Hello World! I’ve pinged up, networked some social SEO, and trackbacked more than you could ever believe. I have, perhaps, 20% understanding of what any of those things mean. But this should now be heading off onto Twitter and Tumblr and all sorts of other places, making me unavoidable! Just like in your dreams.
Those lucid, lovely dreams you have.
X-Men time!
Brian Michael Bendis is currently writing the main X-Men book for Marvel, called All-New X-Men. It’s received good reviews so far, but is only on the first arc at the moment. First arcs are easy to do. You make all the changes you outlined in your initial pitch, you stir up trouble, you get things moving. Keeping that momentum up is another thing, and we’ll have to see how Bendis handles that over the next few weeks.
But assuming he does, All-New X-Men will be a praised run. The thing is, when you’re writing for Marvel, there something as important as creating a good story, and that’s creating a good contribution. Which, I’m sure I should’ve thought up a better term for. Anyway, making a good contribution basically means that you leave the franchise with stories to tell once you leave, and ideally that you give them scope and options for how they can do so. Matt Fraction did this when he wrote the main X-Men book.
In his run on Uncanny X-Men, Fraction brought Magneto back into the limelight (he’s now a mainstay of the X-Men), along with Psylocke and Kitty Pryde, both of whom are important parts of big Marvel titles right now. Namor joined. He moved the X-Men to San Francisco, where they can have stories far removed from the cluttered world of New York (home to Spider-Man, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, Daredevil…) Finally, Fraction reintroduced long-dormant characters like Fantomex, Dr Nemesis and Dazzler into the contemporary world of the X-Men, and they’ve all now gone on to be important parts of the Marvel Universe.
The thing is that barely any of this happened in a good story. The move to San Francisco lasted 12 issues before Fraction moved the X-Men to an island called Utopia, in what appeared to be a poorly-referenced take on the current Israel-Palestine conflict. Psylocke’s return was barely comprehensible, plot-hole-laden gibberish, whilst Dazzler and Fantomex were both written with barely any attention paid to them at all. There’s a reason nobody cites Fraction’s X-Men run when they talk about his best work: it was overthought, underwritten, and consistently awful.
But then again – he gave future writers things to work with. You can contribute something positive to a shared universe in a terrible story, but at the same time a good story can destroy the chances for future storylines. This is the worry I’m already having about Bendis’ take on the X-Men. In his short time he’s taken away Emma Frost’s telepathy, in the process splitting up her long-term relationship with Cyclops which has defined the books for the past ten years. As a result, her purpose is completely gone, and we have no idea why she’s continuing around the team anymore. Bendis has also done this to Beast:
Making the character patently ridiculous, with a Stuart Immonen design which is awful – and other writers struggle to do anything with:
Ahh!!
Where do you go from here with the character? It’s a regression which is afraid to admit that it’s a regression. Which is how you can also define the decision Bendis made to bring time travel into the equation, and bring characters from the past into the present. Five X-Men from the 60s have been ostensibly brought to the present day by Beast, and they have now decided to stay, and chat with the present-day selves. How does that go forward? If Bendis leaves the X-Men unexpectedly, is this a storyline other people can use?
It’s very early on in the run (I believe only six issues have been released so far), but the fresh relaunch offers us a chance to look at this. When Bendis finished a ten year run on the Avengers, his last storyline essentially reversed everything he’d ever done and put things back where he found them. Where will he take the X-Men, and will it help or hinder the franchise as a whole?
Interesting article. I think Bendis is writing one of the better runs on an X-Men title of the past ten years, but as you say, he’s only made good on the pitch at this point. As for the series’ contribution to the larger universe, it’s unfortunately hard to tell at this stage. One thing that’s nice about the run is that it feels important without having too much of a collateral impact of the current Marvel landscape. While the events of All-New have been mentioned in Wolverine and the X-Men, it seems like Jason Aaron is capable of adapting without it throwing off his momentum. The time travel premise means that we aren’t losing characters to this series, notably excepting Kitty Pryde, and we haven’t seen the original X-Men dealing with the larger picture much. This could all change, but, as of this point, it seems like Bendis is being quite respectful of the writers he’s working with and those who will come after him.
That said, it’s not like he hasn’t made some changes. I think the changes to Cyclops and his team are the most significant (are there still mutants on Utopia? Is there still a Utopia?). I think that making Cyclops the leader of a new Brotherhood is a good change. I don’t know how many agreed with me, but I strongly supported Wolverine in the Schism debate. That said, I’ve always held respect for Magneto, at least when he’s written well. Scott often seemed to just be a paranoid isolationist. It wasn’t that he was right, it was just that the world was wrong and Logan was a tad over-optimistic. With this change, Scott is finally committed to an ideal, instead of awkwardly lingering between two points of view. With Scott in charge, the Magneto argument is finally free of the stigma of villainy, and I think that as long as it’s neither vilified nor idealized, it makes for a much more interesting status quo.
In Emma’s case it’s hard to say. As you mentioned, most of her identifying features are gone now, but that might not be awful. Bendis has been falling down when it comes to her character but he hasn’t yet done anything upsetting or irreversible. It’s my hope that this change will allow Emma to grow further. I think being free from Scott could do wonders for her if handled properly. Additionally, I think seeing Emma without her money or telepathy could force her to earn her attitude for a new crop of readers. Bendis has done a good job with most of the other characters, I’m hoping he’ll won’t mess up with Frost.
Overall, I really like this topic. It’s one that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I actually think that a lot of it can be traced back to Grant Morrison’s run on New X-Men. I have a number of issues with Morrison’s writing but my biggest is that, while you can debate the quality of his writing, his work as a contributor to continuity is clearly shakier.
Morrison’s run added a huge number of concepts to the world of Marvel’s mutants, but he did so in ways that took full advantage of the concepts while he was writing and then left later writers no choice but to continue his plot lines. Inevitably not all of these were good, you can like or dislike Grant Morrison but I don’t think it’s controversial to say that attempts to ape him never compare to his own work. The last decade of X-Men stories have been defined by Morrison and House of M, and we’ve just started to get out of those sandboxes. Wolverine’s school has helped revive the joy and hope that was a big part of the X-Men and AvX finally undid the severely limiting effects of House of M. It’s clear to me that the X-Men franchise has a lot of opportunities laid out for it. Whether we see a period of growth or stagnation will probably depend on the ways that writers balance their stories against the health of the brand.
P.S. That Beast design is hideous. Glad to know I’m not the only one who’s displeased.
What an incredible response! I can’t even begin to compete with that. Needless to say, I agree with you. My post is hindered by writing about a period which is happening RIGHT NOW, rather than waiting a year for hindsight to give a better picture, so really it is pretty unfair to compare it to a complete run like Fractions.
I’d be interested in looking at what Morrison left for future writers and how they handled it. Much of it has been reversed or abruptly ended, and it might be interesting to look through and see which reversals were made when…
Thanks for the comment! It was an amazing one. I can’t do justice to it
Don’t think anything of it, friend. The topic was interesting and I’m something of a wordy sort, but, given that my view count shot up right around the time of your follow (thank you for that, by the way), I expect you may have figured that out for yourself.
It’s always hard writing about a story unfolding, and by design most modern comics are endlessly unfolding, but I think you made some good points. As great as I feel these first few issues have been, they’re still only elaborations on what Bendis had revealed prior to the first issue.
As such, I live with twin fears and hopes for the series. I hope that Bendis’ clear talent for writing most of the cast will extend to Emma Frost and Magneto, who have not been as strong, but only as much as I worry that Bendis doesn’t think terribly well of Wolverine and will drag him through the mud for the sake of this Savior Cyclops he’s created.
As for Morrison, I haven’t read half as much of his run as I should have, especially having made that comment, but I think, as much as there were other important changes made by the run, that the act of outing Charles Xavier and his school is one of those permanent changes that cannot be undone, on the same level as revealing Magneto’s heritage or having Spideman get married (oh wait…).
I don’t know if we have more to say, but if you do feel free, as I apparantly can ramble on for quite a while.
This was a fine inaugural post. I’m looking forward to reading more from you.