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I am biased because I am a big Morrison fan. I reread the run a few years ago and even though I knew what was gonna happen it was a fun read with all the things I want out of a Morrison comic. Pretty much did for X-Men what they did for the Justice League.
Same here, mostly anything by Morrison will be something I enjoy, and when he is paired with Quietly its even better!
Friendly reminder that Morrison uses they pronouns now. And yes, Morrison and Quitely as a pair are just about the best you can get in comics.
Huh, unexpected but based
Yeah its absolutely fantastic but I think it doesnt fully stick the landing especially with the magneto arc. I know they were having issues with marvel at the time but it still feels a bit less focused near the end
Phenomenal run. One of my all time favorite iterations of the X-men.
It's my favorite X-Men run of recent decades, and if I'm honest, it's probably better than 1990s X-Men when the nostalgia glasses are removed. The series broke up several dynamics that had grown stale: it replaced the Cyclops/Jean Grey pairing with Emma Frost, which was so good that it became the status quo from then on. And it replaced the tired Xavier vs. Magneto conflict that had run out of steam.
Morrison had a great plan to take the X-Men in a new direction, with mutants developing their own subculture, to move past the tired "hated and feared" trope. Also it was great to see mutants without any combat-relevant powers.
Even the currency Hickman era basically is just paying this concept off. One of the many reasons it's an incredible run!
My only real knock is the Igor Kordey full-in art being terribly rushed. Which is a shame, he's normally great! These days they'd have different artists doing each issue or something, which would have been jarring, but would at least let them later alternate. Editorial being weirdly hostile to the run as it happened despite its success was the real overall problem, and afterwards erased lots of the good elements.
I don't care, to me Cassandra Nova still became Stuff and hasn't appeared since. A piece of her that split off and manifested has appeared a bit, but the main one? Nope. Still at the X-Mansion in special ed.
I heard that Quesada and management were pissed after Morrison left X-Men to sign with DC. That's why they reverted many of its good elements after he left. Out of spite. Went back to the "hated and feared" trope that weighed down the series ever since. That well ran dry in the 1990s. Morrison was right to move on.
I want someone to fix the Ernst thing but Orlando said he doesn’t see a way to do it and he’s probably right. We arrived at a Cassandra Nova that tries to help mutantkind anyway but it would have been cooler if it was through years of unlearning radicalisation and not nanorobots
A+ comment right here.
I absolutely hate Emma frost/cyclops. I hate it from the very depths of my soul. It was forced and tacky and lame. If they felt Jean and cyclops was stale I honestly wish they would have just retired them to Alaska or even killed them off. I just wanted to share cause I feel like a lot of people didn’t like that pairing or the things that Morrison and subsequent writers did with cyclops and prof x. Just not a big fan of the Morrison run in general.
Respectfully, I think you’re in the distinct minority on hating Emma/Scott.
Why do they all look like handsome Squidward?
This issue actually came out 6 years before Handsome Squidaward, so the real question is Why does Handsome Squidward look like the X-men
Incredibly based
For a while I though Frank Quitely insisted his models pursed their lips when posing for him.
Quitely
everyone's a Wide Jaw McGee for some reason.
Thank you. I was trying to place this. Chicken egg etc nonetheless total handsome squidward.
My favorite X-Men run, the part with Igor Kordey (hope I didn't butcher the name) is hard to get through, but I think it's worth it.
I loved the new uniforms/costumes. Jean looks perfect in this imo.
"Xorn" was a cool new addition and I kinda liked the twist towards the end.
The new students at the School are pretty cool imo, Glob Herman is still my fav of them because of his design. The Stepford Cuckoos are interesting and I am glad that they are still acive nowadays. Quentin Quire is good here during "Riot at Xavier's", I really don't care about his character in more recent runs.
The Third Specie/ U-Men are a terrifying foe and I think they should come back for Krakoa.
Cassandra Nova has not been interesting since this run imo.
Love Emma Frost in this, glad she stayed on the good side after that.
To me, Morrison’s stories are meant to be complete. The publishers will do whatever they want afterwards but his story told a great tale. Xorn will always be who he was. That Quentin will always be amazing and didn’t need “upgrades”. Cassandra was not a nuanced villain. She’s evil with a capital E. And No-Girl. Marvel had no idea what to do with the concept and so attached her to another character. Stupid. She was either a joke or something more like an idea than a floating brain.
This was in stark contrast to the other main x-book where Nightcrawler become half-“demon” and there was a plot to make him pope in an effort to destroy the Roman Catholic Church. Or something.
U-Men are fantastically conceived and horrifying, they should totally be integrated into Orchis.
Morrison has a great knack for creating characters who feel fully fleshed out and complete. Their great at taking tropes and stereotypes and molding them into a unique voice. A great fit with something like X-Men where the strength of the title is a bunch of unique characters thrown together only by a freak coincidence of birth. There's a reason so many Morrison characters seem to stick around in their respective titles.
Interesting. This is, arguably, the low point of the story to me. Morrison resorting to M Night Shyamalan type of tricks is a bit of a letdown both because it felt inconsistent with the story to that point (you need to resort to almost Scooby-Doo like mental contortions to make sense of it) and because Shyamalan does it better. That said, "Scooby-Doo" like contortions could apply to almost any Morrison comic, but in this case it felt like a poor imitation.
I thought the reveal made a lot of sense. Lines had already been drawn beforehand and the t-shirts and posters were clues we hadn’t noticed. I wish Marvel had been willing to stick with the aftermath.
Yeah, the Kordey art is rough at times, but from what I understand, he was on a very short deadline for some of those issues -- one of them was done in two weeks -- so it's hard to really hate on it.
And like, it's ugly sure, but the storytelling is still solid. All the emotional beats land well
You ever get that feeling where your brain makes you realize how dumb your brain is?
"What?! There's a new X-Men run by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely?!"
"..."
"Oh....right."
Capital N in New lol
Yep, I was soooo excited for that brief second before I realized my brain was being dumb.
IIRC, this was the start of the road where Beast became a piece of shit. I kinda miss the old, more mirthful Hank. Other than that and the Magneto/Xorn shenanigans, it was an enjoyable run.
There are random moments where understand why people love Beast, but lord has his character been taken in a miserable direction.
Jason Aaron's Amazing X-Men run was the only time I've liked him in the last twenty years.
It's the animated series nostalgia for me mostly.
If you go back to the Defenders, Beast was kind of an ass. Not straight evil, but Beast being both thoughtless and irresponsible did not originate with Morrison.
Hard agree
Grant kinda ruined a bunch of chars by making them too dark imo
Handsome Squidwards.
Handsome Squidwards, everywhere.
I mean if it had been Frank Quitley the whole time it would be massively improved. The art takes a nose dive in the middle
They had a fill in artist for the fill in artist.
Probably a minority opinion, but I feel the opposite. The Quitely drawn characters look so goofy for me. Then the solo adventures of Xorn in the middle of the run are amazing looking to me.
Yeah, it's a rollercoaster of quality, but I enjoyed Silvestre in the end. Just wish they had of gotten an artist who compliments Quieltys work for the issues he didn't work on.
Grant Morrisons run on X-Men was my first introduction to comics as a kid, and it blew my socks off. I've re-read it again recently, and personally I think the story holds up quite well, and I love Whedons sequel run (despite some weird retcons). Definitely two of my favourite X-Men runs on the board. Admittedly I was never super in love with Quitely's art though, and the last 2 issues in particular have jarringly bad art.
Morrison’s run was what brought me back to X-Men. In fact, I think it made me more invested in comics than I had been in a long time.
Gave them a fresh start that was desperately needed.
If people can’t appreciate Frank Quitely art, that’s their loss. The man’s a self-taught genius. Even if you take issue with his faces, the work itself is highly detailed and utterly unique. I could talk about it all day.
His art is definitely an acquired taste, but his sequential storytelling skill is second to none. Him and Mazzucchelli are two of the best that come to my mind when it comes to sheer storytelling clarity.
His work in We3, All-Star Superman, and Jupiter’s Legacy are even better than his New X-Men work. And people think they know his work from this one cover 🙄
All-Star Superman is an absolute masterpiece because of his amazing art and graphic storytelling. Reread it recently and it reminded me why I love comics as an art form.
Loved his work in We3 because there were less perpetual constipated faces ;) That part of it sometimes distracted me from the story in other titles.
Morrison/Quitely on A-SS was phenomenal in every way possible.
I have to assume people who mock Quitely aren't super familiar with the medium. I totally understand disliking some of his art because, it's simply isn't always pretty. But the man understands comics, and even if you dislike his wrinkly faced potato people, it's hard not to appreciate his masterclass storytelling.
I've always thought his art was bizarre but, yeah, that doesn't make it bad. His Beak is a whole mood.
Same!
Looks similar to Peter Chung’s artwork (aeon flux) but bland…
You can say all that about Rob Liefeld, too. But I wouldn't call him a genius.
I really don’t think that’s a fair comparison at all. There’s a lot more genuine skill and attention to detail in Quitely’s work that I don’t see in Liefeld, and additionally you can see Quitely continue to grow and improve through his career, unlike Liefeld who has never really even attempted to improve the basic flaws in his artwork.
I mean, like him or not, there’s a level of compositional skill in, say, the opening to Pax Americana (NSFW) or this fight sequence from We3 that I don’t think Liefeld would ever be able to come close to.
Indeed. Neither would I.
Even though I could say quite a bit more about Quitely’s art, I don’t think it’s worth my time to go on about it to people who either have never seen it, or already don’t like it. To each their own.
The run was a perfect example of how a series of rushed fill-in artists can pothole a series. Some of the art was absolutely atrocious.
I love Grant Morrison's work and used to interview him for a popular comic book magazine. But his interpretation of Magneto as a drug addict was awful and disregarded everything written about the character up until then. Magneto was a control freak who had to be in charge at all times -- he'd never voluntarily give up control by taking any sort of drugs.
He relied on Fabian Cortez who tried to kill him, he then relied on Polaris. He couldn't rely on Polaris anymore, since she was suffering PTSD from the Genosha attack. For me, the kick drug was just him not relying on people anymore and self-medicating. I know he became erratic, but people taking drugs or self-medicating generally do.
Magneto's characterisations were all over the place up to that point. Between X-men 1# - X-men #114, he'd become a villain again, had his mind wiped, held the world hostage with the polar ice-caps and then took over/given a country. He'd become a desperate monster with no real plan. His country was then destroyed. He was far from Claremont man of redemption.
Magneto the holocaust survivor didn't trust anyone and wouldn't ever voluntarily give up control.
I thought his conversion as done by Chris Claremont, from roughly X-Men 150-200 was very well done and believable. I thought the drug addict Magneto was awful, as was Byrne and Simonson turning the character evil again over the course of only 1 issue.
Good writing art is very mediocre and straight up ugly at times though
Got me back into x-men after a 5 year post onslaught hiatus
GOAT run... it made X-men sophisticated to me, didn’t even feel big 2. Before it was a good spirited but kind of simplistic take on civil rights
One of my favorite X-Men runs
Great run, but gets pretty weird by the end. The constant change of artists was really annoying too
Great run, with absolutely horrible inconsistent art.
Quitely's art was obviously the best. Jiminez art was good and I liked what little I saw of John Paul Leon's art.
However, I didn't like Igor Kordey's art. I fully get that Kordey was given zero time when Quitely fell severely behind, but I wasn't that big of a fan of Kordey's art even when he had a decent schedule.
Hated every Ethan Van Sciver panel.
They later put Kordey on xtreme xmen replacing Larocca. I remember reading it in high school and hating the art. I haven't gone back since but if his name is on a book I'll have to pass.
Yeah, I picked up Cable because people were saying his art had a nice gritty style, but his art looked unstructured. Years later, I found Michael Gaydos was doing well, what Kordey didn't. Gaydos had solid body rendition. Kordey's felt like his proportions were always off and his characters looked like mush.
I get that Ethan Van Sciver is a a shitty person now but ppl retroactively saying his art on runs is bad when previously I had only seen positive stuff about it is a little weird to me
EVS is a competent story teller and draftsman but it’s overly rendered (way too much background detail) and there’s nothing dynamic or exciting about his art. It’s just not terribly interesting.
No, it looked like shit to me back then. His characters had this spaghettification style that I hated. The first panel I saw with Beak I was like, this is ugly AF.
I didn't like his art being on New X-Men, anymore than I liked Ian Churchill's work being on Uncanny X-Men with Joe Casey.
Funny enough, I used to post on the Superhero Chat message boards on Comic Book Resources back in the day and I posted how I hated EVS's work on New X-Men. A poster calling himself Ethan Van Sciver replied about how that hurt their feelings. I thought it was some random poster but found out later on that it might have been EVS, who did post on that message board a few times.
I loved his New Titans work. Didn’t care for His New X-men. Sometimes an artist just isn’t a good match.
Note: In any event, he is indeed a shitty person. Just to make that clear.
I love his art on Green Lantern, but it's definitely a situation where you have to try to separate the artist from the art.
Ah! Yeah, I forgot about his Green Lantern stuff. I liked that as well.
I just read it for the first time last week. It's pretty good. But the ending is awful and comes from nowhere. But I like development of Emma Frost.
Incredible run marred by inconsistent art that dipped into nearly unreadable at times (Igor Kordey issues)
Got me back into comics after about 5 years away.
Does this sub not have a recommended list of comics? I keep seeing these posts of “is this extremely well regarded and wildly popular run worth reading?”
…the answer is yes btw.
It ratcheted up the weirdness, but I prefer the JLA run in comparison.
Quitely: Sure I've seen lots of human faces before, but hypothetically if I hadn't could you describe one for me over this staticy phone line?
I remember enjoying it well enough at the time, but I don't particularly care for it now. Grant Morrison's writing just doesn't resonate with me.