X-Men In General

Strange Academy with a bunch of magic kids just started last week.

That's the true tragedy of Arena if you ask me - not just that these characters died, but that they died to cash in on a genre that ultimately proved to be the very epitome of a flash-in-the-pan.

The whole "supernatural academy for superheroes" thing was what the X-Men started as — they were literally students who were also superheroes. Heck, at one point, they even graduated and got new costumes that weren't the uniforms they had before, but individualized. But it didn't get many readers.

When Claremont took over, he basically changed it from "student superheroes at a school" into "a supernatural soap opera with lots of fighting." You'll notice that there aren't actually any students at Xavier's until Kitty Pryde shows up and the next set of students actually becomes it's own book, New Mutants, which manages the whole "supernatural school of supernatural students" a lot better than the '60s X-Men did.

In fact, I like New Mutants is Marvel's longest "school" book, as it were. But even that ended up changing when the '90s happened and they converted the New Mutants into X-Force.

So far, Strange Academy looks great. And the newest X-book, Children of the Atom, looks awesome, too. As for if the X-books have strayed too far from their kernel — the books are still about a group of people that are hated and feared, so no, I don't believe so. Hickman has just put a different twist on the formula, making the X-Men a lot grayer morally and introducing the mutant nation of Krakoa as the main setting, rather than Xavier's School.

Trying to revert the X-Men back to the way they were in the '70s or the '90s just won't work. We know this because that's what Marc Guggenheim tried to do with X-Men Gold. If discounting the fact that Guggenheim isn't the best author, reverting backwards is never a good option. Hickman is going forward with his plan and I hope Marvel lets it all play out — and Hickman has stated that he always plans to "put the toys back in the box" when he's done, so nobody should worry about Hickman's plan completely destroying the X-Men franchise or whatever.

One advantage manga have over Western superhero comics is that most of them are the work of one person or group of people. In superhero comics, there's always the fear that the next writer to move in will overturn everything you liked about the current run, as happened with Arena and with the X-Men an almost comically huge list of times. Fans of MHA probably don't have to worry that half the cast will be raped or dissected or whatever to hype up the next writer's super awesome villain character because there probably won't be a "next writer."

Edited by HamburgerTime on Mar 7th 2020 at 10:02:51 AM

Of course, the existence of a major villain figure in MHA really makes you worry for any hero that dies or gets captured.

x3 - There’s a saying about how you can’t go home again and I feel like it’s the truth when it comes to not just the X-Men, but a lot of comics. That no matter the desire of people to get back to the days of New Mutants for younger audiences and the ongoing soap opera like drama of the core X-Books where they sold hundreds of thousands if not millions of copies the core characters have done so much, that the Gordian Knot of continuity simply won’t allow a return to the good old days. There’s too many new characters, too many things to push, etc.

So people look at the X-books, see what they’ve turned into, and pick up something else. That’s the issue. The core has been lost, but you can’t just magically rewrite the clock and bring it back.

DC trying and failing is why I say it isn’t easy. I’m sure the Marvel comic division would love to return to the era of those sales and no manga competing with them, but it is what it is. The New 52 taught us that.

I doubt Marvel wouldn't just dump the mutants back in school if it meant a sales bump. OMD has shown they don't give a shit about how fans might feel Status Quo is God. Especially if the MCU has them in the academy.

The MCU should use Krakoa for the X-Men. A radical change of setting would make it clear for everybody that this wouldn't be the Fox franchise but something completely new.

Krakoa has, despite my in-universe misgivings, made some interesting stories.

But now I just picture Krakoa X-Men in the movies, everyone responding with a huge “meh”, and then Legendary gets that MHA movie into production they optioned and everyone goes “this is what X-Men should have been.”

Krakoa in the comics is good, because it's something radically new.

Krakoa in the movies wouldn't be good, because the Fox movies tended to rely on the same characters over and over again, so we never got good stories for dozens of characters we should have. Krakoa can come later, but when the MCU X-Men starts, I would love to just see the Original 5 X-Men at the school and then evolve it from there.

That sounds like a reasonable thing, but there's a problem in it: Wolverine. There's no way in hell that Disney will refrain from such a cash machine once they got the chance. Yes, it may be tiring to have yet another Wolverine film, but Disney is not doing it for the art. And note that if Phase Four ends in 2022 and the X-Men film comes immediately in 2023, it would have been 6 years without Wolverine in the big screen: Disney may reply that the character has rested enough.

Also, the O5 include Angel. Are you sure? Look at all the jokes that Hawkeye got for being "useless", because he did not have fancy super powers. Perhaps a bit undeserved, he got into many action sequences regardless, but it still happened. What do you think will hapen to a mutant whose only power is having angel wings for flying? The memes will not have mercy with him, specially if Wolverine was absent.

At least wait a few movies before Logan comes in.

"Did you mean start them off with a Wolverine solo?" - Marvel execs, probably

Who is gonna replace Huge freaking Jackmen then?

Danny Devito.

X-Men: 10 Actors Who Could Play The MCU's Wolverine

Marvel are coward if they don't pick him.

Cable #1 features the return of Old Man Cable. Or standard Cable? Adjetiveless Cable? The Cable we have known for years, the one that is not a teenager, he's back.

There's a very simple reason why an X-Men movie can't start with the O5: No melanin. Which is, you know, a really bad look at this point.

They'd almost certainly have to start with the school. But is the school brand new, or has it been around for a while? That's going to have an effect on the cast. Either way, I'd lean into the minority angle with a diverse line-up. Minority-majority, rather than The Adventures Of A Bunch Of White People And Their One Black Friend.

Also, for fuck's sake, don't kill the black dude. Just don't do it. No. What the fuck, Fox. Killing the black dude whose power is literally not dying. Fuck First Class.

Honestly if we get a movie starring the O5 several of them will most likely get race-lifts.

There's a reason why every adaptation either skips the O5 outright or composites them with the Giant Size X-Men.

Or they could just include actual characters of colour from the start. Besides, as noted earlier, Angel sucks. Drop his ass and replace him with someone cool. I would say Armour. She's great, and it'd be cool for a superhero movie to have a woman as the team tank.

They could also have Beast start off blue and furry instead of, well, not. Not the same as having an actual minority, but at least they aren't visibly white.

Edited by kkhohoho on Mar 12th 2020 at 10:08:10 AM