What era for the X-Men was your least favorite?
 
My least favorite era is the 2000s with Matt Fraction's run on X-Men and other runs because I felt that the start of having too many events really slowed down the X-Men stories and the writing wasn't really as strong as it was during the 80s.

Right now...
 
-there is way too many characters to even give a crap about
-I am still not sure why Namor is an X-men
-Their best bad guys are dead, depowered or on the team
-They made Cyclops to be some sort of dictator
-They consider making Colossus the Juggernaut "character development"
-A lot of build up and fuss for characters like Hope Summers....only for them to become irrelevant 6 months later
-over usage of characters like Deadpool, Wolverine, X-23

Right now...  -there is way too many characters to even give a crap about -I am still not sure why Namor is an X-men -Their best bad guys are dead, depowered or on the team -They made Cyclops to be some sort of dictator -They consider making Colossus the Juggernaut "character development" -A lot of build up and fuss for characters like Hope Summers....only for them to become irrelevant 6 months later -over usage of characters like Deadpool, Wolverine, X-23

Nothing can be worse than Chuck Austin.

Nothing can be worse than Chuck Austin.

@Rabbitearsblog said:

@stambo42 said:

Nothing can be worse than Chuck Austin.

Chuck Austin came out during the 2000s right? Or was that the late 90s? I can't seem to remember when his run came out.

Ironically, he was writing Uncanny for most of the time that Morrison was on New X-Men. Than he did a short spell on that when it returned to its adjectiveless form, when Whedon was on Astonishing. His run was defined by massively out of character behavior, centered around overly dramatic, simplistic, and totally unjustified romantic relations between characters that he forced together, all of which overshadowed the lack of plots and barely present/ certainly not memorable villains. The guy seems to have some serious psychological issues with women. Most of the art during his run was pretty awful too, including this anime person and another illustrator who drew everybody's nose as a giant triangle.

@Rabbitearsblog said:

@stambo42 said:

Nothing can be worse than Chuck Austin.

Chuck Austin came out during the 2000s right? Or was that the late 90s? I can't seem to remember when his run came out.

Ironically, he was writing Uncanny for most of the time that Morrison was on New X-Men. Than he did a short spell on that when it returned to its adjectiveless form, when Whedon was on Astonishing. His run was defined by massively out of character behavior, centered around overly dramatic, simplistic, and totally unjustified romantic relations between characters that he forced together, all of which overshadowed the lack of plots and barely present/ certainly not memorable villains. The guy seems to have some serious psychological issues with women. Most of the art during his run was pretty awful too, including this anime person and another illustrator who drew everybody's nose as a giant triangle.

The next one.

The next one.

@cattlebattle: Well said

@Rabbitearsblog: Specifically what's coming after AvX. It looks like Disney/Marvel are going to run down the X-men as we've known them. Which I guess makes sense because the largest source of income for these properties isn't comics but movies and why would you want to help advertise another person's movies?

@Rabbitearsblog: Specifically what's coming after AvX. It looks like Disney/Marvel are going to run down the X-men as we've known them. Which I guess makes sense because the largest source of income for these properties isn't comics but movies and why would you want to help advertise another person's movies?

Right now...  -there is way too many characters to even give a crap about -I am still not sure why Namor is an X-men -Their best bad guys are dead, depowered or on the team -They made Cyclops to be some sort of dictator -They consider making Colossus the Juggernaut "character development" -A lot of build up and fuss for characters like Hope Summers....only for them to become irrelevant 6 months later -over usage of characters like Deadpool, Wolverine, X-23

'63 and onward.
BB

@cattlebattle said:

Right now...  -there is way too many characters to even give a crap about -I am still not sure why Namor is an X-men -Their best bad guys are dead, depowered or on the team -They made Cyclops to be some sort of dictator -They consider making Colossus the Juggernaut "character development" -A lot of build up and fuss for characters like Hope Summers....only for them to become irrelevant 6 months later -over usage of characters like Deadpool, Wolverine, X-23

I agree with all of this!

@cattlebattle said:

Right now... -there is way too many characters to even give a crap about -I am still not sure why Namor is an X-men -Their best bad guys are dead, depowered or on the team -They made Cyclops to be some sort of dictator -They consider making Colossus the Juggernaut "character development" -A lot of build up and fuss for characters like Hope Summers....only for them to become irrelevant 6 months later -over usage of characters like Deadpool, Wolverine, X-23

amen

Matt Fraction's run.

Probably the late 90's Claremont stuff. Which is funny because the late 70's to early 90' were the best x-books ever written, then he took a nose dive.

Chuck Austen shall forever be a black stain on X-Men history.

Now isn't too far off:

- Cyclops, looking back all the way from 1991's X-Men #1 till now, he's still a prick, now even more so a dictator.

- His Marvel NOW! redesign makes him look even more like a prick.

- Wolverine is still the Marvel poster boy for mutants, HE WAS IN FREAKING SHADOWLAND!! THE BOOK FOR STREET LEVEL HEROES.

- 'OH MAI GAWD GAIS, WE GOTTA SAVE HOPE!', her book was cancelled and she's been shelved for a good two months now.

- AvX's awful characterization and even more god-awful JRJr. Art

- Fraction's Slow, Pixie-centric Writing

- Too many books being rushed onto the market, The First X-Men and Xtreme X-Men, I'm looking at you.

- Too many books written mediocre-bad. Post Regenesis New Mutants, AvX X-Men Legacy and Pre Wood X-Men, I'm looking at you

- Gay Marriage was a great event IMO, overly publicized but great.

- Too many shelved characters, Dust, Surge, Hellion, Rockslide?

- New X-Men: Academy X was great!! What Happened? CANCELLED!! It's okay, if we pull together stuff we can get Young X-Men? UNSALVAGABLE!!

- Schism was stupid, It wouldve made more sense if it was Storm and Cyclops,

- I forced myself to get used to Schism, Regeneis (where I hopped onto the X-train) was a good starting point, but it was weird to see a cold blooded killer who has slept with half of Marvel Universe open a school.

- It only took 10 issues for Wolvie and the X-Men and two story arcs for X-Men Legacy to turn Wolvie and Cyclops' side from none-talking terms to a somewhat diplomatic meeting.

- Vampires

- Gimmicky Aimless Vanilla X-Men, that served a platform for my previous criticism (Now, not too bad)

- If it wasn't for Gillen's writing, I would honestly question Namor's existence.

At least we have Peter David's X-Factor and Remender's UXF, Gillen's UXM is beginning to become enjoyable (and soon to be cancelled), and Wolvie and the X-Men is still a pretty good read.

@Rabbitearsblog: 2000's? What about Morrison and Whedon's runs? They were legendary. The problem is that while there is often 1 or 2 good titles, the huge number of titles pretty much always brings the average quality way down. The same thing is still happening today, some writers are absolutely nailing their X-books while others are complete garbage.

Matt Fraction's run. Just completely bland and uninspiring. Chuck Austin is a close second. The current era is in third place - you know it's bad when you flip through the books in the store just because you know the plot makes no sense so reading it would be more confusing than just getting the visuals hence not worth a purchase.

@stambo42 said:

Nothing can be worse than Chuck Austin.

^ This^

@Rabbitearsblog: 2000's? What about Morrison and Whedon's runs? They were legendary. The problem is that while there is often 1 or 2 good titles, the huge number of titles pretty much always brings the average quality way down. The same thing is still happening today, some writers are absolutely nailing their X-books while others are complete garbage.

@Dman1366 said:

Probably the late 90's Claremont stuff. Which is funny because the late 70's to early 90' were the best x-books ever written, then he took a nose dive.

I didn't find it that awful, Just kind of redundant... but with Yu on pencils I didn't care so much. It wasn't really around long enough to get awful for me, it was just very action-adventury. Than again, I haven't read it since I was 14.

@tomchu said:

- Too many shelved characters, Dust, Surge, Hellion, Rockslide?

Yeah, I miss those guys, they felt like they had a good deal of potential, especially as a group. Surge always kind of annoyed me, or maybe that was just Ramos. Either way good characters, and Surge had a roll to play in that.

Matt Fraction's run. Just completely bland and uninspiring. Chuck Austin is a close second. The current era is in third place - you know it's bad when you flip through the books in the store just because you know the plot makes no sense so reading it would be more confusing than just getting the visuals hence not worth a purchase.

@cattlebattle said:

Right now... -there is way too many characters to even give a crap about -I am still not sure why Namor is an X-men -Their best bad guys are dead, depowered or on the team -They made Cyclops to be some sort of dictator -They consider making Colossus the Juggernaut "character development" -A lot of build up and fuss for characters like Hope Summers....only for them to become irrelevant 6 months later -over usage of characters like Deadpool, Wolverine, X-23

More or less agree. I find moments to enjoy currently (most of Gillen's Run, but even it suffers from event interference) but everything post Morrison/Casey/Whedon feels very well...ill executed and even more poorly thought out.

@cattlebattle said:

Right now... -there is way too many characters to even give a crap about -I am still not sure why Namor is an X-men -Their best bad guys are dead, depowered or on the team -They made Cyclops to be some sort of dictator -They consider making Colossus the Juggernaut "character development" -A lot of build up and fuss for characters like Hope Summers....only for them to become irrelevant 6 months later -over usage of characters like Deadpool, Wolverine, X-23

More or less agree. I find moments to enjoy currently (most of Gillen's Run, but even it suffers from event interference) but everything post Morrison/Casey/Whedon feels very well...ill executed and even more poorly thought out.

@Rabbitearsblog: I REALLY enjoyed Messiah War but like you said it didn't really go anywhere afterwards. There were some interesting status quo changes that occurred but I didn't feel like things happened to capitalize. For Example Divided We Stand was overall cool but more could've been done to explore their affect on San Francisco or it on their lives. Same could be said for Utopia and how it was a great way to put a lot of very strong personalities in a room and let them play off one another, instead what we got was all hail the one eyed vizier. Second Coming got me back into the books monthly and set up some stuff that could've been great to explore and some books did capitalize, but overall nothing much happened after. This is especially true of hope.

@Rabbitearsblog: I REALLY enjoyed Messiah War but like you said it didn't really go anywhere afterwards. There were some interesting status quo changes that occurred but I didn't feel like things happened to capitalize. For Example Divided We Stand was overall cool but more could've been done to explore their affect on San Francisco or it on their lives. Same could be said for Utopia and how it was a great way to put a lot of very strong personalities in a room and let them play off one another, instead what we got was all hail the one eyed vizier. Second Coming got me back into the books monthly and set up some stuff that could've been great to explore and some books did capitalize, but overall nothing much happened after. This is especially true of hope.

Chuck...fucking...Austen. The same chuck who made the Juggernaut behave like a 10-year old douche, the chuck who crucified jubilee, the chuck who invented disintegrating communion wavers and ruined Nightcrawler's origin, the same chuck who turned iceman into an asshole and the SAME CHUCK who turned northstar into stereotypical gay person.

@Rabbitearsblog: Yeah, that's why I roll my eyes out of my head when the words "everything will change" come out of their mouths.

@x_29: Touching his comics makes me feel...well dirty

@JonesDeini said:

@Rabbitearsblog: Yeah, that's why I roll my eyes out of my head when the words "everything will change" come out of their mouths.

@x_29: Touching his comics makes me feel...well dirty

Of course, his comics are mostly full of blatant misogyny and confusing catholic beliefs.

@Rabbitearsblog: Yeah, that's why I roll my eyes out of my head when the words "everything will change" come out of their mouths.

@x_29: Touching his comics makes me feel...well dirty

Inferno.

Inferno.

@Rabbitearsblog said:

@X35 said:

Inferno.

Wasn't that the storyline featuring Madeline Pryor? It's been awhile since I've read that storyline.

Yeah. It was that mess of a story featuring demons, Magik, Madelyne Pryor and Mr. Sinister.

@Rabbitearsblog said:

@X35 said:

Inferno.

Wasn't that the storyline featuring Madeline Pryor? It's been awhile since I've read that storyline.

Yeah. It was that mess of a story featuring demons, Magik, Madelyne Pryor and Mr. Sinister.

@stambo42 said:

@Rabbitearsblog said:

@stambo42 said:

Nothing can be worse than Chuck Austin.

Chuck Austin came out during the 2000s right? Or was that the late 90s? I can't seem to remember when his run came out.

Ironically, he was writing Uncanny for most of the time that Morrison was on New X-Men. Than he did a short spell on that when it returned to its adjectiveless form, when Whedon was on Astonishing. His run was defined by massively out of character behavior, centered around overly dramatic, simplistic, and totally unjustified romantic relations between characters that he forced together, all of which overshadowed the lack of plots and barely present/ certainly not memorable villains. The guy seems to have some serious psychological issues with women. Most of the art during his run was pretty awful too, including this anime person and another illustrator who drew everybody's nose as a giant triangle.

Husk and Archangel were a "weird" couple... and Stacy X was an unidentifiable cuss word all herself!!

@tomchu said:

Chuck Austen shall forever be a black stain on X-Men history.

Now isn't too far off:

- Cyclops, looking back all the way from 1991's X-Men #1 till now, he's still a prick, now even more so a dictator.

- His Marvel NOW! redesign makes him look even more like a prick.

- Wolverine is still the Marvel poster boy for mutants, HE WAS IN FREAKING SHADOWLAND!! THE BOOK FOR STREET LEVEL HEROES.

- 'OH MAI GAWD GAIS, WE GOTTA SAVE HOPE!', her book was cancelled and she's been shelved for a good two months now.

- AvX's awful characterization and even more god-awful JRJr. Art

- Fraction's Slow, Pixie-centric Writing

- Too many books being rushed onto the market, The First X-Men and Xtreme X-Men, I'm looking at you.

- Too many books written mediocre-bad. Post Regenesis New Mutants, AvX X-Men Legacy and Pre Wood X-Men, I'm looking at you

- Gay Marriage was a great event IMO, overly publicized but great.

- Too many shelved characters, Dust, Surge, Hellion, Rockslide?

- New X-Men: Academy X was great!! What Happened? CANCELLED!! It's okay, if we pull together stuff we can get Young X-Men? UNSALVAGABLE!!

- Schism was stupid, It wouldve made more sense if it was Storm and Cyclops,

- I forced myself to get used to Schism, Regeneis (where I hopped onto the X-train) was a good starting point, but it was weird to see a cold blooded killer who has slept with half of Marvel Universe open a school.

- It only took 10 issues for Wolvie and the X-Men and two story arcs for X-Men Legacy to turn Wolvie and Cyclops' side from none-talking terms to a somewhat diplomatic meeting.

- Vampires

- Gimmicky Aimless Vanilla X-Men, that served a platform for my previous criticism (Now, not too bad)

- If it wasn't for Gillen's writing, I would honestly question Namor's existence.

At least we have Peter David's X-Factor and Remender's UXF, Gillen's UXM is beginning to become enjoyable (and soon to be cancelled), and Wolvie and the X-Men is still a pretty good read.

I defiantly agree with all of this...

And ur right... the only X-books I read currently are X-Factor, and UXF... I read Wolvie and the X-men too but since this AvX crap is going on, I had to put it on hiatus!!

I think the orignal 5 era. I have no interest in them or that time. If it wasn't for Jean i would find no redeeming quality in the First Class. It wasn't until the team became "all new and all different" that X-men really became what it was. Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus and Wolverine really opened the scope and feel of the book and made it appealing for all kinds of fans. I have never read anything from before Giant Size X-men. That world before then has no value to me as a women of colour, and those character don't draw me back either. 5 straight white kids and their old white male leader, fighting for mutant equality have the same meaning for me as it did when there were more females on the team, people of colour, and differences in appearances, abilities, sexualities and faiths.

I wonder if Marvel NOW! will address some of these ideas when the First Five visit the present in "All New X-men".

@papad1992 said:

@stambo42 said:

@Rabbitearsblog said:

@stambo42 said:

Nothing can be worse than Chuck Austin.

Chuck Austin came out during the 2000s right? Or was that the late 90s? I can't seem to remember when his run came out.

Ironically, he was writing Uncanny for most of the time that Morrison was on New X-Men. Than he did a short spell on that when it returned to its adjectiveless form, when Whedon was on Astonishing. His run was defined by massively out of character behavior, centered around overly dramatic, simplistic, and totally unjustified romantic relations between characters that he forced together, all of which overshadowed the lack of plots and barely present/ certainly not memorable villains. The guy seems to have some serious psychological issues with women. Most of the art during his run was pretty awful too, including this anime person and another illustrator who drew everybody's nose as a giant triangle.

Husk and Archangel were a "weird" couple... and Stacy X was an unidentifiable cuss word all herself!!

Oh gawd, I must have blocked that one out. I was thinking of Havok and that nurse, Annie. Stacy actually began under a different writer, but you better believe he took her to new lows.

@Silver_Raven said:

I think the orignal 5 era. I have no interest in them or that time. If it wasn't for Jean i would find no redeeming quality in the First Class. It wasn't until the team became "all new and all different" that X-men really became what it was. Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus and Wolverine really opened the scope and feel of the book and made it appealing for all kinds of fans. I have never read anything from before Giant Size X-men. That world before then has no value to me as a women of colour, and those character don't draw me back either. 5 straight white kids and their old white male leader, fighting for mutant equality have the same meaning for me as it did when there were more females on the team, people of colour, and differences in appearances, abilities, sexualities and faiths.

I wonder if Marvel NOW! will address some of these ideas when the First Five visit the present in "All New X-men".

Beyond the crippling conceptual exclusions, I've heard the writing of that era is just plain awkward, and at times clumsily misogynistic. A big part of that is just the conventions of comics at the times, and I've never tried to read them myself, but I've heard it's pretty bad.

@stambo42 said:

@Silver_Raven said:

I think the orignal 5 era. I have no interest in them or that time. If it wasn't for Jean i would find no redeeming quality in the First Class. It wasn't until the team became "all new and all different" that X-men really became what it was. Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus and Wolverine really opened the scope and feel of the book and made it appealing for all kinds of fans. I have never read anything from before Giant Size X-men. That world before then has no value to me as a women of colour, and those character don't draw me back either. 5 straight white kids and their old white male leader, fighting for mutant equality have the same meaning for me as it did when there were more females on the team, people of colour, and differences in appearances, abilities, sexualities and faiths.

I wonder if Marvel NOW! will address some of these ideas when the First Five visit the present in "All New X-men".

Beyond the crippling conceptual exclusions, I've heard the writing of that era is just plain awkward, and at times clumsily misogynistic. A big part of that is just the conventions of comics at the times, and I've never tried to read them myself, but I've heard it's pretty bad.

Agreed. I see this as less about issues with the original 5 and more about how creative teams can build our perception of a franchise. This has more to do with the time period and the fact that the X-Men originally were more about a group of teenaged upstarts, like The Beatles and other rockers, who had powers but weren't adults, and who weren't perfectly conservative (i.e. they hang out with beatniks at the Coffee-a-go-go, used pop culture lingo as teens tend to do in conversation yet still were 'acceptable' and wore non-offensive clothing). It was a different culture back then where it was more important to establish that Jean stayed in a separate dorm from the boys than it was to outright explore civil rights or characters of other ethnic backgrounds. Ironically, though Marvel addressed racism (species-ism?) by the way people reacted to mutants, in terms of characters of other ethnicities, the Black Panther had already blazed the trail in the FF years before Storm came on the scene, so the X-Men's "social message" was really just another way that a particular writing team's impact on the creative direction of the team which colored future writers choices of theme.

TBPH the only thing the All New All Different team did was embrace the idea of the X-Men as superheroes. Up until then, they were privileged boarding school students who wanted to keep their identities secret and have normal lives. What Giant Size X-Men really did was introduce an X-Men lineup that was as far from normal as you can get with secret agents, a cult figure, acrobat and etc. Giant Size, in retrospect, really made the X-Men more like The Avengers than do anything new.

Seriously, if you read any of the original lineups of the older team titles or standalone hero books, such as Superman 1, Batman 1, Wonder Woman 1, Fantastic Four 1 and etc, they all are pretty awkward lol.

@stambo42 said:

@papad1992 said:

@stambo42 said:

@Rabbitearsblog said:

@stambo42 said:

Nothing can be worse than Chuck Austin.

Chuck Austin came out during the 2000s right? Or was that the late 90s? I can't seem to remember when his run came out.

Ironically, he was writing Uncanny for most of the time that Morrison was on New X-Men. Than he did a short spell on that when it returned to its adjectiveless form, when Whedon was on Astonishing. His run was defined by massively out of character behavior, centered around overly dramatic, simplistic, and totally unjustified romantic relations between characters that he forced together, all of which overshadowed the lack of plots and barely present/ certainly not memorable villains. The guy seems to have some serious psychological issues with women. Most of the art during his run was pretty awful too, including this anime person and another illustrator who drew everybody's nose as a giant triangle.

Husk and Archangel were a "weird" couple... and Stacy X was an unidentifiable cuss word all herself!!

Oh gawd, I must have blocked that one out. I was thinking of Havok and that nurse, Annie. Stacy actually began under a different writer, but you better believe he took her to new lows.

Oh I forgot about Havok and Annie Ghazikhanian... weirdest couple! And her son Carter. Has anyone else noticed that they are totally off the grid now!? Where the heck are those two? They left because Annie felt that the school was too dangerous and that Havok still has feelings for Polaris. But the real cliffhanger was when they were leaving... Carter was talking to an unforeseen individual!

The 2000's were the beginning of the end for the X-men.

1990-Present.

The 2000's were the beginning of the end for the X-men.

When Claremont returned to the X-Men was awful. He was way past his prime. I was happy when they just gave him the "... Forever" titles so he could do his own thing.

after onslaught