Marvel "Now!"

[Jobydrone]

I don't understand the way these X books all connect though...Uncanny X men, All New X men, Wolverine and the X men, and X Force are all in the same universe, right?  What about X Men Legacy, Wolverine, and X-Men? They seem to be detached from the current continuity.  I just don't get it. 

[wraith1701]

I don't understand the way these X books all connect though...Uncanny X men, All New X men, Wolverine and the X men, and X Force are all in the same universe, right?  What about X Men Legacy, Wolverine, and X-Men? They seem to be detached from the current continuity.  I just don't get it. 

Oh boy; I hope I can keep myself from running off at the mouth  abut this.  I'm kind of an X-Men FREAK.  I'm going to make some generalizations and skip some bits, otherwise this post could fill a book.  ;D

The short version:  Each different X-Series follows a different team of mutants, and they all coexist and operate in the same Marvel universe.

Long Version:

Way back in the 60's, Marvel introduced The X-Men, a comic about a group of  five teenaged kids born with a mutation that gave each of them unique, superhuman abilities.  Professer Charles Xavier took them under his wing to teach them to control and use their abilities to help a world that feared and hated them for being different.



original team: Angel, Beast, Cyclops, Marvel Girl (Jean Grey), and Iceman.


This series had pretty lackluster sales, until a writer named Chris Claremont took the reigns.  He did one of marvels first re-boots to boost interest in the series.  First, he took all of the original characters out of the picture by having them captured by a living, sentient island.  Xavier selects a team of NEW mutants and forms a new X-Men team to go and rescue the original 5. 


The original 5 characters mostly fade into the background, appearing every now and then while the new team takes center stage. Cyclops, the leader of the original team, sticks around to lead the new team. The title changes from X-Men to Uncanny X-Men. 




New team: Nightcrawler, Thunderbird, Colossus, Storm, Cyclops, Wolverine


Uncanny X-Men becomes THE X-MEN book for a while, but Marvel hates to waste characters.  Eventually, Cyclops is replaced by Storm as leader of the team, and he goes off to form another team, called X-Factor.  This team gets its own book, and is made up of the original characters- Cyclops, Iceman, Angel, Beast, and a resurrected Jean Grey (don't ask).




in the 80's,  Xavier starts training yet another group of young mutant kids, and we have another book: The New Mutants.



Years later, members of this team are recruited by another mutant named Cable to form a sort of para-military, mutant-powered strike-force called X-Force.  Another team, another series.




Throughout the history of the X-Men, characters have died and new characters have been introduced.  Some of the characters turn out to be popular with readers, so the ranks of X-Men have been slowly growing over the years.  If all headlining X-Men characters were in just one series, you'd have a team book featuring around 100 different characters.  Rather than try to do this, Marvel has broken up the X-Men into different groups.   Some fans follow the teams they like, others follow the writers they like, regardless of which team book they're working on.

Until recently, we had X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, Astonishing X-Men, X-Factor, Uncanny X-Force, X-Men: Legacy, and Wolverine And The X-Men.  Each book has its own unique team of characters and its own unique "mission statement".  X-Factor was a detective agency, X-Force was a strike team, Wolverine And The X-Men has become a book about a school founded by Wolverine to teach new mutants, Uncanny X-Men was a book about Team Cyclops, Legacy was a team led by Rogue...

With Marvel: Now, some of those books have been temporarily cancelled, some permanently cancelled, and others continue, but now focus on different characters.    There are two "Main" books now:  Wolverine And The X-Men, which focuses on Wolverine and other former X-Men who are now teaching the next generation of mutants, and All-New X-Men, which focuses on the time-displaced Original Five as they face-off against the now Outlawed Team-Cyclops. 

Some "peripheral" books: Legacy now focuses on Xavier's crazy son. Uncanny Avengers focuses on a special team led by Cyclops' brother Havok, and is composed of both X-Men and Avengers characters.  Astonishing X-Men now focuses on Northstar and company. X-Factor deals with former New Mutant Wolfsbane and a number of other mutants who run a detective agency.  Cable and X-Force focuses on Cable and one team of mutants, while Uncanny X-Force focuses on Storm and a different team.  And Team Cyclops will get its own book as well, when Uncanny X-Men relaunches next month.

[X]

Or for a shorter answer. X-men is a descriptive brand. It's applies to the mutant side of the marvel universe and is labeled for convience as there was a different current in the marvel universe when it looked in on mutants.

There are dozens of people that follow or followed the dreams of Charles. While they might not see eye to eye, they are each descendant from his legacy.

And to be clear, you are right Astonishing X-Men is in another universe ... or several. It seems that the Astonishing X-Men have inherited the legacy of the Exiles.

[wraith1701]

Speaking of other universes, I forgot about Age Of Apocalypse and X-Treme X-Men.  And Ultimate Comics: X-Men.  Damn, there are a lot of X-Books.

[Jobydrone]

Speaking of other universes, I forgot about Age Of Apocalypse and X-Treme X-Men.  And Ultimate Comics: X-Men.  Damn, there are a lot of X-Books.

Thanks for the great detailed response guys!  I should have been more specific that I'm extremely well versed with the 60's - 80's when things were a little simpler.  I stoped reading comics with any regularity in the late 80s through all of the 90s until I got back in during the mid to late 2000s, so I missed a lot (not a lot that was very good I've been led to understand but a lot of content anyway).  I'm just not clear on how the current Wolverine book seems to be following a completely different story than Wolverine & the X-men, they seem to be happening concurrently but with no connection to each other.  Same with the books "Uncanny X-Men" and "X-Men."  And there's a book where Dazzler (I love Dazzler, sue me.  She was in the best X-Men video game ever made in the 80s) is zipping through universes with an alternate Wolverine, a pre-teen Nightcrawler and the disembodied head of Charles Xavier that seems really cool, kind of like Sliders meets the X-men.  And there's a book that's been following Rogue on another planet, but not the Rogue I'm familiar with?  I guess I have to actually read them to truly understand, and not just flip through them at the book/comic store. 

[WillEagle]

I'm a Dazzler fan too, Joby. I have all of her original series and just recently was looking for more books that feature her. I think I saw where she is in the New Excalibur series from a few years back.

[ChrisMC]

I really miss those X-Books from the 80's, when it was X-Men, New Mutants, X-Factor and Excalibur. Just seems very chaotic nowadays with those books. I have no evidence to back that up other than there are like 30 of them. Great crossovers back then, Fall of the Mutants, Inferno, the old X-Men vs Avengers. Guess I'm getting old and set in my ways.

[Jobydrone]

I'm with you there Chris, which is why I love All New Xmen so far...to me it reminds me of the good old days.

[wraith1701]

All-New X-Men is one of my two current favorite comics.  The book is freaking INCREDIBLE.  The introduction of the young team from the past does two things for me: It hits the right nostalgia chord to see the relatively innocent and idealistic versions of the present-day characters, and it's a gold-mine of character exploration and development possibilities...  We get some cool insight into Scott & where he's going, and we have the chance to see some great dissection and development of Bobby, Warren, and Hank.  And adding Jean to the mix.. WOW.  She's like an emotional event horizon for just about every X-character out there.  Scott, Warren, Logan, Emma... they're all going to be severely impacted by her being added to the mix.  :)


Off topic, but I'd like to drop the name of my other current favorite series:  Saga.  Such an incredibly awesome book!  Anyone else reading it? 

[X]

I adore Saga.

[wraith1701]

I adore Saga.

Dude; the book is INCREDIBLE.  In an effort not to derail this thread, I posted about it here http://www.treksinscifi.com/forum/index.php?topic=4810.msg144913;topicseen#new

[ChrisMC]

So far my faves are All New-Xmen and Uncanny Avenger. Love Cassadays' naturalistic style and it's cool to see Havok gettin' some love! Always been one of my favorites, and he always got screwed over.

[ChrisMC]

OK, I picked up Superior Spider-Man No. 1. It's pretty much Otto playing himself playing Peter, there is a funny line when he is fighting the new Sinister Six about how anyone can call themselves that nowadays, and they didn't even waste an issue[spoiler]getting their "out" on this whole nonsense set up. When Otto/Spidey is about to kill a baddie, a ghostly hand stops him from killing him. Yep, it's Peter's katra saying he's stopping him, and he's going to find a way back. [/spoiler] Just confirms what I thought about this being a pure publicity stunt and not really about improving the character.

[X]

OK, I picked up Superior Spider-Man No. 1. It's pretty much Otto playing himself playing Peter, there is a funny line when he is fighting the new Sinister Six about how anyone can call themselves that nowadays, and they didn't even waste an issue[spoiler]getting their "out" on this whole nonsense set up. When Otto/Spidey is about to kill a baddie, a ghostly hand stops him from killing him. Yep, it's Peter's katra saying he's stopping him, and he's going to find a way back. [/spoiler] Just confirms what I thought about this being a pure publicity stunt and not really about improving the character.

This storyline already jumped the shark for me.

[spoiler] On a whole, the issue is good, but when placed into context, the ending reveal pretty much means that this won't last for ever and there will be no consequences in the end. It's also kind of dumb that if you're pretending to be peter, you decide not to act like him at all and you change a costume to be more violent...[/spoiler]

[ChrisMC]

Agreed, there's no awkwardness when he's interacting with people...he's just being arrogant and non-Peter like. I don't think Peter ever called people "dolts".