The X-Men Re-Assessed

The X-Men is likely to be the next BIG thing in the MCU once we get all this current Doctor Doom nonsense out of the way. This got me thinking about Marvel's mutants and what Disney needs to do to get them to work in the 25th century...

I started by re-reading old X-Men comics and re-evaluating all the years when reading comics was the most important thing in my life. The X-Men is a comic I became synonymous with in the 1990s; not only did I produce a popular fanzine about them, I was friends with the editor, two of the writers, often wrote reviews about the comics (and the labyrinthine continuity) and even got a job at Marvel writing the history of mutants for Marvel UK.

Yet, if you were to look at the shelf over my shoulder, which contains the last remnants of my 'comic book collection' you would not see a mutant comic there, in fact I've often thought about this, considering I was such an X-fanatic I couldn't think of a single issue that I could imagine wanting to keep and this led to me wondering why I was so intrinsically linked to this series of comic books. The wife suggested it had more to do with my collector's mentality than any actual love I had for the comics and I don't think she's far off. When you consider the vast array of Marvel comics mutants, my favourite characters were a [non-mutant] dragon, a drunken super-powered buffoon also not a mutant and ... and... very little else. I actually found the X-Men titles far too restrained; the prejudice never felt like real prejudice, especially when you had minority races with mutant powers who might also be gay or trans or all at once. Racism was paid lip service, very much in the 80s and 90s. 

I jumped into he comics after 'The Death of Phoenix' and I would work my way up until The Uncanny X-Men and the X-Men became two different comics - or the point where it simply got too stupid or I'd lost the will to live. The thing is by the time Marvel Comics exploded in the early 1990s, spawning many books and concepts, most of the output was stylised already, bullshit that was too stupid or pointless to follow - even things regarded as classics have not aged well. But, don't let that cloud anything...

I'm no longer sure why I liked comics and I wonder an awful lot about my friends who still like them. Maybe in 2025 the comic book is a far more sophisticated (and expensive thing) than it was? But in the 1990s millions of copies of comics flooded a market that couldn't handle it, even if the comics had been any good, but most of them were all absolute shite, with bad dialogue, poor plotting and full of overwrought angst. 

The issues I re-read followed the soap opera path that had catapulted The X-Men into being Marvel's best selling comic. This was a family unit comic and half of every issue was dialogue driven, story-based with 'lives' for each mutant. In 2025, these stories, plotting and delivery now look old, plodding, dated and cheesy, at best. Even the 'classic' death of Jean Grey is anything but classic (and given how no one dies forever in comics, also quite pointless). It feels as though we were all caught up in this hype but no one sat down and actually critiqued the comics - because the only people reviewing comics were comics fans - therefore there was no objective criticism of the medium and everyone loves what they review (or they wouldn't buy it). 

The further down this rabbit hole I fell, the harder it was getting to follow. The X-Men - at their height - got involved in so much bollocks it's difficult looking back and understanding how this could be such a successful comic. The artwork was mostly average, the plotting lurches all over the place like it was written by a drunk with amnesia; huge swathes of subplot were simply forgotten about; ongoing stories abandoned (probably due to editorial interference and the need for more and more crossovers with other comics) and it still suffered from the worst thing of all, dialogue that if you said it out loud made you sound like a proper cunt. The Marvel Comics 'way' was that you had to treat every issue like it was someone's first, which meant we were reminded with metronomic regularity that Wolverine was the best at what he does, that he has an adamantium skeleton and his history is long and convoluted, or that Storm was the Goddess of the weather, or a street fighter or an orphan or from Egypt ad nauseum. If I had to be reminded one more time that Cyclops needed to wear special ruby lensed glasses either in dialogue or in thought bubbles I think I would have screamed. I'd hazard a guess and say that 15% of all X-Men comics have a subliminal recap or explainer written into it, this is probably the single biggest reason why reading them now - as a kind of box set - is as painful and laborious as having teeth pulled.

Comics are rubbish. I know there's going to be loads of people who disagree with me and as many saying, "But, you have to read #### because it's a work of genius," yet even classics from the 70s, 80s and 90s now read like superficially written snapshots of someone trying to drag comics into maturity and failing miserably. Try reading Watchmen now by speaking all the dialogue and you will understand why comics are just ephemeral shite to be read and thrown away. It is probably why superhero films have bottomed out, because when you strip everything away, superhero comics are about people who dress up to fight other people who dress up, either for a bit of money or for world domination and if a villain ever achieved world domination, just what would they do with it if they were in charge of it? Wander round being evil? Even the concept doesn't stand up.

I spent nearly 30 years of my life reading, writing and earning money from comics and yet when I fell out of love with them it wasn't a long and drawn out break up. It was a case of me looking at comics and thinking 'I don't know what I saw in you'. 

The sad thing about rereading all those X-Men comics was when I reached an issue that I had fond memories of, because of an artist or particular story, I found myself even more disappointed - like seeing an old relationship partner and wondering what you saw in them. 

Along my journey into my past, whenever I reached a 'crucial' point in Mutant History, I'd dip my toe into rereading issues of the myriad other Marvel Mutant comics, to ensure that I didn't miss anything I might have needed to know and for the benefit of completing stories that only finished in other comics. This proved to be even more wrenching, because it made me realise that every mutant comic available suffered from the same problem - overwrought, unrelenting shit dialogue and a kind of interesting idea badly executed - essentially the same book with different characters and relative scales of peril... And then the stories got really convoluted and with so many mutants to deal with even more subplots and ideas (many of which got left along the way), and Wolverine appearing in more comics than there are months in a year - simultaneously - I'd sit here, mouth agape, thinking of all the drugs I could have spent my money on had I never found comic books.

One of the things that set the X-Men apart from other comics and could well be one of the underlying reasons why it has been popular was the calibre of artists working on the book. Historically, in the 1960s, Jack Kirby, Neal Adams and Jim Steranko had stints on the comic and furthered their careers because of them. John Byrne had been the first dynamic 'popular' artist to handle the 1970s team, he was followed by Paul Smith, John Romita Jr - son of one of the original Bullpen at Marvel in the early 1960s - Alan Davis, Marc Silvestri, Jim Lee. The artist of the X-Men was usually the most current artist du jour. You can cover up a lot of shit things with pretty pictures and the X-Men became synonymous with covering over its cracks with pretty pictures.

An example of why any X-Men film or TV show needs time to create itself organically; one of artist John Romita's early issues was the Uncanny X-Men #200 special edition featuring the trial of Magneto - a former bad guy turned good - and it seemed to be a turning point for the comic. As a standalone, this is the kind of comics story that film could adapt really well; comics (and films) like redemption arcs. The problem was it needed 30 odd years of history to get to this point. You could not make this story into a film without there being a few before it, that were good enough to have allowed us to get to the point where a film would work given the amount of time that has to pass from Magneto being a 'nasty man' to him leading the X-Men. 

An even bigger problem and one that Fox's X films struggled with at times are characters who are telepathic, telekinetic or used their minds to move, bend or destroy things. Twisting your hands in the air, or having a slightly constipated look while special effects does all the heavy lifting is one thing, but if you want your audience to believe in your genetic mutations it's got to feel as feasible as Tony Stark learning to be Iron Man before he became a hero. Some mutants look fantastic, but most of your heavy hitters - your super mutants - do stuff with their minds and that doesn't look too good.

Reading the comics again was actually a little depressing because they are not good and by today's standards... well, I don't know what they're like compared to current mutant comics, but they were simplistic, with dialogue that allowed you to get from one plot to another and while I know they were limited by page count and people buy superhero comics for action, but when people talked you wanted to hear their voices in your head... 

The original MCU used updated versions of classic Marvel comics; they took it slow and did enough to maintain interest; the X-Universe needs to be given that time too. Re-start small, concentrate on quality and then there are some stories that need to be told, with good writers and directors.

It is going to be interesting to see what Disney and the MCU do with the X-Universe. For starters, the X-Men comics aren't as popular as they were. It does have a lot of history and this should be the opportunity to build something with that history rather than bludgeon people with a new history. The problem is time is a massively valuable commodity and you'd have to be some patient and chilled investor to give Disney that again, given how superhero films are no longer the Midas touch they once were.

All indications are that once the Avengers stuff is over, we will have a drastically different, rebooted MCU and that will be to help accommodate mutants into it without the inevitable continuity questions being asked by fans who have nothing better to do. This means the X-Men could be given time to develop. Whatever happens, the honest thing to say is I hope they don't use the comics history as a template; yes, some of the stories work, but in general it was a badly-written, poorly-scripted load of nonsense with no distinct narrative... 

The only thing Marvel/Disney has to ensure is that an X-Men film is good - this solves most problems.