I just thought I might try generate a little discussion at the moment, by talking about one of the top five most recognizable comics imprintsgoing. And the X-Men are an imprint all unto themselves. At the moment we're seeing more discussion of the books than usual, seeing that barring the assumed headline book, both regular X-Books have seen creative changes, with both going from staid, somewhat reviled creators, Claremont and Milligan, neither of whom, really, should be writing a mainstream x-book in 2006, to two guys that are seen as the future of comics.


Astonishing X-Men, written by Joss Whedon and art by John Cassady, remains, wether Chris Claremont likes it or not, the defacto headline X-Book. It's a BEAUTIFUL book, thanks to Cassaday, but writing-wise it's suffered, the first arc was excellent, but the second arc was rushed/delayed because of Whedon's Serenity Commitments and was ether horribly rush written, or, as rumour has persisted, ghost written by any number of suspects, from one of Whedon's writer buddies, to Mark Waid, to Chris Claremont. The third act, while well written, has developed what Paul O'Brien has noted, is Whedon's apparant desire to write about....how much he loves the X-Men, and not the actual X-Men. Plus the Emma Frost double turn is blindingly obvious even to a retard like myself.



Uncanny X-Men is now being written by Ed "The New God" Brubaker, with art by Billy Tan. For the time being. One issue in we know.......it's the X-Men in Space.

"Adjective-Less" X-Men is being written by 'Poor Man's Grant Morrison, Mike Carey, with art...in the subjective tense, by Chris Bachalo.

I REALLY FUCKING HATE CHRIS BACHALO

One issue in.....we know that Carey really liked Morrison's run on the book. And by God, he's stuck with the C-Team, but he's going to have a go at recreating it.


The one thing Carey has going in his favour is Marvel clearly have faith in him. The month after next sees him kickstart his run on Ultimate Fantastic Four. He's also a Vertigo writer, which is always a good thing.

With Brubaker it's a little different. He's after coming off Deady Genesis. Deadly Genesis was lauded from upon High (Joe Q's desk, and seen as the X-Men sequel to House of M, and the attempt to seriously shake up the status quo by bumping off one character, changing everything about another, historical revelations out the door, and a new villain.


That would be great except the book sold like shit. Because of the X-Over exposure, which I'll talk about in a bit, most people thought the book was just another miniseries. Quesada went crazy pimping the book, and sales recovered, and Brubaker's being left to do his thing. Except it got a bit boring near the end, and now people are worried that Brubaker can't handle a big team book.


Anyway...

There's also Ultimate X-Men. It's being written by Robert Kirkman and it has a problematic rotating arc. of artists. That's all I could tell ya, I read the book in the HC format.

There's also..... Currently being published by Marvel, under the X-Men banner

Cable and Deadpool. Exiles, New Excalibur, New X-men, Wolverine, Wolverine Origins, X-Factor and X-Men Unlimited (is this still going?)

Not to mention a truly mind boggling gaggle of miniseries' and, in the past five years, they've cancelled a shit-ton of books aswell, ranging from and Alpha Flight revival to the truly questionable policy of giving every X-Man going a mini series for no apparant reason whatsoever.

I'd like to point out though, over exposure or not - thats an impressive accounting of talent writing those books - Fabian Nic, Claremont, Tony Bedard, Frank Tieri, Daniel Way (MARVEL LIKES HIM DAMMIT!) and Peter David.


Paul O'Brien, who runs the X-Axis website I linked to, has correctly pointed out that this has led to the X-Men being incredibly over exposed, to the point where Marvel will stick Hot New Creator 1 on a ......Sunfire miniseries, to give him experience, and hope to got it sells more than 10k. Chances are they won't. This has led to stuff like Deadly Genesis suffering, really great stuff like the recent Son Of M being virtually ignored, and a flagship book that ships bi-monthly because the writer is scripting Wonder Woman.



Does Marvel need to scale back the X-Men stuff they're publishing, or should they strike while the iron is hot and the movie is making money and just throw stuff out. You never know, withing five years they might throw a miniseries at me to write.




And for the record, in my pile of stuff I'd pitch to Marvel, I think I've only really got an Ultimate X-Men story in me. I wouldn't mind re-imagining the Guthries

You should give Excalibur a try. Issues 8 and 9 were pretty good and it's got one of my personal favorites with Captain Britain. I also have the last 4 issues of New X-Men but haven't read them yet. Hopefully that's a good book or HULK SMASH!!!

I'm still a little behind on my main X-Titles. I might just start reading with the new creative teams and polish off the 13 issues I'm behind later. Though I think anyone is better than Milligan as far as X-Men goes. He was just awful on that book. It makes me yearn for the awfulness that was the last 2 arcs of Morrison's run.

I honestly can't stand the X-Men anymore because of the fact that they're so over exposed. I can't keep up with which team is in what book, and who's secondary mutation does what. I pretty much gave up. I read Wolverine, but it's fairly stand alone. Though I wish it was more of what it was when Rucka was writing, and less of Mark Millar's fanboy horseshit

Wow..this thread confuses the shit out of me.

DAVE is asking whether or not we think there are too many X Books

What's so bad about Chris Bachalo? Other than some obnoxious issues of Generation X, his art has been pretty great, IMHO.

For the past few months, I've been on board with:

Wolverine Origins
Astonishing X-Men
Uncanny X-Men
X-Men

I haven't had any real complaints about any of them, other than that now I'm dropping a lot of money into comic books again for the first time in years.

Chris Bachalo? Read his arc of Ultimate X-Men. If you can understand the arc. There's a bit in it, where Proteus infects Psylocke. Thr artwork is uncomprehensible it's ridiculous

Definitely too many. People mention the early 80's years as being the "definitive X-men". Basically, from about #110-180 of the original series. You could score the team's introudction of Rachel Summers/Phoenix as the end of that era.

I wouldn't say it was the "Claremont/Byrne" years, because the title was still hitting its stride after Byrne left. John Romita, Jr, the returning Dave Cockrum and others handled the art well.

Wolverine's spin-off solo title was inevitable. It wasn't clearly tied to "Uncanny X-men", so Wolvie's book didn't dilute things. "New Mutants" was probably what began to dilute X-men. The New Mutants were essentially the Triple A X-men, but soon began to appear liberally in "Uncanny X-men". This weakened things, as it wasn't fun to read about Magma and Rachel fighting the Hellfire Club in the main title. Soon, Cyclops, Nightcrawler and Kitty all went to different teams. The franchise was officially begun in "Mutant Massacre"-- the X-men's first big starring role in a company wide crossover (although it was maybe 6 titles).

At least X-men, X-factor and Excalibur all worked separately. X-men were in their mansion and Australia. X-Factor worked as bounty hunters, then later had "SHIP" in Manhattan as public heroes. Excalibur was over in England. Each team had a completely unique dynamic and function.

The thing that confuses me about today's teams is....what's the difference? Three main X-men books, but don't they all feature a team of X-men from the same mansion? I read Astonishing...X-men in mansion. Uncanny...yup,. X-men in mansion. New X-men...yup, X-men in mansion. So I can't see the clear definitions in each book.

At the moment? Astonishing is the main crew (Cyclops, Frost, Wolverine, Beast, Kitty and Colossus) in the house.

Uncanny is Rachel, Xavier, Nightcrawler, Warpath, Havok and Polaris. In Space.

X-Men is Rogue, Cable, Sabretooth, Mystique, CannonBall, Iceman as a team doing the dirty work wherever it needs to be done

Yeah the relaunch fixed the issue of wondering what was going on when. The new policy is that Wolverine is only going to appear in New Avengers, Astonishing and his own title on a regular basis. So you won't have him working in all of the X Titles. I think the titles are actually headed for an upswing as Whedon/Brubaker/Casey could potentially take the series to an all time high not seen since the early days of Claremont.

Yeah, but it sounds like all 3 teams are still based in the house. So one group's in space... when they come back they'll be shacked up in the mansion, with the Danger Room, Cerebro and all that stuff.

There's also nothing that differentiates the team names. In stories, ALL answer to "X-men". I mean, if they're fighting a villain, the villain wont say: "curse you, ASTONISHING X-men" or "curse you, UNCANNY X-men".