Quite a bit on the forums I see people mentioning members from this team. I think many of us hate that they are in comic limbo right now but equally want them placed on a good team and with a good writer instead of misused or misrepresented. Also it just seems natural that they should get some focus instead of the constant rehashing of the same old few people in multiple books, though that seems to be improving. I would love for a writer like Peter David to get a shot at writing them for the longhaul somewhat like his run on Xfactor Investigations. Ok so lets just say they are brought back as a team...

What should be the premise for the team now?

Who should be on the roster?

Who would like to see as the writer?

What are some potential storylines, unresolved issues, etc that you would want to see addressed?

The premise should be the younger mutants finally striking out on their own getting to the things the older X-Men can't get to due to whatever issue they're dealing with.

The roster would be: Moonstar, Match, Hellion, Transonic, Surge, Nate Grey, and Kymera for good measure. The roster would rotate though considering majority of them are still in school, sometimes it would be whoever is around during an incident so you'd have some weird team-ups every once in a while.

Writer: No idea. I'll have to think about it

@hopesummersforthefuture: so for a New Mutants team you wouldn't use any of the actual New Mutants?

I wouldn't mind it.

yup

@hopesummersforthefuture: sounds more like just an Xfactor team instead of New Mutants

yeah thats what i was doing a new x-factor book. now i realize i was supposed to do new mutants sorry

@hopesummersforthefuture: Oh. Don't scare me like that. Geez!! With all the alternate universe and alternate reality stuff in Marvel right now, I thought I fell into one

LOL :D

Do you mean the original New Mutants??

Because those characters should just be the X-Men now. Cannonball, Kitty Pryde and Dani Moonstar should be leading the mutant revolution, Karma and Wolfsbane should be headmistress of the school, Sunspot, Warpath, Magik should be intriguing characters that could support solo series if they had to. It's a waste if you ask me. It will be the year 2075 and you will still be reading about the redundant adventures of Cyclops, Wolverine and Storm......hooray. -___-

QFT.

And whose fault is that?

I would have Ranee, Xian, Dani, and Amara be the leaders of a younger team, of recent graduates, that would involve: Hellion, Mercury, Rockslide, and Anole. Sam and Bobby could make appearences, but they seem pretty busy in the Avengers.

I would have Yost or David write it.

And the first arc would be about them graduating and getting out into the real world, ya know, like getting jobs and apartments and what not. The next arc would be them going out on "lesser" x-men assignments led by the older members. Maybe even going back to Nova Roma, meeting back up with Gosamyr, and maybe even an arc where Pixie rebuilds Limbo.

People like me. Power to the status quo! *he says unashamedly*

Go old school - Magik, Magma, Moonstar, Karma, Cannonball, Cypher, Warlock, Empath (and any surviving Hellions - I keep losing track of them), Boom Boom/Meltdown, Rictor, Shatterstar, Rusty, Skids and Wolfsbane graduate and become the X-Men.

The old X-Men go off to other careers or retire from superhero life.

@dernman: Damn it!

Well...well damn people like you! Damn you t' heck! *aggressively shakes fists in the air!!!*

Editorial??

I get why they do it.... it's basically so you and your grand kids can read about the same characters while cementing a characters iconography. It does negate story telling though and contributes to the characters feeling more like redundant products than characters who are involved in an actual narrative.

While I want and would love a New Mutants book, I don't think that means we should just ship the older X-Men in a box marked "Geriatric Mutants".

I don't like that we go from Storm story, to Cyclops story, to Wolverine story, to Storm story but by no means does that mean we should write them off the book and just do the same thing with new characters. That's not the problem and that's not a solution. New or fresh characters isn't going to improve the books; new stories with solid line ups (including ones with Storm, Cyclops and Wolverine) and good, but spread out, characterization however are all ingredients for good stories. And as much as I love them, I'd rather Moonstar, Cannonball, Magik and Cypher be used to fill out the rosters then to be the sole focus.

As for the topic. I think if we got a New Mutants book, it would be cool to see it focus on them being the home team of X-Men. Sort of like the first New X-men and Astonishing teams were, and how the Amazing team is now. While the other X-Men and teams are out doing there missions during the day, the New mutants deal with the out of control students, mutant haters who know where they live, and evil organizations plotting against the school and mutants. All while trying to not only improve the image of Mutant kind through heroic use of their powers, but also teach some of the kids to do the same.

Basically I'd make it like Wood's last Arc of XX-Men except with a slightly stronger writer and the New Mutants (Maybe just Dani, Cypher, Magma and Cannonball) as the primaries of a team that is strongly supported by the student body. I just always liked how the opening for Woods X-Men said "They are the teachers and students of the Jean Grey School..." it just showed the book was about everyone.

@cattlebattle: I agree it does have it's faults. There is no way to deny that. Both ways do really. It's a trade off that fits for comics because it isn't practical to most other forms of media. Wouldn't want it to either.

Edit: I'm not against all change. I mean if Spider-Man never left highs school that would be going to far. Though I'm not against rollbacks

I don't see it that way at all. There is many comics throughout the world including numerous American independents like The Walking Dead, X0-Manowar, pretty much every Manga that has existed in the history of Manga and even UK imprint comics like Judge Dredd that have a continuing story where the characters age, die permanently, retire etc. and the stories have a beginning and an end.

In fact, Marvel used to have the characters age in real time and evolve as they went along, throughout the 60s and 70 and even into the first or so half of the 80s the X-Men, of course, introduced new members and students while some older ones were written out, The Avengers even similarly did the same thing but a little less organically. Even the Fantastic Four went from 4 adventurers to two of them being married, to having a kid and having an extensive supporting cast, even Spidey grew up, went to college and got married. Marvel back in its progressive years felt like it was an actual universe that was actually happening and it mad it a lot more interesting, in my opinion at least.

I think they kind of reformatted their universe to be more like DC. DC actually reboots for the reason of the characters and stories stagnating...As far as I know, its only really DC and Marvel that do this crap where they have the same characters stay 30 years old for 50 years and fight the same villains over an over. Then, while the same characters remain largely ageless, they introduce new heroes and villains every year so the end result is that there is hundreds of random characters floating around. I can't understand how people can even enjoy some of this stuff when it comes to Marvel sometimes.

rusty is dead

If this is about another event I'm outtie.

Meh, can't keep track anymore. So many dead youngsters. Forgot to list Sunspot, Firestar, or Justice, too.

I want Tito to be a New Mutant. When his siblings and his parents lost their mutations, they all moved to the city, even though Tito is still a mutant. Apparently at first, he was too young to join the X-Men, but some of the newer X-Men still seem pretty young, so I think the Mutants which aren't high-school or even Junior-high age should be New Mutants.

I tend to agree with the thought that just throwing the older xmen away won't work. I also think its a bit of a slight to just stick them on babysitting duty also though. Integrating them into the current teams would be good although the teams would be huge and I wonder how they would view the current philosophy of the teams at present as far as joining any of them instead of them going out on their own.

WTF My response to you disappeared. ugh I don't want to type the whole thing again.

Basically my response was saying that you misunderstood me. I didn't say comics couldn't have stories stories like that. I was just saying that comics unlike other forms of media have the option not too and that both styles have their positive and downsides. I hope it doesn't disappear again.

Yeah, there was a notification in my box but nothing was there. Just chalk it up to another obligatory Comicvine glitch. Unless it was aliens, man........ALIENS!!

I understood what you meant, I was just elaborating on why I think its stupid. DC and Marvel are the only companies I am aware of that do it so it's not like its a common thing among comic books. At least with DC they reboot every couple of decades so they can do some fresh stuff along with the preexisting continuity and they can retell and modernize origins and streamline their character database. Marvel just retcons stuff to the point where I can't understand how people can take it seriously half the time. Well, it's super hero comics so I guess nobody would take it seriously...but, you know what I mean :/

I'd rather retcons to a full re-boot. At least with retcons the characters origins and personalities are the same. Starfire got completely ruined in the DC re-boot.

Really? You've never read an Archie comic? What about Tintin? Or the perpetually Teen-aged Mutant Ninja Turtles?

I think the idea that comic book characters actually age within a specific continuity is a lot more of a contemporary thing, really. Before the 80's, I think Marvel's were the only characters who aged at all.

I'm not saying one way's better than the other, I like characters who belong to one specific story, like Cerebus or Reid Fleming, and I like characters who exist as constant archetypes to facilitate stories, like The Simpsons. Most Marvel and DC characters are kind of somewhere in between, existing as archetypes while also being developed in their own continuity, and thus seeming to be constantly reinvented to be able to facilitate both functions.

As for new mutants forming a group.

Quentin,

Idie,

Hope,

Transonic,

Primal,

Genesis(he is all grown up now),

Tempus,

Cuckoos,

Kubark(he is still with them)

*Miles Morales*

they are young and will grow.

The likes of gambit, havok, cyclops, wolverine, storm, and the rest should just help them grow and can be doing hero stuffs, while the "new mutants" rescue other young mutants and do some world saving and covert ops like young justice.

I was talking about the actual New Mutants former team. They came out in the early 80's. Not just random new creations or the latest mutants out there

@hawk2916: sorry, thougth it was just some new mutants, and someone's team also consist of some random new mutants

C'mon man, Archie, Tintin and something like The Simpsons was never meant have an ongoing, serialized narrative.

Other than Public Domain stuff and companies that published things like Archie and Richie Rich and Casper there wasn't many comic book companies publishing books in the US in the 70s. In many other countries, many comic books had a timeline that followed the characters aging, I could name an almost endless list of Manga, 2000 AD publications, DC comics, Conan The Barbarian, Solomon Kane, Prince Valiant. It's definitely not a modern thing.

@hawk2916:

the original The New Mutants, eh? ..hmm..

As a group, I've always enjoyed the dynamic between this cast; each fills a fairly well-defined and specific role within the group that makes the whole much greater than the sum of it's parts. While I haven't read all of the original series, what I have read is among my favorite comics of the 80's, and the group's return in 2009's New Mutants (vol.3) was probably one of the better team books of the last decade.

Were this group to reassemble now, as their own team, I'd be pretty interested in checking that out. But it seems like bringing even most of these characters back together might be somewhat contrived after all that they've all done individually. While the individual experiences the characters have had might rejuvenate the old group dynamic beyond simply being back together for the sake of nostalgia, it still makes me wonder what shared purpose would bring them back together at all.

Especially considering that the directions each have gone in separately seems more organic to their characters than the idea that they'd all still be interested in doing the same thing after all this time.

As far as having them replace the classic X-men, personally, I just don't see it. While most of the characters have gone on to make great X-men, a lot of what gives the group it's own singular identity are characters like Warlock, Cypher, and Moonstar, who are both more and less than X-men; part of what makes each of these characters -and the group as a whole- interesting is that they don't fit the classic mutant superhero mold. This is part of what gives the group it's unique character, and for that reason, to my mind there would be no point reuniting the group without their inclusion -but as the X-men, they would most certainly be polarizing among fans.

In part, I have a hard time seeing it as organic that all of the classic Xmen team members would simply step aside, or that fans would want them to (and it's not as if they would simply kill off all of the most recognizable characters).

While characters like Cannonball and Magik have organically become easy to accept as relevant additions to the main team(s), I feel most people would see most of these characters as watering down roles already held by more iconic mainstays. Besides which, it just seems unlikely to me that characters like Sunspot, Magma, or Wolfsbane would rush to be the X-men if characters like Storm and Cyclops decided it was no longer worth their time.

As their own independent group, I think I'd be pretty interested in checking them out again; but as the individual characters, there's not a lot of them that I find as interesting as the classic X-men characters.

I don't know so much for Manga, but I know there were lots of comics that didn't depend on having an ongoing, serialized narrative to have good stories. Besides those I already named, both the Warner Bros. and Disney characters had great comics without it; virtually none of Will Eisner or Windsor McCay or Robert Crumb's comics need to be read in any particular order. I'm not saying it's a new thing, but the idea that it's the norm for comic book characters certainly seems to be.

But my point was more that some characters stand the test of time more than others. There will probably always be Batman comics, there will probably always be Spider-man comics. Neither one of those characters needs to be held to a specific continuity or time-frame for their individual stories to be interesting, because what makes them interesting is the same thing that made them interesting 50 years ago; and for most of the classic X-men characters, I feel the same thing applies.

I'm going to go ham on this and suggest there be a new book for the New Mutants, only, instead of an off shoot of the X-Men like they've been a few times before, they strike out on their own, incognito, and make it their mandate to gather up new mutants (like they were) and set up camp somewhere else in the world where they can train and protect new mutants under new human disguises.

Cannonball leads, with Dani as second in command (maybe field leader). Bring in Hellion, Dust, Blindfold and other Gen X's to act as mentors to the new group and maybe even explore the re-mergence of previous mutants who lost their powers to M-Day but got them back ala Hope/Scarlet Witch.

All this coming out because of this Axis mess, with the New Mutants getting sick of the older X-Men screwing things up time and time again. With the association with the Avengers and X-Factor now decimated, Sunspot, Warlock etc are free to do what they please.

I'm not dedicated to the idea, but at least it gives us a taste of how things used to be in Xavier's school prior to exposing itself to the world. Or having the New Mutants come out as the actual adults on equal footing with the X-Men on panel, instead of just assumed due to age.

Seeing Wolfsbane again would be icing on the cake.

This is actually interesting as a concept.

It seems like a theme nowadays that alot of people want a group of characters to go out and be the X-Men, but not be affiliated with the X-Men. I'm usually against such ideas, but there's so much not being touched on nowadays that i feel like it needs to be looked at now rather then later.

I mean we spent 6 years struggling to survive against a world that wanted the last few mutants eliminated and looking for a way to bring mutants back the powers of those who lost them. People fought and died to keep the species from going out and then after all of that we finally get mutants back and their numbers growing and now.....business as usual?

No one's writing about new mutants and what it means that their back. I mean Cyclops is going after them but his main goal is to fight back against society, the Uncanny Avengers are trying to change the minds of society, and the JGS X-Men just seem small an ineffective when there are supposedly new mutants everywhere and they run just one school that shows very little signs of recruiting and not much in the way of staff.

I'd get behind a group just focusing on the education and search for new mutants, and if we can get some development for the New Mutants as viable adults then i'll be on board completely. A New Mutants book about new mutants....awesome.

To be fair, every time the JGS X-men recruit a new mutant, fans just go bananas that the characters they already have aren't being used and hate them without giving them a chance.

And their staff is almost half as big as the named student body; there's like at least 16* characters who supposedly work there, not counting student advisers. Even if they never featured any of the students, there's more faculty than they can give time to in most stories.

*(Storm, Psylocke, Rachel, Jubilee, M, Husk, Chamber, Beast, Iceman, Angel, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Firestar, Northstar, Karma, Frenzy, Warbird, and Doop, anyway)

But, yeah, I'd check out a new New Mutants book with that premise.

Lol I'll concede the point about the fan reaction since i think the one that got the least rage was Nature Girl. And that went all of nowhere...

It's not so much the reality as the perception when it comes to the JGS. For a while i guess they had Angel recruiting, but after Sharkgirl (i'm noticing a habit with names) we stopped seeing them. Cerebro never goes off, and we never really see them change habits when it comes to gaining new students or engaging new mutants. And the few we do see join the school seem to have heard about the JGS as the place for people with powers as opposed to them doing any sort of outreach.

When you put it out like that there is a large roster of characters there..so they must be doing something, It just feels like they're just waiting on their hands till the mutants come to them.

@oldnightcrawler: @koays: If there is one thing I have a problem with, it's the lack of information about mutants who I assume received their mutant powers back. It's not that I have something against new mutants (well, actually, I kinda do, haha, but more when their powers are so similar to previous fan faves,) it's that as a long time fan, I want some idea as to what happened after The Phoenix dispersed into all the mutants in the world. Does Bendis want us to think it's all for new mutants? How is that fair, or okay? Wouldn't former mutants have a problem with that (those who miss their powers? Or their identity as a mutant for most of their lives?)?

Me and my questions. I just think utilising the old New Mutant roster in such a way would be interesting and could satisfy us rabble rousers.

I really couldn't tell ya, the only books I've been reading out of the JGS are Storm (which is really just about Storm) and X-Men (which has been set in space for the last 4 issues). Amazing' seems to have a huge chunk of the cast going on 70's style adventures that have little to do with either the mutant or school theme, and even WatX-men seems to have very little to do with the students themselves.

The thing with all of the post-Schism recruits on both sides though seems to be that none of them are given any kind of back-story or genuine development. I recently reread Marvel Graphic Novel #4 - The New Mutants (for this thread, actually), and something that book and the original New Mutants story did really well was give each character their own little story. Even Generation X, which kind of skipped that initially, developed each new character's personality by showing how they interacted with each other.

Given that same kind of treatment, there's no reason that Eye Boy, Shark-Girl, Nature Girl, and Sprite couldn't be just as compelling as those characters were. I would actually give a book a chance if I thought it was actually about them, but as is, they seem to only exist to show what the purpose of the school is, without actually being developed themselves (which should be what the school book is for). We got a bit of that with Kid Gladiator and Broo, but even with them it was teased out over the duration of a series that lacked character focus and direction from day one.

More interesting to me than seeing the old New Mutants come back to the X-men would be seeing a book that was actually dedicated to showing the recruiting and training of new characters. Each arc could split it's focus on just one new character being recruited, what their story is and how they end up at the school, and how the most recent recruits are being trained and fitting in back at the mansion. It's a formula that's about as old as the original new mutants themselves, really, but for facilitating stories that make new characters actually compelling, it's one that works.

i like nature girl. Also isnt the genX 20th anniversary coming up and marvel said they had something planned but who knows. maybe if they dont have room, it may not happen. Also the uxm annual is coming next month. also i dont like the codename sprite its old news

Yeah, see, for the New Mutants I think that would be a kind of perfect premise.. not so much them being the X-men or running the school -let the X-men have the school, that's their thing- and the New Mutants could be their own team, doing a more street level investigations thing like Madrox's X-Factor or Moonstar's San-Fran' team.

Moonstar being the leader -besides being obvious, she would have her own reasons for wanting to investigate that stuff. Maybe sometimes they'd find a kid who could be better served at the school, they can have Karma as their agent there, maybe take in some themselves, but mostly they would be actively investigating rather than recruiting/teaching.. Cannonball and Sunspot could be around and be on the Avengers; I don't see why not, all the other Avengers are in other books... Cypher and Warlock (and Danger?) could round out the core cast.. I would read a book just about those 6 or 7 characters, but there's a lot of others that could be explored from there..

Gallery

@hopesummersforthefuture: I like that Sprite's powers make her seem like a weird kind of sprite, but giving her the name of a former main character and then not giving her a story or personality just seems like a poor legacy..

totally agree. Sorry for the late response, it didnt notify me. CV might be glitching or my lab top

@hopesummersforthefuture:

That's the way i feel. When Wolverine and the X-Men first started one of the things i'd heard was that the school had it's own personality. Aaron went 42 issues with the school as the main character, and the book suffered for it because after the school was established as this whacky and whimsical place...he kept reestablishing it instead of working with the pieces he was using.

Just this year Wood's last story arc which involved the poisoning of Sprite and then Beast using questionable methods to help her recover had me interested in a character that I know next to nothing about. Eye Boy and Nature Girl in the first few issues of Latour's run had me as curious about their direction as I was about Armor, Oya, and Hellion defending the school. These characters looked like they were going to do something and it made them much more viable....but in the end they reduced back to school wallpaper.

Really I do want a book where they actually use the enormous amount of X-Men kids from this and the previous generation and explore them as more then just decoration. But the fact were about to recieve a book where Spiderman is the viewpoint character makes me lose faith. There's so many elements to the "Junior X-Men" experience, but they really only work if the characters in the situations have actual characters to them which not many of them do. And like we were talking about on the other thread about the Morlocks...this to a part of the mythos; but rather then be completely gone it's been watered down beyond recognition.

Bendis' kids are a little better off because there's less of them and the writer is stronger at dialogue...but I have hopes of one day seeing this generation of X-Men kids make up the bulk of a team. And it's hard to pick 7 or 8 that aren't from New X-Men or Uncanny, because everyone else isn't much more then their powers power. I just don't understand what the fear is about these characters headlining their own book.

@oldnightcrawler: @koays: @ms-lola: Some great insights here. Love that premise for a return. I have a similar take that I'll post as soon as my computer stops glitching.

1. Yeah, i thought the same thing, and I was actually probably one of he only people to be interested that Primal might get some story.
2. Same. I was pretty intrigued by both Eye Boy and Nature Girl, and I was pretty interested in seeing Armor and Hellion back in the spotlight.
3. yep.
4. I really like the Uncanny kids actually. They aren't super well defined individually, but they have a pretty solid group dynamic and actually get more focus and personality as a group than the senior members (Cyclops, Emma, and Magik), who serve more to facilitate the story than to really be the focus of it. The way the Cuckoos have been used in both capacities was pretty smart.
5. I know what you mean, but I'm kind of at the point where I think most of the New X-men should leave the school. Maybe have a few stick around as X-men, but just have most of them leave. Not even get their own book or anything, just leave and be in actual limbo. That's what most of the New Mutants did (the ones that didn't die), and all of them were more interesting when they came back because they all got up to different things while they were gone, which strengthened their individual characters.
6. I think it's like you were talking about in your 3rd point: they don't seem to appreciate that the elements of the experience are what makes people enjoy it. I didn't like Wolfsbane because she was a little girl who turned into a dog, I liked her because of her story and how her personality was fun with the other characters.