Amph The Great Soontir's and Glorious Chissman's comic talk shop. (ITT get yelled at by a crazy person)

Yeah but Raven don't forget.

you're terrible.

 

One thing I disliked about Morrison's run (and don't get me wrong I overall enjoyed it) was the feeling I got from it that it was being hip and edgy for the sake of being hip and edgy. Like all of the sudden "We're wearing leather jackets and we're cool" which I understand was a shout out to the movies, but it still didn't come off well IMO. The Magneto reveal in #146 is still one of the biggest "WT(H)?" moments I've had reading comics though, and he did manage to kill Phoenix off and have her stay (largely) dead up until this point, so there's that.

 

I never got that feeling. I found that it made the X-Men matter again after so many years of being irrelevant.

 

Oh most definitely, the X-Men had been floundering for a while beforehand. I know, I had been buying X-Men since about "Onslaught". "The Twelve" arc was disappointing and that "Revolution" event was just horrendous. Morrison gave the universe a much needed enema.

 

Though it built on Morrison's run, I have enjoy Whedon's Astonshing X-Men more than Morrison's New X-Men.

 

The funny thing is, he intended to bring her back himself. And then kill her. And then bring her back. And then kill her. And then bring her back. And kill her again. Basically, he wanted it so Phoenix would automatically come back quickly, meaning that we'd never be rid of her.

 

I'd be enjoying it more if its two-year story hadn't taken four years to come out. My guess is that'll be receiving an omnibus of its own late this year.

One thing I disliked about Morrison's run (and don't get me wrong I overall enjoyed it) was the feeling I got from it that it was being hip and edgy for the sake of being hip and edgy. Like all of the sudden "We're wearing leather jackets and we're cool" which I understand was a shout out to the movies, but it still didn't come off well IMO.

Definitely agreed. I also got the feeling that he was a couple years behind the curve of the hip-and-edgyometer. In his "Morrison Manifesto" I really got the feeling that he was trying way too hard and not quite getting the culture he was attempting to cater to.

 

i've really enjoyed astonishing x-men too.
it has that classic sort of x-men feel that hovers somewhere around a made for tv movie.

but let's face facts here;
there was no X-Men after claremont. it ended when he left.

 

Which time?

 

after x-tinction agenda, which was a pretty lousy crossover anyway.
that's probably why he really left a few months later.

 

And yet Exiles ended when he and his girl, Psylocke, arrived.

 

No now we have NEW Exiles. Sheesh, I thought Marvel had gotten over their itch to relaunch everything with a "New" in front of it...

 

But he's got an even better title coming out: GENEXT!
http://marvel.com/catalog/?id=8725

 

Uhhhhhh.......I'm not sure about that. I mean, benefit of the doubt and all, but still...

 

hey, look, i'm not defending anything claremont did with exiles...
he's the one that got rid of miguel o'hara after all, which makes me much less interested in the series.
but the stuff he did on his 16 year run with the x-men was the stuff of legend.

 

And therein lies the problem. He still writes comics as if it were the early 80s. In the meantime, the form's conventions have changed and the way people read comics has moved along with those changes. In addition, his same-old themes, while perhaps still relevant, have gotten stale in the way he clings to them in the same-old way.

 

No one is denying the impact he had on the X-Men. His original run is the stuff of legend. The Hellfire Club stories, Proteus, Dark Phoenix, Days of Future Past, etc etc etc...the list goes on and on. In fact, IIRC Grant Morrison even called his own NXM as a sort of tribute to Claremont's original run. If you have to name one definitive X-writer, it'd have to be Claremont. However, it's also clear that he's lost a step or two since those good old days. His overly wordy styles, frequent use of the same plot devices (really, how many mind control stories can be done?), and tendency to use pet characters (Storm, Psylocke I'm looking at you two), has not really aged well, espicially in this more dynamic time of story telling. It's not disrespecting the many accomplishments he had throughout the years on this franchise to point this out. And Marvel is even compensating for this by giving him his own venue (New Exiles and Genext) to tell stories while not forcing his style on the main books again.

 

Agreed. As far as Morrison's "tribute," I think the real issue was that Claremont's original run was all he'd read of the book. He said very clearly in his manifesto that he hadn't read the last 15 or 20 years of comics and he wasn't going to. The tribute probably came from that those early Claremont/Cockrum and Byrne stories were, with the exception of Crossovers and Events available in TPB form, the only X-Men he'd read while writing his stories.


Changing the subject, Lowe, Carey and Yost talk Divided We Stand here and mention "big changes" to the X-universe come July. "I think it?s fair to say that we aren?t done over here in the X-Office. Endangered Species and Messiah CompleX were the set-up and first punch for the big changes that we started into motion when Axel Alonso took over as Group Editor of the X-Books. They were our way of summing up the past few years of X-Books, kicking them into high gear and breaking down the status quo so we can move the X-Men in a new direction."

 

JMS no longer exclusive to Marvel

How much you wanna bet this comes from the OMD fiasco? I wonder if he's going to write some DC or Image stuff now. He did a good Teen Titans story back in the day.

 

Amazing so many people are so bitter at him. I for one never liked Babylon 5, but have enjoyed almost every comic of his I've read. I'm glad he's no longer exclusive at Marvel, though. Now if only Bendis would step back and give someone else a chance to play with the Avengers. . .

 

whatever happened to larry hama?

 

I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, but how many "bold new directions" does that make for the X-Men this decade now?

I'm almost certain the JMS thing is OMD related, but that's not the total cause. OMD was probably the last straw, the "Well now I won't feel guilty doing outside work" kicker. What titles would he be good on in DC though? Legion?

As for Larry Hama, no clue to be honest. That's a name I've not heard for a long time. A long time...

 

Up until "The Other" JMS run on ASM had been fantastic...since then it seems like his stories were just servicing the needs of everyone else in the company...

 

Yeah, that's one thing that had really turned me off from Amazing, the whole "IRON COSTUME TO CIVIL WAR TO AUNT MAY BEING SHOT TO BACK IN BLACK" pattern that the title got stuck in.

 

He's been over at Devil's Due writing stuff for "G.I. Joe", when they had the license. The real where are they now is Howard Mackie.