My love-hate relationship with the X-Men

Up until a few months ago I hadn't touched a new Marvel comic book in years. I have always been a bigger fan of DC, but when I was a kid I used to love reading the Uncanny X-Men, Spiderman, Excalibur, the F4, etc. So what happened to Marvel?

With the Essentials books making their way into the stores I found myslef reading a lot of the stories I used to enjoy as a kid growing up in my Dad's comic store. I began to remember how much I loved the humor and strange sense of family in Prof. X's mansion. I found myself happily enveloped in the budding romance between Colossus and Kitty Pryde, in Nightcrawler's swashbuckling existence, in seeing Scott get the chewing out he deserved, in seeing the formation of the "X-Babies". So what did I do? I went out to the local comic book store and purchased some of the more recent Marvel books to see what I had been missing during my long absense.

I must say, it was a rude awakening.

On one hand, many of the characters were as I remembered them. Thanks to my long hiatus I had managed to avoid Nightcrawler's spandex priest uniform and Wolverine's killing spree (among many other things). Happily both Nightcrawler and Kitty (my two favorite X-Men) were much as I remembered them, although I was always fond of Kitty as Shadowcat and now she's just Kitty. Thankfully Jubilie was hit by M-day, I always hated that character. Scott is still pretty whiny, and Rachel has become even cooler in my absense. But then there's Emma Frost. I get really tired of reformed bad guys - it was annoying enough with Magneto, but for heaven's sake, when we first met Emma she was literally torturing Storm! C'mon, I'm supposed to believe after everything she did as a bad guy that she's reformed?? I mean, check out the picture below - does Emma look like a good-guy? No, she looks like some wierd S&M
chick. She pretty much screams evil vixen. Even Jean Grey as Dark
Phoenix seems less likely to kill you. And then on top of this Scott is
sleeping with Emma. Sure, I can understand that Scott needed to move on after the amount of times his girl kept dying and coming back (not that he ever deserved her) but, Emma Frost? I'm sorry but I remember my Dad reading comics to me as a kid. I would not read any child a comic with Emma Frost as a good guy - I wouldn't want a kid looking up to someone like that.

Lets move on to plot then, shall we? Marvel's plotlines have only seemed to grow more convoluted over the years. Even back in the early 90s I was growing more and more confused trying to keep up with the Marvel Universe. Granted, much of this can be initially blamed by Secret Wars, but not all of it. Now there is all the M-day stuff, Marvel's answer to Infinite Crisis. While it has shaken up the Marvel Universe and has created such good reads as Generation M and the newest X-Factor issues, it has also made a lot of things even more convoluted. I am fairly confused by the new Excalibur storylines as well as some of Deadly Genesis (due to the fact that I hate trying to resolve continuity withing Marvel). I believe that Marvel has a chance to actually write good stories again but after reading Uncanny X-Men 472 I'm beginning to lose hope.

The more recent stories with Rachel and the Grey family were interesting. You cared about the stories because you cared about the characters. Now its seems Marvel is reverting to world-shaking crisises for plot again. The way I see it is they have just had M-Day. For once, it'd be nice if they focused on their characters again. People don't stick with Spiderman or Wolverine because of how many times they are involved in saving the world. They keep reading because they like the characters. If only Marvel would interweave the actual character's stories in WITH the action I think they could have good stories again. If only... *sigh*

Oh well, at least Nightcrawler is still pretty awesome :) I will just have to content myself with remembering the days of the BAMF doll.