Generation X: a failure?

[Blackcat]

Now it's been a while since Marvel stopped publishing Generation X.

If we look at the team now we see:

Skin: died
Penance: into comic limbo
Jubilee: de-powered
Synch: died
Banshee: de-powered
Mondo: one version died, the other into comic limbo
Chamber: de-powered
Husk: became a 'background character'

Only M and Frost are still active.

Was Generation X a failure?
I not only mean the book, but also the whole idea behind it by Xavier, Frost and Sean.

[twilight]

Now it's been a while since Marvel stopped publishing Generation X.

If we look at the team now we see:

Skin: died
Penance: into comic limbo
Jubilee: de-powered
Synch: died
Banshee: de-powered
Mondo: one version died, the other into comic limbo
Chamber: de-powered
Husk: became a 'background character'

Only M and Frost are still active.

Was Generation X a failure?
I not only mean the book, but also the whole idea behind it by Xavier, Frost and Sean.

Now it's been a while since Marvel stopped publishing X-men.

If we look at the team now we see:

Angel: became a 'background character'
Iceman: de-powered
Jean: died
Cyclops: handled poorly
Beast: handled poorly

Was X-men a failure?
I not only mean the book, but also the whole idea behind it by Xavier.

[Sharcque]

Now it's been a while since Marvel stopped publishing X-men.

If we look at the team now we see:

Angel: became a 'background character'
Iceman: de-powered
Jean: died
Cyclops: handled poorly
Beast: handled poorly

Was X-men a failure?
I not only mean the book, but also the whole idea behind it by Xavier.
The original X-Men series is still on-going. It's the Uncanny X-Men.

[twilight]

*slaps Sharcque with a dueling glove*

[mattbib]

The original X-Men series is still on-going. It's the Uncanny X-Men.Not really, no.

[Sharcque]

*slaps Sharcque with a dueling glove*
doh! LMAO! "a dueling glove" ---- gonna laugh at that all day! Thanks, Twilight!

Not really, no.
Granted, it stopped for a couple of years, but then when it came back, it kept on with the numbering.

But yeah, your point about the original 5 is a good one. I don't see the originals as failures, but for some reason, I do see Generation X as failures. Then again, the originals have had 30+ years to become legends.

Ask me again about Generation X in 2025. :D

[twilight]

Ask me again about Generation X in 2025. :D

Be careful what you wish for :evilsmile

[The Sword Is Drawn]

It depends in what way you view Generation X. Yes, to a degree, unlike the New Mutants before it, very few of it's characters made it beyond the books life. But, on the other hand those characters within it, flawed as they were as individuals, all came to their own natural end once their story was 'done' rather than dragging them on as characters who didn't work.

I would, however, argue that Emma Frost was also a casualty of Gen X. She developed in Gen X from a two dimensional villian into a fully rounded individual, whose world view was changed by being a reluctant good guy for a change. She ceased being just a predictable 'bitch' and became a better character for it.

The Emma Frost from that book was almost totally ignored by Grant Morrison when shoved into New X-Men. He clearly had either never read the series, or simply chose to ignore it. I feel Emma Frost is now suffering, from Morrison's decision here, as writers are now unsure what to do with her.

[fishtaco]

I don't think it's a failure. It went 75 issues deep.

[The Sword Is Drawn]

I don't think it's a failure. It went 75 issues deep.

Exactley. It ran for far too long to be a failure. People were still reading it, and by and large it was worth doing so.

[gary]

I would, however, argue that Emma Frost was also a casualty of Gen X. She developed in Gen X from a two dimensional villian into a fully rounded individual, whose world view was changed by being a reluctant good guy for a change. She ceased being just a predictable 'bitch' and became a better character for it.

The Emma Frost from that book was almost totally ignored by Grant Morrison when shoved into New X-Men. He clearly had either never read the series, or simply chose to ignore it. I feel Emma Frost is now suffering, from Morrison's decision here, as writers are now unsure what to do with her.

I think you're being unfairly harsh on Morrison here. Remember that after Counter X Emma had already began to turn back to the dark side, in manner and deeds. In the last issue she even killed her sister!

And for what it's worth I don't think Gen X was a failure but it took it a long time to recover from the awful Larry Hama run and I don't think it ever regained the heights of the original Lobdell/Bachelo run.

[The Dosadi Experiment]

Generation X was a failure, because for all intents and purposes it could have just as easily never happened. The title made no impact on the long run, and influenced nothing.

Three characters that were created specifically for the title trickled into other titles, where they received very little attention.

Husk, Skin, and Monet. Skin died, Monet is currently starring in X-factor after quite some time out of every title on the market, and Husk was shoved into the background and her history with Generation X forgotten. Her character butchered by Austen who needed a young girl to hook up with Angel. Currently she's back in limbo.

Jubilee had a reputation and had plenty of adventures before Generation X was conceived. She hails from the era of Silvestri and Claremont, the Outback days. Her return to the other titles after Generation X ended was lackluster and even less than a footnote, she has accomplished nothing since Generation X.

Frost was already a character established and named when Dark Phoenix came to be. However the character grew and developped in Generation X. Her personal history had been revealed, and she changed.
During the last days of Generation X she regressed into her old modus operandi of being a cold-hearted bitch, after she had her sister destroy what she had build with the kids in Generation X, she killed her sister and it changed her.

Her role in the core titles today, and ever since Generation X ended, is one where you can safely assume that Generation X never happened for the character.

Emma Frost as we see her now is the Emma Frost who took control over Iceman's body when she lay in a coma. There is a gap a decade-wide, that is being ingored completely.

Her personal history has been altered in a very blattant manner to suit the needs of one writer.

Generation X is a complete and utter failure because it never happened.

Nothing in it is of any importance to whatever stories and personal dillemas are currently running. As far as Quesada and his writers are concerned, it never existed.

[The Sword Is Drawn]

You're right, on Frost. It really is like she just came out of the coma.

[milly3cat]

Emma Frost was written well for the series, and Sean was too.
Chamber was created for it is has been a popular charater with fans.

[The Fury]

The series itself was resonably successful.

The after math and handling of characters since is appualing.

[The Sword Is Drawn]

Emma Frost was written well for the series, and Sean was too.
Chamber was created for it is has been a popular charater with fans.

They were written well, yes. The relationship between the two of them has never been touched upon since. I'm hoping they might encounter each other again in Deadly Genesis.

Chamber was indeed a fan favourite.

[The Lucky One]

Depends on your definition of failure, I suppose. If you mean in terms of continued longevity, then, yeah, it might be considered a failure... but then, so would the New Mutants to a large extent, at least these days. For that matter, so would a lot of great literature. In terms of commercially... well, it made money for a few years, so it was at least a partial commercial success. Creatively? Well, it wasn't the New Mutants, but there were some good runs in there- Lobdell's and Faerber's, namely. It's all relative.

-D

[Haunt]

Now it's been a while since Marvel stopped publishing Generation X.

If we look at the team now we see:

Skin: died
Penance: into comic limbo
Jubilee: de-powered
Synch: died
Banshee: de-powered
Mondo: one version died, the other into comic limbo
Chamber: de-powered
Husk: became a 'background character'

Only M and Frost are still active.

Was Generation X a failure?
I not only mean the book, but also the whole idea behind it by Xavier, Frost and Sean.

hell no it wasn't a failure. Marvel's a failure for cancelling it, not securing the most talented creative team they could find to continue with it, etc. the series was at least twice as groundbreaking as Academy X was in its time. the choice of Banshee and Emma Frost as headmasters was brilliant. heck, i would support a solo title for any of the individual mutants who were introduced in this book.

[Faded]

No I don't think it was a failure.

The current statuses of the characters mean nothing except for who will be a casualty to Marvel's newest event or threat.

Banshee was de-powered?

[lament]

No, Generation X was not a failure, imo. It was a fabulous book that I can still read and enjoy today. Sean and Emma were extremely well-written both together and separately. Their chemistry was amazing. The kids were, for the most part, compelling and well-handled.

The only failure I can see is on the part of later writers who grossly mishandled several of the characters. For example, there was no good reason to kill off Skin. He was a character who had enormous potential, and it was just wasted for a mediocre shock-value storyline.

And Paige had so much promise. Here was a character who could have (and still might) grow into a strong female hero, but what? The only storyline she was good for was a blah romance with Warren?

And don't even get me started on Sean and the X-Corps storyline.

I'd like to see a good writer bring Sean into one of the X-books as a main character, possibly X-Factor.

[Babylon23]

I don't see the book itself as a failure either.

I think the problem with both Gen X and New Mutants is the idea that these teams feature the future X-Men. When the books end, the members almost never "graduate" into the X-Men lineups. Cannonball is the only New Mutant to now be an X-Man, and Chamber is the only Gen X'er who made it into the team.

The problem is that there are too many X-Men to begin with. There's very little room for these characters on the X-Men teams, so they almost invariably end up in other x-books (like M in X-Factor).

[Erik Lehnsherr]

My friend, nothing Monet related is a failure. It's a joy to read whenever she's available.

[DDM]

The editors dropped the ball when the creators Scott Lobdell & Chris Bachalo left the book; it never fully recovered. Why? Lobdell did not fully reliaze the potential he had with Monet, Synch, Skin, & Penance. Generation X may have turned out differently had Lobdell stayed on for about 25 for issues to deal with the mysteries of said characters.

[jawbreaker]

Generation X is a complete and utter failure because it never happened.

Nothing in it is of any importance to whatever stories and personal dillemas are currently running. As far as Quesada and his writers are concerned, it never existed.

yeah. there was a recent Newsarama interview where Quesada said he feels a lot of 90's characters were simply bad characters that not even a good writer could salvage. Gee I wonder what 90's characters he had in mind. :rolleyes: I wish someone with a Newsarama account would ask him about Marvel's lousy treatment of the Gen Xers for that Joe Friday's Q&A segment...I dont think thats a question thats come up yet...

I dont think we'll see anything positively done with the Gen Xers until they start hiring creators who actually grew up with the comic & want to write these characters again. Kinda like how a lot of writers are into reviving 70's/80's characters right now. But for Gen X's case its gonna take a while...

[streator]

i enjoyed generation x.
i think they're easy targets for "current" writers to do away with.
honestly, most of us have been reading marvel comics for a while.
most of us connect with established characters more so than new ones.
marvel is more likely to off skin than cannonball, even though both were at their respective times "new mutants".
marvel is aware that most of its fanbase has been around to see cannonball in his various forms.
marvel wants to sell comics. few new characters end up making it, unfortunately.
thus, skin gets killed and is mourned under the wrong name.


/gen x didn't fail in the same way the current new x-men book won't fail: both were significant but will eventually fade. the majority of characters will (again unfortunately) fall by the wayside.

[Faded]

yeah. there was a recent Newsarama interview where Quesada said he feels a lot of 90's characters were simply bad characters that not even a good writer could salvage. Gee I wonder what 90's characters he had in mind. :rolleyes: I wish someone with a Newsarama account would ask him about Marvel's lousy treatment of the Gen Xers for that Joe Friday's Q&A segment...I dont think thats a question thats come up yet...

I dont think we'll see anything positively done with the Gen Xers until they start hiring creators who actually grew up with the comic & want to write these characters again. Kinda like how a lot of writers are into reviving 70's/80's characters right now. But for Gen X's case its gonna take a while...

Salvage?

Since when has it been tried...other than making them easy corpses for writers to use? :rolleyes:

[generalbradicus]

Generation M seems to be wrapping up the charecters from Generation X nicely. Gen X was far better to me than New Mutants. Since couple weeks ago I saw Iceman get his powers back in X-Men then i'm hoping Jubilee and Chamber follow suit.

[Tre Styles]

Generation X was not a failure. Some of the writers who handled the book failed the characters and the story ideas that were behind the book. As far as it not having any impact, well, I disagree with that. No matter what, it brought Emma into the forefront, and made her a major player on the X-Men team. The fact that she and Sean began training the next group of X-Men again plays highly into the mythos that is part of the Xavier Institute. It brought us characters such as Chamber, who although he's decimated now, was hugely popular, and played a role for a while in the X-Men. He even had his own mini-series that addressed mutant racial issues.Generation X re-established the "school" part of the X-Men, which hadn't been seen since the New Mutants. At the time of it's introduction, GenX was wildly successful, and had a strong fan base. It was only when certain writers took over, that the book began to go downhill. But even with that, the idea behind GENX is still seen today with New X-Men Academy X, which is basically a mix of GenerationX and New Mutants. NXAX is basically Quesada's remix of GenerationX. You could say that it's GEnX-lite....so, I'd say it has had a major impact on storylines. Even Grant used the mutant school in his stories. So in conclusion, to say that Generation X had no impact or was a failure is an opinion that I can't agree with. I agree that the intial outset of GenerationX was good, but the final execution was horrible. For all people want to try and "erase" the memory of the GenXers, you will find that there is a fondness for these characters, whether they're dead, alive, decimated, or living with screwed up origins and that's not going away anytime soon. :cool: ;)

[Alan2099]

Generation X had it's own toy line. How many comic series have had their own toyline?

[milly3cat]

Generation X had it's own toy line. How many comic series have had their own toyline?

There was all so a movie made of generation x.

Husk, M, Jubilee, chamber all become X men after the series. For a time any way.

[milly3cat]

I think the problem with both Gen X and New Mutants is the idea that these teams feature the future X-Men. When the books end, the members almost never "graduate" into the X-Men lineups. Cannonball is the only New Mutant to now be an X-Man, and Chamber is the only Gen X'er who made it into the team.



Husk, M, Jubilee also become X men for a time too.

[TimGunn]

I liked Generation X better than Academy X but not as much as New Mutants.

When was M an X-Man?

I also thought it was neat when the Massachusetts academy had to let all the human children attend and Generation X had to keep it secret that they were mutants. They other kid-X-Men titles never did anything like that (if I remember correctly).

I still don't understand the whole M, twins, Penance, Emplate thing, I was going to re-read those issues over the Christmas.

Original New Mutants
Cannonball - occassionaly an X-Man
Sunspot - comic limbo/background character
Wolfsbane - back on a team as of today!
Mirage - de-powered and kicked out of the school
Karma - not sure, comic limbo? background character of Academy X?

[dazzler_slave]

I don't see the book itself as a failure either.

I think the problem with both Gen X and New Mutants is the idea that these teams feature the future X-Men. When the books end, the members almost never "graduate" into the X-Men lineups. Cannonball is the only New Mutant to now be an X-Man, and Chamber is the only Gen X'er who made it into the team.

The problem is that there are too many X-Men to begin with. There's very little room for these characters on the X-Men teams, so they almost invariably end up in other x-books (like M in X-Factor).
Both Cannonball and Moonstar were X-Men. Karma is considered a member of the X-Men because she teaches at the school. Magma was briefly a member of X-Treme X-Men

Jubilee was an X-Man before joining Gen X. Chamber and Husk were also members of the X-Men. M was a member of the offshoot X-Corporation, but was a liason to the X-Men for one mission.

[dazzler_slave]

I think the problem with Gen X is twofold.

1. Right now there is a hate on for 90's comics, both within the comic industry and with many readers. Unfortunately, Generation X is a completely 90's X Book. Until the guys that were kids reading Gen X are the new writers at Marvel, many 90's characters are screwed. It will happen eventually, that 90's nostalgia will reign. When I started collecting comics in the late 80's everyone talked about how crappy 70's comics were and now look at all the 70's characters getting exposure!

2. Marvel is not sure what to do with Gen X. First there were the New Mutants, but they grew up, so Marvel created Generation X as the new kids. Then, during Morrison's run, a whole school of mutants were introduced. What Marvel should have done is put the Gen X kids into the school and have them be the same age as the other kids, but for some reason they tried to age them so they were older than the Academy X kids. The problem is that they are generally being written as adults. If the Gen X kids are now in their late teens, early 20's, then the New Mutants are in their mid to late 20's and the X-Men are in their early 30's. This is a problem because that ages everyone more than Marvel would like, so their solution was to get rid of the Gen X characters so they don't have to figure out their ages. It was so stupid! Really, there weren't that many years between the end of Gen X and the beginning of Morrison's run. There was no reason why the Gen X kids couldn't have just stayed teens and attended the school. It would have been an easy solution. When the New Mutants were introduced they didn't suddenly age Kitty Pryde just because she had been introduced a couple of years earlier. Marvel sometimes does things the hard way when there is a simple solution. :rolleyes:

[The Sword Is Drawn]

I agree with a lot of what your saying there Slave.

I think I'm in a minority. I grew up reading in the 80s, but saw the vast majority of the 90s as a great improvement on the previous decade, in art and story. But 90s comic books are now being thoroughly damned as stylised and stupid, largely by online communities, but also via media sources, and writers and editors themselves. I do think it's unjust in a lot of cases, and I would include Generation X in that bracket.

I also think you're right in your second point. There really was no room for Gen X once New X-Men began, they just didn't fit. The characters were tried in other places but wheras the New Mutants progressed from their own book into X-Force and X-Factor, Gen X had no place to go. They weren't really given a great chance to develope, and many were dead by then anyway.

I think there was a lot of wasted potential there.

[dazzler_slave]

I agree with a lot of what your saying there Slave.

I think I'm in a minority. I grew up reading in the 80s, but saw the vast majority of the 90s as a great improvement on the previous decade, in art and story. But 90s comic books are now being thoroughly damned as stylised and stupid, largely by online communities, but also via media sources, and writers and editors themselves. I do think it's unjust in a lot of cases, and I would include Generation X in that bracket.

I also think you're right in your second point. There really was no room for Gen X once New X-Men began, they just didn't fit. The characters were tried in other places but wheras the New Mutants progressed from their own book into X-Force and X-Factor, Gen X had no place to go. They weren't really given a great chance to develope, and many were dead by then anyway.

I think there was a lot of wasted potential there.

I agree. A lot of potential was wasted. Synch was a very intetresting character but he was the first to fall. I have always loved Jubilee and now she, along with Chamber have been depowered, effectively shelving them. Skin developed so much from his first appearance and they just killed him for kicks. Penence is gone, as is Mondo. Husk was written as a completely different character by Austen that I don't even recognise her anymore. I have faith in M's treatment by Peter David, however, and at least she will continue.

As to there being no room for Generation X to go after Academy X, why couldn't they just have been absorbed into the student body like Jubilee was absorbed into Gen X back in 94? At least we would see them from time to time this way. It would have been preferable to the massacre which happened instead.

[Teamballin]

I don't know about ya'll but I liked Generation X up until the last few issues because it related better to me, I mean i was a teenager and they are teenagers with problems way deeper then what I had. It was always hard to figure out who the leader of the team really was tho. It was a failure after a while because they didn't have the big events like the onslaughts and phalanx to keep fans excited about reading the book and then the artwork slowly went down hill as well. They coulda been involved a lot more to boost there morality. They also killed off Synch he was like one of the most promising mutants since Cannonball.

[Chocolove]

I think it's difficult to declare a book a failure, even from a marketing perspective. 70+ issues is certainly out of the norm for a (at the time) new book's survival rate, particularly with new characters and (at the time) B list mutants. Admittedly my interpretation might be slewed by the fact that when I first began to seriously collect comics on '99, I was primarily collecting X-books and Gen X was the book that I put the most effort in collecting.

For me, they were all new characters, though I was aware of Emma, Sean, and Jubilee being around before hand (heck, I actually wanted Sabretooth to be part of the team), they were like new characters to me and that was the mindset I had initially reading the book. Nowadays I prefer new/obscure characters to the more mainstream ones, though not by much.

As far as what got the book cancelled, I'd say a lack of direction is what did it in. There were a lot of story arcs that did little to advance the book's original premise and what did happen was rather convoluted (M, M, M and Penny). I felt as if the book had degenerated into the wacky adventures of the x-men kids with very little in the way of plot/character growth, though they did change their costumes a few times. With Spiderman, you can get away with crap, 'cause he's Spiderman -- Not so with just about any book that's supported by a brand new cast.

For the primary X-books Counter X was just a bad idea executed horribly and, for Gen X, the benefits the unofficial relaunch had came too little, too late. Personally, for why I finally dropped the book at this time... Warren Ellis. Yes, there was progression being made (if at the cost of Synch's life), but I've never cared for Ellis' style. Now, I don't believe Ellis' writing got the book cancelled, as stated earlier whatever he could offer came too little, too late for a title that had basically been dying for over a year. In retrospect, the only reason I stuck with the bok this long was due to a desire for completism.