True. Though I wonder if there's enough authority between the members to officially call themselves an Avengers team. 2 Current members and 3 former members(including 2 leaders) may be enough to officially take on the name.

Doesn't really matter I suppose, but it'd be good to find out.

@lykopis No problem. I can't call myself an expert, but I can try and answer any questions you have. :)

I think if Cage has a team with Falcon, She-Hulk, Photon, and Spiderman, he's more than met the requirements to call it the Avengers, whatever their association to the other team is.

@hawk2916:

X-Force - to do the dirty-work that has to be done (at least that was Remender's X-Force, the new X-Force (both of them) I'm still a little confused at their relevance!).

X-Factor - to handle mainstream situations that are more integrated into the main Marvel U.

Wolverine and X-Men - to teach and educate the next generation of mutants (or so it claims).

Uncanny X-Men - to spark up mutant revolution in Cyclops' views.

X-Men Legacy - for Legion to take his father's dream into his own hands and interpret it in his own view.

X-Men - a female-version of X-Men... the title just started so it's hard to tell.

Astonishing X-Men - to be the public team that everyone could be content with. Their message is still a little foggy too, but it is just now going in a direction.

All New X-Men - to combat Cyclops and his mutant revolution while aiding the original five time-displaced X-Men.

A+X - an Avenger and X-Men team-up.

@oldnightcrawler: Exactly. I'm glad Luke and Monica are in charge, as being led by former Avengers leaders seems like a good idea.

Initially they were a blend of Excalibur and X-Men, and then a mix of alternate universe characters but in my mind, I always considered them part of the X-Men world. Dazzler's recently cancelled book was (to me) a new version of the Exiles and to this day, I still don't understand why Marvel went with the Xtreme X-Men title.

Did you follow the Exiles title?

A+X, Astonishing, All New X, Wolvie and the X, all need to get cancelled. Show's over. These titles serve absolutely no purpose to the X-Mythos and the Marvel U. in general. Biggest wastes of trash that Marvel's decided to push out thus far. Further deterioration of what was once a prestigious franchise.

Thats one reason for me posing the question. I dont understand why there's a need for Astonishing and WATX. They should be one book. ANX while entertaining should be included with Astonishing and WATX. A+X can go

@lykopis: Are going to. A guy over the internet sold me a couple of them to me pretty cheep, so I'm just waiting for it to come by mail.

I'm considering reading Excalibur. Do you know a good place to start?

@waezi2:

Depends on how far back you want to go. I am a huge Claremont fan so I dug back deep to get my hands on the first issues (I had some given to me but it was far from complete) when the X-Men split in half because one side believed the other side dead - while the side thought dead had to remain hidden in Australia.

If you want to get the whole X-Men experience, I would start from the very beginning where you have Kitty and Kurt and Rachel with Captain Britain and Meggan. There are stops along the way where other mutants join the team, most notably when Nocturne and Juggernaut are part of the team along with Psylocke which happens when the title is renamed New Excalibur back in 2006 (this picks up right after the House of M event.)

This series is awesome on its own. Too bad it's been dropped - it would be a great way of expanding the X-Men Universe outside of North America and bring back a more international feel, especially with Avengers Arena opening the door to there being an academy set up in England by Captain Britain for mutants and super-powered kids..

The way society and people operate and how fandom works. I remember one person I knew he thought there were too many X-Men books so they only wanted 2 titles and his favorite X-Men books were Legacy and X-Factor and the flaw there of course is that his favorite books would have gotten cut and he would have stopped giving Marvel money.

Over in Avengers Hickman has like a 24 character roster and even despite that books like Young Avengers and Uncanny Avengers have a very different feel about them even with some characters overlapping. Even then some big and popular Avengers characters like Tigra, She Hulk, Hercules, Vision, Pym aren't even in the picture yet. Some of them will be though soon. X-Men has an even larger selection of characters to draw on. Many fans don't really care about the in story creative purpose of a team, a good writer will make it work, a lot of fans just care about having a place to read about their favorite characters or just read great stories utilizing traditional X-Men themes well - think X-Factor.

Well WATX is suppose to focus on the students, while Astonishing was a team of Xmen from the school that did more traditional X men things, now however the "X men" title seems to be doing this as well soo

I think this is a really good point, all of this.

I would add to it two things, though. Firstly, the people who complain that there's too many X-men (or whatever) books, who call for the cancellation of books they see as redundant, don't like, or don't see any value in, never seem to think that the books they like might be redundant or valueless to someone else. It seems mainly because they view their criteria for judging works to be superior or more valid than someone else's, giving them a sense of entitlement to their opinion while at the same time trying to invalidate someone else's.

(you guys know who you are).

Secondly, there seems to be this notion of what Marvel does as being strictly corporate that totally disregards the level of skill and dedication that the creators of these books have to attain to even make these stories happen. I'm not trying to say that all marvel comics have genuine artistic merit, or that any work is above criticism; I'm just saying that just because you don't like something doesn't mean it has no value to other readers. As the great Robert Crumb once said, "not everything's for everybody."

@oldnightcrawler:

Yeah its just people opinion bro. Sometimes having soo many books waters down the plot and hurts continuity. For example you cant possibly tell me that all the Wolverine books they have out is not a bit of overkill.

I agree with this. I think the main problem with having so many X-Men books is that either though we are getting more characters who haven't been shown in years finally show up, it's hard to see if any of the books are actually connected to each other when they have different priorities.

@lykopis: If Nightcrawler and Kitty Pryde is in the series, then I'm going to read it for sure.

Thanks

@aiden_cross: The actual correct answer.

Maybe it is, I dunno. The only books I read that have Wolverine in them are All-new X-men, Wolverine and the X-men, and Uncanny Avengers. I know that I like those 3 books, and that lots of other people don't like them at all.

Maybe I'm not as concerned with the presence of some characters being watered down because I don't read every X-men (or Wolverine) book. I just read the ones that genuinely interest me, and I don't worry about what's going on in the others.

I mean, I get where you're coming from: it does seem pretty redundant how many books there are, but if you asked every X-men fan which two or three books they could live without, they'd all give different answers. I personally don't have more than a passing interest in say Astonishing X-men or 'Legacy, and I've never been a fan of Cable, so his X-force holds no appeal for me either; but I know other people who would count any of those as among their favorite books, and that doesn't bother me because, well, why would it?

Lmfao. The scales willfall from your eyes.

Ugh. WATX srsly needs to go.

haha! you can't know that!

I mean, I've been reading comics for more than twenty five years (eight of which I spent in university learning how and why to critique art), and they haven't fallen yet.

honestly though, I can't say your criticism and general disillusionment hasn't helped keep them more firmly in place.. haha!

haha! I hope not, I'm just starting to like it. I mean, I have been pretty hot and cold with both the tone and focus of this book, but I'm definitely starting to appreciate it more now that they've finally made Quire more of a main character. I guess he's just a personal favorite of mine, but I'm pretty interested in at least his parts of the story.

@oldnightcrawler said:

Cheers and also great points in return. I am a big fan of Claremont era X-Men, but he had a pretty particular style and not only that but I read all his work in trade paper back and in Essentials format. Going back to his style he use to use narration boxes and thought bubbles a lot and thats a great way to fill issues with a lot of information. Sure sometimes it might have held your hand a little bit too tightly, but it was ambitious and covered a lot. As a result you can cover a lot of characters and plots rapidly. Except since he left the book the X-Franchise has continued to grow as far as characters and the style of writing lends itself more to decompression and cinematic style writing. Less is more and all that jazz. Then we have the whole writing for TPB aspect as well as writers/artists who are as big as the characters. Eh a lot of people are going to get hooked into different books for different as you say. Then yeah the balance between artistic merit and selling well is always going to be there. I thought Journey Into Mystery was clever, witty, unique, with great dialogue, characterization, art, covers, but now its cancelled heh heh.

Plus I still want me my damn Gen X reunion, also I am way behind on New Mutants so not sure where they are now, plus when X-Factor ends I am worried about my favs there. I want more books!!! ^_^

Yeah, i haven't even been alive for 25 years let alone been a cb-reader.

No, this is by far one of the worst X-Titles out at the moment and with each and everysingle passsing issue, Aaron only helps to solidify my judgment. Aaron's been proudly dragging Husk through the mud since he first got his greasy mits on her, and now she's a bigger joke than the rest of the faculty and students at that school. This title is only ever good when Aaron focuses on Quire, Oya, Broo and KG together, but now KG's gone, Broo's a monster and Oya's indocrination and self-loathing have reached inexplicable levels of dated abnormality.

More on the faculty, they're all portrayed as oblivious, self-indulged jokes. Aaron is bad for the X-Men. He needs to goooo. Those small glimmers of nicey-nice won't save this title, as it doesn't detract from the amount of sh*t Aaron's riddled it with since inception. Fan-ficers can do better than this. Heck, I could do better than this.

It's embarassing.

@ageofhurricane: @oldnightcrawler:

Actually when Marvel was self published in the 80's they clearly were looking for long term readership, in the 90's it was all about the speculator market and special edition covers. In the 00's it was about creating "indie" credibility and desperation for sales. Today, after the acquisition by Disney, it completely about short term sales. This is evident by the overflowing new readership attempts, recurrent ending and beginning of series, and multiple yearly crossover projects. Sometimes I cannot tell a difference between a traditional magazine business model and the Marvel business model. The writing is second to art, actual plot build up (this is not inclusive to crossover tie ins which is NOT the same) has given way to sensationalism. If it will "put asses in seats" this month the actual repercussions and continuity the series or universe as a whole are inconsequential.

thanks. Yeah, that's pretty much the thing I miss about Claremont's style in the X-books: there was more to read.

I don't disagree with any of these criticisms, but I'm still enjoying the book at the moment, so I disagree that it should be cancelled.

I don't disagree with your main argument, although I would point out that this happened as much in the 90's, just on a smaller scale. I know that lots of people first got into the X-men by way of 92's X-men Animated Series; I actually didn't watch that show until probably '97, so I only knew of it through the X-Men Adventures comic adaptation of the show, which was, from my perspective at the time, the same sort of obvious new readership attempt that you're talking about. Except instead of trying to acclimatize new readers to the X-men's world (like say, All-new X-men), it just confused the story by retelling it in another way. But even in the 90's they had line wide crossovers all the time, the line just wasn't as wide.

All that said, from the perspective of what the creators of the X-men books are producing, even if it is under more editorial direction than before (which I can't tell), I'm still currently interested and entertained by it, which I think is a step in the right direction from the past few years. Honestly, I've been pretty into most of the main X-men books ever since the relaunch.

@oldnightcrawler: Multiple continuities in the same medium are a bad sign, DG. In the 80's it was pretty accessible to just about everyone young and old. If you wanted to have a jump on point you didn't go to the extremes they do now, you just bought back issues until you feel everything clicked, it was THAT easy. It is poisonous to the books and to the "X" series as a whole. Hell they could make MORE money had they the wit to try to control there own back issues. They can do that via the internet, everyone can see that they just lack the testicular fortitude to go through with it. It is complete mismanagement from editorial to marketing. "90's they had line wide crossovers all the time, the line just wasn't as wide", sort of but it was more like they had arcs every month that crossed over and they saved up the big one for the summer or something. Wrestling promotions have less events, dude. It is also hurting units sales clearly.

is marvel soooooo MONEY!

A + X: Short stories that star a random Avenger and a random X-Man teaming up.

- Uncanny Avengers: Mutants and Humans working together to repair the image of Mutant-kind.

- Uncanny X-Men: Cyclops' Mutant Revolution and his new school.

- All-New X-Men: The original X-Men brought forward in time to force Cyclops (and Mutant-kind) remember their roots and make better decisions in the present.

- X-Men: A team of female X-Men protecting a baby.

- Cable and the X-Force: Cable leads a team of fugitives to save the world.

- Uncanny X-Force: Psylocke-lead team that is hunting Bishop.

- X-Men Legacy: Legion's solo series.

- Astonishing X-Men: Currently focusing on Ice Man.

- Gambit: Gambit's solo series.

- Deadpool: Deadpool's solo series.

- Deadpool Killustrated: Deadpool vs. Literature's Classic Stories

- Wolverine: Wolverine's obligatory solo comic.

- Savage Wolverine: Wolverine's second obligatory solo comic.

- Wolverine and the X-Men: All about Wolverine and his school.

- Wolverine MAX: Wolverine's solo series set in the MAX universe.

- Ultimate Comics X-Men: The X-Men of the Ultimate Universe.

- Age of Apocalypse: A series set in the post-apocalyptic AoA universe.

- X-Treme X-Men: X-Men of (yet another) alternate universe who explore the multiverse.

EDIT: You could also include...

- Avengers: Occasionally stars a few different mutants doing Avenger type stuff.
- New Avengers: Stars Namor and Beast protecting the world with the other members of the Illuminati.