Grant Morrison's historic three-year run on "New X-Men" has ended. The writer that breathed new life into a stale, self-parodied franchise published his final issue last week. Morrison will follow Stan Lee and Chris Claremont as one of the primary influences on the X-Universe.
Under Morrison's watch, the X-Men maintained their deep characterizations but were portrayed in a noticeably more freakish fashion. Morrison left behind the outlandish spandex adventures in favor of the soap-opera style of plots. He used old characters in ways and created new mutants, something many writers are too cowardly to do. He suggested perhaps Beast was gay.
Old X-fans new to Morrison's bizarre soap-style of writing were put off. New X-Men continued to gain readership, however, because Morrison's work appealed to a more intelligent comic-book reading audience. "Fanboys be darned," in Comics Code Authority terms.
Since the announcement of Morrison's departure nearly a year ago, X-fans have wondered what direction the X-Universe would take. Would Marvel find a new writer to continue the direction Grant Morrison took? Would they ignore his era all together? Would there be inner-book continuity once again?
Marvel answered these questions recently with a shocking revelation: They would be "reloading" every single X-book. Some would be new books, some would be canceled and the surviving books would juggle writers.
"Not again," moan the seasoned readers.
The details of the reload are staggering. Bear with me.
Bishop gets his own book in "District X," which is NYPD Blue with mutants. "X-Force" is back. Original creator and Marvel expatriate Rob Liefeld is going to write it. "X-Men" movie director Bryan Singer is going to write "Ultimate X-Men," which exists in an entirely different Marvel continuity line. (This matters little since the X-Universe no longer has inner-continuity anyway.)
Chris Claremont's "X-Treme X-Men" is now extinct. Claremont moves to Uncanny X-Men with his co-creator of the original Excalibur, artist Alan Davis. Claremont also gets the new "Excalibur," though original co-creator Davis won't be drawing it. Chuck Austen leaves "Uncanny" and goes to "New X-Men," which is re-re-titled back to "X-Men." The old "X-Treme X-Men" artist is attached to it. "New Mutants" turns into the "new" "New X-Men," "New X-Men: New Mutant Academy."
To top it all off, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" creator Joss Whedon is going to write "Astonishing X-Men," which was previously a title that only existed in an alternate continuity time line. This doesn't matter (because there is no inner-continuity in X-books anymore) except that, with no explanation whatsoever, all of the X-books will recognize the events at the end of Grant Morrison's run of "New X-Men."
Whew. See people, this is why only dorks read comics.
Admittedly, the prospect of a total re-load excited me at first. I adore Grant Morrison's "New X-Men," and I liked the idea that someone else couldn't taint it. That was until Igor Kordey revealed why he was unexpectedly fired as artist from the new "Excalibur":
"My opinion is, as it happened with the rest of Reload titles: back to diapers (that's what I call those bright spandex costumes)."
After all of the progress made in the mainstream, the X-Men are putting the spandex back on. Back to unbelievable plots, shoddy writing... and yellow spandex.
Maybe it's a good time to quit reading comics.
Write to Ben at bbmcshane@bsu.edu
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