The Four Color Media Monitor

I found this recent Newsarama item about what they consider the best X-Men comics, and predictably, they can't keep from adding some of the worst of newer stories onto the list. For example:

After Professor X and Magneto, the two men at the heart of the X-Men are Cyclops and Wolverine. The limited series X-Men: Schism speaks to the unrest evident in the X-Men line in the 2010s, and specifically those two characters' unrest. With House of M decimating the mutant population, the remaining mutants had to decide on a way forward.

On one side, Jason Aaron's handling of Wolverine was most in line with Chris Claremont's – Logan is Xavier's biggest success – and with that, we see the seeds of the man who would want to reopen a school for gifted youngsters.

But Cyclops, while not a failure, feels like one. He's failed his mentor. He's failed his family and his friends. And more than anything else, he believes that for the dream to be realized, drastic changes have to be made.

That's the conflict at the center of this book, and while it gets overlooked because of the 'Regenesis' era that came after, Schism is some of the strongest work of its time.

Oh, tell us about it. Aaron's proven one of the worst of the woke writers to get their mitts on Marvel, so why should we believe this tale is any different from how he approached Thor? If anything, Aaron's a leading example of a bad writer failing upwards, and ironically, they make it sound like it's inherently okay to depict Cyclops even partly as a failure. Buying and reading Aaron's stories is a waste of time and money.

Another modern tale listed here is Age of X by Mike Carey, and it says:

The X-Men have always been ripe for an alternate reality tale. 'Age of X' presents a world in which the X-Men are essentially doomed to suffer. Writer Mike Carey offers up interesting new versions of Cyclops, Wolverine, and Magneto. But at its heart, the story asks, "What are we doing?"

In a sense, with 'Age of X' standing as another story of the last remaining mutants making a stand against a world that hates and fears them, Carey is almost asking readers what is so compelling about returning to this status quo over and over and over again. But this is a story that also solidifies a lot of what Carey's run is about. Rogue has taken the name Legacy which makes sense considering how much she's the focus of the main title. Age of X also pays homage to the original Age of Apocalypse story with the ultra-powerful psychic mutant Legion creating a new reality where he gets to be a hero.

So Age of Apocalypse, also on the list, wasn't enough? What's really appalling is that stories like these never depict Islamic terrorists as the haters of the mutants, and said mutants aren't depicted as metaphors for Israelis, even after October 7, 2023. As a result, that's exactly why there's little point to revisiting this status quo if they're going to avoid challenging real life issues. Let's not forget Marvel's a company that rather hypocritically describes their universe as "the world outside your window".

There's also Messiah Complex from 2007, and, most fascinatingly, it states:

House of M changed the course of mutant history in the Marvel Universe forever. With three simple words, Scarlet Witch took mutants close to extinction, but it made their struggle for survival even more desperate and compelling.

'Messiah Complex ' might be a little bit of a sprawl at 13 issues, but essentially the X-Men, Marauders, Acolytes, Reavers, Purifiers, and Predator X are out to get the first mutant baby that's been born since the Decimation – when all but a relative handful of mutants lost their powers. The crossover is a little uneven as it's told by five writers who were all writing books that were fairly different in tone, but they still get the job done.

And what was so marvelous about a storyline written at Wanda Maximoff's expense, as was Avengers: Disassembled? Sorry, but this too is dismal. House of M's status quo may have been reversed, but I'm sure not enough.

They even added the run of a TV and film producer who's since been unmasked as an embarrassment:

'Gifted,' the opening salvo of Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men run, brought Colossus back, helped redefine Cyclops, and introduced a mutant cure (providing part of the plot for X3: The Last Stand). The dialogue and wittiness of the script sometimes outweigh the impact of the plot, but the writer puts characterization at the forefront, and that allowed him to organically build as many "astonishing" moments as possible into his work.

And it never hurts to have artist John Cassaday on your side either. After years of no-frills leather, Cassaday's reimagined costumes for the team still exude an understanding of each character's history. For many, Cassaday's costumes are the characters' essential looks more than any before or since.

While reviving Colossus is welcome, considering how awful the storyline where he was turned into a sacrifice for the sake of getting rid of the Legacy virus as a plot device, what's the point of recommending Whedon's work? It was discovered several years ago he did what to hurt women behind the scenes more than help them. There's little point to reading his work any more than watching it on TV, since whatever impact it had before has since been dampened. And aside from that, I wouldn't be surprised if his work wasn't so "organic", any more than anything else that turned up since the turn of the century.

Oh yes, and the Age of Apocalypse also turns up here, as noted:

Unstable (and incredibly powerful) mutant David Haller plans to go back and murder Magneto – but ends up killing his father, Professor X, instead. This leads to an alternate future where Apocalypse rules the world.

The '90s get a bad reputation for indulging the worst parts of the comic book art form, but this remains one of the best stories of the decade for its sheer boldness. The characters we had come to know and love were forced into fairly different roles in the 'AoA' timeline, and seeing how they changed (or stayed the same) is interesting and probably couldn't work as well with any other superhero team.

And with artists like Joe Madureira, Chris Bachalo, Steve Epting, Andy Kubert, and more onboard, 'Age of Apocalypse' still exists solidly in the golden age of X-Men art.

Well I'm sorry, but this whole storyline was decidedly regrettable, turning Haller into yet another sacrificial lamb instead of making him a character who could possibly be explored as a regular. Curious how they say Haller wanted to murder Magneto, but when it comes to Xavier, it's just "killing"? All that aside, are they implying that talented artwork is a problem, but not untalented writing? As I once noted years ago, if the writing isn't good, it undermines the impact of the artwork, no matter the quality, and if the writing is really bad, it embarrasses the artwork altogether.

I must also take issue with what's said about the sans adjective X-Men's premiere:

'Mutant Genesis'? Your first thought is probably, 'Wait, really?' But let me explain.

Though Chris Claremont's storied X-Men run ended somewhat unceremoniously with this short arc as Marvel shifted the power balance from writers and editors to artists, all it takes is one look at the characters as imagined by Jim Lee, and anyone on the planet can tell you who they are.

To this day, Lee and Claremont's X-Men #1 stands as the highest-selling single issue of all time at over eight million copies. The story inside the pages might strike some as a little thin, but Claremont's commentary on the end of his time with Marvel is undeniable, and Jim Lee turns in some absolutely incredible pages.

Say what you will about the '90s, but without this, we may never have gotten the X-Men: The Animated Series. 'Nuff said.

This predictably refuses to acknowledge sales were store-level only, with only so many copies gathering dust in boxes, and the whole notion the TV cartoon wouldn't be possible without this spinoff series is silly too.

Also listed is a GN titled Season One:

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby are visionary creators in their own right, but their initial take on the X-Men is something of a product of its time – it's telling that none of their stories appear on this list. But still, those formative years lay the foundation for everything Chris Claremont and others have built on in the decades since. Could there be a better way to contextualize them considering what we know now?

As it turns out, yes. Enter Dennis 'Hopeless' Hallum and Jamie McKelvie. With the humanity and clean linework of McKelvie on display, Hopeless takes readers through some of those early years of interactions between the Original Five X-Men and refocuses them for modern audiences. By injecting some truly Claremont-ian melodrama, Hopeless gives a fuller picture of the X-Men's Silver Age adventures and the people who would become the mutants we know and love.

Forget it, because if, as they insultingly imply, Lee/Kirby's stories are just "products of their times" then so is Hallum and McKelvie's work. It's decidedly telling indeed Lee/Kirby's work doesn't appear on the list, because all that does is make clear the columnist's that biased.

And as expected, they had to include Grant Morrison's run:

Just as their first film slashed its way into theaters and turned everything we thought we knew about superhero movies on its head, Grant Morrison’s team-up with Marvel's merry mutants a year later provided a similar reinvigoration for the X-Men in comic books.

Morrison changed everything. With artist Frank Quitely, they redesigned the team's costumes for the new millennium and canonized the idea of secondary mutations that further empower the mutants who undergo them, while paring down the core team to a more tenable and iconic few.

The result is the beginning of an era of new growth for the X-Men that still saw Morrison fall into the patterns that define the X-Men specifically. Over time, the cast grew and the soap-operatic adventures filtered through Morrison's brand of new psychedelia, allowing them to comment on the legacy of superhero comic books' greatest team with their work.

This was a head-shaker in the sense that it followed Joe Quesada's insulting playbook, with the very dull-looking leather jacket-like outfits mandated because of the movie from 2000. And Morrison turned the X-Men into something like isolationists, and worse, ramped up the violence, like the part where Genosha was wiped out, as though they couldn't just ignore it's presence if having so many mutants was such a big deal. Not mentioned is what was done to Jean Grey in the end, putting her into death limbo again for nearly a decade, as though she were literally a curse upon the earth, not the Phoenix story itself. Some "growth" alright. Instead of making Jean her own agency, Morrison and Marvel went the cheapskate route. What's so wonderful about that? Not to mention "2nd mutations" didn't exactly stick, nor did it help the X-Men series in the long run, seeing how few people care about the comics today.

One more item is House of X:

This might feel like a high placement for the most recent story on the list, but it's almost impossible to overstate how thoroughly Jonathan Hickman, Pepe Larraz, and R.B. Silva reinvigorated the X-Men franchise with House of X/Powers of X.

Revelations about Moira MacTaggart's many lives, the establishment of Krakoa as a mutant homeland, and the Resurrection Protocols made the world sit up and take notice of the X-Men again, in our world and in theirs. Hickman's knack for heady sci-fi gave the characters a direction for the first time in years, ending an era of stops and starts that failed to capitalize on the fact that at one point the X-Men ruled Marvel's publishing line.

With Marvel recently relaunching the entire X-Men line and bringing the Krakoa era to a close, now is a great time to look back at where it all started.

"Revelations" is some of the silliest comedy I've ever read, when "established" and "canonized" make more sense. All this storyline did was water down the significance of Moira MacTaggart, turning her from civilian to mutant, and proving how bankrupt mainstream superhero fare's long become. "Reinvigoration" indeed.

Articles like these are so filled to the brim with cliches, it's a wonder they even bother to continue writing about comics like these, and why they won't differentiate between eras, and ask where things really began to go downhill. What's the use anymore?

Labels: bad editors, dreadful artists, dreadful writers, golden calf of death, history, marvel comics, moonbat artists, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, violence, women of marvel, X-Men