X-Men (Comic Book): Difference between revisions

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Under a cloud of increasing anti-mutant sentiment, Professor Xavier creates a haven at his Westchester mansion to train young mutants to use their powers for the benefit of humanity, as well as to prove mutants can be heroes. Xavier recruited Cyclops, Iceman, Angel, Beast and Jean Grey, calling them "X-Men" because they possessed X-tra power due to their possession of the "X-Gene", a gene which normal humans lack and which gives mutants their abilities. Though the X-Men started off with just five members, as the years went on, many characters joined the team. Just as many left, and some returned.

 

== The three main titles are: ==

* ''Uncanny X-Men'', the original title, ongoing (for the most part) since the 1960s. This was the book reinvented by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum, and John Byrne which turned the X-Men into a franchise. Sadly, its long, uninterrupted run ended after the events of Schism and now is on its Volume 2. It is the main book of the Blue Team and features Utopia's "Extinction" team (Cyclops, Emma Frost, Namor, Magneto, etc...).

 

Previously, Chris Claremont's "X-Treme X-Men" was a core title. (Yes, really, [[Xtreme Kool Letterz|X-Treme]].)

== Secondary titles for the Gold Team are: ==

* ''X-Men Legacy'', previously known as just X-Men (or "Adjectiveless X-Men" to distinguish it from Uncanny). Started off as a showcase for Jim Lee, but it was transformed into Grant Morrison's New X Men to coincide with the first two movies. After Schism the book currently serves as a display for most of the teachers in the JGSFHH.

* ''[[X-Factor (Comic Book)|X-Factor]]'' (not to be confused with [[The X Factor|Simon Cowell's show]])

 

* [[Generation X]]

* [[New X-Men (Comic Book)|New X-Men]]

* Xmen First Class

* [[X-Men Forever]]

* And storylines:

** [[The Dark Phoenix Saga]]

** [[Age of Apocalypse]]

** [[House of M]]

 

== In addition to the comic series, they have also been adapted to television: ==

 

== And film: ==

 

== And last but not least, our merry mutants have starred in a few videogames: ==

* ''[[X-Men Next Dimension|X-Men: Next Dimension]]:'' 3-D fighting game based on the Operation: Zero Tolerance storyline.

* ''[[X Men Legends]]:'' Series of action/role-playing video games, which are based on various comic continuities but take place in their own.

* [[Apocalypse Maiden]]: Jean Grey as the Phoenix.

* [[Army of the Ages]]: Inverted when Fitzroy tries to conquer the present (his past) with future sentinel technology. It finally backfires spectacularly when he opens a portal to a prison riot in the future, bringing in a horde of mutant inmates - Bishop follows.

* [[Ashes to Crashes]]: Destiny (girlfriend/advisor to Mystique) left very specific instructions for when Mystique was to scatter her ashes. It was to be on the fantail of a particular cruise liner, on a specific date, at a specific time. Mystique waits for the specific time, then tosses the ashes, only to have the wind blow them right back in her face. The fact that Destiny was a clairvoyant means the entire thing was a rather macabre practical joke. Mystique appropriately laughs at her lover's final joke.

* [[Author Catchphrase]]: Especially during [[Chris Claremont]]'s run.

* [[Big Bad]]: The major evils of the X-Men universe are [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|Magneto]] and [[Social Darwinist|Apocalypse]].

** {{spoiler|Magneto}} is currently enduring a case of [[Heel Face Turn]]; however, new big bads have been popping up, most recently bringing Bastion back.

* [[Big Good]]: Xavier originally, but since being forced to take control, Cyclops has taken this role.

* [[Bitter Wedding Speech]]: In an issue of ''X-Men Unlimited'' about the wedding of one of Emma's college friends.

* [[Black and Gray Morality]]: This gradually creeped in ever since the late 80s Mutant Massacre, but got blatant with [[Darker and Edgier]] storylines the past few years.

** At least Rogue's damage is temporary if she's careful, whereas Wither tends to irreversibly cripple or horribly kill anyone he touches. After M-Day, he thinks he can finally hold the hand of the girl he's in love with... and promptly maims her. Poor kid.

** Rogue also does not drain life-force, she drains powers and memories. The loss of life was an unfortunate side effect that got briefly [[Exaggerated Trope|tuned up]] that's was eventually dropped entirely.

* [[Brought Down to Normal]]: The ''Decimation'' event mentioned above did this to nearly the ''entire mutant population''. There are only roughly 300 mutants left with powers after everything is said and done.

** [[Brought Down to Badass]] In Astonishing X-Men, Emma's mind rape of him turns off Cyclops' powers, causing him to take a gun and start shooting mental images, to make a point.

* [[But Not Too Black]]: Storm is African-American, but she has fair hair and blue eyes, which is supposed to be a mark of her royal heritage. Also, Bishop is black, but he was born in Australia and is part [[Australian Aborigines|Aborigine]], which may account for his straight hair and his lighter skin tone.

* [[But Not Too Foreign]]: Storm has an African mother, and grew up in Africa, but her father was an American, and she was apparently born in New York.

** Proteus has to possess people, as his [[Reality Warper]] powers burned out his body.

* [[Demoted to Extra]]: Cyclops in [[The Movie]]. Kitty Pryde gets this in most adaptations, despite spending years as one of the central characters of the series.

** Many of the characters, since there are a lot of them and have been a lot of writers.

** You'll also notice a subtle difference in the way sympathetic characters use the word "human" as a blanket term for both mutants and ordinary humans, but occasionally use it to mean just ordinary humans when it's clear from context they're not implying a value judgment. Under some writers, though, they'll avoid the second usage or use the word "human" exclusively for non-mutants (e.g. specifying "humans ''and mutants''" when talking to aliens). For a long time, this didn't vary from character to character, except for villains: the anti-mutant racists inhuman freaks unworthy of being part of humanity while evil mutants are emphasizing the supremacy of homo-sapiens-superior over mere [[Muggle|Muggles]]. However with the recent Decimation and Endangered Species events, everyone is referring to mutants as a separate species from humans without regard to the good/bad implications.

* [[Evilutionary Biologist]]: Mr. Sinister; Dark Beast; Apocalypse;

* [[Evolutionary Levels]]: Mutants as "homo '''superior'''".

* [[Face Heel Turn]]: Gambit, Bishop.

** Gambit, especially has turned this into a revolving door.

** The Sentinels typically fire Hand Blasts in their mutant-hunting endeavors.

* [[Have You Tried Not Being a Monster?]]: See [[Does This Remind You of Anything?]].

* [[Heel Face Turn]]: Gambit, Magneto during his "headmaster" phase, Emma Frost, Juggernaut, Rogue.

** The Sentinels: after Decimation, they're now a human-piloted peacekeeping force to protect the remaining mutants.

* [[Homosexual Reproduction]]: [[What Could Have Been|One proposed origin]] of Nightcrawler, {{spoiler|as Destiny and a temporarily male-morphed Mystique's son.}}

** Though canon now states that Nightcrawler is {{spoiler|the son of Mystique and Azazel.}}

* [[An Ice Suit]]: Bobby / Iceman usually only wears briefs when going into his ice form.

* [[An Ice Person]]: Founding member Iceman is one of these.

** Surprisingly averted with some characters who have obvious physical mutations, like Nightcrawler. He's perfectly happy with the way he looks, even though, resembling a blue demon, he actually would have some legitimate reasons to complain. If such a character were written by another writer and not [[Chris Claremont]], he likely would've fallen into this trope.

* [[I Just Want to Be Special]]: The U-Men are a bunch of humans who want to be Mutants.

** [[Memetic Mutation|Nothing moves the Blob!]]

* [[Implicit Prison]]: In Marvel Comics "Decimation" event, the Xavier Institute was called a "Haven" for remaining mutants, but was really an internment camp for them.

** [[Justified Trope|Justified]] that many of these "renegates" suffers of this because some only appeared in a single arc concerning an alternate future/universe or a ''What If?'', Torrent in particular fits the bill. The one truly worthy of mentioning is [[An Ice Person|Iceman]], the original who has been there since day one has not had a single continuity where he peforms actions of extreme prowess compared to the likes of Phoenix; being able to create endless ice streams, barrages and beams out of thin air with no visible water supply is impressive enough, but not even close to the [[Beyond the Impossible]] things his (seemly unlimited) control of moisture and temperature would imply he could do. No wonder many of his alternate incarnations in media, cartoons and video games adaptations are prone to make him an young ''newcomer'' who still is learning to control his powers along with the others young mutants in the ''Danger Room''.

** [[An Ice Person|Iceman]] has gotten a major upgrade in the new Wolverine & The X-Men comic. In issue two, he defeats an army of flamethrower-wielding Frankenstein clones by activating the sprinkler system and spawning dozens of autonomous ice duplicates. It's pretty much exactly as awesome as it sounds.

* [[Look Ma, No Plane]]: Rogue does this in the ''X-Men'' comics, buzzing Air Force One and giving ol' Ronnie Reagan a thrill. She does it again in the first issue of her limited series, this time planting a kiss on one of two fighter jets.

* [[Loves the Sound of Screaming]]: Sabretooth. In spades.

** Perhaps it's a case of "be yourself," which in the real world is the best solution.

** As a general rule, the more powerful they are, the more likely they are are to actually ''be'' a threat to humanity. This is especially true of Omega level mutants. Even in a best case scenario you have instances like [[Goo-Goo Godlike|Franklin Richards]] and the [[Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds|Scarlet Witch]]. On the more deliberately villainous side of things you have [[The Social Darwinist|Apocalypse]], [[A God Am I|Dark Phoenix]], [[Master Race|Magneto]], [[Generic Doomsday Villain|Proteus]], [[Dystopia Justifies the Means|Onslaught]], [[The Conqueror|Vulcan]] and others. Is it really irrational that regular humans might be just a tad bit disconcerted by this state of affairs and feel that it could be prudent to [[Muggle Power|do something about it]]? For the most part, the writers have made such a point of creating dangerous and/or evil mutants, and then hurling them at the general public, that one would think humanity would have to be ''insane'' to not be terrified for their lives! Which unfortunately makes their [[Fantastic Racism|attitude towards mutants]] seem more than a little bit justified.

** He also served in this role briefly for the CIA, resigning in a rather...spectacular fashion when agents killed his then-girlfriend because he had gone after a Nazi who, unknown to him, was working for the United States.

* [[Nested Mouths]]: Bliss the Morlock has an extra mouth on her tongue.

* [[Nineties Anti-Hero]]: Cable, Bishop.

* [[Noble Male, Roguish Male]]: Cyclops (Noble) and Wolverine (Roguish) in some depictions.

* [[No Fourth Wall]]: [[Deadpool]]. His entry at the top should really tell you all you need to know, but if you're still in doubt you can just go ahead and check my- I mean HIS [[Shameless Self Promoter|awesome main article]]... Uuh... I have to go now. Ciao!

* [[Not So Different]]: Comparisons between Magneto's ideology and Hitler's are inevitable, particularly as Magneto oscillates between a [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]] protecting mutantkind from the same fate his family and the rest of the Holocaust victims suffered and an [[Evilutionary Biologist|evolutionary supremacist]] who sees Homo Superior enslaving or killing off [[Muggles]] as the natural order of things.

* [[Oddly Common Rarity]]: Omega level mutants. Mutants in general are supposed to be rare. Mutants whose potential and/or actual power levels are so great as to be difficult to measure should therefore be almost unheard of. Only they are not. During the [[The Silver Age of Comic Books|Silver Age]] and the [[The Bronze Age of Comic Books|Bronze Age]] it was generally held that Professor X and Magneto were the most powerful mutants in the world. But in recent times mutants whose power equals or exceeds their's are surprisingly common, and with the recent reduction in the size of the overall mutant population they stand out even more.

* [[Opening a Can of Clones]]

* [[Outside the Box Tactic]]: Sebastian Shaw absorbs any kinetic energy directed at him, even a bullet, so Storm covers him in snow, which actually saps his energy, due to cold being a lack of said energy. <ref>Ironically, 15ish years later the X-Man Bishop--whose powers are similar to Shaw's--would charge himself up ''by using snowfall''.</ref>

* [[Painting the Fourth Wall]]: Deadpool is perhaps one of the shining stars of this trope, due to his [[Medium Awareness]] for his being in a comic book, to the point of answering his own letters column.

* [[Phlegmings]]: Often exhibited by Wolverine, the Brood, and many others.

* [[Pinball Projectile]]: Cyclops' optic blasts have a habit of doing this.

** Heroic examples Sunfire and Neal Sharra.

* [[Power Creep, Power Seep]]: The powers of several characters have been inconsistently portrayed.

** Magneto is the most notable example, with his power level depending heavily on which side of the [[Face Heel Revolving Door]] he is on at any given time. As a rule, when he is being a villain he has practically unlimited power. When behaving more benignly his powers are usually dialed back substantially.

** Wolverine's healing factor was not nearly as invincible in earlier stories as it is of late.

* [[Power Loss Makes You Strong]]: Storm, back in the 80's. She lost her powers at the hands of Forge and ends up with a mohawk living with the Morlocks, even beating Callisto in hand to hand combat and defeating Cyclops without powers to retain leadership of the X-Men. She was the primary leader until the teams split into Gold and Blue...then different books...and then she got married so she never actually was out of a command position.

** She defeated Callisto to become the leader of the Morlocks ''before'' losing her powers. She's just ''that'' [[Badass]], [[Badass Normal|normal]] or not. On a related note, she never lived with the Morlocks, despite being their boss.

* [[Super Human Trafficking]]

* [[Superman Stays Out of Gotham]]: Why the Avengers and other non-mutant heroes on friendly terms with the X-Men don't get involved in their [[Fantastic Racism]] troubles: because they don't have to deal with it themselves. [[Lampshaded]] during the [[Marvel Civil War|Civil War]] when Emma Frost gives a [[What the Hell, Hero?]] speech to Tony Stark asking why the X-Men should care about Stamford when none of the other heroes got involved after the destruction of Genosha.

* [[Suspiciously Similar Substitute]]: Hope to Jean. Let's see: both are [[Green Eyed Red Head|Green Eyed Redheads]], both can manifest the Phoenix Force, which leads to both being [[Mary Sue|Mary Sues]] of sorts... Yeah, pretty much.

** Except for the fact that she doesn't ''act'' anything like Jean, doesn't have Jean's power set, is frequently shown to be not-so-great at anything that doesn't involve shooting a bad guy due to her hunted-through-a-wasteland childhood, and hasn't manifested the Phoenix Force in any meaningful way outside of cover art... So, no, not really.

** Surge's has blue hair, it came in a bottle labeled "electric blue."

** Beast and Nightcrawler. Yeah, it's blue fur, but same difference.

 

{{reflist}}