Thursday 9 February 2017

Nostalgia is as nostalgia does


Its been a while since I've cared about the X-Men, which is sad because they're my favourite superheroes. Its no big secret that Marvel have been keeping the X-Men at something of a remove from the rest of the Marvel Universe the last few years. You can't blame them: they make millions and millions out of their own Avengers movies and sod all out of Fox's X-Men movies.

Still, something seems to have changed and now there's a big relaunch in the offing: ResurreXion. Encouraging news but by Marvel's current standards its a bit... traditional.

I mean, this is a company currently aggressively pushing female leads in Thor, Hawkeye, Captain Marvel and Iron Man; changing the races of the Hulk, Spider-Man and Ms. Marvel; pushing characters out of the closet left right and centre; and, Spider-Gwen. Against that background we get...
a straight up reunion of the first generation X-Men...
and a similar one for the Claremont generation. Not the worst pitches in the world and there are some interesting ideas off to the side with Iceman and Jean Grey solo series and a Generation X revival with the Jubilee leading the “Wolverine & The X-Men” generation of kids.

Still, I can't help but think the fact there's not a potential Marvel Studios movie being workshopped here is holding the line back from the sort of innovation that's happening just about everywhere else in the Marvel Universe.

I'm always willing to be surprised by things and if this works no one will be happier than me. I dearly want to care about these comics again. It was the original “Blue & Gold” era that got me into comics in the first place, the original GenX were (alongside DC's Young Justice) “my” generation of teen superheroes.

Hell, maybe somewhere in this relaunch there's secretly a place for Chamber, the greatest British mutant superhero of all time. 

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