X-men ruined after Marvel NOW!

The X-men before AvX were becoming a strong and powerful force. But now, they are a unorganized groups who are disbanding by the minute. Schism had something to do with this as well. Avengers are doing better than the X-men. Is this racism towards mutants.

Events

Wolverine healing factor loss

Prof X dead

Cyclops a fugitive

Best thing to happen so far is Nightcrawler is baacckk!!

@kingmagnus: You want to talk about things ruined by Marvel Now try the Thunderbolts. I lost my favourite title and character (Songbird) to a fan-boys wet dream. Sure Wolverine and Cyclops are going through some changes but it won't be the status quo and everything will revert back to the way it was.

As for Songbird I doubt we'll see her soon and that's a shame. She is one of the biggest casualties of Marvel Now, more so then the characters (Professor X excluded) you mentioned.

@impurestcheese: I liked Songbird, she was a good member of the team. I didn't read the series because the team sounded like a train wreck excluding Deadpool and Punisher.

this

I can agree that the avengers are being cradled by Marvel, but all the problems mentioned are just part of the story being told, let them finish telling it before we go up in arms about things that aren't going to stick.

You can't really say it's racism towards mutants, since anti-mutant racism is fictional.

But I do think it has a lot do with Marvel not owning the movie rights to the X-Men - they've been showing a lot more favoritism to the characters of the cinematic universe.

Not Wolverine though. He's too underexposed. He could use a bit more exposure.

@impurestcheese: Good to know someone else misses Songbird. It'd be really neat to see her leading her own team, but like you said I doubt we'll be seeing her any time soon.

I'm not a huge fan of what has happened to the X-Men in recent years, especially the whole Schism thing. I hope that older relationships will be restored some time down the line.

Half baked jean is back

@squares: Not popular enough I guess. I just hope she doesn't become an Avenger. Maybe a Redeemers title that actually fits with the old style Thunderbolts books. Then again Marvel didn't care about the continuity within that series. They totally forgot Radioactive Man was now a hero just to give Red Hulk a one liner in Avengers X-Sanction (or whatever it was).

It's also not really racism since mutants, collectively, aren't a race. It's obviously meant to have parallels with prejudice in general, but mutants are of every race, so even in their fictional world, racism just isn't the right term for it.

Freaking Avengers bias at Marvel, lol jk

Want to see how things turn out after the "No More Humans" storyline, maybe Cyclops and Wolverine will improve their relationship

Yeah, "Thunderbolts" led by "Thunderbolt" Ross does have a nice enough ring to it, but no continuity at all with the older teams and treating it more like the "punisher avengers" is just kinda eh.

@fodigg: I call them the Murder Bolts

@impurestcheese said:

Red Bolts ?

X-men are ruined for a long time dude. Few things were good in recent years.

@tomasmaclgh: Yep them

I half disagree. I think Schism was pretty sloppy, and Avengers Vs. X-Men was even worse, and Battle of the Atom just kinda sucked.

But, outside of those events, I think most of the books have gotten better and better in the last few years.

Let's see, there was Uncanny X-Force, and...

Help me, Comic Vine.

X-Men Legacy, Uncanny X-Men, Age of X, Messiah Complex, Age of Apocalypse, Astonishing X-Men, New Mutants, X-Factor

good things?

• New Mutants (vol.3, 2009-'12)
• Uncanny X-Force (vol.1, 2010-'12)
• Brian Wood's run on X-Men (vol.3 and 4)
• and Ultimate Comics X-Men
• and Wolverine and the X-Men: Alpha & Omega (2012)
• The Arms of The Octopus (2013)
• Astonishing X-Men #62-66 (2013)
• most of Uncanny X-Men (vol.3, 2013) (other than the two BotA tie-ins)
• Amazing X-Men (2013)

that's off the top of my head, but it's all stuff I really enjoyed.

The X-Men were ruined when Gillen stopped writing UXM. We didn't have good X-Books in a long time except for Gillen Uncanny and Remender Uncanny X-Force.

- New Mutants wa average

- Uncanny X-Force was awesome.

- Brian Wood X-Men was also average

- Ultimate X-Men was ruined back when Kirkman took over at issue 65 (or 66?).

- AXM is dead since Ellis run.

- Wolverine and the X-Men, Arms of Octopus and Amazing were and are still horrible childish books.

Uncanny X-Men is probably the worst with the pacing being so slow. There's what, 18 issues? It could have been written in 5 issues.

@kingmagnus:

yeah. the x men are gonna be messed up. I've been thinking that for a while too.

I think Wood's X-Men is at least on par with Gillen's run as of now, but that's beside the point. Curious what you mean by childish in regards to WatXM, Arms of the Octopus and Amazing?

I like the pacing of it (The only problem is the art...)....and it's by far the best x men comic because of the characters it features...All the others are the worst..(wolverine and the bunch...hypocrites)

huh. so does that mean I didn't enjoy them?

because I totally still did.

I'm guessing that he's implying I have the same tastes as a child because he doesn't share my taste in comic books.

I like the pace of it too (and I agree about the art; I like it well enough, but I liked Frazer Irving much more). Though I am still just as interested in the books from the JG School, I have to concede that Uncanny' is probably the best X-men book right now. Maybe even the best in years.

But, y'know, I have the palette of a juvenile, so what do I know?

:v

@oldnightcrawler: Maybe he thinks there too colorful? I cant see how WatX, Amazing and Arms of Octopus could be lumped together at all...let alone as childish.

Overall I feel like its a tough time to be an xmen fan and it has been for quite a while now. Im reading my lowest number of x-books at the moment. Really its a matter of personal preference so I dont want come off as insulting.... but I really feel like WATX is just hard to fathom. I really dont like for my favorite comic book characters to be made into a parody and a joke but thats what Aaron seems to be doing at least to me. I hate that Bendis has come to the xmen books. His pacing is slow and while the concept is good the execution is lacking. Then to create more mutants/x-students of which only 1 is interesting is just... I dont know haed to describe my thoughts here. ANXM I dropped because for me the concept is really ridiculous and again Bendis seems hellbent on destroying continuity. Xmen under Woods pen has been better. Though, having the stories revolving around a bacteria and a computer virus is really difficult for me to get around. I know Sublime is not his creation. But this is one of the few characters I wanted retconned. Amazing Ive given no chance because of the writer,"fool me once". Ive almost always enjoyed reading xmen but Im barely buying anything right now. I just have to go back reread the good stuff I guess

I didn't even mention Wolverine & the X-Men, because overall it's just been too inconstant for me to get into. I can see how someone would consider it a pretty silly book, but I don't think that's necessarily a fault in itself. Either way, I was talking about theWolverine and the X-Men: Alpha & Omega5 issue mini, which was pretty good. Better than most issues of WatX-men, for me.

I probably wouldn't have given Aaron another chance after WatX-men if it hadn't been to see the return of Nightcrawler, either, but, 4 issues in, I'm still glad I did. Amazing has been much better than WatX-men, at least for old school Nightcrawler fans like me.

X-Men was ruined by Decimation and then completely spun away from what made it special with Matt Fractions' Uncanny X-Fraternity run.

The book is more or less in the same place it was, but with better artists and less offensively bad, if not mediocre writing.

By childish, i mean the ''childish tone'' that Aaron use on the X-Book. I mean, LOL, have you seen the new Hellfire club?

those kids that murdered their parents, hunt humans for sport, and shot one of the students in the face? what a childish joke!

Exactly

basically...

so sad

Things aren't that bad.....

I think the new Hellfire club had potential just for them being child sociopaths that would get worse with age,...though making them kids verses teens made them somewhat cartoonish when interacting with say Sabretooth.


WatX-men's tone is the only appealing thing about it, since I'm sure no one is reading it for the thrilling character development and plotlines.
Still I can't compare that to what we've seen of Amazing, since it just seems like just a fun adventure book at the moment. More 80's style then anything else. The only thing I can say is similar is that the characters are more lighthearted then say Uncanny or X-force, which seems to fit with how the JGS has been presented.

@avenger85: Agreed. Wolverine is easily the most underexposed Marvel character there is. He deserves a few more solo series to flesh out his character. Oh throw him in a few team up titles that he leads! And don't even get me started on those movies. He hardly got any screen time at all!

@experio: @oldnightcrawler: what was cartoonish was seeing them order around the likes of Sabertooth and Mystique. And I swear seeing the way Idie was drawn in that dark phoenix lingerie black queen get up made me think Aaron might be...... well. Imo It Is That Bad.

Yeah, they could start by making him leader of a few more X-Men teams. He really needs the exposure.

I lost track of X-Men after Decimation, it just seemed to collapse under it's own weight. They just seemed like they kept adding story line on top of story line. Heck, I was reading one X-men title & didn't realize Nightcrawler had died for like 6 months.

you don't have to convince me that most of Wolverine & the X-Men has been bad. I've read most of it (although not the Hellfire Saga or the Battle of the Atom issues, since, well, they didn't seem worth reading, so I didn't..). But I do think the series had had some good in with the bad, and a lot of what I did think was good was good because it was kind of silly and not as serious as other books.

I would never recommend the series overall, but not because of the approach so much as the execution.

Like I say, it was inconsistent; refreshing in it's irreverence, yet ultimately not consistent enough to satisfy. The first arc was promising, 17 - Wolverine's Secret Weapon was really cool, #24 - Ain't No Sin To Be Glad You're Alive was a lot of fun, Wolverine taking his class to the savage land? cool story; Wolverine's time traveling brother being the villain? pretty weak. The last arc with Wolverine and Cyclops going up against SHIELD was decent, but it was sort of too late (and then the next issue sucked). Maybe if the book had had less involvement with the events (at least 10 issues of the series are tie-ins to crappy events) or less editorial agenda in general, it might have stood a fighting chance of developing into more of it's own thing (like Excalibur used to be, or like She-hulk is to the Avengers). As is, it was a failed project overall. But still with enough good ideas going on that I'm glad they're giving another writer a crack at it.

And, even if it is a failure in itself, Aaron has still redeemed himself to me (for the time being) for Amazing X-Men, which I am thoroughly enjoying.

Death is so cheap in X-Books, they don't even use it to promote the other X-Books.

But I don't think it's been bad nearly that long. They just haven't had much in the way of delivery on storylines outside of the Messiah crossovers.

@oldnightcrawler: Bro!! That must be a helluva book if in what, 4-5 issues he's redeemed the mess he left in WATX. LOL!!

In all honesty though, I've dropped WATX a long time ago. Although Schism was a horrible event, i thought that the different sides would be interesting. But to see Wolverine and some of the other characters who's species was on the brink of extinction be written in a silly way was just mind-boggling for me. Not to say that those who like silly books shouldn't be appeased, but for that to be one of the main flagship titles for the franchise and represent Wolverine's side of the Schism, was just plain ridiculous. But then again Schism was the worst event and terribly executed. It felt like a Wolverine fan-boy wrote it. Although AVX was also bad, at least with the outcome you still have people on different sides of the equation and you could understand both points of view from the Avengers side and Cyclops' side of things. Unfortunately Schism was all about Scott and Logan when it should have been about everyone and more so Cyclops and Emma against Beast and Storm.

By the way, the pace argument with Bendis' Uncanny I think is an argument with merit and it comes up quite a bit. Personally I might have found a bit of a solution for myself. I think i may just swear off buying the individual monthly series and just wait for the trade. This way at least the story might seem to move faster and it may actually feel like Im not getting cheated so much with the slowly unraveling pace. I'm seriously considering this

one book doesn't redeem another. I just like Amazing', that's all.

I'm not saying that liking it makes me suddenly like WatX-men; I just meant that Aaron's work on that book wasn't really for me, which made me trepidatious about giving Amazing' a chance, but that I'm glad I did because I do like it.

humans? humans do all kinds of silly things all the time..

I feel like the characters who went back to the more traditional X-men role at the school were meant to appeal to the idea that the team had ultimately lost their way by following Cyclops' separatist leadership.

Whether they actually had or not is debatable, I suppose, but for many X-men fans there was a feeling that things had become too serious, too political, and not enough about being a weird family that has fun. So to not have to further alienate those fans, they decided to counter Cyclops' X-men with something more wacky and fun. I tend to agree with you that WatX-men maybe took the silliness too far for my tastes at times, but I know some old school fans who said it was their favorite X-men since the original Excalibur, and when I thought about it that way, I could at least see the point.

But then I never thought of it as the main book. The main book would be about the X-men themselves as characters, where WatX-men was more like wacky tales from the X-men's weird school. To me it was always a spin-off.

I think it was relevant that Beast had already left by then, and I think Storm's story was actually made more poignant because she stayed and tried to help Cyclops rather than siding with Wolverine like many expected (given her misgivings during Schism). Her personal conflict with Cyclops was, after all, what finally made her a relevant character in her own right again.

I wasn't that into Schism either really, but I don't think it was just like Wolverine quit and the X-men followed him. There were a lot of moments leading up to it that made it seem like most of the classic characters were already questioning the X-men's new direction. That Wolverine was the one who stood up to Cyclops' leadership was hardly a new theme, since it was basically just recalling the roles they'd traditionally played off each other where Cyclops had his vision of how things should be done and Wolverine was more aware of the personal effects of his environment.

That so many of the classic members went with him to the school doesn't mean they were joining his cause so much as he was just the one who stood up and said is this what the X-men do now? From Cyclops' perspective (having been recruited as a child), that's always what they had done; from Wolverine's perspective (who had argued with Xavier that Kitty should be allowed on the team) it never was.

Magik is a major character now, therefore X-men is better than is has been since the original New Mutants series.

Demon Sword Waifu tier > all

The X-Men have been dead since the 90s, with very little of stories worth mentioning in between. They are a classic example of victims of their own success and still riding they wave of popularity they have been surfing since the 90s, when the franchise exploded.

When you think about it, almost everything done over the past 20 years is in some way just a rehash of stuff done in the 80s.

Thats the way I have always kind of seen it.

I think almost everything's better in trades for that reason, I just hate having to wait for them.

There are some books I know are worth waiting for the trade of, but X-men are rarely that consistent and I just get too curious.

The argument about pace in general is as much a matter of personal taste/patience/attention span as anything. For me Uncanny' has a pretty solid pace with just enough happening in each issue to make me want to see more, which is what the best monthlies have always done for me. Plus, at least with Uncanny', I'm usually getting two issues a month so it doesn't feel like much of a wait compared to what I'm used to.

I see the current X-Men comics this way also, like the constant time traveling themes.