Favorite parts of X-men lore
- Thread starter DragonSJG
- Start date
A British woman took over the body of an Asian woman and it took nearly 30 years before the Asian woman got her body back.
"Sworn to protect a world that fears and hates them"
Also, "The focused totality of my psychic power" being emblazoned in my young mind by the amount of times it is crammed into each issue for a while, lol!
But at the core I love the family and interpersonal aspects that many of them share.
Also, "The focused totality of my psychic power" being emblazoned in my young mind by the amount of times it is crammed into each issue for a while, lol!
But at the core I love the family and interpersonal aspects that many of them share.
I always liked the overarching use of mutant for powers you're born with. It provided a linking factor between the characters that then tied them easily to politics and prejudice as well as battles with super-villains, as they were an endlessly expanding group waiting to be discovered that could be born or have their powers manifest at any time as they grew up. Compared to super-teams where it was 'throw all our most popular heroes of disparate origin together into the super-friends!', it just felt instantly cohesive and ready for expansion as a concept. I was mostly reading them when I was an adolescent, so all the 'mutant powers manifesting = puberty' felt relevant to me as a kid, I guess like a lot of teen media does to the audience whenever it's released.
Also that they rarely went out patrolling and looking for trouble. It either landed on their doorstep as everyone outside their sanctuary either feared them or kept them at arms length (like much of the rest of the hero community), or they headed out to try and help mutants only to find things were more complex. The sheer size of the cast meant you could have whole episodes of people just kicking around the mansion/school, so the soap opera element was fun too.
Also that they rarely went out patrolling and looking for trouble. It either landed on their doorstep as everyone outside their sanctuary either feared them or kept them at arms length (like much of the rest of the hero community), or they headed out to try and help mutants only to find things were more complex. The sheer size of the cast meant you could have whole episodes of people just kicking around the mansion/school, so the soap opera element was fun too.
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OP
OP
Isn't Vulcan the third summers brother?Adam X the X-Treme, the real third Summers brother, now returning to comics in 2021 under the guidance of Fabian Nicieza.
I really liked the twist about Moira. It reminds me a lot of a novel called The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, which I'm still surprised hasn't been adapted into a movie or something, but the idea that you live in a perpetual loop and each subsequent life retains all knowledge of all your previous lives is fantastic. Especially when used in the context of a woman whose very perspective on mutants changes with each life and each experience. It was also a very cool way of showing us just how wildly different things could turn out if they had gone a different way.
I once thought about why X-Men villains work and it's that while they're mostly all evil or at least against the X-Men, they all have different goals to achieve and standards for how things should be so it's easy to mix them up and even have team ups between the X-Men and their villains to deal with another threat.
Like your typical Rogues Gallery is filled with guys who pretty much only get up in the morning because they hate superheroes. It's easy to line them up together, but you're mostly not gonna get Magneto and Mr. Sinister in the same room.
That there's been a secret member of the X-Men with the power to make you forget he ever existed, and all of those strange coincidences that allowed the X-Men to win or survive things when the odds were against them, was all because he's doing stuff and no one knows, because everyone forgets he exists.
At one point Nightcrawler was the unwitting pawn of a plan where he was going to become the Pope and the Catholic church would reveal his true appearance to the world while activating all their exploding communion wafers, thus making everyone believe the Devil was real and turn to Catholicism. This plan failed because Nightcrawler couldn't stop being horny.
Speaking of the Devil, he's Nightcrawler's dad, Azazel. See in the Marvel U it turns out there are no actual demons and angels, just Mutants who looked demonic or had angel wings and that inspired the myths. Azazel is trapped in Hell and wants to escape, so every once in a while he leaves Hell and goes to Earth to impregnate women to give birth to a son with the power to get him out of Hell. After his defeat Azazel disappeared from comics until Amazing X-Men, where he became a pirate in Hell.
Speaking of the Devil, he's Nightcrawler's dad, Azazel. See in the Marvel U it turns out there are no actual demons and angels, just Mutants who looked demonic or had angel wings and that inspired the myths. Azazel is trapped in Hell and wants to escape, so every once in a while he leaves Hell and goes to Earth to impregnate women to give birth to a son with the power to get him out of Hell. After his defeat Azazel disappeared from comics until Amazing X-Men, where he became a pirate in Hell.
That Project Rebirth, the program that created Captain America was actually secretly part of Weapon Plus, the organization that captured and bonded Adamantium to Wolverine; the X in Weapon X actually being 10, with Deadpool being Weapon XI and characters like Fantomex being Weapon XIII.
But wait, there's more!
Weapon Plus was actually started by a man named John Sublime, and John Sublime was possessed by a sentient bacteria colony that came to earth millions of years ago to enter a symbiotic relationship with life on Earth that eventually came to hate mutants because they were the only species that were immune to it.
It's stupid, but it's comic book stupid, which makes it great!
And there's more!
Humanity's initial spurts of irrational hatred for mutants is largely Sublime's fault through subconscious influence to get humans to come up with ways of driving mutants to extinction!
But wait, there's more, said sentient bacteria has a sister bacteria named Arkea that can possess technology.
but wrapping back to the Project Rebirth/Weapon Plus thing, there's very few corners of Marvel not touched by them. The Infinity Formula that Nick Fury used was originally derived from them before Hickman's retcon of it being created by Leonardo Di Vici or some shit, we have characters like Sabretooth, Team X,and so on. Emma Frost has five daughters rapidly aged into late teenagedom thanks to their experiments, Mr. Sinister infiltrated them back in the 50's, and so on.
Weapon Plus runs deep in Marvel.
But wait, there's more!
Weapon Plus was actually started by a man named John Sublime, and John Sublime was possessed by a sentient bacteria colony that came to earth millions of years ago to enter a symbiotic relationship with life on Earth that eventually came to hate mutants because they were the only species that were immune to it.
It's stupid, but it's comic book stupid, which makes it great!
And there's more!
Humanity's initial spurts of irrational hatred for mutants is largely Sublime's fault through subconscious influence to get humans to come up with ways of driving mutants to extinction!
But wait, there's more, said sentient bacteria has a sister bacteria named Arkea that can possess technology.
but wrapping back to the Project Rebirth/Weapon Plus thing, there's very few corners of Marvel not touched by them. The Infinity Formula that Nick Fury used was originally derived from them before Hickman's retcon of it being created by Leonardo Di Vici or some shit, we have characters like Sabretooth, Team X,and so on. Emma Frost has five daughters rapidly aged into late teenagedom thanks to their experiments, Mr. Sinister infiltrated them back in the 50's, and so on.
Weapon Plus runs deep in Marvel.
Grant Morrison's New X-Men was bad and Sublime is in the runner up for worst part.
1st place obviously going to how they wrote Magneto.
I always respected the Xmen's attempts at trying to open the eyes of impressionable youth to priviledge and status. Biggotry and Acceptance are things kids need to understand and, while it flubbed the message a lot, it at last tried to tune kids into an idea of empathy in order to set them on the right path.
Honestly, the problem with that aspect of most xmen stories are that you always have to end them with, "and then a man with metal tenticles coming out of his back burst out of the f loor and stole the documents, said something cheesy about something else, and ran off. COME BACK NEXT ISSUE TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS!"
Xmen, more than other books, never let the point drop, because if you stop talking about how bad thing are and start talking about how to make them better, then your story ends. At least with Genosha and now with House of X, they're trying it again, but I can't see that ending in any other way than, "and then everyone died, and charles couldn't bring them back", because you have to keep the conflict going.
Honestly, the problem with that aspect of most xmen stories are that you always have to end them with, "and then a man with metal tenticles coming out of his back burst out of the f loor and stole the documents, said something cheesy about something else, and ran off. COME BACK NEXT ISSUE TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS!"
Xmen, more than other books, never let the point drop, because if you stop talking about how bad thing are and start talking about how to make them better, then your story ends. At least with Genosha and now with House of X, they're trying it again, but I can't see that ending in any other way than, "and then everyone died, and charles couldn't bring them back", because you have to keep the conflict going.
It's Krakoa to me. I know it still has time to play out and explore other territories, but the fact that all of mutantkind united (after being given access to Moira's memories/testimony from her various lifetimes) and is finally just deciding to live for themselves is really cool. The comic booky stakes of an impending onslaught of ominous forces is usual comic book fare, but the entire "HOXPOX" mini-saga really shifted X-Men into what I feel is an incredibly hopeful spirit that feels like it has the potential to finally kinda think bigger about mutantkind than just their constant conflicts with normies.
... but I also dropped off around the time my local lockdowns start happening last year so I maybe made it up to Hickman X-Men #7 or 8 and haven't kept track of anything since. Still, the premise and particularly HOXPOX felt like a huge breath of fresh air to me. Sure, there's some huge challenges facing the foundation of Krakoa but I still feel like it positions the X-Men in a much more interesting light that breaks them from a 20ish year rut of trying to feel novel and interesting in the same way they felt in their earlier history (about up until the start of the 90's).
... but I also dropped off around the time my local lockdowns start happening last year so I maybe made it up to Hickman X-Men #7 or 8 and haven't kept track of anything since. Still, the premise and particularly HOXPOX felt like a huge breath of fresh air to me. Sure, there's some huge challenges facing the foundation of Krakoa but I still feel like it positions the X-Men in a much more interesting light that breaks them from a 20ish year rut of trying to feel novel and interesting in the same way they felt in their earlier history (about up until the start of the 90's).
Kind of incorrect. Angels and demons exist in Marvel; it's just that some subsects of mutants expressed powers and appearances that looked angelic and demonic, and Azazel was banished to a hell dimension via human/mutant magic and then exploited his situation.
He's not the devil; he just has his own little hellscape. There's plenty of demons that rule Hell, but the primary "the devil" role belongs to Mephisto, who is explicitly not a mutant.
Speaking of the Devil, the actual Devil, he hates Wolverine.
Yes, that's the actual Satan fighting Wolverine in Hell.
Sidebar, the actual actual devil is a disembodied gamma radiation cloud called The One Below All.
Agreed. I was hyped when I found out he was Omega-level (select group of the most powerful mutants).That Iceman (My personal fave) is a beast.
I liked his run, though I haven't read it in forever, so it could be nostalgia. The real core of my post is that Weapon Plus and everything that came from it is awesome, even in its current ORCHIS and Xeno incarnations in the Krakoa era.
Kind of incorrect. Angels and demons exist in Marvel; it's just that some subsects of mutants expressed powers and appearances that looked angelic and demonic, and Azazel was banished to a hell dimension via human/mutant magic and then exploited his situation.
He's not the devil; he just has his own little hellscape. There's plenty of demons that rule Hell, but the primary "the devil" role belongs to Mephisto, who is explicitly not a mutant.
Speaking of the Devil, the actual Devil, he hates Wolverine.
Yes, that's the actual Satan fighting Wolverine in Hell.
Sidebar, the actual actual devil is a disembodied gamma radiation cloud called The One Below All.
No see, master scribe Chuck Austen was very clear in the seminal X-Men classic The Draco that Azazel and his ilk were the real inspiration for the myths of demons. Then cowards at Marvel retconned it when they remembered they had, like, an entire corner of their universe dedicated to the supernatural and they let this one guy state in-canon that it doesn't actually exist.
As for the Devil himself, fun fact: There is no Devil in the Marvel universe since he's been splintered into multiple pieces. Characters like Mephisto and Satannish are explicitly only small parts of his power.
Also Hell has been conquered on two separate occasions by Strong Guy and Puck.
Yeah his name is Forget-me-not. His power is that he is instantly forgotten once you turn away from him.
Kind of incorrect. Angels and demons exist in Marvel; it's just that some subsects of mutants expressed powers and appearances that looked angelic and demonic, and Azazel was banished to a hell dimension via human/mutant magic and then exploited his situation.
He's not the devil; he just has his own little hellscape. There's plenty of demons that rule Hell, but the primary "the devil" role belongs to Mephisto, who is explicitly not a mutant.
Speaking of the Devil, the actual Devil, he hates Wolverine.
Yes, that's the actual Satan fighting Wolverine in Hell.
Sidebar, the actual actual devil is a disembodied gamma radiation cloud called The One Below All.
MAN, the devil stuff in Immortal Hulk is INCREDIBLE.
INCREDIBLEEEEEEEEEE.
Professor X has a crush on underaged daughter-figure Jean. Nuff said
edit: also Jean finds out about it years later but never mentioned it ever again
edit: also Jean finds out about it years later but never mentioned it ever again
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It sounded dumb at first, but reading this.....Yeah, that's kind of cool. I dig it.
Also, everyone knows Cable and his old mission to fight Apocalypse, but did you know that Cable was part of a group of mutants named the Askani? And the Askani were a group of mostly psychic mutants created by Cable's kind of sister from another universe named Rachel Summers to fight Apocalypse. And then when they killed Apocalypse in the future, the group splintered thanks to Cable's clone Stryfe, and then splintered further by a descendant of Rachel's traveling back into the past with a bunch of psychic women to create a secret society hell bent on taking over the world with psychic women?
And they had lightsaber sticks for their psychic powers.
In translation, to fight Apocalypse, Rachel Summers created the Jedi in the future, and then when Apocalypse died, Cable's clone caused a rift that created the Sith, and some of those Sith traveled into the past to use their Sith ways to conquer Earth.
Cable and Rachel beat the time traveling Sith though.
And they had lightsaber sticks for their psychic powers.
In translation, to fight Apocalypse, Rachel Summers created the Jedi in the future, and then when Apocalypse died, Cable's clone caused a rift that created the Sith, and some of those Sith traveled into the past to use their Sith ways to conquer Earth.
Cable and Rachel beat the time traveling Sith though.
Nuff said
Nope, no, god damn it no, this one is a mistake.
Back in 1963 at the very beginning of the X-Men the idea was that Mutants were the "children of the atom" and got their powers thanks to being mutated by exposure to radiation. Xavier himself was intended to be only a few years older than his team at best, and then a few issues later the idea was dropped and he became the sagely mentor and, subsequently, the idea that he loved Jean never came up again.
...Until 1996 where, in the Onslaught story, Mark fucking Waid of all people wrote in a scene where Onslaught shows Jean Xavier's memory of this panel.
Joss Whedon really kicked it into gear but Mark Waid is probably the guy who got the "Xavier is an evil douchebag" train rolling to begin with.
X-Men in the movies or cartoons: We fight evil mutants who try to conquer humanity, or evil government programs that want to use us as weapons!
X-Men in the comics: We fight demons, aliens, other dimensional reality TV producers, Dracula, more aliens, and a ton of alternate universe or future timeline threats!
X-Men in the comics: We fight demons, aliens, other dimensional reality TV producers, Dracula, more aliens, and a ton of alternate universe or future timeline threats!
edit: also Jean finds out about it years later but never mentioned it ever again
At a certain point in your life, you just accept that your weird not-dad is kind of a creep and a jerk, and you move on with your life with your two husbands on your own private estate on your living island that watches you 24/7.
That is factually incorrect. She has moved on with her life with her two husbands on her own private estate ON THE MOON.
I silently stand in judgement of everyone who has ever said the X-Men should be in their own "grounded" universe.
Imagine X-Men without Mojoworld.
Storm, Rogue, Jean, Jubilee, X-23, Kitty, Dazzler, there are certainly a lot of them. I'm mainly curious what they'll do with Captain Britain + Psylocke, if anything.
Speaking of which, the fact that none of the X-Men bothered to settle Tranquility Gulch confuses me.
It's pretty much a city on the moon that everyone ditched once they realize they couldn't mine some Unobtanium anymore because it was killing everyone. Drop a Krakoan flowerr to give it an actual atmosphere and I could see the X-Men having the first real sustainable tourist destination on the moon.
I bet they just delete the whole british aspect of psyclock's character and have her be part of the asian lore that they're building in shang shi/eternals/namor.
Because shit dude.
SHIT DUDE.
DON'T DO THAT BODY SWAPPING SHIT.
Including the time he sends his child army to a living island and gets it kidnapped, sends a second child army to go rescue them and gets them all killed, and proceeds to erase everyone's memory of them to keep himself innocent.
Speaking of which, the fact that none of the X-Men bothered to settle Tranquility Gulch confuses me.
It's pretty much a city on the moon that everyone ditched once they realize they couldn't mine some Unobtanium anymore because it was killing everyone. Drop a Krakoan flowerr to give it an actual atmosphere and I could see the X-Men having the first real sustainable tourist destination on the moon.
I mean the first rule of remodeling is knowing when it's just more cost effective to start from scratch.
I could see it going three ways:
Captain Britain and Psylocke both appear, not body swap
One Captain Britain or Psylocke appear, and one doesn't
They are an amalgam character, maybe with Betsy being Asian-British.