Age of X, Schism and some complaints on the X Men

Well I haven't written anything too in depth about any comics but just wanted to give a few thoughts and opinions about different things going on with the X-Men right now and also just as a warning I'm going to talk about recent stories so might be some spoilers in here if you haven't read any of the X titles in awhile.

First, I wanted to talk a bit about the recent Age of X storyline that just wrapped up in X-Men Legacy and the New Mutants titles. I'm a big fan of Mike Carey who wrote it and who has written X-Men Legacy since the name changed and before then had written X-Men for a long time. When the teasers came out for Age of X, I was really excited but then by the time it was about to come out I was fairly disinterested in it and felt it would be a knock off in ways to the Age of Apocalypse. Reading the two first issues of it quickly changed my opinion. It had allot of twists and turns that kept you guessing and interested. I mean by the third issue I kind of figured where it was going but I enjoyed all the suspense it had in it. I think its just so refreshing because I may have issues with the X-Men franchise in whole but its great that Marvel has kept Carey on the X-Men/X-Men Legacy title for so long that he can really develop ideas. With Age of X it was of course one of Legion's super powerful super crazy split personalities that warped reality to its new form which was disastrous and chaotic for most everyone but placed Legion in the role of a hero. I appreciated this revelation so much because I feel with other writers in the other major X titles would have just left Legion in the background. Carey had shown Xavier and Dr. Nemesis working with Legion to get control over his mind and personalities and Age of X was the result of what they had attempted. It may be a bit early to tell but certainly seems like this event will have lasting effects on a number of X-Men characters in the X-Men Legacy title. I'm also excited and hopeful for the upcoming story arcs in X-Men Legacy. Seems that the title will go back to somewhat of a team book featuring Rogue, Gambit, Magneto, Xavier, Legion and Frenzy. I really enjoy most of the characters so feel like those will be some good stories. One last thing, I'm interested to see what happens with Rachel Summers or Revenant. Its interesting that she is stuck outside her body and waiting to see what message she has from the others that have been in space for about forever it seems like now.

Switching topics, the X-Men Schism is going to be getting under swing this summer. I had written a previous blog about the X-Men and one thing I talked about was how I felt that a split was coming within the X-Men ranks. Now, I thought it would be Cyclops on one side and Xavier on the other. So I was off on that but still kind of want to give myself a pat on the back on that lol. With the latest previews that they are showing for the Schism event, I'm not sure how to feel about it. One of the things I feel about with the X-Men is that they have a fairly big lineup of mutants to use but seems like the same few are all in the spotlight. I would hope after Schism, that Marvel could have the Uncanny X-Men title focused on Cyclops group while maybe the new regular X-Men title could focus on Wolverine's side etc. I feel like that would be a good idea and I am hopeful for a situation like that to unfold. The thing that worries me is that I'm not sure if I'm going to buy a Wolverine vs. Cyclops situation. Right now it kind of seems like they had an idea to have like an X-Men civil war and Marvel had just said well its got to be Wolverine vs. Cyclops. In my previous blog I talk about how Cyclops was acting like a general and some choices he has made could led to a split. If that is the case, I'm not sure if Wolverine is the person that should led the X-Men in a different direction on some high moral ground reasons. I mean Wolverine openly kills high numbers of people and often will get in berserker mode and kill those who may not deserve it. So that may be a stretch. With that being said, I guess I'm going to have to leave my judgment to when the story comes out and we learn what the "major event" is that ignites this schism. I will say that clearly Wolverine and Cyclops have had their issues over the years with Jean and even more recent events I could see playing a part. If written right, I think the schism could work out all right.

Finally, I have to get out my usual moans and complaints about the X-Men. My over all issue with the X-Men is that Marvel needs to create more continuity between the titles. I pretty much read every X title out there so its a big thing for me. I realize that this is obviously comic books I'm talking about so it doesn't need to be held to a real high standard but sometimes its too much to ignore. Like I said above it seems like every X title has to have the same main characters such as Cyclops, Emma Frost, Magneto, Namor and of course Wolverine. I understand there are probably allot of things that go into  these decisions like how popular the characters are and who the writers want to use etc but again at times its hard to tell if all the titles are suppose to be canon within the larger scope of the X-men universe. I mean when you have like 4 books all with the same characters in them dealing with different huge crisis on different sides of the globe all at the same time, it kind of takes away from the stories in the big picture sense. I feel like it would just be kind of common sense that Marvel could sit down and divide up the major characters into the different titles so they all could get some face time. I mean clearly they could have some over lap but just so that it would make sense in the big picture. In my opinion, its much needed for Marvel to get one person to overview all of the major X titles to preserve continuity among the titles.