1 Colossus is dead
2 Nightcrawler is now a demon
3 Angel is now an Angel
4 Cyclops now has "defining personality" which is a spin on becoming a psychopathic idiot and losing 40 years of character so bad writers can make another punisher for the easily impressed types.Might as well turn Superman into a cannibalistic crossdresser
5 Those wonderful Secondary mutations [Up next Prof Xs head turns into a sawtoothed butt that constantly pukes blood and gore]

Back to Millennium. Others remember this uh storyline. Yet do you all remember which new guardian was gay before he became a New Guardian and cured when he became a New Guardian? Have fun.
As to X-men. I quit collecting them soon after The Brood.
Redwolf

Feh. New X-Men is trash.

It's just Morrison doing whatever he wants and totally ignoring any sense of continuity or cohesion.

Cassandra Nova is one of the worst ideas ever. The whole thing was just an excuse for them to get Charles out of the wheelchair again.

Then you have that Snake Eyes wannabe, Fantomex and the whole Weapon Plus debacle. Sure. Let's ignore how many years of Weapon X history with Wolverine and make up something totally different. Captain America? Super Soldier Serum? Nah. He was a Weapon X project. Please.

(spoilers for New X-Men 150 HUGE SPOILERS!!!! DON'T READ IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW)
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And all this for what? Oh yeah. Magneto comes back (again) and tears up all of Manhattan. No problem because he made a phone call and all of New York's heroes are convienently tricked into being somewhere else. Just as well since he's a drug addict/pusher now. His plan is to reverse the Earth's magnetic poles? Nah. That won't kill ALL life on Earth, mutants included. I read that story out of a bad Authority comic. And of course the loser s####s of students Cyclops dredges up actually manages to stop Magneto. WHAT?!?!? But then Phoenix shows up and Magneto kills her. Easy. Can't beat children with no training (except for Esme, the second of his own Brotherhood he kills) but can kill the Phoenix with next to no effort. And all this leads up to what?

The constant cliche. Good ol' Wolvie for the kill again. Cuts off his head this time. Didn't Wolvie already "kill" Magneto JUST before Morrison took over? Did we resurrect him just so we could kill him again? The EXACT SAME WAY? Argh. I can't wait till all this is retconned.

As much as I have disliked X-Men in the past, I thought I would give the last year or so a try. Somehow, they have managed to turn poor stories into rotten, stinking garbage. Wow, could this be a new fuel source?

The introduction of Gambit is when they first jumped the shark, and I think only Alan Moore doing a complete "Whatever happended to the Man of Tomorrow" could save this.

Warren Ellis could fix it, if he was given total control, and paid large buckets of money.

Warren Ellis is a hack. What's more, he's the only guy who hacks his own stories. They let Ellis have X-Force for a while and he ruined it even more than it was. Because since he's only got one concept he wrote it exactly like The Authority/Planetary with tons of government conspiracies and espionage. Hell he brought back Pete Wisdom and made him into an exact Jenny Sparks clone. I was reading both X-Force and Authority at the time and one of Pete's speeches to X-Force was almost word for word a carbon copy of a speech Jenny Sparks gave in Authority.

Giving Ellis full control would be..........exactly like what happened with Grant Morrison. They're great writers but when they get full control the results can be disasterous depending on what they're writing.

It could be worse. They could pay someone buckets of money to write a 4 part mini-series and they never finish it.
<cough,Kevin "sell out" Smith,cough>

Am I alone on this or is this the first time in history that the movies are better than the comics?The films have made a three dimensional man of Logan and I care about the rest of the characters as well-somrthing I CANNOT say about the comics in a very long time.Cassandra Nova as the evil twin-P.U!To me the WORST thing Morrison has done is "invent"KICK-nothing like Mags as a junkie-stop the bus I wanna get off.X-men started as a habit for me during the absolute height of its run-it has since become a terrible curse of halfa$$ed writers and-"choke"-artists"sure that guy draws with crayons-put him on X-men-those guys'll buy anything!"
As for Rasputin being dead-relax guys this is Marvel-nobody stays dead and those guys'll buy anything.

Three dimensional Wolvie was there under Frank Tieri and Sean Chen.

As for Ellis being a hack. It sounds like someone needs to read Storm Watch before The Authority. Change Or Die pretty much stands as one of the ten greatest stories ever!

His run in Excalibur was awesome as well. Not to mention his Wolvie story Not Dead Yet.

The reason for the similarity between Wisdom and Sparks, are that they are Ellis' mouthpiece for his opinions and views.

Ellis' run on The Authority was nothing short of spectacular. The series didn't dive until he left.

I'm left to wonder if some fl the stories were bad, or if they actually just disagreed with the views presented in them.

For instance. Garth Ennis is a good writer, but I find myself in a love/hate relationship with his run on The Punisher. There is the awesome: Streets of Laredo and Brotherhood. And the not so awesome: Soap and the storyline with the return of The Rusian. Sometimes wheter something is good or bad may not be in sinc with what is merely to m taste.

I personally didn't like Morrison's take on The X-Men, but I have loved other things he has done (Animal Man, Doom Patrol, Flex Mentallo, and The Invisibles). He was spot on with FF:1234.

I personally find Busiek to be a hack, who has been lucky enough to dialogue some great stories by great artists. Marvels and Avengers succeeded because of Ross and Perez. How many out there raced to collect his Ninjak and Shadowhawk? Did anyone feel Avengers was quite as good after Perez left?

Perez has proven he can write. I would have let Perez do JLA/Avengers solo.

I guess my point is there is stuff we all can agree on as really well and truly bad writing. Then there is stuff that was just done in not the way we would have liked.

I felt the six or so issues by Lobdell right before Morrison were some of the best X-Men that I had read in years. I wouldn't mind if he came back. I too wasn't happy wth Claremont's initial return, but he found his footing with Xtreme. Especially with GLMK II, and Intifada (I'm still feeling a chill from the last two panels of that one).

It may actually be time for some writers never seen before, with a editor intimate with the characters. Like Claremont. That way you can get fresh stories, without decimating what has gone before.

Many have compained about the alien invasion in Xtreme. But in the old days it was nice when every once in a while we'd get a break, and the team would go to Asgard, or meet Dracula, or mess with Impossible Man and Mojo. True the series is and should always be about race relations, but variety is also the spice of life.

Man I miss things like Excalibur and Kitty's Fairytale. I also believe the theme of Xtreme will lead to a better future of storylines. Elitism and Isolationism like in Uncanny and New X-Men is not the way. Storm and company saying let's work together for both sides seems to make more sense. And is much more heroic.

The X-Men movies also make much use of Claremont and Byrne's material, albeit filtered through Singer's modern and on target sensibilities.

Daredevil was Frank Miller's storyline.

Spider-Man was OK, but would have been better if they had used Gwen Stacy at the bridge. Then brought MJ in for the second film.

Hulk was OK. I liked it except for the whole sweeping the nuclear arms race under the carpet thing. I guess in today's climate we wouldn't want to talk about the nuclear hammer of death held over the world for decades. Or how Banner's inner demon is released by the very weapon he created. Thereby destroying the true moral of the story. That you can't just throw a can of whitewash on a problem and hope it will go away. The Hulk movie stands fine on it's own merits. It just could have stepped up to the plate to become an important film, instead of just good entertainment. I think many non-comic readers would have been surprised to find these things were discussed in a comic in the sixties. What must they be talking about today? That would bring in new readers.

Blades I and II superceded anything ever done in his comics.

Although the old Captain America and FF films do show universal bad writing.

And I still say The Punisher was a decent action film. Again like Hulk it shouldn't have dodged the Vietnam War issue, but as a standalone film it worked.

This Claremont Fanboy agrees wholeheartedly with you CandySuxxx. You should check out his 3 novels he did years ago for more great stories: First Flight, Grounded and Sundowner.

Actually, Briel, three dimensional Wolverine was done under Larry Hama. Frank Tieri and Sean Chen just followed up on everything Hama started and originated.

Marvel made Hama leave the book because at the time they wanted more guest appearances with cross overs with the other X-Men titles and Hama refused.

It's strange that you mention that, because I always point out how strong Wolverine as a series was due to it's isolation from the rest of the X-saga. I like Hama too (must have, I collected the whole series). I think Tieri's run shines partly for coming after such a random hodgepodge of stories inbetween his run and Hama's.

Zero Tolerance was the only crossover to really invade Wolverine (excluding one issue of Fatal Attractions). Hama made it really important though, for what passed between Jean and Logan when they thought it might all be over.

You know what Rogan. You just convinced me to not stop collecting Wolverine after all. I love the little guy, and the current arc will pass soon enough.

thanx for the heads up ro_gan, but i have FirstFlight and Grounded, also all the books from his 3 part novel based on Lucas' Willow movie. plus the X-Men 2 movie novel adaptation. still need to read X-Men 2 and the last part of the Willow books. cant think of the names will get back later.

ro_gan in case you were wonderin' the books were...
ShadowMoon, ShadowDawn, and ShadowStar. they were co-writin' by Lucas/Claremont.
oh and Ellis is not a hack. my opinion of course. again i have to agree w/ Briel on Busiek. this may be crazy Briel, but we probably have matchin' comic collections.