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Arrgh! My brain!

I know all of this stuff and it still hurts to read.

I know all of this stuff and it still hurts to read.

Doesn't it, though? Especially Inferno and Cable. I haven't felt quite so foolish explaining something since the time my class had a table at Emerald City Comics Convention and several of the parents asked me who the people dressed as Skrulls were supposed to be.

This gives me flashbacks to trying to explain the X-Men to my friends back in the day. And this was before the Ultimate Universe and the cartoon.

Anyway, to address two things you mentioned, I forget the issue number, but an issue of Marvel Team-Up had Spider-Man and Kitty Pryde. Kitty was babysitting a couple of kids who got kidnapped by the Morlocks, IIRC, and somehow Spider-Man got involved.

In the 90s cartoon, there was a flashback showing Ms. Marvel explaining how Rogue absorbed her powers.

Now, try explaining the age-ing thing, where Kitty Pryde was 14 or 15 when she was first introduced in the Uncanny X-men way back in the early '80's and she's 18 in the Astonishing X-men when she finally sleeps with Colossus. Just a couple years ago.

Then explain the "Days of Future Past" storyline where a future and older Kitty Pryde from 2012 (or circa) comes back to try and change the "Future".

Bearing in mind that 2012 is less than 3 years away.

heh heh heh.

"I forget the issue number, but an issue of Marvel Team-Up had Spider-Man and Kitty Pryde. Kitty was babysitting a couple of kids who got kidnapped by the Morlocks, IIRC, and somehow Spider-Man got involved."

Marvel Team-Up #135. I think Spidey may have met Kitty before that - bumping into the X-Men when she was a member - but I think that's the first time Kitty worked with Spidey without the other x-Men around.

"Didn't Rogue officially join somewhere in here?"

I want to say it was a little earlier than that, maybe around #168-170, give or take. As memory serves, Rogue comes to Xavier pleading for help, Xavier makes her an X-Man (which doesn't sit well with the other X-Men), the X-Men travel to Japan after getting an invintation to Logan's wedding (as a result of the Wolverine mini), Viper & the Silver Samurai attack, Rogue is willing to sacrifice her life to save Logan's fiancee (can't remember her name), which impresses Logan, and because Logan comes to accept her, the other X-Men do so, as well.

You've got to make sure you take a canary with you when you go plumbing the depths of X-Men continuity. When they choke to death on the minutiae, get the hell out of there.

It's also a sad statement that I knew all of this information even though I don't care about the X-Men franchise at all.

Huh. This reminds me of how I got into comics in the first place: by reading the saddest comic ever published, the Marvel Handbook Deluxe Editions. I was the kind of kid who had fun reading the real encylopedia, so it sort of worked out. And for the eight seconds it was actually accurate with its info, it was maybe the one place where all the convoluted insanity of a sprawling decades-old shared universe could be made to appear, er, sensical, if not exactly well-planned.

The big thing that happened when I was first getting into the sordid business of buying back issues as a result was that I followed villains' appearances. Frankly, villains at Marvel were often the characters who most benefitted from continuity or consistency or whatever you wanna call it. Since their appearances were sparser, but generally still meant to tie together, as a younger and burgeoning fan I could actually get all or most of a given villain's story. And of course, villains tend to get closure in losing that heroes don't get, what with the latter having to fight neverending battles and cope with neverending subplots.

That also explains why I never got heavily into the X-books: even their villains were so blasted overcomplicated and the wicked schemes so heavily retconned (when they weren't insanely Byzantine to start with) that I never got a real feel for them as antagonists, characters, or even bits of some patchwork pseudo-storyline across titles. Even if you're only reading, say, Inferno, good luck trying to make any sense out of Sinister's arc there.

And then the 90s came, and even the villains in every other title were written that way.....

I should say, superhero comics.

Ultimate Kitty Pryde's costume is fantastic. Or at least the mask is. Who designed it? Immonen? Bagley?

Also: Iceman and Polaris got back together briefly either toward the end of Austen's run or the beginning of Milligan's. Either way, the relationship didn't last, as Lorna ran back to Alex (and then they left the planet and were abandoned in outer space). Both runs were pretty damn terrible, though, so you should probably recommend Rachel not bother with the trades.

Also, also: Wolverine & the X-Men premieres Friday, January 23rd, on Nicktoons, for those who are interested. Not sure on the timeslot.

Thank you for this article, which helps reduce the head trauma caused by trying to decipher X-Men continuity.

As for Ultimate X-Men; I maintain that had the book continued in a less-convoluted way after Millar and Kubert left, a way which kept the team to seven characters and didn't dwell on trying to Ultimatize every last X-character, it could have stayed viable without being an imitation of the MU X-Men's excess.

There is no apostrophe in 1990s. It's the plural of "nineteen-ninety," i.e. 1990, 1991, 1992, etc. Each of these is a nineteen-ninety-something year. Referred to in aggregate, they are the 1990s.

If you have three books, you wouldn't refer to them as "the book's" would you? I would hope not, at least. (Though I'm well aware of how many people would, and do. They're wrong. Please try. This isn't advanced college-level English, here.)

As for Ultimate X-Men; I maintain that had the book continued in a less-convoluted way after Millar and Kubert left, a way which kept the team to seven characters and didn’t dwell on trying to Ultimatize every last X-character, it could have stayed viable without being an imitation of the MU X-Men’s excess.

That said, the Vaughn run managed to make a virtue out of the problem in many respects with the twists in its Genosha storyline and a few other bits here and there.

I think my favorite UXM issue was the Bendis one where Wolvie has to deal with the mutant teenager whose power kills about everyone in his home town.

sorry, I meant Ultimate, I forgot UXM can mean Uncanny

If you have three books, you wouldn’t refer to them as “the book’s” would you? I would hope not, at least.

This is a bad argument though because different entities are pluralized in different ways, and some entities are pluralized with apostrophes. For example, if you have three doctors, you WOULD refer to them as "the Ph.D.'s" with the apostrophe.

Or even more closely related, if you were talking about a collection of letters distinguished by certain characters (not so different from a collection of years distinguished by certain numbers), you would say something like, "The word 'piece' has two e's in it," and use the apostrophe to pluralize.

Also, since 1990 is a numeral, the choice of plural form is especially confusing. For example, it would not be wrong to write something like "Out of all the SAT scores in the school, there were three 1990's," or "I won the poker tournament with a pair of 9's."

So even though it's wrong, it's not unreasonable to put an apostrophe in the plural of "1990."

Too... much... stupid!

Wait, is Rachel Summers Rachel Grey? Or is that another character?

I got about a third of the way through this explanation and my head exploded.

Wraith said:

"There is no apostrophe in 1990s. It’s the plural of “nineteen-ninety,” i.e. 1990, 1991, 1992, etc. Each of these is a nineteen-ninety-something year. Referred to in aggregate, they are the 1990s."

And Wraith is correct...now. It used to be that it WAS written as 1990's, but that usage has changed.

If I write something about how many times the letter e appears in piece, I like to write it as:

There are two "e"s in piece.

Or you could change the wording to say:

The letter "e" appears twice in piece.

Yeah, that's probably a better way to write it, Alan. I was just writing it that way to give an example of how apostrophes could be used in pluralization.

Also, I would trade all the Liefeld panels in my 90's X-Men longbox for corresponding Greg Hatcher student panels. In Rachel's one picture of a pillow fight, she demonstrated more diverse, natural facial expressions and body poses than Liefeld did in his entire tenure on the X books.

Ha, I mean 90s. That really was unintentional.

While all of this is what it is, Greg, I *still* don't get why you like Scott and Emma as a couple. Nor do I remotely think that it's logical for Scott to have ever sought counsel from someone who has tried to kill him, his wife, and basically everyone he ever gave a damn about on multiple occasions, regardless of whether said person is now a team member or not. To me it's just incredibly bad writing.

So please, explain why this particular element appeals to you.

what about Nathan Gray? from age of apocalypse. or are we not trying to further confuse this poor girl.
if you really want to break someone's brain, explain the origin of the vision and his body.

Actually, the Rogue and Ms. Marvel plotline did come up in the cartoon. I forget the name, but there was a great episode when Ms. Marvel's personality started haunting Rogue and she ended up putting her mind back into the original body and finally coming to terms with her past.
You shouldn't have told her the Grey/Summers family tree over E-Mail. I love explaining that to people in person. The looks on their faces are always hilarious.

Grammar, the only thing more convoluted than X-Men history! Like in the case of the noun "deer". It takes the same form for both the singular and the plural. So, if one were to talk about "the deer's hooves," does the apostrophe appear in the same place regardless of whether you are talking about the singular or the plural? I honestly haven't a clue! It's much simpler when you can pluralize a word by adding an "s."

My head hurts! I'm off to draw a diagram of the various X-Men timelines, including all the members' sliding ages since 1963. That should be much easier!

Congratulations on getting though all that without using the term 'continuity'. With all the passion and discussion in the fandom over continuity you can easily forget that a large segment of the population doesn't even know what the word means, at least in the context we use it in. Although the fact that Rachel here is so adamant on reconciling the comics and movies into a single narrative shows the appeal that continuity clearly has in the audience. Here is a person that clearly hasn't been indoctrinated into the continuity paradigm, and still retains the desire to reconcile. There are many good arguments against continuity - many of which I support - but this a good arguments for it.

I'm not enough of an X-man fan to really be entering the argument - and I can't speak for Greg - but I can see the appeal of the Scott-Emma relationship. For me it has similarities to the Peter-MJ relationship. Sure Jean is who Scott is supposed to be with, just like Peter was supposed to be with Gwen, but who wants to see characters with who they're supposed to be with. Emma is who Scott isn't supposed to be with - and that's what makes it interesting.

Regarding the 'Rachel Summers' versus 'Rachael Grey' thing...

Rachel changed her name somewhere around Uncanny 450. This was after Jean 'died' the latest time, and when Scott and Emma shacked up. She did the switch as an homage to her Mom, and a dig at Dad as she didn't really approve of the relationship. But it is the same character.

Or alternatively, you could also see it as writer Chris Claremont taking a dig at earlier writer Grant Morrison.

I love Morrison's depiction of Cyclops. I think the Scott/Emma relationship was explained very well by Morrison on Scott's side and by Whedon on Emma's side.

Another aspect of Emma's evolution of a character that most people choose to forget is her role in the 'Generation X' book. It's not as if Emma went from being a grade a villain to moving into the mansion instantaneously. She did spent a better part of a decade (real time of course) working alongside Xavier at the school portion of the operations.

Her role as a teacher from the Hellions to Generation X to Genosha to the Xavier Institute is the most consistent portion of her portrayal as a character.

In that context, I think she's one of the more believable villain rehabilitations out there since the change happened fairly holistically over time. Her moral shift was always much easier to accept that (say) the repeated attempts to shoehorn Mystique or Sabertooth into the side of angels.

Others are making most of the Emma arguments I'd have made, and honestly I don't CARE about it all that much, I'm not reading any X-books at the moment anyway. I like Warren Ellis on the book but Astonishing X-Men was downgraded to discounted-trades-only status in this household after that Ghost Boxes business. That was just robbery.

But you can set all the in-story arguments off to one side. The main reason I like Scott-and-Emma is because it makes me laugh. Her role on the team as the eye-rolling malcontent who just wants to, you know, kill everyone or mindwipe them and be done with it cracks me up, and you NEED someone on the team to do the snide zingers.

Moreover, I enjoy the idea that Emma's trying to be good but isn't really very skilled at it. She clearly loves Scott FOR his goodness and decency but doesn't quite know how to get at her own little spark of it... there are endless games you can play defining that relationship, there's fertile ground there. Certainly more than there was with Scott and Jean and their Perfect Love. The only way to generate any tension there was apparently to turn Scott into a dick, which was the one part I didn't really care for about how the relationship with Emma started. Though I did like the idea that Emma started it as a lark, a way to amuse herself, but then it got away from her. I know a lot of real-life loves that started that way, and oddly enough, they seem to last longer than high-school-sweetheart relationships do.

On top of all that, I'm just tired of Scott and Jean, and I really prefer Jean being DEAD. Like she was supposed to be the FIRST time. It diminishes her heroism to keep bringing her back, like death is just an inconvenience on the level of a bad case of the flu. But Marvel's pretty much gone on the record as saying Jean will be back and once she is, I'll bet you a year's pay against a Liefeld issue of X-Force that eventually some writer will kill Emma or otherwise remove her from the team, restore Jean to Scott and all will be as it was. This is the company that magically annulled Spider-Man's marriage to "get back to basics," you know. Let us Emma fans have our fun while we can.

Hah, you'll have to excuse me, Mr. Hatcher, but I can't help but laugh at how you complain in your column at some of us fans for being obsessed with continuity details but then you overexplain the answers for your student's questions. (Though I think that was your point as well. ) Really, was that much detail needed? Couldn't you have said something like, "You know how the Harry Potter movies aren't the same as the books? Same deal here." And such.

What pisses me off about the X-Men continuity is that much of it was messed up INTENTIONALLY. Did Cable HAVE to turn out to be Cyclops' son from the future? No. Did they have to solve the Madelyn Pryor problem by turning her into the Goblin Queen? NO. Do they HAVE to keep bringing Maddie back from the dead? Definitely not! And the Replace-Jean-With-Emma thing? Almost as bad as One More Day. I can understand that a comic that has been going on for decades can get continuity problems, but when you do things like these, you have no one to blame but yourself. I hate to say this, but if there's a Marvel title that could use a Crisis-style reboot, it's X-Men.

I can’t help but laugh at how you complain in your column at some of us fans for being obsessed with continuity details but then you overexplain the answers for your student’s questions. (Though I think that was your point as well. )

Mostly, yeah; I think it behooves us every so often to see how this sort of thing looks from the outside when you try to explain it.... but also, to be fair, Rachel enjoys the detailed answers.

I don't know if I've mentioned this in print, but my students generally are fascinated with the history of the Marvel and DC characters. They know the movies and the cartoons and such, and over and over in the fifteen years I've been teaching cartooning and comics, they ask me-- this is my favorite question-- "I saw the movie, but what REALLY happened?" They know there ARE comics, they understand that there is some sort of history for the characters, but they have no clue what it is or where to find it. The difference between this and the continuity-obsessed-- I think, anyway-- is that the kids just want to KNOW the 'real' history. They don't want to refine it or correct it. They just want to know what the baseline IS: How did Professor X hurt his legs, how'd it all work out with Peter and Mary Jane, and so on and so on. Look at how Rachel's trying to puzzle it out with the roster. I get that kind of question from kids ALL the time. How did it all begin? Then what happened? Those don't strike me as 'continuity' questions.

Denny O'Neil once called it "post-industrial folklore," and that's as good a name for it as any.

Also, before you get swarmed-- there are TWO "Crisis-style" X-Men reboots available to you and have been for some time. The Ultimate line and the Marvel Adventures line. (I hope you aren't one of those people who says, "But those don't COUNT," because I do hold the opinion that fans worrying about what COUNTS as opposed to what's GOOD is a lot of what skews bad comics to the top of the sales charts.)

Although even in the main line of X-books (the ones that 'count') I think the case can be made that you got pretty close to a cold reboot with Morrison, and then again with Whedon in Astonishing.

GREAT run-down Greg (except for your irrational hate for the 1990s X-Men!!!). i knew almost everything in your column (there was only ONE thing i didn't know but i'm not saying what it is!!!). anyway the entire point of my post is this:

AWESOME CARTOON, RACHEL!!! it brought a huge smile to my face.

I'll one day be lynched for this, but I think Scott and Emma are way more interesting as a couple than Scott and Jean.

Ted:

I can't buy into the Scott / Jean= Peter / Gwen analogy at all. MJ was never a criminal who had tried to kill Peter or Gwen. Nor do I necessarily buy into the Scott / Jean "destined lovers" bit, either. In fact I rather enjoyed it when Scott was dating women such as Colleen Wing and Lee Forrester years and years back, before the Madylene Pryor character was introduced. That actually showed the character as a functional human being to some extent.

But then I would've left Jean dead to begin with and let Madylene just be herself (not a clone or anything to do with Jean or Phoenix in any manner), let Scott retire to Alaska and only be an occassional recurring guest character for a while. After all, the whole point of Xavier's School initially was to let people learn to manage their abilities and function normally in society, not forever serve as superheroes / soldiers / whatever. Just like Claremont claims to have intended all along. (This is why the notion of having multiple writers writing the same characters without any singular vision that must be adhered to screws up not only the so called continuity, but just basic logical storytelling.)

Sure, Emma is "not" who he's supposed to be with, but I don't see where that makes it interesting. For me, I don't see why ANY woman would want anything to do with Scott after he left his wife and kid to get back with the woman he thought was dead, when the wife was for all intents and purposes basically the same person sans the telepathic powers. "I'm sorry, dear. Even though you gave birth to my son, you can't read my mind, so adios." It made Scott the most scummy, worthless being around, and that's never really changed. I really don't see how anyone on the team really ever justified hiding the truth from Jean all the while, or remotely put up with him. Emma I suppose may not care about that (after all, it was before she was around the team on a regular basis), but still what woman in their right mind would want a guy who pulled this kind of stunt?

Anonymous wrote:

"Another aspect of Emma’s evolution of a character that most people choose to forget is her role in the ‘Generation X’ book. It’s not as if Emma went from being a grade a villain to moving into the mansion instantaneously."

Well, it's easy to choose to forget since it was a craptacular book, but irregardless, no, I had not forgotten that Emma, for all her flaws, has always been a teacher like Xavier and I'm not suggesting that Emma has no place in the school or on the team. I'm just saying that most sane people would not become romantically involved with a person who has tried to kill them in the past. There's this little thing called trust that I think would be a gaping chasm of an issue in such circumstances.

*******

Greg:

Thank you for your answer. Had you given me the same as the above only, I wouldn't have bought it. But talking about how the characters make you laugh and why, *that* I can accept as personal reasons, and I appreciate you sharing that side of it. You like Emma as a character and I agree she has her purpose. I guess I just think she'd be just as effective a character for what she brings to the table without adding a relationship with Scott to the mix.

Greg:

Thank you for your answer. What the other people said, with all due respect, I could debate very quickly. (Peter / Gwen / MJ is nothing at all like Scott / Jean / Emma - MJ never repeatedly tried to kill the other two, for example. And my issue was never about Emma being at the school, rehabilitating herself or whatnot. It's can you logically see yourself dating someone who's tried to kill you on multiple ocassions? I sure as hell can't. It's mentally effed up beyond even what passes for 'effed up' relationships.)

But I do agree with you about what Emma as a character brings to the table. I guess I just think she's as effective a character without the relationship with Scott, and that it detracts from *her*, moreso than it does him. I mean, she may be a criminal, but she does have her own sense of ethics and I guess I just don't think she's the type who wants a guy who dumps his wife and kid. She's a bit too self-minded and domineering, and I don't think she would ever trust him to be worthy of her because of his past with Madylene, any more than he should trust her because of her past actions.

I'm not a "Scott & Jean Forever" guy. Like you, I feel she should have always been dead. Of course, like Claremont I'd have packed Scott off to Alaska and left him with a 'happy ending' with Maddie and just brought the character back as a guest star now and again. Because holy shit, that makes SENSE.

But this is Marvel. And at Marvel, we can't have anything make sense.

Gah. Stupid computer said the posts didn't go through. Sorry about that, folks.

By the way, speaking of Emma, I want to credit the site I got many of these page scans from: EmmaFrostFiles.com. I forgot to mention it last time and I didn't want to miss it again. Really a terrific online resource for all things Emma, cataloging everything from the first Hellfire Club appearances through today.

Scott and Jean are boring together. Scott needs someone to get him to live s little, and Emma needs someone to keep her grounded. They complete each other.

I have to chime in here to out-geek everyone: Kitty and Spider-Man first met, briefly, in Marvel Team-up #118 (in which Spider-Man teamed up with Professor X ). They chatted for a bit somewhere at the start of the issue in the X-mansion's breakfast nook (and Spider-Man was hanging around in the X-mansion because Wolverine brought him there for a little workout in the Danger Room after their team-up in the preceding issue...)
Anyway, Greg, excellent post, as usual; it also reminds me of why I went from being the die-hardest of X-fans (I started somewhere in the middle of the Claremont/Byrne run) to someone who can hardly stand anything comic product labeled "X" these days...

"Also, before you get swarmed–"

Before I get WHAT? *reaches for a dictionary*

"there are TWO “Crisis-style” X-Men reboots available to you and have been for some time. The Ultimate line and the Marvel Adventures line. (I hope you aren’t one of those people who says, “But those don’t COUNT,” because I do hold the opinion that fans worrying about what COUNTS as opposed to what’s GOOD is a lot of what skews bad comics to the top of the sales charts.)"

No, I'm not that kind of fan. Heck, I've been boycotting DC for years (as I think I mentioned in this column once) because as much as I love their characters, I won't accept the anything-for-a-sale-no-matter-how-amoral editorial attitude they have been under since Didio took over. And yes, I know about Ultimate X-Men and X-Men adventures- but those are not "Crisis" style reboots- they're adaptations, in the same way the X-Men movies are, as you already explained. And while I think they were well done, I still prefer the "official" version better. But like many people, I'm frustrated by the lack of vision -and sometimes, common sense- that has made X-Men canon a convoluted mess that so many people find impenetrable (and I actually UNDERSTAND most of it; that doesn't mean I can't see how unnecessary much of it is, as I mentioned above.) I'm just saying that at this point, some sort of clean sweep might be needed, though in general I'm against those. In a way, DECIMATION (as much as it sucks as a story idea) helps, in that it forces many mutant characters to "retire" (until they are needed again, of course) which greatly reduces the number of heroes and enemies the X-Men have to deal with, and thus spares readers from all the exposition needed for them. Even better would be if someone actually sat down, analyzed the X-titles' history, and found ways to explain away the more convoluted stuff, even entire storylines, particularly ones involving time travel. it CAN be done, but it needs a lot of work and care.

You know, if the X-Women had more pillow fights, I'd be reading the X-books a LOT more often. >:)

Rachel calling that X-Men cartoon from the '90s retro makes me feel really, really old, especially since it was big part of my young X-fandom. Also, it's amazing how much of this convoluted stuff in the X-Men's backstory I accepted at face value. When you read it the way Greg was relating it to Rachel, after years of not thinking about it, it really hits you.

Thanks for posting Rachel's questions!

Okay, here's my question:When did Emma Frost become British? I haven't followed the X-men much since 1995, but I read my wife's copies of Astonishing and was surprised to see Emma using British slang. And then I saw the "Scott Bloody Summers" line in the link to Rachel's earlier questions. She's from Boston, right? Or has this been retconned?

Late to the party, a few things:

As someone who was grew up with the X-Men and whose adolescent mind considered Jean and Scott to be the paragon of fictional romances, I love the Scott/Emma pairing, for most all the reasons Greg cited.

Next, allow me to put on my geek hat for a moment and add that the Lucifer injured Xavier's first body; after a Brood Queen hatched out of that body, Xavier had his consciousness placed into a clone of his body, which eventually regained the ability to walk. That body was then later injured by the Shadow King, putting Xavier back into a wheelchair. Until recent events that I'm not entirely sure about restored his ability to walk again.

Honestly, that kind of stuff, as well as the Scott/Jean/Maddie Pryor/Nathan/Cable/Rachel stuff detailed and bemoaned above, is exactly why I like the X-Men specifically and super hero comics in general. When I was a kid first discovering this stuff, I was exactly like Rachel: eager to reconcile all the history and versions and intrepretations, not out of a sense of right vs. wrong or good vs. bad but just to KNOW it, to absorb all that vast, wonderful history. Nothing else I had encountered had that same kind of wonderful, convoluted history to learn. And along the way of delving into the X-Men's backstory, I gained a greater love of other comics, super hero and otherwise, that I never would have developed otherwise.

Sure, I read some bad comics (X-Men and otherwise) along the way, but I also read some great ones. And I still remember fondly my time spent learning and unraveling the tangled web of X-Men history.

"Doesn’t it, though? Especially Inferno and Cable. I haven’t felt quite so foolish explaining something since the time my class had a table at Emerald City Comics Convention and several of the parents asked me who the people dressed as Skrulls were supposed to be."

Once in a while my brother (who doesn't really read comics) will ask me what's going on with a particular superhero character in the comics and after 15 or 20 minutes he usually just keels over laughing. One More Day had him in hysterics. http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/themes/csbg/images/button-publish.jpg

I've always maintained that I absolutely hate how Scott and Emma got together. But I love them actually together in the books that followed. It's strange, but, there it is.

To chime in on some other questions.
JasonM: re: Emma's 'britishness'. She's still from Boston, but I believe it's canon that she has sort of an affected semi-british accent and uses British slang.

Teebore: I'm probably forgetting a few, but in the adventures of Xavier's magically healing/re-breaking back we've also had:
He's been healed by Xorn and allowed to walk. This was actually Magneto, using nanomachines in Xavier's body to bridge the severed connections in his spine. He later took those nanomachines away and Xavier was wheelchair-bound again.
Then, if I'm not mistaken, after House of M, when Wanda said 'no more mutants', Xavier was one of those left powerless... however, for some reason, perhaps in subconscious compensation, he had the ability to walk again. He later gained powers back and kept the ability to walk.

I love this 'column', it's always entertaining to see something I love through new eyes again.

I'm with teebore

That's what makes it compelling. The continuity and the universe is why Marvel and DC continue to dominate the business.

And if you can read and understand science fiction and time travel and alternate realities, i think you should be able to follow the story. Its not that convoluted. I think some X-men fans love telling newbie , OH MY GAWDS, its so messed UP.

Continuity, and figuring out how to write within that is challenging and in no way limits what kind of story a writer can create. After all, these are on-going stories. And Continuity adds depth and complexity.

I started following the x-men in around 2003, to let everyone know my perspective.
And I'm OK for Jean Grey coming back, that's what the Phoenix does.

If you don't mind my asking, since I'm curious because it seemed to take her a while to understand that the movie is not the comics is not the movie, approximately how old is Rachel (the questioner, not Summers)?

If you really want all the X-men books, I recommend the DVD over the Essential collections.

Jason, Emma is not British. But she affects a British accent rather than her native Boston one, presumably because it sounds more impressive.

The only thing I'll say on the whole Scott/Emma/Jean/whoever issue is this - when Scott and Psylocke had a flirtation going in the beginning of adjectiveless X-Men, the fans were practically calling for Betsy's head on a stick. They even had to, months later, blame her actions on "Kwannon's sultry influence" or some such nonsense. And yet Emma wide, although not universal acceptance. I find that strange.
Oh, and Betsy has never tried to kill Scott, either.

I really sighed when you said that Xorn killed Jean. I wanted to say it was Magneto, but no, stupid editorially-pushed retcons say it was Xorn pretending to be Magneto pretending to be Xorn. Because that makes way more sense.

..

Please stop.

Before you influence another person to try to figure out the mess that is the X-Men.

Remember, "no" means NO.

Just say "NO" to crap.

Here's one: explain in four sentences WHO and WHAT Mr Sinister is and WHY he looks EXACTLY like Colossus.

That's right. It will NEVER make sense.

..

" That said, the Vaughn run managed to make a virtue out of the problem in many respects with the twists in its Genosha storyline and a few other bits here and there. "

Vaughan is a brilliant writer and did very well for what was basically an extremely extended fill-in to buy time for a no-show Hollywood writer ( Bryan Singer ), but in a lot of ways, he made the problem even worse; the attempts to justify various extra-genre villains by remaking them into more " realistic " variants largely flopped, either because the originals simply didn't fit that mold ( Mojo, Longshot, etc. ) or because they were taken too far ( Sinister ). The character stuff in that run was incredibly strong, but I wish that instead of screwing around with the X-Men's catalogue of C-Listers, he'd focused more on the X-Men that were already there

Yeah, that's how you know you're officially a massive nerd. I've always said that any true Marvel fan can explain the history of Scott/Jean/Nathan without batting an eye. That's the litmus test. It's sorta the same thing as the history of Hawkman for DC fans. Once you can understand these complex back stories, contradictions and all, like its the most natural thing in the world-- there's no turning back.

I find Rachel Summers/Grey harder to explain than Cable. Maybe because I've read more Cable stuff, but Rachel always confuses me more.

Good article Greg, and I'm glad Rachel seems to be enjoying X-Men comics and their history. You've presented all eras pretty fairly to a newcomer.

However let me make my views clear please.

Let me make this absolutely, fundamentally, crystally clear: Emma Frost is evil. Evil with a lower case e.

She is pond scum. She has no morals, has racist views towards Jews and black people, will happily brainwash and abuse people (implied sexual overtones natch) for her own ends, and has violated many of the X-Men's personal lives many times over the years (to say nothing of being a catalyst for the Dark Phoenix Saga and thus linked to the death of five billion broccoli people). And she's been an implied prostitute in the male-dominated Hellfire Club if you really pay attention to the cahracterisation. If Selene is the Jadis of the X-Men franchise, then Emma is the Cruella de Ville. An old haggard bitter woman who thinks she's "all that" (but isn't) and will pathetically try to mind-fry anyone who gets in her way. Basically, a Scooby Doo villain. Look at her first wrinkled depiction by Claremont & Byrne and tell me how *that* becomes the stupid bimbo sex object displayed nowadays. Because that's what she is and why she is still around now. A big-boobed blonde woman dressed in slutty white oputfits usually shown casually kissing/screwing Cyke out of his right mind without thought. "Here's what you should be girls: a evil manipulative murderer with a great rack and a sexual hyperdrive! That's what we think of you and your whole gender." Jesus Christ. It's like the Claremont Eighties and Ellen Ripley/Sarah Connor never happened.

Lobdell trying to make her into a likeable character in Generation X during the 1990s was a terrible mistake, one of many to happen in that decade to the X-Men. If she had started said school not only would she have worked all the Gen Xers to the bone in some ridiculous slave scheme, one of the former New Mutants or Shadowcat would have knocked her for six. Would have, if anyone bothered paying attention to characterisation. No-one at Marvel cares about what the characters would or would not do as long as they can flog more senseless crossovers and gimmicks.

Then came New X-Men. I have nothing but disrespect for Grant Morrison as a writer, a creator and as a person. His pathetic attempt to drag everything back to the Silver Age is blatantly obvious to anyone who who unfortunately reads 'All-Star Superman' and 'Batman'. He crushes anything remotely modern that he's involved with under a quixotic quest to return things to the 'old way' and the best example is him bringing back the Phoenix force, Magneto, the meaningless death of said two characters and a hackneyed 'evil twin' plot that would make Paul Levitz blush. (see his work on Judge Dredd, Authority and WildCats for more franchise screw-ups because they don't adhere slavishly to SA cliches.) His misguided idiocy forced the forced the X-Men out of the number one position in comics, a position they had always roughly held for about 20 years (given occasonal bumps like Image), and nowadays they are in the 20s or 30s of the sales chart.

Basically whilst everyone else can enjoy the comics they like: I *know* Emma Frost is evil. I know the X-Men now are a pale, sad shadow of their former self (and were even before the House of M depowering and stupid Wolverine/Gambit/Rogue etc. retcons). I miss the huge, HUGE potential that Alpha Flight, the original New Mutants and Excalibur had which was squandered by Marvel appealing to the lowest denominator. And so I can't really enjoy this broken universe anymore.

If this sounds like a warning, well it is. But one with good intentions. Comics can be better, and have *been* better in the past, so why waste $2.99 (soon $3.99) on sub-standard, decompressed and recycled stories written only with the writer's own personal career path in mind? I think we should expect better, and ask for better.

Why don't Marvel editors establish a moratorium on time travel stories? Those tend to screw things up the most, but the X-titles can't seem to resist having a good ol' fashioned time travellin' every few years. It's also represents a bizarre anomaly relative to the rest of the outside-your-window Marvel U where time travelling/shifting doesn't exist by and large.

" Then came New X-Men. I have nothing but disrespect for Grant Morrison as a writer, a creator and as a person. His pathetic attempt to drag everything back to the Silver Age is blatantly obvious to anyone who who unfortunately reads ‘All-Star Superman’ and ‘Batman’. He crushes anything remotely modern that he’s involved with under a quixotic quest to return things to the ‘old way’ and the best example is him bringing back the Phoenix force, Magneto, the meaningless death of said two characters and a hackneyed ‘evil twin’ plot that would make Paul Levitz blush. (see his work on Judge Dredd, Authority and WildCats for more franchise screw-ups because they don’t adhere slavishly to SA cliches.) His misguided idiocy forced the forced the X-Men out of the number one position in comics, a position they had always roughly held for about 20 years (given occasonal bumps like Image), and nowadays they are in the 20s or 30s of the sales chart. "

Questions;

1.) How is keeping Emma Frost a reformed villain and hooking her up with Cyclops even remotely attached to the Silver Age?

2.) Is Morrison entirely to blame for the X-Men's downfall, with Claremont, Casey, Austen, Whedon, Milligan, and House of M/DeciMation being completely innocent?

3.) If Emma cannot be reformed, what about Wolverine, Rogue, Gambit, Bishop, Angel after Apocalypse's brainwashing, Marrow, and any number of other X-Men with checkered pasts?

4.) Why should Marvel care about whether or not Emma is a good role model for teen girls, or at least care about Emma above the other reasons that teen girls don't read Marvel comics?

JasonM:
When did Emma Frost become British?

When Grant Morrison started writing her.

If you don’t mind my asking, since I’m curious because it seemed to take her a while to understand that the movie is not the comics is not the movie, approximately how old is Rachel (the questioner, not Summers)?

Rachel is fourteen, I think. She was my student in cartooning from the 5th through the 7th grade, first at the art studio and then in the middle-school OST art program. Currently she occasionally works as my TA at the studio, and she and her BFF Aja are our helper monkeys at the Emerald City show when the class has a table there.

Here's a picture of her at Emerald City 2007 with Power Girl. PG is holding a picture Rachel drew of her.

When I read this kind of articles, still can't believe I know almost all this stuff (and even more) and for some reason, it makes sense for me. I'm a sucker for info comics, like handbooks, sagas, and now the official index, more I read about, more I want to know, the only thing that give me a headache is time-travel, sometimes is pretty hard to understand. Peace.

That’s the litmus test. It’s sorta the same thing as the history of Hawkman for DC fans.

What's funny about this is that I'm really more of a DC guy than a Marvel guy, I carry much more of THAT history in my head... and I don't think I could explain the full history of Hawkman to save my life.

Great , fun article. Hope to see you at ECCC!

Brian K Vaughan's run on Ultimate X-Men is the only X-Men run I've ever fully enjoyed (Morrison's is good, but there are too many artistic down-moments that cancel out the genius that is Quitely).

And btw, would Jean and Emma not make a more interesting couple than Scott with anyone?

Tell Rachel to get (or ask for as a gift) "40 Years of X-Men Comics on DVD" --The complete run of Uncanny X-Men and other comics from 1963 -2005 in full color printable PDF readable comics. It's the gift that keeps on giving. It's out of production, but still available on Amazon for under $30 -- almost half the original price.

http://www.amazon.com/40-Years-of-the-X-Men/dp/B000E28UT2

Happy New Year,
Marc Patten
Former contributing Editor and Cover Art Director, Comics Buyers Guide magazine.

Personally Greg, I would have skipped some of the details if I were you - they may have been what happened, but some things sound better without all the details (like I'm sure in a brief explanation you could make Jeans return sound interesting, and not just the sales gimmick it was).
One of those things where too much knowledge of the book and motivations for changes can hurt - like how you loathe GL: Rebirth for it's slavish continuity and nostalgia for nostalgia sake, where as I a reader who got into comics just as Hal was being replaced by Kyle found it to be a lot of fun.

His pathetic attempt to drag everything back to the Silver Age is blatantly obvious to anyone who who unfortunately reads ‘All-Star Superman’ and ‘Batman’. He crushes anything remotely modern that he’s involved with under a quixotic quest to return things to the ‘old way’ and the best example is him bringing back the Phoenix force, Magneto, the meaningless death of said two characters and a hackneyed ‘evil twin’ plot that would make Paul Levitz blush.

Yeah man, and like how he got Doom Patrol back to it's roots with Danny The Street, and then he took Animal Man back to being aware of his fictional nature, had the greatest selling OGN of all time where Batman lived through a Jungian psychological nightmare - and don't get me started on his creator owned works, blatant rip offs of everything that's come before...

Seriously dude, with Superman and Batman... why wouldn't you drag them back to a time where creativity and sales were way above what they are today?

They a corporate properties that only really work when viewed for a Silver age lens - I think a lot of long time readers tend to forget that.

As for dragging New X-men's sales down... not sure that happened (except maybe when the editors seemed to refuse to believe they had to give Kordey more than a day to draw an issue).
The series not only sold well as singles, it was collected in three separate hardcovers, tpbs of each story line, a hardback omnibus (well before Marvel started doing that with other runs), and now giant sized tpbs.
You don't do that with books that don't sell.

His misguided idiocy forced the forced the X-Men out of the number one position in comics, a position they had always roughly held for about 20 years (given occasonal bumps like Image), and nowadays they are in the 20s or 30s of the sales chart

And actually, the books were down in a time when Joss Whedon, a big name writing a love letter to Claremont was on the book, and they undid almost everything Morrison had done on the book.
But seriously, you go ahead and keep on hating the guy because you either just don't like, can't understand, or feel challenged ny his work.

I *know* Emma Frost is evil

Okay, but she reformed, realized she was wrong and has turned her life around.
Like a lot of the X-men.
Like Rogue, who once put a superhero in a coma.
Or Gambit, who used to be a thief.
Or any other number of them.
You may 'know' she's evil, but the people who own and write her don't think she is.

They even had to, months later, blame her actions on “Kwannon’s sultry influence” or some such nonsense.

As that storyline went in to play pretty soon after her flirtations started, I'm pretty sure it was always intended to be because of Kwannon - I think the awkward conversation between Betsy and Jean after those story lines where they spelled out what had happened was an attempt to calm down fans who need things spoon fed to them, and still hated Psylocke for taking a shot.

(For instance Greg, when telling a new fan about what had happened in X-Men, I'd skip over the details of Kwannon, and if I had to, skip over the Cyclops affair... it just works better... although for me, that was the storyline I got into x-men on... and for some reason, hung around for awhile).

[...] Another Weekend In Westchester [...]

Thank you for this. The X-Men were something that got me through adolescence and although I have come and gone from reading the titles in a monthly format, I have always had a special place in my heart for them as an abstract extension of my family.

I remember being ten years old and trying really hard to understand the Jean Grey/Phoenix/Madelyne thing or the Psylocke/Kwannon debacle. Even did little diagrams and sketches like some pint-sized quantum physics professor. It's comforting to know there were other people out there really into it too.

Isn't Rachel the daughter of Phoenix and Scott Summers? I assume Jean was still in suspended animation on the bottom of the sea when Rachel was conceived.

Oh man do they always have to point out how bad the 90s were? It always hurts a bit to be reminded that your favorite character (in my case Marrow) comes from a time which is famous for being bad and unfocused and should because of that never be addressed again.

Also i noticed that i have strangely absorbed X-men knowledge without actually focusing on it, by randomly looking around on Uncannyxmen.net, since all these storylines are familiar to me despite having never read a comic (or storyline) which is older than 12 years.

Cyclops over the last year has become in my eyes everything that he's fighting against. He's taking more extreme measures and he's not treading the path of peace anymore. I'm cool with the change, but it makes me wonder when the other X-men will get wise and break off and form a rival X-men group. Emma adds a nice twist though.
By the way are there still any Bishop fans out there? Has anyone considered that his prophecy is coming true about the baby because he's the one killing everyone trying to get to her?

Burnt Frog takes funnybooks awfully seriously.

Let's hear it one more time for the Outback X-Men! Heroes in a world that believes they are dead! And the Reavers with their Mad Max Riff!

Loved it... Then came the 90s... and I left the title.. (not long after the arrival of Cable) Grant Morrison brought me back. I dropped the title again after the "Actually it was Xorn pretending to be Magneto, pretending to be Xorn"... I liked the Magneto on Drugs storyline...

Mind you I also liked Inferno...

Although I first thought Sinister WAS a Dark Collosus, then started thinkning it was his evil twin... then just thought "F&*% it"... The only difference is the cloak and red diamond thing... (don't the rest of the team get confused?!?

I quite liked the recent Colossus: Bloodlines story because it tried to reconcile that...

I have a question about Mr. Sinister. Has he ever intereacted with Apocalypse in the present or in 616 continuity? I know the two work together in Age of Apoc and their relationship is shown in the Further Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix... or whatever that limited series was called. But have the two ever squared off...in present day and what an interesting story that would be!!!!

And yes Sinister does look like a Dark Colossus.

Burnt Frog makes a good point re: How someone interpreting a corporate franchise in a way that you don't agree with makes them worse than Hitler.

(In my world "good" means "batshit insane," though.)

So, did Jean Grey / Phoenix Force literally became THE replacement reality, or WHAT ?
Something about her surgically excising a ' bad ' alternate-future, and birthing a new one ( universe in hand ) in place. Don't know how that fit.
'Coz her just making Scott and Emma go ' kissy face ' made that ending a lot crappier than it was.

"Isn’t Rachel the daughter of Phoenix and Scott Summers? I assume Jean was still in suspended animation on the bottom of the sea when Rachel was conceived."

I may be mistaken, but I think that in Rachel's timeline, Jean/Phoenix didn't die on the moon, but was rather depowered by the Shi'ar (as per Claremont's original script), and Rachel was conceived sometime after that.

It's a good thing the "batshit insane" comic reader isn't physically forcing you to just read what he likes, just giving you his opinion. But maybe I wasn't very clear.

He's not worse than Hitler, he's just not very good at writing IMO. Good British writers include Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Warren Ellis because they can write outside their comfort zone and still try to make things with new readers in mind, even if their originality has dropped a small tad. I think this about them even though sometimes I don't agree with them, because they do their job well.

Whereas Morrison tends to absurdly overthink things, and drown comics in SA nostalgia (see JLA, All-Star Superman, 52, Seven Soldiers, Batman, WildCats and X-Men if you look at prior runs, even Zenith for the '60s Brit obession in Phase 3) or make them incomprehensible to any poor new reader who dares pick them up (see The Invisibles, The Filth, Final Crisis). I admit that saying I had no respect for him as a person was a stupid thing to say but my temper was running very high on things unrelated. I still think he's not good.

FunkyGreenJerusalem, I wouldn't have a problem with Scott and Jean splitting up, or with black leather and a full mutant student body. These are minor things that can be done fairly easily without fraying the battered logic that holds the title together... hopefully in a way so it makes sense. But Emma Frost was a murdering mind-raping racist all from 1979 to the early 90s. Compared to how Rogue and Gambit were presented in their first few years (likeable but with a hint of tragedy and mystery) it's a bit like the Avengers just letting Norman Osborn join them, pre-Secret Invasion when he was still a loon.

Hey, I know Marvel owns them. But I think Marvel is acting dumb, so...

Whereas Morrison tends to absurdly overthink things, and drown comics in SA nostalgia (see JLA, All-Star Superman, 52, Seven Soldiers, Batman, WildCats and X-Men if you look at prior runs, even Zenith for the ’60s Brit obession in Phase 3) or make them incomprehensible to any poor new reader who dares pick them up (see The Invisibles, The Filth, Final Crisis).

I think it's easier to look back now and throw shit on JLA - personally I enjoy it more now than I did a decade ago (isn't it shit we can say that?) - than it would have been at the time... it really helped pull superheroes out of the shit heap that was the late 90's. It dared not to be Watchmen.

Also, I'm not sure where you get silver age from New X-men - he outraged most of it's haters by daring to bring up - and finally finish off a lot of the same old songs that people had been writing for them since Claremont (who in turn had updated what Lee and Thmos had done).

Also, The Filth and The Invisibles aren't incomprehensible at all.
They aren't easy reads, but they are good, and they do make sense.

All Star Superman is the only blatant love letter to the silver age on that list.
Seven Soldiers and Batman are more exercises of joining the continuity of back then to the modern day.
Seven Soldiers is taking what were basically dead concepts and bringing them back, whilst staying true.
Batman isn't great, I'll grant that, but it's not to the silver age, it's to every era of Batman ever, Golden, Silver, Dark etc.

Just note, I haven't read the one's I haven't commented on, but surely he couldn't have done a worse job on Wildcats than Alan Moore - his first issue was good, but the rest was utter shite.
There was no characterization at all, it was just plot, plot, plot - most of which didn't even make sense, but people think is great due to an interesting twist on who the villain was.
I can't believe he did a worse job than Moore.
(That said, Moore gets props for actually finishing his run).

But Emma Frost was a murdering mind-raping racist all from 1979 to the early 90s.

Yeah, but Professor X also wanted to get down and dirty with a teenager in the 60's, Cyclops married a girl who was identical to his dead girlfriend, and then ditched her with a kid the second the dead girlfriend came back from the dead, Rogue 'mind-raped' and stole the powers of a superhero before becoming a good guy, but you're cool with that...

Greg,

Rachel might enjoy my blog, which takes an issue-by-issue look at the much-maligned '90s era of the X-comics. I try my best to present the information clearly for anyone who's not familiar with the source material, and make notes of when new ideas, characters, and concepts are introduced.
You can find it here...
http://notblogx.blogspot.com/

I've been seeing Wolverine and the X-men, and well, there is sort of an explanation, SPOILERS:

Early on the X-men are disbanded, but for x reasons Wolverine has to put them together, and ends up as their leader. Wolverine leading the x-men sounds silly, but the show actually shows the problems with it, and as it progresses shows how he grows as a leader.

Have we ever seen Mr. Sinister and Apocalypse meet in current 616 continuity? What a story that would be!!!!

[...] of Rachel, she will be joining us at Emerald City again this year (dressed as Rogue, she says; truly, the Dork [...]

Hi Greg! I'm the owner at EmmaFrostFiles.com. Thanks so much for crediting the scans...I appreciate it a lot. And I'm glad you enjoy the site.