Why Are The X-Men?

Sorry, my boss came in halfway through thinking through the question. I think what I'm interested in is why certain titles and franchises seem impervious to badness. Are there any examples of comics where sustained rubbishness HAS damaged a once-mighty character/brand?

2000AD. Which reminds me..

A mixture of comics-as-object mania, where they were there to collect rather than read and became worth owning or not based on mad, arbitrary criteria, and the fact that - much like parents hated Action - that fact that adults and would-be adults like us think the 90s were full of ridiculous unreadable shit made them MORE ATTRACTIVE to crazy kids...

Yeah Jordan but it's not like there was a big dip before the film and a massive rise after, the immunity from rubness had set in before that.

side qn - what would the X-editors have to do to kill the franchise? That they haven't already tried.

I think the two successful X-Men animated series from the 90s are a factor here.

Do twelve months with the X-Men having their mouths stolen so they cannot speak or make angst.

Manga offshoots! No, hang on...

I think another point in the X-Men's favor is that you have a book with a ginormous cast of potential characters, meaning that in the gigantor comic book glut you had a gazillion books mostly featuring different people, as opposed to a gazillion books featuring the same person (I AM LOOKING AT YOU, SPIDEY BOOKS).

I don't know at which point the X-Men became the marquee Marvel heroes, though; people recognize Hulk, Captain America and Spiderman but most people I know have no clue about the Fantastic Four or the Avengers in general, yet know of the X-Men and JLA (again, largely because of TV/movie exposure).

I think it's the "X".

Didn't one of the X-Men #1's set sales records? Were they also the breeding ground for the New Hot artists that turned into Image?

I'll go on record as saying that the Avengers never impressed me even slightly. Possibly it's the "the best heroes anywhere (who aren't Spiderman, or in the X-Men, or the Fantastic Four)".

I also suggest Grant Morrison's point (though it may have been more aspiration) about the X-Men always being the teenagers to the rest of the world's grownups. That shit sells.

I think that The Avengers are supposed to be The Best Heroes As Decided On By The Comic Universe's Inhabitants, as opposed to Readers' Favourite Heroes. Thus X-Men (mutant freaks!) and Spidey (often seen as urban menace, and even when that's not the case - and I guess it hasn't been in a while - his powers are so minor and his personality so everymanish that he can't qualify as a Great Hero) don't fit in, while realtively second rate (but uncontroversial) heroes do. The JLA has more high profile heroes because their biggest sellers are mostly adored by the ppl in their universe.

Lots of girls I knew in high school, who never read other comics, read X-Men (I think it was Uncanny at the time-1990s?) I think they liked the angsty soap-opera nature that other comics didn't have. Plus they had more prominant female heroes than Spidey/Superman. That's what I liked at the time, Ooh Rogue is like me, she doesn't fit in and has relationship problems too.

My girlfriend is obsessed with Rogue. :>

Even in the movie, with Anna Paquin's scary Alvin the Chipmunk voice?

Nope, definitely not with movie JubiRogue.

Although, I do think it makes perfect sense for a girl who can't touch anyone to turn into a goth rather than a sexbomb, although that has its psychological justifications too I guess.

(Was she even that goth-ed out in the movie? I may be thinking of that recent X-Men cartoon where they're all in high school).

She wasn't very goth in the movie, she was just kinda meh. Unless hoodie=goth? I don't know anymore.

"X-Men: Evolution" is THE SHIT.

Sigourney Weaver was nearly X-Men’s Emma Frost, instead in Imaginary Heroes
By Angela Pacienza
TORONTO (CP) — Sigourney Weaver in a white PVC bustier and thigh-high boots?
It almost happened.
So explained X-Men 2 screenwriter Dan Harris at a press conference to promote his Toronto International Film Festival entry, Imaginary Heroes.
In the film, a seemingly picture-perfect family, with Weaver and Jeff Daniels as the parents, tries to cope with the suicide of their eldest son, a competitive swimmer treated like the family’s only jewel.
Harris, who wrote and directed Heroes, said when it looked like there was going to be a third instalment of the popular comic book franchise, Emma Frost was written with Weaver in mind.
“We were going to do X-Men 3 for a little while and our big secret or coup was — and it’s not going to happen so it’s OK — we wanted to have a character that was Emma Frost, a famous X-Men character. She’s called the white queen,” said Harris, whose next project is helping write the much-hyped Superman script.
“We were going to ask Sigourney to be it. She was an empath in our version of the movie which means she could control people’s emotions.”
Looking surprised at the thought of herself as a superhero, Weaver replied: “I try to do that.”
“You could look at someone and make them cry on cue or hate you or be lonely,” answered Harris, who looks like he’s barely out of college.
“Write it into Superman,” quipped a smiling Weaver.
Instead, Harris cast Weaver as the complex matriarch in his directorial debut Imaginary Heroes, which had its world premiere Tuesday.
Both a tear-jerker and light comedy, Heroes sees Weaver play Sandy Travis who tries to make life go back to normal after her son’s suicide.
The actress, who is best known for kicking Alien butt in the popular trilogy, said she loved the script immediately.
“One is sent a lot of mothers at a certain age. They’re usually just evil and very uncomplicated caricatures of human beings,” said Weaver, 54.
“Here’s a woman you couldn’t categorize in any way. She had her good points. She had her bad points. She’s a full human being.”
Weaver said she’s often sent scripts where the focus is solely on the young people.
“The parents are totally unbelievable. They’re just thrown in there for some sort of joke. They’re really hard to relate to,” she said. “There’s certainly many good stories out there but the tendency, especially in a studio movie, is to give anyone over 30 short shrift.”
The film will be released in New York and Los Angeles on Dec. 17 in order to make the “award cut-offs,” according to a publicist sitting in the back of the room.
It then comes to the rest of North American theatres in early 2005.

Who knows? Hollywoodspeak can be inscrutable. Maybe "we" meant "Sigourney and I" or maybe there's a "right away" or "next" to be inferred in there.
Regardless, Sigourney Weaver is awesome. Maybe she could play Superman, we'd get a slightly less effeminate than the two most recent version. (that's no dig at Sig, either)

I could see a younger Sigourney as Wonder Woman, if nothing else -- she can sell the "I can kick your ass"-ness and she's good-looking without being just mindless eye candy.

I don't know about her as Emma Frost, but I guess it really depends on how Emma'd be written -- I had trouble imagining Famke Jansen as Jean Grey, too, before seeing the movie, just cause I was thinking of a different sort of Jean Grey.

I read (in popbitch, so it may be all lies) that Joss Whedon is going to direct XMen3.

Nicole, I think New X-Men was a brief period (now transferred to Astonishing) when you could just pick up an issue and start reading, without any "But Gambit, what about... your problem!?"

...that's probably one of the main reasons why I got into New X-Men. With a lot of the other Marvel books it seemed like you had to have been following the plots for a while in order to get what was going on, or care.

Haha, that makes it sound like Gambit needed Enzyte.

The only X-books I'm bothering with now (due to financial constraints) are Astonishing and New (Astonishing because the writing has sucked me in and New because I Am always a sucker for school-setting X-books, esp. since most of the new characters start out there).

New is soooooooooooooooo slow though. Actually what it feels like is the Marvel Superheroes RPG 'xaviers school' campaign I ran once which was all fites w/rival characters in the danger room etc etc.

Sooooooooooooooooooo slow doesn't bother me when I only buy comic books once every three months.

Yeah fair enough, I'm still quite enjoying it.