X-Men - comics

  

   The X - Men has always fascinated me. How could it not? A story about natural rebels and outcasts, selling millions of copies. And still retaining it’s original premise.
   I still remember vividly the first time I read the Phoenix saga. A multi part story, almost like a movie. The X - Men was interesting before that, too, but not very much so. The team was interesting. Intolerance, prejudice, labeling, racial hatred and all that. But now the story really started focusing on prejudice towards and oppression of people different from the average norm and more than hinting about the consequences. Even the X - Men, in their very early days, were hardly decisively removed from the carbon copy characters of those days. But the Phoenix saga changed all that. It turned Jean from part madonna, part housewife, part sister and all saint, to a living, breathing human being. It made them all human. Slowly, slowly they changed from card board to flesh.
   The death of Thunderbird didn’t accomplish that. He wasn’t a central character, but just the neighbor’s son hardly ever visiting. The death of Polaris, Sunfire or Havok would not have accomplished anything. The transformation of Jean to Phoenix, did.
   That’s also, why I really objected to her death, seeing it as wasteful. The really interesting part had already taken place, the introduction of Passion, of Fire, of Life. We already had a Greek theater of the fates. They didn’t have to confound it, to press the point. It was one of the first times in my life I was confronted with the «work» of an editor (Jim Shooter made Claremont and Byrne rewrite the entire #137), and I was pissed. For more than two years after that, even with the first Days of Future Past storyline (I always saw it as programmatic), the stories bored me. (even if it did stress Magneto’s point about the repetition of Holocaust, which was great), It wasn’t until Storm killed Calisto and the introduction of Rogue, that I became somewhat hooked again. Forge and also the best stories ever featuring Magneto, also contributed to my passion for the series being reawakened. But...
   I didn’t really became involved again until... you guessed it... X - Factor #1. The sorry retcon stuff in Avengers and Fantastic Four, though naturally exciting at the time, was just a warming up. I shrugged at the stupid return explanation, and counted on them to rectify it. It took ten years, with the monumental Onslaught storyline, but after that Jean has gradually become Phoenix once more.
   All because of a stupid editor, who thought he was morally superior to everybody else. This wouldn’t be so bad, of course, if it was just a comic book we were talking about, but this is happening in «real» life all the time. Even in that, the X - Men emulates «reality»...
   For 70 issues I read X - Factor first every month, than X - Men. In the final X - Factor story, #65 to #68, there were hints of Jean returning to full glory, but as stated, the remaining stretch is quite a long one. She is the true adversary of Apocalypse. He’s sort of a skewed mirror of her.
   The new Claremont stories, with a few moments of exception, virtually failed in any way to excite me. I'm not glad he's gone, I'm not sad, I'm indifferent, and that means, of course that I'm glad. The X - Men should ever be more than the average. It took Scott Lobdell only a few issues to return the team to greatness. The death of Colussus and Magneto eradicating the stupid Neo. Now, we're once more looking forward to the next issue, because anything may happen. To bad Lobdell will not be the regular writer. I saw him as a typical "staff-writer" 15 years ago, but he has really grown.
   The strange thing, which was perhaps not so strange, was that everything new Claremont introduced was completely uninteresting. Just the stuff (from his glory days) with Kelly and Moira and Rogue and Mystique showed (a faint echo of) old glory. And he wasn't writing all of that anyway.

  

  

  

  

  Phoenix, Jean Grey, and X-Men are all copyrighted by Marvel Comics. All characters (and the distinctive likeness thereof) are trademark of Marvel Characters, Inc. This site is made without Marvel's permission, but it's for fun only, and I do not benefit in any commercial/material way, by having this site.