It’s actually good.
I usually like to stick to speaking for myself, but this time I’ll go ahead and bet that anyone else who saw X-Men Origins: Wolverine and/or X-Men: Blue Frasier has spent the last year following the news about X-Men: First Class through barely parted fingers like they were watching a horror movie at a slumber party. We had high hopes, sure—we may not be optimists, but we’re all here to have a good time—but over the last few years the custodians of the franchise had made the prospect of an X-Men movie something to dread. They had chosen to tell the story of Logan’s jacket. They actually got me to say the words, “That’s no way to treat Deadpool.” Let us linger for another moment on Blue Frasier.
There was a chance, apparently far above average, that this was going to suck without the people responsible caring too much one way or the other. The checks were going to cash either way. Instead, thank God, apparently the X-Men movies are now a perfect distillation of the comic reading experience: they got atrocious, but we kept showing up until they got good again.
I would have been able to play it cool if Hollywood had birthed another lackluster X-movie, but it would have been my secret heartbreak. You see, while I may not fit the profile, and I don’t talk about it as much as certain people I could name, I am actually one of the big time mutie lovers from way back.
Uncanny X-Men was one of the books I actually subscribed to as a child, back when I had no idea when things were coming out and had no internet to spoil them for me. It’s funny to think about now: I became a Marvel kid in the eighties because I looked at DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths and said, “Yikes! That seems overwrought, unnecessarily complicated, and difficult for a newcomer to follow.” Then I promptly started reading Chris Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men (unofficial tagline: “Did They Ever Go Back and Explain That? They Didn’t?”)
As a kid whose tastes steered more towards the lone heroes like Spidey or the Hulk, a kid who thought The Avengers looked like trying to read dry toast, the X-Men were my first experience with a team book, so through them I got to experience the Line-Up Shuffle for the first time. If you were a Spider-Man or Hulk reader, no matter what else happened you were always reading about the same Spider-Man or Hulk. (Back then, anyway. Since then… yeesh.) When I talk to someone about how much we liked the X-Men, though, there’s a great chance we’re thinking about completely different characters. Every reader has his or her own set, and you never forget your first.
I imagine when most people think of the X-Men, they’re either thinking of the team from 1963 or the team from 1983. Whenever the characters are feeling nostalgic and one of them has an old portrait of the team to gaze at (which happens so often we should probably add it to the drinking game) it’s usually one of these two. Actually, these days a lot of them are probably thinking of The Whedon Team as well. Looking at “my” X-Men now, though, they look like the team the network would throw together while they were working out a salary dispute with the real cast. I look at the picture above, and even though they were my team a part of me still thinks, “Psylocke and Longshot, huh? What, you couldn’t get Madcap and ALF?”
Don’t get me wrong! It obviously worked. I stuck with the book religiously for years, as did essentially everyone else reading comics at the time (it was, you whippersnappers, the best-selling-by-far book on the market for more or less the entire time I read comics as a kid). It’s just this unrecognizable blip in the book’s history. I don’t think Professor X, the mansion, or the school were in the book the entire time I read it.
I wonder what people jumping on now will be saying in twenty years. (Hopefully not something that begins, “See, comic books were these illustrated periodicals, a little like storyboards. It’s where the term ‘comic book movie’ comes from.”)
The era of my personal X-Men was best summed up after they “died in Dallas” during the earth- and junior high-rocking Fall of the Mutants. When Professor X’s original team hears about Dallas on the news in the pages of X-Factor, Jean Grey sits in front of the TV and thinks, “Hmm. I recognize Storm, and I think the beige one is Wolverine… and I guess those other guys are the freshmen? Or something?” And this is coming from someone who’s still on the school mailing list. As far as I can recall, the woman never held a job where Cyclops was not her boss.
That can’t do your psyche any favors, by the way. Graduating from high school and then getting a job at your high school. Yes, I know the world fears and hates you, but transitioning into adulthood should mean more than getting your own single in the dorms. I don’t care what species you are.
Come to think of it, have they ever held a graduation at that school? Does Cannonball just think he’s in the 21st grade? The whole situation is unhealthy over there, the more I think about it. That school just did not prepare young adults for the workforce, and that mansion was like a roach motel. Ten new kids join the team every year, and nobody ever leaves. No wonder they needed eight books in the nineties. It wasn’t market saturation; they just needed the room.
Sadly, the X-Men wrapped the excesses of the nineties around them like a warm blanket on a bed of money, and those excesses drove me away from comics for the better part of a decade. When I came back, though, I had the X-Men movie to thank. I always say Alias got me back into comics, and that’s true, but I wouldn’t have been looking for Alias if Bryan Singer hadn’t gotten me digging through my old longboxes again and wondering what my old friends at Xavier’s were up to.
This weekend, then, I will be remembering the pleasures of 2000 and 1987, and adding a feather to 2011’s cap to boot. Meanwhile, somebody three rows behind me will be trying the series out for the first time and walking out of the theater with their X-Men.
Jim Mroczkowski knows in his heart that to someone, somewhere, the X-Men just aren't the X-Men unless Mimic is on the team.
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Very well said! I hope Cannonball DOES think he’s in 21st grade.
Randomly, Jean Grey was a model for like an issue in the 60s and has been padding her resume with it ever since. What I’ve never been able to figure out is what she taught when she was a teacher there. “I pretty much gather any information I need telepathically, good luck on your standardized tests, kids!”
Ah, Jimski, you had me at, “That’s no way to treat Deadpoo.”
Wonderful
That Longshot/Havok/Psylocke/ect team is actually one of my favorite lineups. I loved the outback storyline and it still has my all-time favorite x-issue. the one where Wolvie gets crucified on a giant X by Donald Pierce and the Reavers. He has these crazy hallucinations that i found soo facinating as a kid. it drew me into the mythology of the x-men. Also, it has the greatest X-cover of all time: http://blogs.furman.edu/makingcomicbooks/files/2011/05/Wolverine-Crucified1.jpg
@MisterJ Ha! I forgot the ‘L’. You know, it looks better that way.
I think Jimski and I are in accord regarding Blue Frasier.
Grew up with the 90’s show.
At that point the X-Men were divided in 2 teams. Blue and Gold. Yeah, how awesome was the 90’s. As a kid, I was a blue team fan.
Wolverine, Cyclops, Psylocke, Gambit, Beast, Rogue, and can’t remember the rest.
Because of my sporadic reading of the comics and then my undying love for the show my team is a bit of a humble. Cyclops, Wolverine and Beast have to be there. I love me some Rogue and Storm as well and anytime Collosus and Nightcrawler are on the team it’s a good time.
Wait- So you have seen it already>?
Generation X!
X-Men Blue and Gold was pretty cool too. The Jim Lee character redesigns are iconic.
@WHATTHEDAST I started in that era too. Since X-Men had that handy #1, they had me hooked on the blue team from the beginning. I was a little sad that Jean was rarely in the pages of adjectiveless in the begining, but Rogue’s a darn fine substitute if you ask me.
My dream team would be:
Wolverine
Rogue
Husk
Rachel Summers (Claremont era not Brubaker era)
Cyclops
My dream team: Cyclops, Colossus, Iceman, Rouge, Storm, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, and screw it Beast too.
Invitation to be ridiculed: I actually liked Blue Frasier Beast. It’s pretty close to how I imagine Beast speaking. Please don’t be too hard on me…
Yeah, Frasier was fine as Beast. It was everything else about that movie that was terrible.
As I told someone at the time (my wife? a stranger at the bus stop? it’s been a while) Kelsey Grammer would have been interesting casting as a voice in an X-Men cartoon. Real life has a whole different cargo hold full of baggage.
@Jimski It was so “on the nose” as to be ridiculous. When Kelsey Grammer talks, you hear Kelsey Grammer at best, Sideshow Bob at worst. There’s a reason he doesn’t have a film career. He’s a personality much more than an actor. At least that’s how it feels.
Also, the X-Men theme song from the 90’s needs to be the general theme song for anything X-Men from now on.
Especially the new movie.
I also grew up with the Outback X-Men, which of course is my favourite. The fact that it was such a cast of unknowns or B-level mutants made it interesting. Can’t wait to get my Fall of the Mutants Omnibus in the mail! I wish they would collect the Aussie years. We’re kind of getting the latter half with the Jim Lee and Christ Claremont Omnibus, but the stuff between Fall and Inferno is still uncollected. Would love to see a Marc Silvestri and Chris Claremont Omnibus or whatever you want to call it to get those issues in a nice volume or two.