What X-Men characters were missing from certain periods such as the 90s, the 80s, the 2000s? For example, when I was reading the X-Men comics in the 2000s, characters like Storm and Iceman were missing for most of the decade. I couldn't exactly count the 60s or the 70s since most of the X-Men characters were being introduced during those periods.

Storm was leader of X-Treme X-Men and Iceman was part of mike Carey X-men.

@time: Oh yeah, I forgot about those runs. Also, Iceman was around in Astonishing X-men at the time.

@rabbitearsblog: I think Bobby was around in the later issues of Astonishing X-Men.

Madrox was hardly around at all in the 80's

except for that crappy Fallen Angels series.. which was kind of crappy.

Thats what Claremont did that Bob Harras and creators in the 90s didn't understand. That not every mutant was a super hero. Some mutants like Havok and Madrox didn't want to be super heroes, heck, Guido, later known as Strong Guy was just Lila Cheneys bodyguard. That was one of my favorite things about the Claremont run, that there was a pretty great supporting cast to support the main X-Men.

and I agree, Fallen Angels was pretty bad. I think that book was actually suppose to turn into some kind of "Titans West" thing for the New Mutants.

even the original X-men were just supporting cast, mostly, until X-factor in '86.

I still wonder what could have happened if characters like Madrox, Siren, Warpath, or Firestar had joined the X-men when they'd first had the chance.

but yeah.. Fallen Angels.. bleh.

True, and I loved how Bobby and Warren decided to not be heroes, or reserve X-Men at the least it made the X-Men world more realistic. They always say when describing Xaviers school that the students either serve as X-Men or return to the world with control of their powers. You almost never see anyone just graduate the school and just go lead a normal life.

Weren't Firestar and Warpath Hellions originally? So, something was being done with them, if you really want to delve into it I blame Louise Simonson, after she took over New Mutants the book really took a dive in quality and the Hellions became almost non existent, which was sad really, they were such good characters.

yeah, not in a long time.

Maybe Cecilia Reyes, but she was sort of made to be that kind of character.

yeah, I've never understood all the love for Simonson's work around the X-books. Then again, none of the Hellions themselves really interested me, outside of Empath.

Firestar and Warpath were never full-on Hellions so much as they were young mutants used by Emma and the Hellions to get at the X-men. In the tradition of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, both of them were offered membership after the fact, and both refused.

Sunfire disappears for large chunks of time.

Simonson, while a nice lady, is poop...for lack of a better term. Although she will say that the dumbing down of New Mutants came from higher up, it still can be said that a good writer could of worked around the mandate. She could have made it less mature while still writing good stories. Her X-Factor stuff, while better than the first writer, wasn't anything special either. She gets a lot of credit for creating Apocalypse and Archangel, and while everything about Apocalypse thats interesting was developed by other writers so her association with the character is meek, I can still give her credit for Archangel, as that was a cool idea.

Warpath was a full on Hellion if I recall correctly, he had a uniform and everything. You are right about Firestar though, she just kind of floated around the Marvel U.

pretty much, yeah.

actually? I don't remember that..

Banshee disappeared for a long, long time post-Gen X / Joe Casey's run. And then he pops up in Deadly Genesis and dies. Brilliant.

Most characters who joined X-Corps were pretty irrelevant now that I think about it, Chamber and Jubilee did jack from the early 2000s till M-Day.

Legion disappeared for an ungodly amount of time, but I guess he was dead. Does dead count?

Most of the X-Terminators are also pretty much missing since Inferno. Artie and Leech got shipped off the FF (more recently), Firefist was Necrosha'd, Skids was put into SHIELD and never heard of again, Wiz Kid more or less went off the radar, apparently in Avengers Academy.

Then there's Caliban...

Yeah! What happened to Caliban? I actually liked her rivalry with Storm and somehow, she's been missing ever since!

No Caliban was the Morlock that wanted to marry Kitty and then became a horseman. He died during Messiah Complex. You're thinking about Calisto.

Last I saw Calisto she was on Genosha, post M-Day, in a storyline involving Quicksilver trying to restart the mutant race using stolen terrigen crystals. Decimation - Son of M perhaps.

But yeah, poor Caliban.

Whoops. Sorry about that. It's been so long since I've read Mutant Massacre that I'm forgetting some of these characters' names.

There are several images in existence. Since he joined the team later on before Claremont left, he wasn't featured a whole lot.

@emequious_swerve: yeah, I looked into it after my last comment.

Still makes me wonder what it would have been like it he'd joined the X-men or early New Mutants instead..

God I miss Skids, her first appearance was one of my first comics, I was really hoping in Uncanny when they said they needed a mutant liaison they'd bring her back, but nope Dazzler, not even a mention that they already had a mutant working for them. Random is still around, but he is definitely a shadow of whatever characterization he had, and I haven't seen Frenzy since Age of X.