X-Mutants ( The "all -things- X" topic)

[jjreason]

After what I found to be a surprisingly ok first issue, All-New X-Men 2 was terrible. Young Cyke gets tossed in jail with one of the "Ghosts of Cyclops" gang he was confronted by in the first issue & cries about not having his own future. Gay Bobby is avoiding talking about the gay. The rest of the X-Men go for pizza with a baby nightcrawler that gets drunk & tears up the place. I'm done with this title.

[jjreason]

I'm not sure what to make of Lemire (Extraordinary) X-Men. Old Logan meeting & teaming up with Young Jean Grey to rejoin Storm's team of X-Men is a positive concept because of their differences in how they perceive their destinies - though again I'd prefer if they just dealt with all the time traveled youngsters in one clean fashion. Since that's not happening any time soon.... on we go.

What did we learn in issues 2 & 3?

- the Storm school is actually in Limbo (and the Demons are unhappy since Illyanna is out of action)
- something has befallen Kurt (ummm, his tail has been put on ice for safekeeping, not good)
- old Scott is dead as a result of attacking the Inhumans (so Secret Wars Scott, which was the one who killed Prof X in AvX and obtained part of the phoenix force then died in SW wasn't the real old Scott - straighten me out here please as I'm confused - I know we saw Old scott at the White House in Uncanny 600 as well, but I thought that was pre-SW???)
- Old Logan was fooled by Mysterio in his future/past & killed the X-Men during a successful super-villain uprising
- Humberto Ramos must have been told to tone down the Humbertoness, but it still shows from time to time & looks a bit sloppy here
- Old Bobby is trying to control armies of snowmen now which is a stretch for me (but so was crystal Emma and I got used to it)

I still have issue 4 sitting here and I guess I will keep buying for now since I feel I should be keeping in touch with the X-Men in some fashion.

[Tom Foolery]

Uncanny 600 happened pre-SW.
Whatever happens at the conclusion of SW resets everything so Phoenix-Scott undies and everything is kosher in All New All Different Marvel.
Then in the intervening Eight Months all the mutants got sick from Terrigen mist and Scott attacked the Inhumans and supposedly died during the attack, thus making mutants hated and feared all over again.

[jjreason]

Uncanny #1 is going to be a Brotherhood of Evil Mutants book it seems, and that's fine with me. #1 moved along ok, definitely in for a few more issues. I also like the way the first arc resolved in Extraordinary, so I'll stick with it. All-New I'm done with. Old Man Logan I'm good for 1-2 issues to try it out & see.

[Tom Foolery]

Is this the smallest the X-office has been since like 1986? They've got 3 ongoing X-Men series, All New Wolvie, and Old Man Logan. That's it. (Is Deadpool part of the X group, or is he his own franchise now?)
They used to have like 15 ongoing series in any given month.

[jjreason]

For sure it is. I really can't imagine they could go any smaller, unless the young Wolverine series tanks. And I'm not sure where Deadpool would fit in today, he seems more main Marvel U now. That is one character who's explosion in popularity I cannot get my head around.

[Diabolical]

Deadpool is an Avenger now, so the X-Men ties are shrinking.

[jjreason]

When did he explode in popularity, exactly? I remember the character debuting, and there were a couple of popular 4 issue limited series, but that was very common in the 90s (I mean Bishop's was popular & Gambit's 4 issue was about the hottest book going for a few months there). Did they give him a max book & let the swearing commence in earnest?

[Diabolical]

Deadpool has always had a following and it's been slowly building the last handful of years. Someone apparently decided to push him hard and it paid off for Marvel.

He briefly had a Max book, but it wasn't very good.
It had nothing to do with the 616.

[Tom Foolery]

When the Cable/Deadpool series was winding down and Daniel Way's DP series was launching, they started in on a bunch of secondary DP minis and they sold well. So they started doing more like DP Corps and even a second short lived ongoing. Then Cullen Bunn's popular minis, the hilarious DP Team-Up series with reverse numbering, etc.

I think it's some kind of hipster thing that doesn't have anything to actually do with comic readers.

Granted, the Duggan series has been wonderful and deserves its praise. But the DP explosion happened a decade ago.

[anarky]

I remember just a month or two after his debut being told how popular he was, but no one I knew seemed to give a shit about him.

[jjreason]

I might seriously have to dig out my New Mutants 98-100 & all the Deadpool shit I amassed back then & see if I can't sell it for all the wrong prices once the movie gets here. I have no affinity for any of it, but I'd have to make sure I could get a tpb of the New Mutants in case I wanted to do a big series re-read at some point.

[Tom Foolery]

Part of my most recent purchase was a bunch of Classic X-Men issues 82-110. When I got the original issues they were reprinting I bought and read most of them out of order as I was piecing my collection together one issue at a time (and stupidly paying full price for back issues. What a dope. $5 per issue of X-Men!?) so I haven't read that run in awhile. It's Uncanny 178 up to 206. My original collection started with 210 and the Mutant Massacre stuff, so it's gonna be fun reading all the things leading up to that.

But I have a question. How did Xavier get the use of his legs back? In one issue he's still in the chair, and the next issue he's walking around. Within the next issue or two everybody got wished away to Secret Wars. So, was there an Annual or miniseries that explains how Chuck is walking again? It's in like 179 or 180.

And does Rom show up in the TPBs of this run? I'm assuming he does, because he's in the reprint comic and that came out in 1993. Long after the Rom comic had ended and Marvel no longer had the rights. But it's weird Claremont would use the villains from a licensed book in his popular series. It funny the amount of characters Marvel has from licensed books that they try to use throughout the Marvel U without referencing the characters from those books that were licensed and unavailable to use now. Micronauts. Godzilla. Rom. Even Transformers.

[jjreason]

I don't remember them using Rom, but they did use the direwraiths that he fought against as villains for sure. With respect to Chuck walking, it might have just been introduced that he was able to walk on the Shi'ar ship when he was up there with Lilandra, I'm not sure if there was any explanation as to why other than he was in space on their ship. I remember him shooting hoops with Larry Bird ball hugging shorts on to go with his 70's WBA headband. I went through a few issues from that general era a couple of years ago, I had extra copies & put them into Tom's collection then wound up digging them out again after I re-read the Miller Wolverine mini.

Here's Wikipedia's explanation - I don't recall much of this at all:

"When the X-Men fight members of the extraterrestrial race known as the Brood, Xavier is captured by them, and implanted with a Brood egg, which places Xavier under the Brood's control. During this time, Xavier assembles a team of younger mutants called the New Mutants, secretly intended to be prime hosts for reproduction of the aliens. The X-Men discover this and return to free Xavier, but they are too late to prevent his body from being destroyed with a Brood Queen in its place; however, his soul remains intact. The X-Men and Starjammers subdue this monstrous creature containing Xavier's essence, but the only way to restore him is to clone a new body using tissue samples he donated to the Starjammers and transfer his consciousness into the clone body. This new body possesses functional legs, though the psychosomatic pain Xavier experienced after living so long as a paraplegic takes some time to subside. Subsequently, he even joins the X-Men in the field, but later decides not to continue this practice after realizing that his place is at the school, as the teacher of the New Mutants."

[Tom Foolery]

Okay. A bunch of this shit must've been going down in the New Mutants book that was running concurrent with Uncanny.

Also, when I started reading X-Men, I was under the impression there was this backstory between Forge and Storm about a sour relationship that had gone bad. But now that I'm reading Forge's first appearances I'm not seeing that. There was like an unspoken attraction between the two but then she immediately got depowered and blamed him.