Examples of characterization changing dramatically Depending on the Writer in X-Men.
By Character:
- In one old X-Men comic, Colossus is shown to be especially weak to Storm's lightning because he's made of metal, the tiniest spark sending him into bouts of pain. Only a few issues later, he takes one of Storm's normal lightning bolts with a smile on his face. Maybe he just became a masochist.
- Cyclops tends to go from badass leader, to whiny emo-kid, to punchable asshat who treats his women like shit due to his constant infidelity.
- How powerful his Eye Beams are also varies wildly from book to book, as indicated by their varying effects on Wolverine, who has probably absorbed more full-power optic blasts than anyone alive. They range from as weak as a firm shove, to reducing him to a smoking wreck only saved by his Healing Factor.
- Many comic-book villains alternate between Noble Demon and baby-eating psycho depending on who's writing them (Dr. Doom and Magneto being the most obvious). It's very strange to see Magneto go between being Chris Claremont's Well-Intentioned Extremist Magneto and Grant Morrison's parody Silver Age drug addict Magneto. Which is why Grant Morrison's Mags officially wasn't him. And afterward Magneto (written by Chris Claremont) commented "Why would anyone think I was capable of that?"
- Mystique tends to be a pretty big victim of this especially whenever she is with her children Rogue and Nightcrawler. Is she an Anti-Villain who has a genuine, if twisted, love for her children and is a dark Mama Bear? Or is she a complete sociopath who cares nothing for them and only uses them when necessary before ultimately discarding them sometimes lethally?
- Nightcrawler, another member of the X-Men, falls prey to this trope as well. In his initial appearances, he was a woobie and a case of I Just Want to Be Normal. The next writer turned him into Fun Personified. Later writers have gone with one portrayal, the other, or a combination of the two. It also happens with his religion, initially he didn't talk about it much and said it was just a matter between him and God, but some writers make him more devotedly religious, even to the point where he trained to become a priest.
- One of the worse examples in the X-Men has to be Polaris and Havok. Either they are insane with rage at the treatment of mutantkind, running screaming into the hills to try and live normal lives (their original default personalities BTW), or are being written as the brainwashed pawns of the villain of the week. A controversial moment in Uncanny Avengers had Havok declaring to the public that he despises the "m-word" and wished to be treated just like everyone else. A number of people online pointed out that a statement such as this was extremely out of character for Havok, who in the past had been shown to be very proud of his mutant heritage.
- The portrayal of Sabretooth is all over the place. He can go from animalistic berserker to calm criminal mastermind within the same storyline, and not in a Jekyll-and-Hyde way. Similarly, his evil tends to vary. Sometimes he's a feared & depraved serial killer that has performed almost every evil act known to man. Other times, he's an edgy bad boy. And in some extreme cases, he's a juvenile frat-boy type that people find annoying.
- James Proudstar, AKA Warpath, has an interesting case of this regarding his powers. Sometimes, he's a nigh-invulnerable Colossus-type fighter who can stand up to the Juggernaut for several minutes. Sometimes he's weaker, but still growing stronger. He tends to always have superhuman senses, but sometimes he's on the level of a feral mutant like Wolverine, and sometimes he's at Superman levels where he tracks down snipers by the sound of their heartbeats. He also tends to have superhuman speed, but he's varied between Spider-Man levels of speed and reflexes and flat-out being faster than the speed of sound. Sometimes he can fly, sometimes he can't. And recently he gained a Wolverine-level healing factor, though he might not have that anymore. Poor Warpath has New Powers as the Plot Demands but it is never beneficial for him.
- Wolverine is even worse, as he can be a murder-happy asshole, honorable warrior, fatherly mentor, and the gruff veteran super-hero whose violent nature is a source of conflict within him. His personality being all over the place is par for the course, but combine that with his tendency to be everywhere at once in various different costumes. And his powers aren't even consistent. He goes from taking a gunshot to the stomach and taking a few days to heal to standing right next to Nitro when he goes off and regenerating from only his skeleton in seconds.
- Both Wolverine and Colossus have an actual physical problem in this area: writers can't seem to decide once and for all whether adamantium and organic steel are magnetic... which is kind of important given who the X-Men's most frequent recurring big bad is. Hell, a major plot point in Wolverine's character arc was having his adamantium ripped out of him by Magneto, leaving him with with a regular skeleton for years (real time), which means any writer who makes it non-magnetic is asking the readers to forget that whole thing happened.
- A minor one for Wolverine is whether or not he can swim. Often he's shown swimming with ease (especially in earlier comics), while other times, it's pointed out that his skeleton would make him completely unable to swim since his skeleton would make him far too dense to do much in the water other than sink. The reason this is important is because drowning is one of the few surefire ways to kill him, so it's a question of exactly how susceptible to drowning is he?
Other:
- A storyline from late in Chris Claremont's classic run has the team killed and resurrected, which renders the lineup at the time, which included Rogue, Storm, and Wolverinenote invisible to cameras, a fact referenced and exploited frequently throughout the rest of his run. This is completely forgotten by the next writer, and since then, whenever one of the eight shows up, they turn up on camera unless it's written by Chris himself, who makes references to this trait well into the noughties.
- Another is the use of the word "human" by sympathetic characters — certain villains draw a bright line, but whether aliens feel the need to specify "humans and mutants" or whether the X-Men themselves refer to "humans" or "non-mutant humans" depends far more on the writer than the characters. Justified since the terms aren't being used scientifically; mutants are a subspecies of human rather than a separate species. All mutants are humans, but not all humans are mutants.note
- Madripoor. Whoever is in charge of the island nation can vary as quickly as whoever is writing the story. One moment, Tiger Tyger is in control and pushing through reforms to transform it into a respectable nation. The very next it's right back into a haven for human and drug trafficking and other organized crime under the control of the likes of Viper or Sabretooth, with no explanation of how the regime changed. It's even happened across issues of two different series released in the same month. While it could be handwaved since Madripoor is often fractious, and divided into territories controlled by different individuals with differing goals, (so Tyger's part of the city is a progressive mecca of legitimate business, while Daken's territory makes Mos Eisley seem quaint) the books rarely actually utilize this, (at least until the gang warring becomes a plot point itself) and applies the current situation across the whole island.
