Most significant X-Men

[jjonahjameson1]

Magneto is the most significant X-Man.

 

1. Long history/frenemy status with Prof X

2. Incredibly powerful

3. 1st villain the X-Men faced wayyyy back in X-Men 1

4. Leader of the Brotherhood of evil mutants

5. Father to a few other mutants you may have heard about

6. Leader of the X-Men

7. Appeared in quite a few X-Men movies

 

[Kal-El]

Magneto is the most significant X-Man.

 

1. Long history/frenemy status with Prof X

2. Incredibly powerful

3. 1st villain the X-Men faced wayyyy back in X-Men 1

4. Leader of the Brotherhood of evil mutants

5. Father to a few other mutants you may have heard about

6. Leader of the X-Men

7. Appeared in quite a few X-Men movies

 

+1 for Magneto. The rampage he goes on in the beginning of First Class was probably the coolest thing I've ever seen. The guy travels across the globe hunting down Nazis! It doesn't get much more significant than that,

 

P.S. "We are the future, Charles. Not them!"

[asteroid-comix]

1. Sub Mariner (he's been on the team as a member and who can be more significant than one of the first two Marvel super heroes?)

2. Wolverine (can't deny his popularity and what he's done for the brand)

2. Prof X

3. Magneto (yes, he's been on the team and where would they be without him as a villain or team member?)

4. Marvel Girl

5. Beast, Ice Man, Angel

6. Fill in for any of the 900 hundred mutants that they've had on the team since issue 66

 

[joe_collector]

Why do mutants have to have powers? Can't a mutant be resistant to a certain bacterial infection, for instance?

 

There are lots of mutants like that, with useless abilities, but they're either down in the sewers with the Morlocks or not important enough to be featured in comic books.

[Westy Steve]

Another vote for Wolverine. Food for thought. The X-men comic was a dying series. Sales were so bad that the only way it could turn a profit was to reprint it until they revitalized it with GSXM1 and then X-men 94. So here's my question: We all know that GSXM1 was actually the 2nd appearance of Wolverine. His 1st appearance was in the Incredible Hulk. My question is...did the Marvel staff look at the sales figures for issue #181 and then say, "Hey...sales were good...maybe we should put a bunch of these guys into the X-men to replace the old team". I mean, is it possible that Wolverine was the spark that lead to the revamp of the X-men?

 

I don't know where to begin...

 

X-Men was not really a "dying series." The fact that it was still reprinted, rather than simply cancelled (which it actually was, in 1970), means that it was selling at an acceptable level. Marvel was never shy about cancelling books that fell below the acceptable sales threshold. Silver Surfer was cancelled, Sub-Mariner was cancelled, Astonishing Tales was cancelled, several of the reprint titles didn't last. X-Men, itself, was cancelled.

 

Were the X-Men lingering in limbo, waiting for someone to think of something to do with them? Absolutely. But it wasn't dead, and it wasn't even dying anymore. After all...back in the early 70's, comic specialty stores were not on every street corner, and back issues were difficult to come by...so those who hadn't read the originals 10 years earlier could do so now...it was, after all, new to them.

 

So, dying? No. It had already died, and was resurrected in reprint land.

 

So Len Wein, Chris Claremont, and Roy Thomas come up with a new idea for the characters...and Giant Size #1 comes out. Then, Claremont takes over the writing with the "All NEW, All DIFFERENT" #94.

 

It took a few years for the series to take off. In fact, in the 1978 OPG, GS #1 was only $1.80, and #94 was 60 cents....same as the reprints. The series was bi-monthly...a fate reserved for low selling books...until issue #112, a full 3 years after issue #94.

 

1978 was the breakout year for the new X-Men.

 

But back to Giant Size #1...Wein could do pretty much whatever he wanted, since the title was in bi-monthly reprint limbo. So, he did. The only non-original new character he brought in was Wolverine, who had been introduced six months earlier, in the Incredible Hulk, which happened to have been written by...Len Wein!

 

Wein liked the character, and added him to the team.

 

Claremont and Cockrum did NOT like Wolvie, and came *this* close to dropping him. As mentioned before, Byrne saved Wolvie, since Byrne, a Canadian, had an infinity for the little runt, being a fellow Canucklehead.

 

And...fans had been asking for, and talking about, the X-Men's revival before Hulk #180-181 (as evidenced by Doug Stewart's letter in #184, and Marvel's response), which Marvel had been hinting about for a while.

 

So, most definitely, NO, it was NOT the intro of Wolvie that sparked the revamp of the X-Men.

 

Sorry, but how can you be so sure? You say that Wolverine was introduced 6 months before GSXM1. Don't you think that was enough time for Marvel to analyze sales receipts, read a bunch of letters, and then conclude that Wolverine needed to reappear somewhere else in the Marvel universe...either by himself, or with a team? You don't think someone said:

 

"Hey Len, we were reading the fan mail and we noticed a lot of good feedback on your Wolverine character. We were trying to think of something to do with the X-men...we were planning a Giant Size issue anyway...wanna do a one-shot with a new team and see how that goes? Throw that new Wolverine character into the mix".

 

I mean...the timeline fits, and that's generally how things were done back then...and today. Give the people what they want.

 

EDIT: Pulled this gem out of Wikipedia (which isn't always accurate)

In 1975, he and artist Dave Cockrum revived the Stan Lee / Jack Kirby mutant-superhero team the X-Men after a half-decade's hiatus, reformatting the membership in Giant-Size X-Men No. 1 (May 1975).[21] Among the characters the duo created for the series were Nightcrawler, Storm, Colossus, and Thunderbird. Wein plotted the early "new X-Men" stories with artist Cockrum. These issues were then scripted as Uncanny X-Men No. 94 and 95 by Chris Claremont, who subsequently developed the title into one of Marvel's leading franchises.

 

In 2009, Claremont said, "The history of modern comics would be incredibly different if you took [Wein's] contributions out of the mix. The fact he doesn't get credit for it half the time is disgraceful. We owe a lot of what we are – certainly on the X-Men – to Len and to Dave [Cockrum]".[22]

 

Sounds like Wein created the characters and worked out the general direction of the series before Claremont took over.

[delekkerste]

Claremont almost wrote Wolverine out of the X-Men. Byrne saved him.

 

It wasn't until Byrne came on board that the character started to develop a personality.

 

He wasn't the big draw until the late 80's.

 

As someone who got into comics in 1983 because of Wolverine, I can tell you that he was a big draw way before the late '80s. He was such a big draw that he was the first Marvel character to get his own solo mini-series in 1982. And, although it sucked and nobody cares about it today, the Kitty Pryde and Wolverine mini-series of 1984-85 was another huge deal involving the character. But, but this time, he was already *the* established fan favorite and had numerous storylines where he either featured prominently (e.g., Days of Future Past, the Brood saga) or the story revolved around him (Wolverine in Japan). Any conversation you had about the X-Men back in the early-to-mid 1980s inevitably came back to Wolverine - that's something you had to have lived through.

 

It may be hard to remember a time these days when Wolverine wasn't overexposed, but, in the early-to-mid '80s, fans could not get enough of him, which eventually led to a solo series in 1988 and countless cross-overs, mini-series, spin-offs, re-boots, etc. soon after.

[slym2none]

Wolverine's success is in large part because he fulfills the violent fantasies of fan-boys with his kick hey bub attitude. It wears thin in my book pretty fast.

 

You liking the character or not doesn't really change the fact that among most people in and outside of comics, he's viewed as one of the top 4 or 5 characters in all of comics.

 

That would be a bit like saying because I don't like the Toyota Camry it's not one of the most popular cars in the world.

To be fair though that's because he's had such a lot of screen exposure. Youngblood would be popular with the masses if he had similar exposure.

 

Wolverine was highly popular (and over-used in comics) long before the X-Men movies happened, Bub.

 

 

 

-slym

[kav]

Wolverine's success is in large part because he fulfills the violent fantasies of fan-boys with his kick hey bub attitude. It wears thin in my book pretty fast.

 

You liking the character or not doesn't really change the fact that among most people in and outside of comics, he's viewed as one of the top 4 or 5 characters in all of comics.

 

That would be a bit like saying because I don't like the Toyota Camry it's not one of the most popular cars in the world.

To be fair though that's because he's had such a lot of screen exposure. Youngblood would be popular with the masses if he had similar exposure.

 

Wolverine was highly popular (and over-used in comics) long before the X-Men movies happened, Bub.

 

 

 

-slym

True but he said 'both in and outside of comics'

I would dispute the outside of comics part.

[Diamonddave]

Who's the most insignificant X Man?

I vote Banshee.

 

They don't get more insignificant than Cypher.

[slym2none]

Wolverine's success is in large part because he fulfills the violent fantasies of fan-boys with his kick hey bub attitude. It wears thin in my book pretty fast.

 

You liking the character or not doesn't really change the fact that among most people in and outside of comics, he's viewed as one of the top 4 or 5 characters in all of comics.

 

That would be a bit like saying because I don't like the Toyota Camry it's not one of the most popular cars in the world.

To be fair though that's because he's had such a lot of screen exposure. Youngblood would be popular with the masses if he had similar exposure.

 

Wolverine was highly popular (and over-used in comics) long before the X-Men movies happened, Bub.

True but he said 'both in and outside of comics'

I would dispute the outside of comics part.

 

Find me any mutant who was, before the movies, popular "outside of comics."

 

 

 

 

-slym

[kav]

Wolverine's success is in large part because he fulfills the violent fantasies of fan-boys with his kick hey bub attitude. It wears thin in my book pretty fast.

 

You liking the character or not doesn't really change the fact that among most people in and outside of comics, he's viewed as one of the top 4 or 5 characters in all of comics.

 

That would be a bit like saying because I don't like the Toyota Camry it's not one of the most popular cars in the world.

To be fair though that's because he's had such a lot of screen exposure. Youngblood would be popular with the masses if he had similar exposure.

 

Wolverine was highly popular (and over-used in comics) long before the X-Men movies happened, Bub.

True but he said 'both in and outside of comics'

I would dispute the outside of comics part.

 

Find me any mutant who was, before the movies, popular "outside of comics."

 

 

 

 

-slym

Al Sharpton

[slym2none]

He was never in the X-Men.

 

 

 

-slym

[kav]

He was never in the X-Men.

 

 

 

-slym

You just said 'any mutant'.

[slym2none]

OK, he also isn't a mutant.

 

 

 

-slym

[chrisco37]

Claremont almost wrote Wolverine out of the X-Men. Byrne saved him.

 

It wasn't until Byrne came on board that the character started to develop a personality.

 

He wasn't the big draw until the late 80's.

 

As someone who got into comics in 1983 because of Wolverine, I can tell you that he was a big draw way before the late '80s. He was such a big draw that he was the first Marvel character to get his own solo mini-series in 1982.

.

 

Yep. He was huge backing he early 80's. I distinctly remember passing this issue around in 3rd grade with my friends. It was the Wolvie vs SS battle.

 

[kav]

OK, he also isn't a mutant.

 

 

 

-slym

Oh he's a mutant.

[slym2none]

No.

 

 

 

-slym

[Primetime]

For nearly 10 years, wolverine's origin was relatively mysterious, unknown, and untold in full in comics. Characters with the unknown (like Batman) always gain extreme popularity.

[kav]

How do you KNOW he's not a mutant? Do you have a Cerebro?

He looks like a mutant. Acts like a mutant.

[kav]

For nearly 10 years, wolverine's origin was relatively mysterious, unknown, and untold in full in comics. Characters with the unknown (like Batman) always gain extreme popularity.

What is unknown about Batman? We know everything about him.