Years before Scott and Jean were even born, Xavier and Magneto sit by a fireplace and discuss mutants. Xavier thinks mutants should live in peace with humans. Magneto disagrees and crumples his wheelchair into a ball. With Xavier gone, Scott remains homeless, Jean overdoses because the voices won't stop, and Beast goes to prison for life after he snaps and murders some jock who kept calling him Harry Hairyhands.

Magneto tries terrorism for a while, humanity goes lol no and bombs him to death.

All is well with the universe.

Yeah but what about rest of the mutants? Especially Wolverine...

BB

There is nothing wrong with empowered female characters when you have male characters like Cyclops, Wolverine, Iceman, Angel and Beast, who have never had to endure anything close to what the women have to deal with. Like deaths, depowerings, dismissals, marginalization, tokenization, sexual objectification, mental problems, slut shaming and other typical development women get in comics. Cyclops and Wolverine in particular can apparently do no wrong in anyone's eyes, can be over exposed, over saturated and franchised to the point that there is hardly anything of substance left. They are cash cows milked for all their worth and have an invincibility that keeps them in the books always. It's not popularity it's just privilege and power, just because they are white male superheroes.

If i have to deal with all that injustice in my X-men then you types got to deal with the Claremazons that after a two long absence are back in the spotlight.

Wolverine escapes from the Weapon X program and finds his way to James and Heather Hudson. He begs for sanctuary. They lol and sell him back to Weapon X for the reward money.

Every other mutant can be similarly accounted for.

Good enough.

BB

Claremont's Second Run.

Chuck Austin's Run.

Maddie Pryor either a) not existed, or b) stayed with Cyclops.

A better explanation of why Jean Grey was alive in X-Factor #1

Schism - either Beast or Storm arguing with Cyke

Phoenix Five - They could have handled it better. A lot better.

Five Lights - More relevant now or throw them out the door

A more competent writer from when Age of Apocalypse ended.

An artist for Grant Morrison that could keep to schedules.

Joss Whedon staying on longer, or cancelling Astonishing.

Get a long term writer for the X-Men to revitalise the series. Green Lantern has Geoff Johns, Batman has Grant Morrison, Fantastic Four has Hickman...

Stop showcasing big X-Men, we have enough books with Wolverine and Storm thankyouverymuch. Not that I hate these characters, its just that we get enough of them. I miss the good times where we had a book for the students. New Mutants and New X-Men anyone?

I would pretty much retcon Spectre's any PIS filled stories.

As far as X-Men goes?

I would definitely retcon Wolverine back into the lovable scumbag he used to be. In my eyes Wolverine will never be a leader, he will never be a teacher, and he will never be an Avenger. I get Wolverine working to absolve his past and be a better person. But the way he has been written for the past ten years he has already attained that, and that's just boring.

And I also think the Colossus/Kitty relationship from the 80's is a little bit creepy. I might want that to disappear as well.

Agree with all of this!!!

You don't particularly like them?

There are a lot of things I wished hadn't happened, even if the events after them turned out alright. Spider-Man has suffered long under a few bad decisions editorially, but the worst was One More Day. (Yes, worse than the Clone Saga. Yes, worse than Sins Past even. And yeah, I know there are some old fans out there who still think Death of Gwen Stacyis awful.)

The reason why OMD was terrible was not that it ended the marriage between Peter and MJ—editorial was hellbent on that and I understand some of their reasons why even if I didn't like it—but the way in which they did that. Peter Parker, Marvel's avatar for personal responsibility, should not be selling his wife to the/a literal devil. That is so out of character. That is nonsense. And worse, it killed what was already a big shift in Peter's status quo, and an interesting one, his secret ID going public. Personally, I loved that I feel like that's the direction the character should go. Being responsible means staying behind and dealing with consequences, not running from the cops.

Alas, instead we get no more public ID, no more MJ & Peter marriage, no more chance of Mayday Parker, and a big rollback of his status quo to his teenage/college years. (At least until Big Time changed it up again.) And then we got One Moment In Time that was supposed to explain what happened and the explanation was that a fat guy landed on Peter so he missed his wedding. Ugh.

EDIT: Oh hey X-Men thread, not general Marvel thread. Then yeah, I'd go back and retcon out every instance where Hank McCoy acts like a hypocritical piece of crap. So pretty much all of his appearances in the last half decade or so.

Lose time travel and magic

Second coming- What was that for? I mean they Marvel made it seem like it was jean grey who's coming back, but all of a sudden it's Hope that came, why was it even called 2nd coming?

really not understanding what your criticism is here.

it's like you've got an actual point, but I can't for the life of me figure out what it is..

Dam can fanboys complain. The only thing I would change is Logan remembering everything. I always thought that aspect of him having no origin was interesting.

Then again House of M would never happen, and I liked that story.

Which says more about you than her.

sure.

yeah, I was actually pretty disappointed when they revealed his origin; it ruined the mystery.

NO PHOENIX WARSONG-- FAIL

To me the House Of M and the stuff after wasnt terrible. I actually liked the Vulcan stroyline as well. I just think it all could be done better.

I would actually combine some stuff like adding the Vulcan Storyline and the Civil War stuff with AVX.The mutant registration act being okayed by the Avengers would be seen as an act of war especially when fewer than 200 mutants were left remaining in addition everything with Hope would lead to a massive war and a great cause on both sides. Professor X's death would come on the heels of Cyclops' discovery of Vulcan and the Professor's lies as well as his involvement with the Pheonix and the Professor's acions in AVX. Vulcan who has come to earth for revenge on Xavier as well as wanting the Phoenix for himself. I just really would have done AVX big, one of the biggest storylines in history

House of M would be about Scarlet Witch losing her mind but some type of device would be built in which she erases the X-gene from most mutants not just chanting the words to a spell. I say this because in my opinion all this magic has no place in books about mutants and their power coming from their genes.

Messiah complex and Messiah war could be combined.

2nd coming was cool.

Schism was ridiculous and it should have been as somebody else mentioned Storm and Beast splitting from Cyclops and Wolverine.

First X-Men - what an terribly bad series.

Anyway, although it's officially been retconned - Planet X/Xorneto reveal!

"The Dark Phoenix Saga". I really prefer the original, rough version that the writing team wanted, where Jean gets a massive power upgrade and has to learn to come to terms with it versus the cosmic space entity crap. I did like the battle on the dark side of the moon and the art was great, but too much of the story seemed to take the X-Men away from everything they were about.

#1 Storm Marrying the Black Panther:

Let’s take an A-list X-man, who’s identity transcends being a black hero or being a female hero, marry her outside of the X-family (so that we will have to come up with an excuse as to why she’s not with her husband every time she’s on an X-team), and do it with a C-list hero who’s name is 1) a pun on a political movement that no longer exists and 2) a reminder that once upon a time you couldn’t have black heroes who didn’t have the word “Black” in their names. Oy.

Nobody besides me really remembers X-treme X-men much. It had a lot of problems, including the name, and plot-wise it was the anti-Morrison. Somehow in New X-men Grant Morrison took old stories and made them new. In X-treme Claremont took old stories and made them old. (A long-haired space invader named Kahn, you say?) Or else made new stories that were incomprehensible. (Like Vargas. Never got an explanation there.) But the book had great outfits, which went under-appreciated everywhere except in a bad fighting game called X-men: Next Dimension. More importantly the book had good characterization. And one of the virtues of that title was that Storm was in a leading role. At one point she ends up having a fling with Slipstream, a cute blond guy (mutant) from Australia who’s infatuated with her. It was interesting because usually the male heroes get to have flings with stupid young things but the females heroes don’t. And in some ways it fits her: she’s powerful, she can be aggressive, why wouldn’t she enjoy holding the reigns of the relationship? Meanwhile there was a sense of respect that occasionally bordered on flirtation between Storm and Bishop, who also had more of an identity in that series than he is sometimes given. The Storm in that book never would have married the Black Panther. Only the den-mother, plant-lady, side-character Storm does that.

Low and behold, post A vs X, they’ve annulled the marriage, and just in time for Storm to lead an X-team. The whole thing felt like an editorial stunt, and a bad one at that. If Marvel wants black readers they're going to have to do more than marry the good black heroes to the dated ones.

Other gripes:

#2 The Excessive (Character) Assassinations of Xavier: I’m fine with the idea that he manipulated minds more than he let on, which creates interesting ethical questions. But is Danger really the moral failing that the characters immediately think it is? If my laptop became sentient I'd still need a computer. And take back the Secret Krakatoa team! A character called Vulcan in space = Double Oy. Add the Illuminati stuff. All these things are part of what made Xavier's death by Cyclops underwhelming. And didn't Charles get shot in the head by evil-Bishop recently? Killing Xavier has become the Boy Who Cried Wolf, even more so after they decided to make him a secretly horrible person.

#3 Hope Summers: Another time-traveling Summers, raised on the run? Another way of having a Jean Grey without having a Jean Grey? And powers that are sort of just like Rogue? And the baby / guy-with-a-gun paradox that reminds me of a comic called Nomad from the 90s? Is anything about this original?

#4. The Grant Morrison-Style Phoenix-Club: Undoing the cocoon-in-the-ocean retcon that split Jean Grey from the Phoenix and rendered the Dark Phoenix Saga emotionally irrelevant? Good call. Turning the Phoenix into a D.C. style Legion-of-Super-Phoenixes? Unnecessary. No, Grant, we don't like Quentin Quire that much. And it leads to the Phoenix 5. The Phoenix 5 story intrigued me more than I would have thought, but really, it's only the Cyclops part of that is interesting to me, because, as with Jean, it becomes a question of how you use power. Only with Scott they focused on what could really be done to change the world. But I don't really need Magik-Phoenix or Colossus-Phoenix. Or Namor, who I still don't think of as an X-man, even though I like him.

#5 Priest Nightcrawler: The irony that a devil-looking guy is Christian is not as intelligent as it seems, and the sobriety of Priesthood completely undermined the happy-go-lucky Nightcrawler who was freaky to outsiders but adorable to the X-men.

@gambitvoleur: I completely agree with all your retcons.

Storm should always be free and flying solo. But she can entertain male suitors. Professor X's image was so tarnished unfairly to make the other guys look better and it was really no big deal that he died,. Hope was one big waste of everything, especially post AvX. The Phoenix was diluted and diminished before it even appeared again. And Nightcrawler should have been a leader not a preacher.

I agree with all this! It felt like everything that happened in the last few years was kind of pointless, especially with what happened with Hope. I would have thought that she would have played a bigger role after the events of AvX, but she isn't. I also didn't like what they have been doing to Professor Xavier over the years since it seems like they want to tear down certain leaders to make room for newer leaders instead of just letting the original leader step down in a non-controversial way, just like what they are currently doing to Cyclops.

@rabbitearsblog: I agree with your comment about tarnishing leaders to get them out of the way. I just wanted to add that with Scott I think it's actually the extension of a different trend. Cyclops seemed to become more than a boyscout when he started to have problems: being possessed by Apocalypse, girl trouble, and the mental issues behind his power working. Maybe "evil" cyclops is the extreme version of this desire to make him interesting by being flawed, rather than just an attempt to get him out of the way?

@silver_raven: In retrospect yours is a nicely edited version of a long-ish rant : ).

just get rid of AVX

@flazam said:

@arkhamc1tizen said:

just get rid of AVX

ya betcha robin

I think if it were up to me to do all over, honestly, I'd retcon out many of the major plot points of the original X-factor. I know it's a pretty classic part of X-men history, but, in my mind, it was just an excuse to have another X-men book with the original members, that ultimately did more harm than good to the story.

1. I wouldn't have brought Jean Grey back. So, basically, I'd un-retcon her not being the Phoenix. I don't even think the Dark Phoenix Saga was all that good, but bringing her back and saying it wasn't even her basically robbed it of what relevance it had. Even if they did form X-factor, Cyclops would have stayed with Madeline (until at least the early 00's when he started his affair with Emma).
2. Nathan would never have been sent into the future. I've never been a big Cable fan to begin with, but even besides my dislike of 90's X-force, he set a stupid and ultimately un-artful president that characters who have children ultimately never end up raising them. Cyclops would probably be a very different character now if he had actually been raising Nathan (who'd be like 6 or 7 by now) this whole time. And maybe Cannonball, Moonstar, and some of the other New Mutants would have actually become leading X-men as originally planned.

I know these two changes would have made a huge impact on the last 25 years of X-men lore, especially the late 80's, the original X-force, and Morrison's new X-men. But I think it would have resulted in Rachel actually taking the mantle of her would-be mother as a more central character in the X-men, and the New Mutants actually graduating into the X-men as intended, and I can't help but feel that would have been far less contrived and much more interesting in the long run.

Oh, and I'd also retcon Corsair out of existence, which, really, is just another un-retcon.

I would follow you again if I wasn't following you already.

@arkhamc1tizen said:

@flazam said:

@arkhamc1tizen said:

just get rid of AVX

ya betcha robin

Definitely this!!!

Funny that you mention retconning X-Factor since that is when the long tradition of X-retcons took off. I just wish there was an alternative timeline that followed Claremont's vision of retiring Cyclops and having Rachel take over for her mother. I wonder who would else could have launched that spin-off? I never liked the origiinal 5 so every time they have reappeared has been such a bore for me. Which is why i try to avoid and ignore what is happening in All New X-men.

Bringing Cyclops out of retirement seemed unnecessary. They could have brought in Havoc and Polaris instead of Cyclops and Jean, but really, I think the main justification for all of the convoluted smegg they did in that book (and that era in general) was having all of the original members back together again. So many wasted opportunities.

Yeah, that would have made sense and when i think of X-Factor, Havok and Polaris come to mind.

But if could play around with different retcons I would have loved if Moria's Second Genesis team had been introduced in the 80s so they could have been a part of this team led by Havok.

Well, they were on the second X-factor that took over Freedom Force's job, so there's that that could have been made more organic; but I thought of them because they were both in the X-men's first class.

Really? I never cared for that story, myself. I'd probably retcon that out. Which, again, would be another un-retcon. It was just so contrived and served no purpose other than to further complicate the X-men's already ridiculous history. The only good to come out of that story was Darwin, and surely they could have found a less convoluted, more interesting way to introduce him.

I only like the characters not the story that created them. If they could have just been introduced without being a part of the Second Genesis and Vulcan was not related to the Summers brother, then i could have seen them work in X-books. And if they had been thought up during the 80s, they could have brought some diverse looks and powers to the X-teams. Darwin and Sway especially.

Thing is, without that story, without being the lost Summers brother, what is there to even be interested in about Vulcan?

I'll give you that Darwin and Sway are cool characters. But the rest, just awful. It's bad enough that they tarnished Cyclops' perfect origin by introducing Corsair, but Vulcan just takes it ridiculously too far, and for no good reason. There's absolutely nothing about him or that story that isn't super contrived.

That whole story is, in my mind, a contrived blight on the otherwise awesome origin of the X-men.

Have WPotC jean make the phoenix whole again then you could do away with a xerox copy look alike and all the arc's that dealt with her.

A god like character reigniting the mutant race kinda bring's jean/phoenix full circle.