VioletPhoenix

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The Cohesion of the X-Men

It's no news that different writers on a single continuous arc or continuous hero team narrative tend to fracture the fluidity of the story in question as a whole. To be honest this is mostly a rant because as someone who has only very recently gotten into comic books, feeling hooked into a cohesive story does tend to make or break the deal. I started with my favorite superhero team the X-Men. The very first comic book I had read that made me delve into Marvel, was the House of M. I know, right? Talk about the worse place to start for a new reader. Which is fine, because I quickly got caught up on the characters and where they had been. I loved HoM. Following HoM, I chronologically followed the X-Men. I stopped myself after Decimation so I could truly get caught up on all my mutants. And here is where my rant begins.

I already was aware of the major facts about the X-Men, the members and their relationships and some of the major story arcs. So I decided to take one writer's arc and run with it. I started with Grant Morrison's New X-Men, a perfect place to start for any fledgling X-Fan in my opinion because it allows you to follow and begin anew without the convoluted clutter of the team's former history. Just as Morrison had intended it to be. I absolutely loved the whole Morrison NXM run and it allowed me to start my X-Journey perfectly. I soon made my way into the purposefully connected Astonishing X-Men by living god Joss Whedon. Talk about astonishing! I mean the guy was absolutely terrified of following Morrison's run (for good reason) but boy did he have nothing to worry about. Absolutely fantastic and flawless storytelling in the most amazing Whedon way. What I loved about NXM and AXM is that they flowed and were connected, almost jumping after each other directly. The mix-ups begin following HoM. I was as caught up as I needed to be when I returned to my X-Journey. And it's been..good..okay and sometimes even great. Not all the stories flowed into one another as smoothly, but I did the whole suspension of disbelief thing in reconciling some facts (such as Kitty's presence post-Giant Size Astonishing). I was good and hooked because I was getting my X fix, I love me some X-Men let me tell ya.

Sure some stories aren't as stellar as others, some are just filler adventures and some are just explorations and experiments. Which is fine, I was getting my X-Men and that makes me happy. It's just that after Morrison and Whedon's nearly decade-long combined run, both of which had amazing and very different styles and stories that amazingly flowed together, the stories that followed were all done by many different writers. Each writer, naturally, with their own style, goals and methods. My problem is that it fractures the story, sometimes the story gets stagnant or stale even. I mean I understand that it would be difficult to have a single writer stay on for so long on one title, or for a team like the X-men to revolve around one flagship title whereas they have several of them. I just wish all the different writers would collaborate fully when their turn comes up on the X-Men, or any title for that matter. It would be great if they worked on transitioning the stories smoothly and show consistency with the characters, the narratives and most importantly the quality. There needs to be writer discussion or writers bouncing off the last one's angle successively. I heard that Wolverine and the X-Men and the new Uncanny X-Men are showing a steady flow, which I hope is true even though I'm going to read them regardless. I haven't gotten that far, I'm still at 2010 when it comes to Marvel, as I am both new and partial to TPBs. I set out on reading a decade's worth of X-Men and I am beyond excited to get to Second Coming, I am but a book away (currently on Necrosha). Here's looking forward.

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