You know, I do have to concede to a few points through this thread.
1. Grant Morrison is reputably, (and of his own admisiion) a daily user of hashish and occasional user of nearly anything else that seems interesting.

2. This does flavor his writing to be a bit..off..sometimes.

3. The story has been slightly odd, with alot of wierd stuff, inappropriate stuff, and stuff that makes less sense than every before.

I think the reason he decided to kill magneto yet again and in his worst possible death yet, was because he was supposed to have creative control of the x-books, and about 2 weeks before he takes over, they put a little story in Unlimited(which is and always will be a great read of 1 shot x stories) that basically said mags was alive again anyway. Grant was told by Quesada a when he took over it was his job to revolutionize the X-men, but make it still feel like the X-men.
So he took the following steps.
Give Cyclops a personality(but not too much of one) and reinforce it over and over again that scott is just crazy.

Ended the Wolverine saga, and made wolvie more than that "drunk uncle" figure to the xmen.(weapon +, for all it's faults, brought a( welcome for me) end to I don't even know how many years of random weapon x stories in which wolvie seeks his origin.

Made chuck walk(mandatory for the new writer)
Made chuck not walk(repeat)

Bring out the first batch of sub powered mutants since the morlocks. I for one am in favor of lesser powered mutants.
(besides, sentinals gotta win sometimes)

Ended Charles contact with the Shiar.

Humiliated and killed magneto..Now this dosn't seem like a good idea on the surface, but look deeper, every time mags comes back to life, he gets more powerful followers than the last time, heck, right before grants story mags had a huge genoshan army and was gonna teach humanity...
This was just a way of doing it and proving how tired the story was, not just putting it to pasture, but hitting it in the head with a huge mallet, and selling it's bones to make glue and jello. Personally, I'm happy with it. What better way to say "Don't do any more magneto stories" than bring him back to life, completely destroy any hope of him ever saving face in the marvel universe again, show what a tired old has been he really is, make fun of him, then cut his head off solidly at the shoulder, heck, I think they should have burned the body just for good measure and had a big funeral where they shot the ashes into the sun just to be sure.(hyuck, yea right)

Anyway, yea, he did kinda take a wierd and probably inapproprriate route, some of which I(as admittedly a Morrison fanboy) have even been confused by alot of, I'm still hoping the ends justify the means..

and yea, Rover is SWEET! "Say Hi Rover" "DESTROY!"

Mugwump: I agree, making Magneto a fool seemed (after reading that last issue) to have the point of making sure he didn't come back, or, at least, that if he came back* he'd have to reinvent himself and his mission. Now, Magneto (or the inheritor of the name, if they go that route) will need to do some sort of starting over thing.

* They'd find a way.

I started reading New X-men with the xtinction agenda and dropped it at the end of that arc.

I started reading comics with the x-men and felt what made them a consistent top 10 seller was that readers are invested in the characters. We want to see what will happen with Scott, Jean, Ororo and the lot from month to month. Yeah the stories have to be good, but there are lots of other good stories out there in other books that don't sell as well because these guys have 40 years worth of history.

But along comes a writer who says, 'screw years of history and character development, I can do this better and different than anyone else.’ And goes on to radically change core concepts of characters we're invested in. Not in a 'corrupted by the cosmic being of evil' change, but just 'I'm bored and thus will change my sexual orientation or cheat on my wife for the hell of it.' change.

I found it to be egotistical to say he could do better than 40 years worth of great story. At this point I think the best a writer can say is that they'll do their best to remain true to the characters and bring us new and exciting stories that strive to live up to the standard set over the decades.

This carp is best left for hacks trying to sell start up team books at Image.
And I strongly believe that New X-men's continued success on the stands is a case of the Emperors New Clothes. Wizard magazine keeps going on and on about this book like its the second coming, that no one stops to realize that its really not all that good. (Granted its not terrible, its just not great, and its definitely not the X-men.)

Ok, I know this is off topic somewhat (and may have been brought up already on this thread, to be honest I haven't read it all) but I don't think you can put all the blame on the writers. The powers that be at Marvel are encouraging dropping continuity and core concepts of the characters.

(And here's where I go off topic and on a rant)

Take Hulk as an example, Bruce Jones has disregarded continuity a lot and changed the core concepts of the characters throughout. Marvel's response: 'We're tired of uber fanboys complaining so we're moving the book over to Marvel Knights as Marvel Knights readers are more progressive in their thinking' (although not an exact quote that last part is directly from Executive Editor Axel Alonso). So in order not to worry about continuity, they are just adding the little Marvel Knights logo. To be honest, Marvel is turning me off comics altogether.

Ok, first I'm gonna stand up for Grant on a couple more points, then it's onto my love/hate relationship with Chuck Austen(Uncanny's writer in case anyone didn't know it.)

Grant didn't change Beasts sexual orientation, Beast openly admitted to the team in one issue he was lying about that to confront socio political mores about sexuality and popular image(not to mention the sweet satisfaction of telling an lover that essentially, your sudden change in orientation might be thanks to them)

As for Scott's affair, millions of men up and cheat on their wives every day, especially the ones who seem "emotionally distant" or "not quite there", much like Mr. Summers. Not to mention the fact that given the opportunity to get wild with Emma has to have gone through every single mutant hetero male(and a few female) personality you can think of off hand.

Onto Uncanny.
Chuck Austen X-history so far reads like great expectations, except it's starting to look like Pip just ended up drunk in a gutter somewhere underneath liverpool.
His first couple stories were great, the return of havok and polaris, the nightcrawler priest thing, the Chamber story, all of it fantastic, Jugs and Northstar are great additions to the team as far as I'm concerned. It's this new stuff that's killing me. One more X story about angels or demons and I think I'm going to puke. I'll read the bible or some horror fiction if I want to read angels and demons masquerading as mutants or vice versa. The Draco story was sucktastic, and I thought the new Gurthrie kid story was going to be sweet, right up until the moment I read about the second new Guthrie kid, with the Angel wings and Choir voice..somebody tell me when this story's over, I'll be much happier if I just give up.

"As for Scott's affair, millions of men up and cheat on their wives every day"

Yeah, but their love is supposed to be the stuff of legend. Like Superman and Lois Lane. Its cannon.
When reading about the fantastic (people shooting rays out of their eyes and flying) you don't want to think about real world ordinary statistics. Millions of people suffer depression too, but how interesting a story would jubilie's going on Prozac be?

As for Uncanny, I agree. The stuff they're doing is so disjointed and uninteresting that its almost the opposite of New X-men. Somehow they've managed to reveal Nightcrawler's origin and make it totally unispired.
This is reminding me of the X-men of the mid 90's that was so bad that I stopped reading altogether for about 5 years.

I have mixed feelings about a lot of stuff that Morrison has done, but the Scott/Emma affair is not one of them. It's brilliant, and fits the characters exactly. I disagree that Scott/Jean is like Lois/Clark-- quite the opposite, it's not iconic, it's operatic. Which includes downfall and tragedy.

I think it just made a lot of people uncomfortable.

I certainly agree with azs post (above).

I love the X men. Concept. Book. History. Characters.

Always have (since issue 11 of the first series, which I read when I was 9), and always will. What is happening to the
book(s) and characters now is deeply sad.

X Men continuity and characterization has been totaly trashed in recent months, and this is bad. Yes, it's fair to blame the writer - after all, assumedly you've got to be pretty bad to take some of the most iconic comic characters on the planet and write absolute dross about them - but I would personaly blame the Editors, or Editor system at Marvel. Someone has to keep the writer on line (bad choice of words in this case, I assume), and actualy make sure they READ the previous episodes of the Saga. The plot holes and idiocies reffered to in the above posts would have been immediatly obvious to most fans of the book - and we could be forgiven for thinking that the writer DOESN'T CARE.

OK, it's not as bad (yet) as what happened to Thunderbolts or Green Lantern. But it is worrying.

It needs fixing - but, realisticaly, who do they give the core book to - and which Editor could handle overseeing the 5 or more books which have to sincronize ?

OK, I know it's virtualy inevitable that I'm going to say "Claremont/Byrne/Austin" (There. See ?) in reverential tones, but whatever you think about the three gentlemen concerned, their X Men was internaly consistant, had numerous plot lines, and didn't try to reset the Universe every 5 issues. It was also VERY popular...

SO :-

1. Bring back the "real" Magneto.
2. Get Cyclops back in time to talk Jean down from being Pheonix (again)
3. Resurect Collosus, time gate him, alter time, anything.
4. Show that we don't have the truth about Nightcrawler...all the Belasco/demons/mutating merged teleporters and other dimensional weirdness is a very big Carp indeed...
5. Put the senior XMen into 2 teams, (Scott, Jean and co...Orroro, Logan and co) then have a New Mutants/Gen X 3rd team, with the school having the lightweights and the XStatics drop outs.
6. Drop XStatics.
7. Recognise that what we have here is a modern myth. Don't ignore it's History.
8. Sort out the Shi-ar plot lines so that Xavier / Lilandra are still OK with each other, and the Imperial Guard can make guest appearences (hooray !)
9. Get the writers on all the X books to talk to each other, and follow an overall plot design OK'd with their (mutual) editor.
10. Sabertooth IS Dog. No, really.

It's not REALLY the number of X books that's the problem - if we could ensure quality, that would be fine - it's that so much of what is there is poorly written, without any feel for the preceding story.

The "Death" of the White Queen / Xorn is Magneto issues had some very good art - it's just a shame that the story, well, wasn't.

Characterization. Subtlty. Multi-Layered Plots. Bring them back. (...and Colossus - although possibly not Cypher !)

Well, that feels better. (Rant Mode Off)

LoL

All the Best

Noman

Let's not forget that Jim Lee started a little storyline with Cyclops becoming obsessed with the X-men's other telepathic hottie at the time (Psylocke) which continued to progress through the beginning of Fabian Nizcea's issues.

I personally liked the whole Emma/Scott telepathic affair. Also ... if you rad those issues you'd see that Morrison actually fleshed out Emma's character a bit and made her more than the 2D character she was.

keep colossus dead, i never liked that character




ps: its like the 4th time i say the same thing on this thread, i really dislike the character.

Yes, we know it's like the fourth time you've said it, we are well aware of your dislike of the character.


Personally, I liked him OK, but he wasn't a major character for me (except that he was an artist and a more fleshed-out character than many of his ninja/secret past/who are my parents?/etc/etc/etc. counterparts). However, Piotr died a meaningful death: saving his people from the very virus that cost the life of his sister and many other mutants. Bringing him back would cheapen that.
Also, the character, in his exploration of his life and motives, has been alot of things to alot of people over the years. I remember reading about him in the 80's when he was in Scotland, the issues where those kids followed him around, looking at his drawings and talking about him and the other mutants. I remember when he was an Acolyte of Magneto, though I don't know all the details, this was near my lull in comics reading.
Piotr Rasputin has, in retrospect, been one of the most deeply explored characters in Marvel Comics and certainly in the X books. after all of this, I agree that he should be left dead. Then again, in ten years, most of us older readers will be selling our collections and none of the new kids will remember the legacy virus anyway.
Every Marvel marketing campaign I see nowadays with the X-Men on it shows the 'Ultimate X-Men', not the 'REAL' X-Men. I got the Marvel Trivia Game and a Marvel calendar for Christmas. Both portray the 'Ultimate Wolverine' rather than the Logan I grew up reading. Such is the way of the future of comics. Kyle replaced Hal. Wally replaced Barry. Only true icons, engrained, blazed into the collective consciousness of all people, are immune to this change. Superman/Clark Kent and the like. Dare I say it, they may have an 'Ultimate' Captain America and they may put him in a 'Marvel Knights' title right now, but he, like Clark, will ALWAYS be the living legend of WWII that Kirby masterfully crafted.

I'm going to shut up now because I intended at the beginning to type about two or three sentences. However, I encourage you all to go back ten years and find the issue of Uncanny X-Men where Illyana died. Many of you will automatically know the one I'm talking about. At the same time, I did not get to read the issue where Piotr died, I only got to read a couple of panels of it, printed elsewhere. Can someone tell me what issue it is?


"Bamf"

Bring back the Basil Elks Basilisk, I think that he's cool!

yeah, my one hope at this point is that magneto get's taken over by the xorn personality (that becomes a real personality, sort of as a defense mechanism to save magneto from the drug "kick"), but that's as far fetched as the rest of this book has become.

shin, i agree with you completely, except that toad is probably the most unlikely of the old guard brotherhood that would have joined him. toad's always been weak. really weak. think of all the cooler mutants out there, that had already been established, and magneto instead keeps his students, the "rejects", as close trusted collegues?

um...yeah. game over for the xmen. my one real hope after their trip to the future would be (other than xorn coming back) that they continue on without xavier and with cyclops and white queen in charge of a new crop of xmen.

in fact, xtreame xmen is so bad now that i'm ready for them to just wipe all the mutants out and start fresh...

I'll have to chime in and say I'm a big fan of the writing on new x-men. I love the discontinuity of it. my one complaint is that I really liked Xorn as a new character. Too bad on that one for me, but hey, at least I didn't see that one coming! Unlike so many of the plot developments in recent years. As far as Noman's comments on the Claremont/byrne/austin team "their X Men was internaly consistant, had numerous plot lines, and didn't try to reset the Universe every 5 issues". Yes it was internaly consistant....and only unto itself. It got that way by throwing everything previously written out the window and changing the x-universe "every 5 issues" with the total re-vamp of jean grey, the x-men core team, villians,.... everything! It was way more than just a roster change. And (unfortunately for whomever it may be at the time) the writer of any x-title will have to be compared to that run forever. It was great, but man, it has been time for a change(an interesting change, that is) for a long time. Morrison at least is giving us that.I don't think he's trying to "preach" about anything, as one poster seems to believe. I believe he's just being entertaining(sometimes maybe its for his own entertainment, but I don't see anything wrong with that).I find it very entertaining, unlike the other x-titles('cept for ultimate, it seems to be consistantly entertaining, but I don't read every issue) And don't let me get started on uncanny. complete carp! The one redeeming plotline has been the juggernaut. Sometimes being a completist is very taxing. Oh, well that's just my opinion.

i believe its uncanny x-men #390.