AvX: Which side are you on.... but why?!?

[Relique du Madde]

Most of the time, as I lose interest in a series (comics, movies, TV, etc), it's a general waning of interest followed by a cutoff where I decide the time input isn't worth it any more. It's relatively rare that I can pinpoint the exact point in the story where I stopped caring about the plot. This is it, right here. Once a series decides they are going to literally throw out all history and stop playing by any set of rules, I simply have no desire to follow it any more.

Relique, please note that this is directed at the series, not at you. Like Bullgrit, I also stopped following X-men in the 90's, and thought I might be interested in this new plotline. The summary you posted, however, has been immensely helpful. I am extremely grateful to have learned about this early on, before I invested anything in the new series.

Trust me, many of the fans feel the same way since the quality of all marvel comics have been fluctuating wildly as a result of every yearly event derailing continualty while destroying the ongoing storylines. Except for the case of a few arcs, it seems alot of story arcs in the last 5 years been filler between major universe events or line events.

Seriously.. it saids alot when the two spin off series of the last event concludes a month before the begining next event.


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[Agamon]

RdM, thanks for that comprehensive update.

I'll I can say is o_0

My mind is boggled. Officially.

LOL, I agree. I'm currently trying to get caught up on some MU stuff (just finishing Civil War). The X-Men stuff is confusing, to say the least. I've been sticking to Bendis' New Avengers and Whedon's Astonishing X-Men so far, and they're well written, it's too bad this crossover crap has to mess with the writers' storytelling.

Anyone know anything about this new Avengers Assemble comic? It's obviously piggy backing on the movie (the roster is the same as the movie), but is it part of the current continuity, tying in with AvX? Just seems like odd timing.

 

[jonesy]

I kind of find myself on the side of Phoenix. I stopped reading X-Men sometime 2000, and all that sounds insane.

 

[GSHamster]

Do comics not bother with "small" stories anymore? Like old episodes? Or are all stories crazy, huge ramifications, let's change everything, plotlines?

Also, I'm with [MENTION=10324]jonesy[/MENTION]. Maybe Phoenix will reset the universe back to some form of normal.

 

[billd91]

The current X-men story line sounds all sorts of fed up. But then I stopped buying them back in the mid-1990s. I've read House of M recently and, while it was interesting, most of the stuff swirling around the titles just makes me cringe.

The main thing I found worth reading from Marvel recently was the Ultimate lines of comics. Ultimate Fantastic Four, Ultimates 1 and 2 (I thought 3 was awful), and Ultimate Power were well worth reading. Ultimate Xmen had some decent stories too. Too bad they decided to implode the Ultimates lines.

 

[Relique du Madde]

Trust me there have been good "small" stories however, they haven't appeared in Uncanny X-Men, though ymmv. They tended to take place in between events or whenever the X-Office allowed the writers to tell the story they wanted without acting on editorial mandates.

For instance, X-Schism only had two "tie in books" The first one was horrible (Prelude) and was basically the writter talking about how awesome Cyclops is and how everyone lovesCyclopse. The official tie in story in Generation Hope actually was better then X-Schism and focused for the most part on Idie then the other "lights'"reaction to the events.

Uncanny X-Force was several self contained stories which had huge ramifications (mainly Arc Angel's ascencion which happened because one character thought that letting Child Apocalpse live and training him to be an X-Man was too risky). 18 issues later, Uncanny X-Force (and the X-Men in general) are still dealing with fall out from that one decision.

Wolverine and the X-Men, has been chaotic...but it's been fun. The entire series so far has been "smaller" stories that really spun out of X-Schism and Uncanny X-Force.

There are other short story arcs and one offs which have been pretty good, however, as mentioned before they tended to only be the ones that escaped being forced into the "grand event treadmil."

Personally, I think the flaw with marvel is the fact that EVERYTHING has to tie into the "block buster summer event!" If Marvel's editorial were smart they would only make the major events happen every other year so that the storylines could have a breather for once.

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[Zelda Themelin]

I side with Phoenix too. Maybe they re-start everything and save world from that chaos. I think that Chaos god won long time ago, whatever it was.

Really interesting to know about those things. I stopped reading marvel years ago. But permanently I stopped after that crystal event. Which of course wasn't real end. I have read some random issues since and oh gosh they are awful. They are really un-fun. They read like they wrote them for some jaded adults who still like comic books.

I miss more "innocent" or well later times of comics like they were around 1980-1989. It wasn't that I grown up. It was because comics changed. And I didn't like new direction. Too serious subjects presented half-assed ways and too much confusing story-lines and splits to many crossover to many magazines whose heroes didn't intrest me. It was becomming more a money sink too. It was bad enough when there was unicanny x-men, new mutants, x-factor, excalibur and occacional what if...

Then crossovers was in every magazine basicly when there was some big "event". I gave some thought of starting read them again. But doesn't look so good.

Maybe next time....

 

[megamania]

Comicbooks have changed a great deal in the 35+ years I've been reading / collecting. The style of art, pacing of stories, story content and even the concept of trade paper backs have changed the books. X-men and others.

My opinion is that Valiant Comics is still the best books that made it out there (until being bought out in the mid 90's).

I hope the relaunch of the company in May will be good. We begin with X-O, then Harbinger, Bloodshot and Archer & Armstrong.

 

[Nellisir]

It's relatively rare that I can pinpoint the exact point in the story where I stopped caring about the plot. This is it, right here. Once a series decides they are going to literally throw out all history and stop playing by any set of rules, I simply have no desire to follow it any more.

Ironically, for me it was when Grant Morrison decided the world's mutant population should go from thousands to millions, seemingly overnight. It killed huge amounts of the X-Men "feeling" when it seemed like almost everyone was either a mutant, or related to one. House of M was the editorial correction to that. I think cutting the number of mutants down to 300 or 198 or whatever the official count was was an overcorrection, but I also think it was purposeful and the editorial offices are working off some kind of 10-year plan. It seems logical that the end plan is some kind of sustainable status quo similar to the 1980's & 90's, because this "endangered species" thing has lost it's glitter, but...we'll see.

I'm trying really hard to believe there's a master plan.

I do like that the New Mutants are the only ones really living Xaviers dream. [rant] <rant>It'd be nice to see some kind of transition that allows some of them to finally move into actual X-Men leadership roles, but I'm pretty sure that's just crazy talk. Newbies can be X-Men (Armor), Hellions can be X-Men (Warpath), but the Cannonball is the perpetual hopeless hick, and the New Mutants are always second-class.[/rant]

PS - And y'know, it seems really weird that Professor X has fallen off the face of the earth again. :/
<sigh> </sigh></rant>

 

[Relique du Madde]

I'm trying really hard to believe there's a master plan.

So do it.

Newbies can be X-Men (Armor),

I often find editorially mandated Wolverine/Cyclops groupies to be annoying. Pixie was cool before her bust size grew 4 cup sizes in a day, she grew 5 inches taller, aged 3 years, gained a stripperiffic body and became a magical X-bus.

Strangely enough, Quentin Quire becoming Wolverine's tag along actually is interesting, and I'm glad Idie hasn't really acted like Wolverine's other side kick girls.

the Cannonball is the perpetual hopeless hick, and the New Mutants are always second-class.

That's because Cannonball is useless. Seriously, his only time to shine was Carey's X-Men run, AoX, and in Well's NM's run. Sadly just when he was seamed to reach a new level of awesome and had his mojo flaring, both Carey and Wells decided to neuter him so that Danny Moonstar could become an action girl extreme.

Unfortunately, I don't have any confidence that Gage will make Cannonball awesome again because he already decided to continue with Rogneto, continue with Rogue's Mary Sue treatment and even worse spent his first arch of Regenesis making Team-Wolverine look like an incompetent idealistic asses.

If only Marjorie Liu choose Cannonball for Astonishing in addition to KArma. Sigh missed opportunities... At least Face-cannon will most likely return from his corner in obscurity.

PS - And y'know, it seems really weird that Professor X has fallen off the face of the earth again. :/
<sigh> </sigh></rant>

I'd rather have chuck become a wall flower then have another year of "Professor X is a d-bag arse who is evil and needs to get out of my face, even though our current leaders are committing every crime we are crucifying Professor X over.."