X-Men In General

Beast/Wonder Man becoming canon would be the one and only thing that makes all this hell worth it.

Currently reading Rise of the Powers of X #3

So it was Enigma all along who brought Orchis' Omega Sentinel from the future where Mutantkind won and deleted Karima's mind. So in essence, Enigma created Orchis.

Omega Sentinel did mention she was sent back by a "trickster dominion" who was considered a traitor by the others...

Enigma flatly confessed that the trickster dominion was him.

So why exactly did Charles shoot Rachel?

It didn't seem to be about stopping his plan with Sinister. I'm not sure if it's part of the new plan Rachel gave him (resurrecting the Phoenix) or he's just doing what he does best: acting on his own and assuming he knows best.

I'm hoping he's not doing that last part.

So recently someone on the X-Men reddit finished a poll figuring out tbe worst actions committed by several X-Men

Its hilarious how this goes from having an affair or shagging someone's else partner to straight up genocide.

Says a lot about Jubilee that the worst thing she did was adopt a baby. Like, she is so pure and good that people had to basically twist adoption into a bad thing. Jubilee is the best girl and this poll proves it.

Also, we get more evidence of how goddamn boring Angel is. Warren's great as Archangel, but as regular Angel, man, he really is the most useless X-Man ever.

JUBILEE STANS UNITE

And yeah, I've mentioned before that of the OG Lee-era X-Men characters, Angel is among the few who never really adapted to what the series became and as a result has become pretty useless. Nobody has any idea what to do with him outside of rehashing the Archangel arc over and over again. I think it's telling that the only major storyline for him that's been any good in the 2000s onwards is Rick Remender's X-Force run... which also ends up rehashing the Archangel arc.

Same as how Jean has been stuck either being a toy for Wolverine and Cyclops to fight over or Phoenix shenanigans. And how Ice Man is basically a nonentity half the time with a nebulous personality that hardly anybody seems to have any idea what to do with, and even now is only really notable for being gay.

IIRC even in the Lee/Kirby run, Warren does precisely two things of significance:

• Yank off Magneto’s psychic-proof helmet so Charles can drop him.
• Yank off Juggernaut’s psychic-proof helmet so Charles can drop him.

Very much moments where you could tell they were going out of their way to give the weakest member something to do.

"I may not be the strongest or fastest or smartest or coolest or most useful or likeable or unique... but if you need someone to rip psychic-proof helmets off people, I'm your man."

I think at least Warren now has the razor wings in his normal state ever since X-Force.

If they ever wanted to give him an upgrade give him the same powers as Hawks from My Hero Academia where he control his feathers that each one can carry person and he can use them bludgeoning clubs.

I could also make him similar to Swift from The Authority so he also has talons and increased physical strength turning him into a rocket that can shatter rocks with his dive-bombs.

Unironically, all they have to do to make Warren useful is put him on a team without any flyers.

Thats what he was on the Original X-Men team.

By the time Jean learned to use Telekineses to levitate herself, he was well into his Archangel phase as well.

Giving him a Hawks style upgrade might work. I'm surprised nobody thought of it.

Also, I think Angel does have some level of Super-Strength, to allow him to both carry his own weight while flying and still be strong enough to carry others.

The Swift thing is funny cause she is on a team with several reality warpers, and other powerful superhumans and she is no less a valuable member of the team. The comic allows her to reach the logical conclusion of her abilities.

She flies well then she flies fast at supersonic speeds as fast as the other flier Apollo. And her body is durable enough to support the strain so she can essentially crash and splat a humans body like a water balloon with no injury to himself.

Just play up Angel being a human-sized bird of prey.

Angel as less "guy with wings" and more "humanoid bird of prey" (kinda like Beak's grandson who's a humanoid eagle in Here Comes Tomorrow) would go a long way to making him more interesting to look at if nothing else.

Warren in general is a pretty good example of how the "hated and feared" aspect wasn't really felt in the Lee years. His "freakish" appearance is being a handsome white upper-class man with beautiful wings that make him look like pop cultural depictions of a holy messenger of God; hardly the sort of person who would be on the outskirts of society. You can definitely see why Chris Claremont and Stan himself felt the "all-new, all-different" soft reboot that made the team actually diverse and not just a bunch of rich white American yuppies was necessary.

Edited by immortaleditor on Mar 28th 2024 at 12:42:01 PM

Playing devil's advocate, but if I saw what appeared to be an angel in the really real world I'd probably freak out regardless of their ethnicity.

Edited by kkhohoho on Mar 28th 2024 at 3:01:46 AM

The OG 5 is a good case of early comics being very simple.

Cyclops just shots eye rays, Beast was acrobatic, Iceman can shoot ice, Angel can fly, and Jean was telepathic. Of those arguably Scott had the most dehabilitating power cause he couldn't control it.

It's no surprise the series only improve once it introduced a greater variety of powers, and the OG 5 started changing like Beast getting his blue furry form catapulting him to one of the most popular on the team.

The funny thing is Fuzzy!Beast wasn't on the team until the late 80's.

Early 90's if you want to get technical.

I think it's also notable that it was pretty easy for the O5 X-Men to blend into polite society.

Iceman could even turn his mutation on and off.

Warren probably had it the hardest, because having to stuff your wings into clothes sounds unbearable.

I mean even for the All Different team it was pretty easy. Nightcrawler was the only one who couldn't blend in.

If there are any criticisms you can lob at the X-Men it's that most of them don't have obvious mutations.

Edited by kkhohoho on Mar 28th 2024 at 3:53:28 AM

Yeah, exactly. As me and others have noted, most of the O5 X-Men could easily blend into the crowd and were arguably almost nuclear family-esque in general appearance. They weren't the sort of people that were victimized or oppressed in American society at the time, they were the sort of people you saw on Hays Code-drenched movies or Leave It To Beaver-style television.

The "blending into a crowd" aspect mentions also highlights a weird bit of Early-Installment Weirdness with the very early Lee comics where there seems to be some kind of masquerade going on; the X-Men operate in more or less secrecy and Professor X goes out of his way to cover up mutant involvement, to the point of casually mind-wiping witnesses.

You're forgetting that many of them couldn't blend in with "polite society" (i.e., upper-class society) in other ways than just obvious mutation. Storm was black (remember, this was only a decade or so after the Civil Rights Movement), Colossus was Russian (it was the Cold War), Sunfire was Japanese (again Civil Rights Movement plus only a few decades after WWII), hell, even Wolverine and Banshee arguably, given they were - especially at the time - drawn as being far from conventionally attractive, and Banshee is Irish and thus had his fair share of persecution in his bloodline.

Edited by immortaleditor on Mar 28th 2024 at 2:03:42 AM

As noted Cyclops probably had it the worst because his powers were both uncontrollable and destructive.

Unlike the others he actually requires wearing protective googles/glasses just to function in everyday life which is good enough to showcase why his powers aren't great.

"Angel is among the few who never really adapted to what the series became and as a result has become pretty useless." I mean, the problem with Angel is less a lack of decent stories (although he doesn't have many outside of his Archangel days), it's that he's just useless. You know how superhero teams always had the check member getting captured by villains? Angel was the chick of the X-Men. He was kinda the embodiment of "you had one job." His whole thing was being fast and manoeuvrable enough to avoid getting grabbed by enemies. So, of course, he was routinely grabbed by enemies.

He once got captured by crows. Not mutant crows, not robot crows, just regular crows that some jackass had trained to help him with crimes. Angel managed to get himself defeated by a handful of birds.

Worst. X-Man. Ever.

"Same as how Jean has been stuck either being a toy for Wolverine and Cyclops to fight over or Phoenix shenanigans." I mean, I would disagree with this. Again, outside the cartoon and the movies, even when she didn't have stories of her own, Jean was a pretty integral member of any team she found herself on, and she spent most of the '90s with minimal Phoenix shit. Morrison went back to the Phoenix well, but they did it really well, I thought. While she was dead, other writers kept going to the Phoenix well and Jean was constantly referenced among that shit. For the first couple years after she came back to life, she had relatively little Phoenix stuff. I'm not sure if it's been a big thing in the Krakoa era, but it sure wasn't in the Jean-led run of X-Men Red.

"By the time Jean learned to use Telekineses to levitate herself, he was well into his Archangel phase as well." Not really? She learned to use telekinesis to levitate herself short distances early on. Prior to becoming Phoenix, she could typically only levitate herself at a low speed and for fairly short distances, but it was a definite part of her power set. When she came back in X-Factor, she was better at it. Still nowhere near Angel's flight, but still.

"Jean was telepathic" Telekinetic. The telepathy came a couple years into the book.

Phoenix definitely wasn't a thing in tbe Krakoa era either.

I think it was partly caused Jason Aaron logged the Phoenix for his Avengers Saga so the X-Men couldn't use the fire chicken.

And don't forget that Wolverine is *shudder* CANADIAN.