Comic Book Resources

Great article, man. I really like the original X-Men in principle, though I couldn't stand the 60's comics. Personally, I think the reason for the lack of quality and success for the original X-Men was the fact that Stan and Jack were spread very thin at that point, working on the enitre line instead of just one or two books. For all their brilliant innovation, juggling the X-Men as well as Fantastic Four, Thor, Hulk, the Avengers, Captain America/Iron Man Tales of Suspense, Daredevil, Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, and others I'm probably forgetting was just too much, so the X-Men were one of the unfortunate casualties.

Still, the original team had a lot of promise that still hasn't been fully realized ( credit goes to everyone who's tried, such as the Simonsons on the original X-Factor, or Jeff Parker and Roger Cruz on the current First Class ).

The X-Men are *the* classic example of a comic whose creators didn't quite know how to bring it to life properly, and whose basic concept was done better later on, in the hands of a different creator. There are a few others...Swamp Thing is probably the next best example. I'd make a case for Daredevil under Frank Miller, even though he didn't radically alter the nature of the book. While I'm not hugely familiar with the later Silver Surfer comics, your own article made a great case for the Steve Englehart version being superior to the Stan Lee version. Wonder Woman's 80s mythological revamp is the closest anyone's come to really making the character work (though I still feel Wondy has more untapped potential than virtually any other superhero). Grant Morrison on Doom Patrol wasn't neccessarily a revamp, but he was a perfect fit and took them to a whole new level. And then there's Batman, whose grim 'n' grittiness is basically inherent to the character, but has been reintroduced a number of times over the years, particularly in the late 60s. I feel like I'm forgetting some other, obvious ones.

I've always thought that there are some superheroes who have been kicking around for years and STILL haven't "clicked" with the right creator who could really make them work. Aquaman's an obvious example. But you know who else I'd say was like that? Iron Man. It really seems like he has the potential to be a major league character--he is in the Marvel U., of course, but the average joe has barely heard of him--yet despite a couple of interesting hooks, alcoholism especially, I feel like no one's ever quite opened up the character to his full narrative potential. Maybe the movie will change things.

Claremont's 80's X-Men issues were really in tune with the zeitgeist. They were really bleak and ambiguous stories.

"All of the above." =) Seriously, though, it WAS all of those things everyone's mentioned (and more) that turned the Original Cancelled into the ANAD Franchise. It was a rare-convergence thing.

Not to hijack your post, John, but I did want to bring up something from the Morrison NEW X-MEN thread that I think bears mentioning here: Claremont's most important change was to the metaphorical engine (it's also his most overlooked one). The Lee/Thomas X-Men were freaks, teens rejected from society but told to protect it by their bald dictator. From a feel-your-pain reader perspective, that's not an easy metaphor to tap into. But Claremont's X-Men were rebels, not so much rejected by society as they were mistrusted by it, but driven to protect it by an innate sense of being a part of it. It was a very slight, almost imperceptible adjustment, but one that allowed Claremont to tap into general teenage metaphors that his predecessors couldn't. The "freak" angle didn't disappear, it just applied to mutants in general, not the X-Men specifically--and in doing so, allowed the X-Men to seem less freaky and more "relatable" by comparison. This in turn freed the X-Men from the Dr. Strange-type pulpish stories and into the more superheroic action-adventures.

As for the "Why keep the X-Men name?" question, I'd guess that it was because of the mutant connection. Wein and Cockrum, I believe, were just working on some generic team--not necessarily mutants--at first, but it quickly became apparent that Cockrum's Storm/Black Cat, Colossus, and Nightcrawler concepts fit the mutant mold pretty well. Then when Wolverine made a splash, it sealed the deal for a mutant team. Sunfire and Banshee were from X-canon, so I think that led them in the direction of calling the team X-Men. With Cyke as leader, it became apparent.

I do think it's admirable that the originals didn't fade away, though. As individuals, they are just as much X-Men as their more popular ANAD teammates. Hell, when they were X-Factor, even the X-Men themselves thought they were the real X-Men. And look at the movies: of the 12 characters who could be considered X-Men, HALF of them were originals (including Charles)! So I guess it's a good thing Marvel DIDN'T decide to name the ANAD team something else...

"The rogues gallery also deserves mention; sure, the first 66 issues of X-Men brought us Magneto, the Juggernaut, and the Sentinels, but it also brought us “Grotesk the Sub-Human”, “Unus the Untouchable”, Lucifer, and a big Frankenstein Monster robot built by aliens. Very few of the X-Men’s foes from this era were interesting, credible threats, and of those few, even fewer really felt like they belonged in an X-Men series."

I would disagree and say Unus and even The Blob were credible threats. Those were situations that really had the X-men on the ropes. Lucifer even was intimidating and seemed to be a real challange for the team.
The later developments for those characters weakened them, but they were great villains during their introduction. Don't forget, characters like Doc Ock didn't reach greatness until their second or third appearances.
If Thomas didn't make Lucifer an Alien, or Unus didn't fade into obscurity, the villains could have stood the test of time.

In the case of Lucifer, I don't think it was so much that he was "lame" or silly, but that he didn't seem to be a very X-Men-esque villain. I like the things later writers did with the villain, the species, and the technology (in Avengers, West Coast Avengers, Thunderbolts, et cetera), but it never felt very "X-Men" to me.

I'll have to think about why the Shi'ar don't bug me the same way, though.

When you think about Lucifer's first couple appearances though, when he had only kidnapped Xavier and were trying to keep the X-men from doing 'something'. It wasn't until later when Thomas (who also had the X-Men fighting Nefaria and the Mantis) made him into an alien mastermind.

Kyle Baker did a great 3-panel Unus "vs." Nightcrawler.

I'd love to see this. Where was it printed?

Drat. Misused blockquote. What I meant to say was, I'd love to see this Nightcrawler vs. Unus the Untouchable sequence. Where can I find it?