Comic Book Resources

SNARK FREE CHALLENGE

If Marvel decided to only have ONE X-Men title, which seven characters do you think should be on the team?

This is a little off-model, but I did a similar blog post a few weeks ago on the sameish topic here. I didn't stick with seven exactly, but the first team has seven, the second has eight, and the last has four.

If I absolutely had to pick one team of seven, it'd be my Strike Force team less Mystique... so Cable, Sage, Bishop, Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Gambit, and Psylocke.

That's actually a pretty nice use of the Transformation aspect for that New Teen Titans cover homage. I really dig the Beast Wars show starting with Season 2 and the introduction of that bird-dog... Silverbolt?

I made a similar post about super-hero weddings a couple of years ago. I hit several of the same ones you had here (though I didn't have the Marvel ones), plus:

In Superman & Batman: Generations, Batman's son and Superman's daughter are trying to get married, but Lex Luthor shows up with Superman's brainwashed son and kills a bunch of people.

Wally West's mother re-married, and the minister got held up in in traffic...caused by T.O. Morrow.

The Lois and Clark wedding, of course.

One correction: the Barry Allen/Fiona Webb wedding was never completed.

I only came up with one "on-camera" wedding that wasn't interrupted by a super-villain: Donna Troy and Terry Long in Tales of the Teen Titans.

The Seven X-Men:

Cyclops, Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler, Beast, Colossus, Shadowcat (or whatever her name is now).

Who is it? I'm guessing Wonder Man, after three questions. Totally not looking up if I'm right...figure Simon would have the ionic mojo to live in the 30th century.

Only wedding I can think of was in the Fox X-Men cartoon...Scott & Jean got married, but a Sinister-influenced Morph tooks the minister's place beforehand.

re: uninterrupted on-camera weddings ...

Um, well, it's gonna sound really dumb now that she's a psycho murderer/Eclipso'd freak/flame-thrower-totin' badass, but: Atom and Jean Loring. Really. [sigh] To think they once had a blissful romance, and were graced with one of the only hitich-free nuptials in all of comicdom!

(The details, for those who want 'em: When Ray Palmer told Jean Loring (in the pages of Justice League of America, mid-to-late #150s) that he was the Atom, she got all nervous and considered calling off the wedding. The JLA members had an informal little satellite chat about why they would or wouldn't spill the beans to their significant others (remember, this is looong before Lois knew Clark's secret), after which a lot of shit went down requiring costumed action. But happily, at the end of the issue, Jean walked down the aisle, with practically the entire League standing up for the couple.)

My first guess for the "Who Is It" was Justice, but now I think Jason's nailed it - WM did indeed live all the way into the future as "Hollywood," but I don't know squat about his parents.

(un)Interrupted weddings: Jessica Jones/Luke Cage got attacked at their engagement party, but the wedding went 100% smoothly. I don't think anything happened to Scott and Jean in the comics, either. Their honeymoon was shot to hell by time travel, but I think the wedding itself was fine...

I don't recall supervillains involving themselves in Lois and Clark's wedding--the engagement was called off and then resumed, but once they decided to get married, they just got married and that was that. Like Scott and Jean, though, the honeymoon was nuts.

And it's gotta be Wonder Man (after question three--Avenger who was a supervillain and was related to a supervillain narrowed it down a lot, although I was still thinking maybe the Vision for a bit)...but I didn't know he had a living parent. I thought both mom and dad were dead for him.

Oh, and Beast Wars--the cartoon, at least, I haven't read the comic--absolutely and totally rocked. Great one-liners. "I don't believe you're really evil. If you were, you'd pull that trigger." *shunk* "You shot me!" "Well, duh--I'm evil!"

As I recall, in the comic-book version of Clark and Lois's wedding, there were no interruptions (Batman had other heroes on extra patrol around Metropolis, just in case IIRC). And folks are right -- Scott and Jean's wedding went off without even an interruption (it was a nice, quiet character building issue if I remember right). Peter and MJ's wedding was also conflict-free as I recall, though there was a dream sequence.

And I was thinking that the "WHO IS IT" was the Vision, not Wonder Man. He was a supervillain in his first appearance, his "brother" Simon also "was" a super-villain, he has one "living" parent (Ultron), and he was a member of the Guardians of the Galaxy. (The living parent clue made me think Vision, and before that I was thinking Black Knight -- I'd totally forgotten that Wonder Man was even in the Guardians of the Galaxy as "Hollywood"). Amusingly enough, except for my lack of knowledge of Wonder Man's parents, the clues seem to fit them both, don't they?

One more interrupted wedding - Captain Britain and Meggan in the final issue of Excalibur (the first edition), #125. Interrupted by Technet and a few other suprise guests, if I remember correctly.

It seems to me that the Transformers cover is an homage to New Teen Titans #1.

Karate Kid and Projectra's wedding wasn't quite interrupted, but some of the guests had kind of a time travel adventure before they could make it there.

Not sure what happened at the weddings of Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl or Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel. I think Colossal Boy and Yera had a quickie offscreen wedding, and Matter-Eater Lad and Saturn Queen had a rushed onscreen wedding. The White Witch and Star Boy both got married (not to each other) offscreen.

In the reboot, Saturn Girl and Cosmic Boy's wedding was cancelled when it was revealed that Saturn Girl had been subconsciously mentally animating Cosmic Boy's comatose body the whole time, and anyway she really wanted to marry Lightning Lad instead. So the wedding was cancelled, but I *think* Ultra Boy and Apparition took that opportunity to get married themselves.

The Essential X-Men:

Cyclops
Jean Grey
Wolverine
Storm
Beast
Colossus
Kitty Pride

I didn't know if Professor X was supposed to be counted as one of the seven or not, but I would rather see Charles take a long sabatical and entrust his school and his mission to the first, greatest mutant: Namor.

All these people with their old-school X-Men! Sheesh. Cyclops sucks. Let's all just admit it, people. In fact, all the original X-Men suck, except for Jean, and even she's kind of boring. So here's a group of seven:

Rogue
Psylocke
Dazzler
Longshot
Havok
Polaris
Kylun (yes, Kylun!)

It seems to me they already had this team, and they screwed it up!!!!! You can argue about the last four, but Rogue, Psylocke, and Dazzler must be on any team, because they're the three best mutants ever. EVER!!!!!

In Avengers Three, Kurt Busiek addressed the fact that Gerry Jones accidentally (perhaps more a case of "not giving a crap") wrote Wonder Man as parent-less when it had been established that his mother was still living.

Busiek basically had Wonder Man say something like, "I was so messed up then that they even had me believing my mother was dead!"

Rex Mason and Sapphire Stagg's wedding in Batman and the Outsiders was quite deliberately written as a contrast to Donna Troy's action-less nuptials New Teen Titans 50. Mike W. Barr was quick to point out in interviews and letter columns that he felt that Superhero weddings needed fight scenes.

That said, my favourite superhero wedding still IS Donna and Terry's. And I'm still annoyed they split up Donna and Terry and killed Terry off. I really liked him.

Rick Jones and Marlo's wedding was sort of interrupted... I mean, villains and alien races showed up, but they didn't actually fight. And Mephisto only crashed the reception.

As for the X-Men:

Cyclops, Emma Frost, Beast, Rogue, Sage, Madrox the Multiple Man, and Doop. It would be a fun group to write. I had to cut Wolverine, though.

John Stewart and Katma Tui had a nice quiet un-interrupted wedding, I THINK. Been a while and the book's buried under a couple of layers of longboxes. But I'm pretty sure that it went off okay. In fact, it was considered kind of daring that Steve Englehart essentially took care of it in a page or so and then went off on a totally different tangent for the issue.

It's funny how the uninterupted superhero wedding has become almost as much of a cliche as the interupted wedding. I much prefer the interupted weddings myself.

Some more interupted weddings- Wolverine and Mariko- more or less interupted by Mastermind causing Mariko to call the whole thing off.

Johnny Storm and Alicia (er..Lyja)'s wedding had to put up with some behind the scenes hijinks from the Wizard and the Puppet Master.

For my seven X-Men, I'd go with Cyclops, Emma, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Kitty, Colossus, and Beak.

Actually, it's Rick Jones who got shot by Thunderbolt Ross, not Bruce Banner. Unless Bruce and Betty got married a second time and that time the General had better aim. I don't know, I haven't read The Hulk since Todd McFarlane drew it.

Thanks for the Wonder Man, explanation, Brian--as someone who had a complete run of the Jones series, I did think I knew him, but I guess I only knew him as well as Gerard Jones did.

For a nice reversal, the wedding of supervillains Titania and the Absorbing Man was interrupted by the She-Hulk and the Avengers, who mistook the event for a regrouping of the Masters of Evil. (Avengers Unplugged #4)

Lex Luthor actually tricked Superman into interrupting the wrong wedding, by maneuvering a subordinate nakmed Harold Vekko into tying the knot on his yacht while he and the Contessa de Portenza actually wed elsewhere. (Superman: The Man of Tomorrow #5)

Ohh, and Reed Richards' second wedding to Susan Storm Richards went uninterrupted...despite the fact that everyone outside the Fantastic Four believed that Sue was marrying Doom, because Reed was trapped in the villain's armor at the time! (Fantastic Four v.3 #26-7)

Cyclops, Jean Grey, Nightcrawler, Shadowcat, Banshee, Havok and Polaris.

My favorite bit of wedding hijinx was Rick Jones seeing his fiance, Marlo, in the stag film they were showing at the bachelor party. And Captain America's cataclysmic confrontation with... THE ECDYSIAST!

The Essential X-Men...?

Ones to keep...
Shadowcat
Wolverine
Nightcrawler
Colossus

Ones to add...
Blink
Mystique
Silver Samurai

Ones to kill off...
Cyclops
Jean Grey
Storm
Iceman
Professor X

Ones to push into politics...
Beast
Angel
Sebastion Shaw

...and, dagnabbit...!!!

BRING BACK BARRY ALLEN!!!

I don't remember Cyclops wedding to Madelyne Pryor being interrupted either, but honestly i don't really remember the wedding at all... Oh and Wolverine's wedding to Mariko seemed to be going fine till Storm showed up in a mohawk and leather and made Kitty rethink her choice in role models, and then Mariko made Wolvie cry... On the other hand, Snow White and Bigby Wolf just got married without a hitch last month over in Fables

The wedding between Jonah & Mei Ling was interrupted. After Jonah gunned down the bad guys, the wedding continued. Super villians may be cool, but just walking out & shooting the bad guys is even better.

i cant recall i got to pull it out of the long boxes..but when scot and jean got married i dont think any villians tryied to stop it...buuuuttt

havok and polaris...the vilian was polaris going nutso ..does that count?she looked like magneto when it happend??

If Marvel decided to only have ONE X-Men title, which seven characters do you think should be on the team?
1.rouge
2.iceman
3.havok
4.phoneix
5.cannonbal
6.dust
7.juggernaut

my choises were based on what could be needed in a fight.
for example they need some muscle so juggernaught.they need a psi talent so phoneix.they need an energy based member havok.the need a newbie so dust(so much wasted potential on her ..sheeshh)they need a flier so cannonball.they need a seasoned vet so id go with ice man and rouge both are by far 2 of the more powerful memebers that never seem to reach thier potential.

Well, I would have to write the X-Men "field team" as thus:

SHADOWCAT: (Computers & electronics; limited espionage skills; Astral Sight; personal and limited team transportation - airwalking; martial artist; minor occult knowledge due to her experiences with weilding Illyana's SoulSword; Purpose: Team Co-leader and Field Leader)

NIGHTCRAWLER: (Martial artist; wall crawling; team mechanic; team medic; BLACKBIRD pilot; personal and limited team transport - teleportation; Purpose: Co-Leader, team counselor, mechanic and field medic)

ROGUE (Co-Pilot of BLACKBIRD [from her knowledge of piloting from Carol Danvers]; espionage [from Carol Danvers]; personal and limited team transport - Flight; super strength; heightened invulnerability; power and psychic absorbtion. Purpose: Team muscle)

BEAST (Science expert- electronics, biochemistry and genetics; superhuman strength; superhuman dexterity and speed; martial artist; political liason. Purpose: Team scientist and secondary muscle)

PHOENIX [Rachel Summers]: (Telekinesis, telepathy, mind blasts, martial artist, flight, mutant detection, psionic invisibility [clouds other perceptions so that she and those she wants to be "invisible" are, save to that of electronic devices], etc. Purpose: Team telepath and long distance strikes; team field tracker)

WOLVERINE (Team Trainer / Drill Sergeant. Espionage and military specialist. Healing factor, martial artist, claws, animal senses, animal empathy, etc. Team Purpose: The team trainer and field warrior. Acts as Second in Command to Shadowcat or Nightcrawler in field command (depending on whether 'Crawler stays on the plane while the team is on mission). Trains the team in martial arts and danger room sequences.

That would be the field team.

Now, I would have others make guest appearances as teachers at the school now and then, but they would not be field operatives regularly appearing in the comic. For example, I have no problem having Cyclops appear as one of the school instructors having retired from active field work, but as far as him being a regular character, forget it. Storm would be off in Africa with the Black Panther but would make occassional guest appearances when she and T'Challa are in the States. Stuff like that.