The Four Color Media Monitor

Reading this sugary Scripps-Howard article, it's apparent that there simply are too many X-Men titles. Which has been a problem for years now, and hasn't changed much. The writer says:

If you read comics, you know how this works: One big event always leads to another (in this case, a story called "X-Men: Divided We Stand," beginning in February).

And that's exactly the problem. Now, we once again have a story where the X-Men are disbanded as a team by Cyclops (while Jean Grey apparently is still in death limbo). And this is supposed to once more spread out across as many as a dozen books. The article even quotes Mark Guggenheim saying:

"They don't have the mansion. They don't have the support system. They are not being coddled. ... They know there are no more mutants, no more new mutants. This is the final group of X-Men that will ever be assembled. It's young kids being placed in incredibly difficult, trying, challenging situations and having no 'out' other their own abilities ... and their own courage and fortitude."

Sure it'll be the final group ever assembled. As long as it makes money, selling to the very same people, as has been the case for years now, they'll keep on writing spinoff series, such as the Young X-Men, the latest of the spinoffs they've been doing.

On Uncanny X-Men, they say:

Although there's no X-Men team anymore, this book will follow the adventures of Cyclops, the telepath Emma Frost, Wolverine, Colossus and Nightcrawler. But they're not a team. Got it? Not a team. They just, um, hang around together and have adventures. But they're not a team! Marvel says so.

I fail to see the point here. It sounds more like one of the attempts Marvel made in past years to downplay superheroes being supeheroes, and write stories that supposedly "get inside the heads" of the characters to know what makes them tick. But failed nevertheless.

And no matter what they say, it's apparent that they're still milking the X-Franchise for all its worth, including Cable, who now get a series anew:

-- "Cable & Deadpool": Canceled. Because the baby (see above) wound up in the hands of the time-traveling Nathan Summers, he will flee with it through time and space, pursued by the murderous turncoat Bishop, in the new, ongoing "Cable" (debuting in March).

Ugh. I don't think I want to see Bishop depicted as a killer going after the infant of Messiah CompleX. And since this is likely to be just a pointless excercise in time travel, that's why I'll skip it. Notice also the strategy they have of cancelling one title only to replace with another.

There are plenty of characters worth supporting in the X-World, but the way the franchise is so bloated with ongoing series is not the way to do it. I think miniseries would be a better idea, but not to Marvel's editors, apparently.

Labels: marvel comics, X-Men