You nailed it, Desslock. I keep buying out of loyalty to that material, and I keep being disappointed.
I’ve heard good things about X-Men: First Class, but I haven’t read it yet. Has anyone else?
Also, I still hate everything to do with Birds of Prey because they “stole” Simone from her glorious run on Deadpool. I realize that’s not rational or what happened, and actually heard she had a great run there, but I couldn’t get over how awesome Deadpool/Agent-X was with her.
And I like Kirkman’s Ultimate X-Men stuff too, though I only read the trades, so there’s always the possibility it’s gone completely off the rails in the issues I haven’t gotten to yet.
Could I add
- Scott Lobdell’s run on Generation X
- Warren Ellis’ brief stint on Excalibur
- and much of Zero Tolerance arc before the crappy ending.
My first comic was Incredible Hulk #168, which I think I bought in 1973 as a 8yo. Picked it up from a Kroger’s grocery store on S. Limestone in Springfield, OH, after begging my mom for the money for it. My first Spidey was the issue right after Gwen died (Spidey fights Luke Cage if I recall). Poured every dime I could lay hands on into my collection from that point on until finally quitting in 1985. Fortunately, a good friend still collects and throws books at me all the time, mostly graphic novels these days, though.
On an aside, I found my old middle school comic buddy on Classmates.com the other night and shot him an email. Haven’t seen him since graduation in '83.
Definite yes on Lobdells’ Gen X run - that’s also my favourite Bachalo work.
I also think Lobdell’s x-men stuff at the end was decent, but more than anyone else his work was really compromised by editorial mandate. When they opened the door a bit to creative freedom, as in the start of the Zero Tolerance run (when he brought in characters he was interested in, like Sabra), he was an interesting writer - he was always pretty decent with characterization and dialogue, but his plotting/action was weak.
Not a fan of Ellis’ Excalibur’s run, although he did a good job treating characters like Kitty and Wisdom as adults.
I liked it better when Byrne was doing the idea. Marvel’s never given a decent explanation for canceling that book.
I didn’t make it past the first issue. I found it thin, out-of-continuity, and anachronistic. It’s essentially a Marvel Adventures title without the label. I guess I’m not seeing what Marvel sees with Parker.
Also, I’ve never found the first 5 X-Men that compelling. Of course, neither did the comics-buying public in the 60’s and 70’s.
It kinda went nowhere and wasn’t the best Claremont. He tried to build things along, but I wouldn’t rate it a very good work.
I also liked when Madrueira was drawing X-men. Then he made money and decided he couldn’t draw more than 22 pages a year.
Ah, that’s a shame. Still, I like what I’ve seen of the art. I may end up with it on a slow comic week one of these days.
I think Marvel’s putting them out in digests, so not much of a buy-in.
I agree, it was just one of the more distinct pieces of work of his - it was so weird how he “reclaimed” Magneto just a month after Morrison left him, and basically retconned him back to the Magneto 1980s. I always thought they were going to use the Scartlett Witch’s meltdown as an explanation for that, but instead they stuck with the lame “imposter Xorn” crap.
Xorn/Magneto was probably brought back forcefully by Bendis, Claremont story arrived later and Excalibur had to close because of bad sales, so probably all his plans went to hell.
House of M wasn’t a bad crossover, it ended leaving threads open and the spin-offs were good. “Son of M” in particular. Mini of five on Quicksilver, with a great artist.
I actually did read that (Son of M), it looked great (Crystal esp) and continued the “Quicksilver is a dick” tradition.
How do you think Bendis was involved? Because he wanted him for House of M? That was well over a year later - it was Chuck Austen who brought back Xorn, in a Fabian Nicieza-like attempt to ‘correct’ something he thought was unexplained, even though he had just misunderstood the story in the first place.
All the House of M-minis had some interesting angles - Millar was apparently at one point going to take over the X-men line, which would have been interesting, but I’m content with the more traditional angle they’re taking now - I just wish Claremont was still on a mainstream book and given creative freedom to do what he wants with the characters in it. “New Exiles” may be the first Claremont book I pass on, just because I’m getting tired of fringe stuff, and I even picked up Sovereign Seven.
I think the Xorn undo was editorial mandate, badly mangled by Austen. Everything since Morrison’s run ended has been a deliberate and spiteful undoing of every big idea Morrison brought to the book.
Humanity becoming extinct in favor of mutants? No more mutants.
Magneto is dead? Magneto’s fine.
Xorn was a disguise? Xorn was real.
Xavier’s as a functioning school? Nope, all but a few of the students are now depowered or dead or both.
Stepford cuckoos? They’re just Emma Frost clones.
Secondary mutations? Those don’t happen anymore.
Nope, Xorn/Magneto thing comes up again after House of M. And it comes up in a story of New Avengers where Magneto kinda explodes and the body disappears.
I think Claremont never actually explained why there was another Magneto. An idea slipped that it may be Wanda to have created once again the “old” Magneto and gave him back powers when she needed them (when she was defeated at the end of Avengers Disassembled).
Xorn? Magneto? … mumble mumble … Scarlet Witch … mumble mumble …
There, settled?
I kinda wish Millar had taken over the X-Men line, Uncanny X-Men is the only Brubaker I’m reading that’s not awesome. It’s not bad, but it’s just not doing anything for me.
Millar is another destroyer (see his Wolverine run). He can’t build and wouldn’t do any good on the mutants.
Bendis is the only one who builds, but he can’t write everything.
I’d give more power to Warren Ellis myself, but he’s too busy with weird titles and other projects.
Well, I think Warren likes doing this stuff for the money, but he saves the building for the stuff he does for himself.
If you haven’t been reading Doktor Sleepless, the book is really starting to shape up.
By the way, the FF are in a worse state than the mutants (but I read only up to pre-Civil-War).
The Mark Waid cycle wasn’t good. “4” wasn’t good. And Strazynski’s cycle started decent and ended abysmal.
I read the last story of his run where Doom tries to lift the hammer and it’s possibly his worse ever. Feels like written for six years olds. No plot at all, the explanation of how Doom fled from hell makes no sense, the way the hammer reappeared makes no sense. I hope his Thor doesn’t suck like this.