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Post by hondobrode on Dec 6, 2014 0:34:24 GMT -5
I think the X-men became a meh book when Romita Jr. took over the artwork. When he left the first time for me. Agree with both of these statements. No disrespect to JR Jr, as I really like some of his stuff, like Thor, but I didn't like his X-Men, and for the first time I dropped the title.  With the exception of the Barry Windsor-Smith issues, it never felt the same to me, even with Silvestri, Lee and others on the art. I just couldn't bring myself to buy it again until Byrne and the Image boys around 281 I think and I hated it. Despite Claremont coming back, Brubaker, Carey, Alan Davis, etc., outside of Morrison's run, it's been dead to me. I've thought for the last 20 years now there are 2 Marvel groups of titles that had just gone too far and felt too artificial for me to come back and they were the X-titles and the Spidey titles. I still feel that way about the mutant titles but despite the fact that I too hate OMD, and I liked Petey and MJ married, but JMS did some good and Slott has been surprisingly good with Superior. If DC needed Crisis in the 80's, I think it's the X-titles that need something of that magnitude to clean it up and make it attractive again, but I don't see that happening outside of something universal like what Marvel's got cooking for this spring parallel to DC's big event. |
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Post by Paste Pot Paul on Dec 6, 2014 2:54:13 GMT -5
With the exception of the Barry Windsor-Smith issues, it never felt the same to me, even with Silvestri, Lee and others on the art. I just couldn't bring myself to buy it again until Byrne and the Image boys around 281 I think and I hated it. Despite Claremont coming back, Brubaker, Carey, Alan Davis, etc., outside of Morrison's run, it's been dead to me. I've thought for the last 20 years now there are 2 Marvel groups of titles that had just gone too far and felt too artificial for me to come back and they were the X-titles and the Spidey titles. I still feel that way about the mutant titles but despite the fact that I too hate OMD, and I liked Petey and MJ married, but JMS did some good and Slott has been surprisingly good with Superior. If DC needed Crisis in the 80's, I think it's the X-titles that need something of that magnitude to clean it up and make it attractive again, but I don't see that happening outside of something universal like what Marvel's got cooking for this spring parallel to DC's big event. I know the good folks here tend to dislike the Crisis type of story due to the big changes in THEIR characters, but I'e thought for some time that Marvel desperately needs to do it. The sheer weight of 50 years of history is making them stale. Time for a reboot folks. |
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Post by gmiller on Dec 6, 2014 4:48:41 GMT -5
Anyone remember all those 90's X-Men they tried to push? Cece Reyes, Maggot, and Marrow anyone? LOL... as we just stated, Marrow is currently featured in X-Force. I think Cecelia Reyes was around recently, too. I kinda liked her as Beast's girlfriend, back when Beast wasn't a mess. Maggot, I got nothin'... I think they killed him off during the Utopia era. Maggot died in the Weapon X series in the 2000's...He took the place of a young mutant at the concentration camp, and ended up being gassed...So, he died a hero.... Also, I actually really loved Maggot... |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Dec 7, 2014 20:59:25 GMT -5
I liked Maggot too. A unique powerset a good visual, and a gross visual... WHich I also think is good. He definitely foreshadowed the Grant Morrison mutants-that-are-not superheroic Golden Gods.
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Post by fanboystranger on Dec 7, 2014 21:11:42 GMT -5
I liked Maggot too. A unique powerset a good visual, and a gross visual... WHich I also think is good. He definitely foreshadowed the Grant Morrison mutants-that-are-not superheroic Golden Gods. I think if there had been a reasonable artistic accompaniment during Kelly's (and Seagle's) X-Men run, we may have understood how horrific Maggot's mutation actually was, but it was any other upcoming superhero artist on the run. It just looked liked any other superpower. Marvel had Leo Manco locked down at this point, but they stuck him on marginal books. Probably too frightening for a runaway franchise, but neither Kelly nor Seagle lasted that long anyway. |
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Post by badwolf on Dec 8, 2014 10:46:10 GMT -5
Wasn't "No more mutants" kind of a reboot?
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Post by impulse on Dec 8, 2014 12:04:19 GMT -5
Wasn't "No more mutants" kind of a reboot? Nope. It was more like the anti-reboot. Reboots are a way to start over and drop off years of baggage. This did the opposite. It stripped away the super powers and fun and left nothing but the baggage. It also marked the ruination of the franchise IMO. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 8, 2014 12:41:07 GMT -5
It did lead to a couple of years of navel-gazing and teeth-gnashing, but at the same time it did get rid of the ridiculous situation where 93%* of the world's population were super-powered mutants.
(* approximately)
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Post by impulse on Dec 8, 2014 15:39:06 GMT -5
I think Marvel could have dialed back the extinction gene aspect of Morrison's run where the whole human race was going to be replaced by mutants in a few generations without throwing out everything else along with it. They didn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. They blew up the house and hunted down the entire family.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 8, 2014 16:01:18 GMT -5
They had a great oppertunity to reset the X-books just a few months ago with Remender's planet X story line.. they just chose to undo it/make it an alternate reality or whatever happened exactly (I'm not entirely sure even having read it)
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Post by paulie on Dec 9, 2014 13:44:06 GMT -5
Not having read the bulk of the thread for me personally it was when Marc Silvestri became the regular penciller. Claremont had already made the book dour, humorless and no fun and Silvestri just kind of mirrored that vibe for me. So... around 220 or 221.
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Post by rberman on May 20, 2018 13:31:50 GMT -5
 Storywise, as soon as this ensemble book multiplied and began farming out its characters to other books, the beginning of the end was nigh. One author (Claremont) couldn't come up with that many different creative plots to keep all the series well-stocked with interesting stories all the time. (One could argue he couldn't even keep one series well stocked, given that his solution was to genre hop: Now we're doing Aliens, now we're doing Dracula, now we're doing Star Wars, now we're doing Conan...) The dilution of the characters and the writing talent ultimately weakened the overall effect of each series. If I had to point to particular plot points signalling the end, two would be (1) bringing back Jean, and (2) bringing Rachel to our time. Both an attempt to recapture something that should have been allowed to remain a cherished memory. Artwise, I remember well reading through the final Paul Smith issue (the extra-large Maggie/Phoenix story) and turning the page and... what happened? Kitty looks weird. Oh, some other guy had to pitch in on art for this issue? Nope. That was the end of Paul Smith, and I just never warmed to JRJR. And it wasn't just "I am getting too old for comics." I was delighted by Art Adams' work, sporadic as it was. |
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Post by mikelmidnight on May 21, 2018 12:30:56 GMT -5
I don't think there is a point of no return for any series. Any good writer can bring it back. I started reading the X-Men during Claremont & Byrne, and I think it started to go downhill after Paul Smith left. It was somewhat enjoyable for a while, but it got more and more miserable and ugly until I finally ditched it all around Fall of the Mutants, Inferno, Mutant Massacre... I can't even remember the sequence because they all blur together for me. X-Factor was a horrible idea as well. You know what, that's where it jumped: the resurrection of Jean Grey. I would say Paul Smith's absence did it for me too. I didn't care for Romita as a successor, and as you say, that's the time the darkness of the series became unbearable. For me the moment the X-Men jumped the shark was the moment it went from being the X-Men to being the X-Universe, and that was 1982 with the dual publication of the New Mutants graphic novel and the Wolverine mini-series, which is ironic because they are both good stories in of themselves, the problem is they diluted the concept and the focus of the X-Men. When X-Men was a single book (not the core of a franchise) there was a singular vision guiding it, a singular story being told, and an inherit limit to the size and scale of the storytelling that prevented it from becoming a bloated mess.It was the story of the X-Men, a small group of misfits fighting the good fight in a world that feared them. With those two publications it became the story of a group of misfits fighting the good fight in a world that feared them and the story of the next generation training to take their spots and the story of a noble savage-the berserker with the heart of gold, and from there it kept adding ands to the story as a splash effect form the shark jump. Once it jumped and made the big splash, the ripples kept going outwards and the focus, the purity of the concept and the quality became diluted, more so over time as the ripple effect got bigger and bigger. But the actual shark jump was when the book stopped being a book and tried to become something else-a line, a franchise, a cash cow, or whatever Marvel tried to make it. There was no going back. Part of what made it what it was, was the fact it was a book where anything and more importantly everything happened. After 1982, everything didn't happen there. It was no longer one story being told, one concept, etc., etc. It was something different. (Some may argue better, but that doesn't invalidate it being different). I had no problem with the New Mutants, and actually welcomed them, but never considered X-Factor remotely plausible. However, when the X-Men occupied a single title (with rare spinoffs, like the original Wolverine miniseries) I actually appreciated the fact that they occupied a small, isolated little corner of the MU and dealt with their own issues. When their titles proliferated to the point that they predominated the MU, my attention began to wander. Prof. X falling in love with Jean was a one issue development in the original series that pretty much got forgotten after. They struggled a lot with the Professor's characterization in those early issues, and giving him a crush on Jean was an attempt to humanize him and make him seem younger/more relatable to young readers by getting away from the stern old guy characterization. That inability to make the professor accessible is also, presumably, why he ended up appearing to die and vanish from the comic for a length of time shortly after. It was only in later years that writers chose to return to this idea of the professor having a crush on Jean, where it was definitely better left forgotten. I always liked the Professor's relationship with Lilandra. Far more appropriate, and also quite endearing. I think the crush that Charles had on Jean occupied one thought balloon. It was a poor decision but as you say, quickly forgotten about. In Claremont's defense, he fully intended Charles to go off and live happily ever after with Lilandra (which would have pleased me), but Shooter ixnayed it. |
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Post by cellardweller on May 21, 2018 19:20:39 GMT -5
Not sure when they jumped the shark truly.
I always enjoyed their crossover stories, but really started to lose interest around the Age of Apocalypse crossover. The whole Onslaught thing didn't grab me either.
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Post by wildfire2099 on May 21, 2018 21:56:53 GMT -5
If I had to point to particular plot points signalling the end, two would be (1) bringing back Jean, and (2) bringing Rachel to our time. Both an attempt to recapture something that should have been allowed to remain a cherished memory. There are few Big 2 American comics that you can't say they took something good and beat it into the ground instead of letting it be a cherished memory. I can't count the number of times I got excited for something getting a new series/new look and having it be horribly disappointing. |
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