My vote goes to Storm...

Wolverine or cable

Storm or Cyclops

Lmao Claremont?

Scott Summers

Magik of course

@koays: I'll follow him anywhere.

I always liked Magneto. Cyclops is like what Magneto use to be but sometimes I question Scott's decisions as of late. If I was a mutant, there would be no other leader I would want due to determination, and sheer power. Dude had Toad on his team and there teams were considered threats

Chris Claremont?

Quicksilver

I say storm will always be my leader. Second would be Cyclops after him then Magneto.

Emma frost.

Cannonball? Really?

I voted for Emma. Emma is a good leader, and she is a good bae.

@rocketraccoonthingy: He used to lead the New Mutants.

I'd choose Deadpool over him. XD

Deadpool is more "serious".

Storm? Ya can't be for real. I'm with Magneto, Wolverine, and Cyclops FTW

I'd go for Storm. I've seen her as a strong woman who can really lead the pack. She looks like someone in authority and someone they will follow. I'd also go with Cyclops but I really prefer Storm more.

Storm or Cyclops...

jean or scott. I just thought one of the original 5 should lead the team. i voted for jean because she is the heart of the x-men. she has shown herself as a good tactician and we all know that she is the most powerful x-man

Cyclops

Cyclops or Magneto both share the same ideals.

Storm

Cyclops

Emma is going to be a phenomenal leader after her experiences of the last couple of decades/story arcs. Unlike the others, she can get things done with a bare minimum of hand-wringing, and I often find that she has the most military outlook because of her strategic approach to a problem, and willingness to go no-holds barred tactically. Most of the X-Men on the list tend to get hamstrung by their moral codes, whereas Emma is able to operate closer to the real world.

I really like Cyclops in this role, so he is a close second. Storm...her track record is actually not all that great when you look at team members killed, strategic losses, and etc. but she is good in terms of PR. But I wouldn't want to be on her team. To put it another way, she became a leader when no one else on her team wanted or had the skills to step up. She filled that void, but I don't think it is a skillset that she enjoys.

Storm is a good leader,not the best but good. Storm can sense changes in the air(normally she will know something or someone is coming and from what direction),her weather powers offer attacks and defense,she can see the physical world around her as energy which includes the human body's nervous system which in turn allows her to counter all but the fastest attacks,she has willpower/ telepathic resistance since she has one of the most powerful wills out of the x-men and her resistance is further enhanced by the electrical forces that which she controls,she is good at getting past advanced security systems and she is very stealthy. Storm is a gifted and formidable hand-to-hand combatant and is an excellent gardener which shows she cares for and likes plants and just life.

Storm can create natural and unnatural phenomena which do not exist on planet earth:)

" Be gone lesser mutant "

Jean or Cyclops.

Ororo Munroe aka Storm, ruler of the skies.

There's pros aand cons to ALL The x-leaders. While i would always vote storm ... Cyclops, Emma, Charles and even Magneto have strong claims to being good to great x leaders.

i think the claim that storm only became leader when no one else wanted it is now irrelevant. She's been The or A leader of xmen as long or longer than everyone including cyclops and Xavier. Whilst she may resent having to be the leader it's that not wanting it that makes her the Best choice. Those who desire authority are to be treated with wary caution. Storm is the very best choice to lead the x-men. Unlike all the others she commands through respect and experience and was literally born to lead, causing others to instinctively follow her. no other x-man has that default reflex from the others (aside from cyclops due to habit). Until the utopia storylines none of the other leaders had needed to make any actually difficult decisions in either morally grey or life/death situations. Storm makes the hard calls. That the other xmen still follow her is testament to those decisions being the right or at least best calls.

Emma or Polaris. Polaris was a great leader in ANXF.

Magik

Storm, then Cake. I also like when they co-lead.

@lord_shiva: Who is Kake?

@phoenixofthetides: I think Shiva meant Cyke

@lateralus: Ah OK.

Storm of course.

I laughed on the Cake/Cyke. I'd like to see Rogue go back to leading a team. I was hoping she would get a leadership role in UA but that obvs didn't happen :-(. For me I place Storm as the stronger leader amongst our x-leadership, followed by Cyclops and then Rogue.

Cyclops...less "mutants are superior" than magneto, more "we have to place our protection and survival above PR" than Xavier

Also more of a big picture leader than storm...he would be tougher to work with than her though

Storm is a strong and compassionate leader. I wouldn't trust cyclops, he has a habit of ditching people.

Cable. Where do you think Cannonball learned it from?

Have a big ole council like Planet X.

@undefined: I'm disappointed Deathstrokes not included on this list, he his the most powerful conceivable being after all...

I'm really trying not to get pulled into an a Storm V Cyclops debate...but the way I see people aren't really backing Storms leadership based on her track record so much as the idea of her character.

Idk. Really the way I saw it Cyclops is the better choice 8/10 times. He's adaptable and rarely let's personal feelings get in the way of the needs of the team. Storm to me leads to much from the gut and it sometimes effects the teams cohesiveness if she gets taken off the playing field mentally or physically.

Idk though, Cyke tends to thrive with bigger groups and if were talking 2 or 3 teams under one guy or a mutant nation then he's the only choice. And his strategy makes him the best guy when you don't know what the danger is or the decks stacked against you. He's all around the best for a X-Men teams leadership choice, but the thing you need to be wary of is where you stand in relation to the teams objective. While Cyke is almost Xavier like in his forgiveness of enemies and betrayal, he will kick you of the team if you don't perform correctly and if it comes down to you vs many you may be out of luck since he doesn't like dividing attention from threats. Though even that's a dice roll depending on the day.

Really I think I'd die under Xavier and he'd replace me, would get killed when Magneto's plan either backfires or turns into "And kill all humans"mode, probably die in order to inspire Storm's one mutant victory and probably live longest under Cyke...but eventually die.

Magneto FTW

Obviously Magneto. Cyke will lead the young mutants to death and/or have them become murders. Magneto is the messiah of mutants (and we all know this). He leaded basically all his life so, I'm with Magneto.

this

Even though rogue is one of my favorite x-men she is no the best leader bc she can be a bit reckless. i would have to say cyclops he did a good job in the comics and lead the whole x-men team for a very long time until more recently.

My vote went to Storm (of coarse) and for good reason too. Storm may have had a few mishaps and failures as a leader (like most leaders), but that doesn't make her as incompetent as some people are making her out to be. Xavier and Cyclops have had team members die under their leadership and honestly bringing up Emma, when she has a death toll that would make the Grim Reaper blush, is a bit asinine IMHO. But to each's own.

Storm is a natural leader (she leads by example) and as history shows it, people have no problem following her. This doesn't mean she became a leader when no one else on her team wanted. She does tend to rely on intuition but this hasn't steered her wrong too many times. For example, her returning to Santo Marco to liberate it's people from Suncorp troops. Or even the time when she rallied a team to save the Avengers stuck in Magik's Limbo/Volcano. As for operating with the "real world"...

She also has a better track record of protecting her students. IIRC none of the JGS kids have died under her reign as headmistress ( despite the fact that Scott kept bringing trouble to the school). I'd also like to point out that Cyclops may have a different approach but that does not make him an overall better leader. Having multiple nervous breakdowns while running 2 or 3 teams or a "mutant nation" just shows how he is not the best choice for leadership.

@roddy010: Here here :-). Well said Roddy.

For the record, I don't think she is incompetent - she was the team leader when I was a teenager during the Outback Era (my favorite era overall). But I do recall her treatment of her multiple responsibilities of the team leader, head of the school, member of the Inner Circle from that era, and a lot of those issues carried forward in Extreme X-Men (so part of it could be "blamed on Claremont"), AvX, and more recent titles. And part of my consideration is tactical - her tactics tend to involve providing air support or aerial strikes, which makes it difficult to coordinate strategy without a telepath, dedicated communications mechanism, or some other thing. Hard to lead your team when you are in another battle arena.

It's all a matter of personal preference, of course, but whereas Scott always seemed to carry the heavy responsibility of leadership but could walk upright and adjust to it due to his personality, for Storm it always seemed to be holding her back from doing what she wanted to do, which is IMHO fly free and be able to make a big impact. I don't think it works that well to have one of your Big Guns be the leader, in general. Feel free to disagree.

@phoenixofthetides:

For the record, I don't think she is incompetent - she was the team leader when I was a teenager during the Outback Era (my favorite era overall). But I do recall her treatment of her multiple responsibilities of the team leader, head of the school, member of the Inner Circle from that era, and a lot of those issues carried forward in Extreme X-Men (so part of it could be "blamed on Claremont"), AvX, and more recent titles.

I'm not sure I understand your stance here. Storm did have a lot on her plate during that time but she did manage to form an alliance with Magneto and the Hell Fire Club to combat the rising forces against mutants, decided the X-Men must fake their deaths and become an underground proactive strike team and even stopped The Reavers successfully. Though at some cost, but as I stated earlier, Cyclops and Xavier both ran into similar situations. Still though she has progressed as a leader and is managing her roles as headmistress and leader of multiple teams very well.

And part of my consideration is tactical - her tactics tend to involve providing air support or aerial strikes, which makes it difficult to coordinate strategy without a telepath, dedicated communications mechanism, or some other thing. Hard to lead your team when you are in another battle arena.

Storm's powers calls for her being the aerial support so I don't see how this makes her tactics inadequate. Communications are not impossible without a telepath (Just as the Avengers, GotG) but since the X-men have plenty running around most teams tend to have them for this purpose anyway. This also includes every single team Scott has lead so I guess the same can be said for him.

It's all a matter of personal preference, of course, but whereas Scott always seemed to carry the heavy responsibility of leadership but could walk upright and adjust to it due to his personality, for Storm it always seemed to be holding her back from doing what she wanted to do, which is IMHO fly free and be able to make a big impact. I don't think it works that well to have one of your Big Guns be the leader, in general. Feel free to disagree.

To each's own I guess. I don't agree that Scott is a stronger leader due to his adaptable personality and his history shows as much. I believe Storm looks more at the bigger picture, while Scott tends follow the path of a psuedo extremist, though it is justified. She is a natural leader and has lead even without her powers so I don't believe that her being a "Big Gun" matters all that much.