I used to read comics from the late 80’s throughout the mid 90s. I’ll still read a graphic novel here and there, but the latest X-Men movie has led to me downloading quite a few to my Kindle over the past few weeks.
I’ve read House of M, Messiah Complex, and Second Coming and have some questions. Why is Xavier walking? Why does he seem like a background character and Scott brushes him off anytime he tries to offer advice? Why are there Sentinels on the grounds of the school? Where is Jean? Emma seems to have replaced her.
I’m sure I’ll think of more, but those were the big ones that stood out.
He got the use of his legs back the same time he lost his powers (which he’s since regained) during M-Day - just afterwards, he speculated that the Scarlet Witch did it to rub in the loss of his powers, by giving him back a physical ability he used to lack.
And, IIRC, Scott’s attitude toward him in those stories is because it had recently come out at that point, that Xavier had been a lying, manipulative bastard toward the X-Men from the start, but I haven’t read X-Men since just after Messiah Complex, and had started reading again not long before, so I might not be remembering that well.
Jean is dead again.
Professor X is dead again(Scott was possessed by the Phoenix Force and killed him.)
Emma and Scott have a thing going on. And off. And on.
The Sentinels may are may not be there because SHIELD wants to keep mutants under their control.
Emma “replaced” Jean during Morrison’s New X-Men run – Scott was carrying on a telepathic affair with Emma, Jean found out, but eventually (posthumously) accepted Scott’s moving on from their own marriage. It actually works out as a much better dynamic, making Scott more interesting, I think.
Prof X has gotten cured so many times I can’t keep track. Magneto/Xorn did so temporarily during Morrison’s run. I don’t actually recall how it happened again after that was undone. He was pushed into the background as Scott came more into the foreground in leading the X-Men. Basically, the new guard has taken over.
Those sentinels on the schoolgrounds are part of Sentinel Squad ONE – basically, they’re piloted (not robots), set by the government to watch mutants after “M Day,” when most of the mutants stopped being mutants. The idea is that mutants wreaked world-changing chaos one time too many, and the government finally stepped in. They’re not necessarily there as mutant-killing foes of the X-Men, although they’re obviously there as an implicit threat.
If you’re catching up on lots of Marvel titles, I highly recommend Marvel Unlimited. The app is terrible (forgets how many issues you’ve downloaded, often freezes if offline), but as a reader it is functional, and the value is unbeatable.
Don’t even try to look up the Summers/Grey family tree. There’s so many doubles, clones, lost relatives, dopplegangers, etc. etc. etc. it will blow the top off your head. Jean appears or disappears every few issues, and it’s a coin flip whether she’s the real Jean or copy Jean.
I’ve long since given up trying to follow any kind of continuity. I take 'em as they come. If the art is good and the writing is good, it’s a good comic book.
(The business where the “young X-Men” come forward in time to the present era is pretty good. Very nice art, and a cute plot line.)
I like the Marvel amnesia approach. Let’s just forget, eh, that Hercules once fastened chains to Manhattan Island and towed it out to sea. Good.
Download Astonishing X-Men - Gifted, Dangerous, Torn and Unstoppable. The arc was written by Joss Whedon and illustrated by John Cassaday. It’s fairly independent of the main continuity and introduced some ideas that were later used in X-Men 3: Last Stand.
Y’know, one question I wanted to ask: Isn’t Scott still married to Madeline Pryor? As far as I know he never got a divorce, and while the law would probably presume she’s dead, he’s still a bigamist. I’ll grant he’s probably as confused as fans, and I couldn’t blame him for not know how many times or to which women he’s been married. His love life seems to be subject of multiple time-travel loops, reality re-writes, and retcons.
I’m not really a huge fan of what Marvel’s been doing for the last decade or so, but the whole Scott Summers bit does bother me more than most issues. I don’t think the writers can quite decide if he’s deeply-trouble-from-long-term-psychological-scars, jerk-but-heroic, or just-an-asshole.
Jean nearly died in a space shuttle crash, the Phoenix Force copied her and placed the original Jean Grey in a cocoon at the bottom of the bay to heal. The Phoenix Force Jean Grey killed herself in X-Men #137. The real Jean Grey came back some 8 (?) years after that. Xorn/Magneto that killed Jean Grey.
Madelyne Pryor is a clone of Jean Grey.
Rachel Summers is Scott and Jean’s daughter from an alternate future.
The actual reveals were from before I started reading again, so I’m just going on what characters (Scott, when telling off Xavier, and other people when telling off Scott for acting just like Xavier) said. Which is a long way of saying ‘I don’t rightly know’…but it does sound like something that would have come out in Illuminati.
In Joss Whedon’s run on Astonishing X-Men, it was revealed that the Shi’ar-tech computer that ran the Danger Room was fully sentient, and had effectively been enslaved by Xavier to serve as a training ground for his students. When the X-Men found out about this, they threw him off the team.
I only read the comic sporadically, so I don’t know if that’s the breach they’re referring to in the current comics, or if that got resolved, and then there was a second falling out between Xavier and his students, which led to what’s going on now.
When written well, current Scott has been great. After M-Day he had to step up and basically turn the X-Men into an isolationist, military group just to keep the remaining ~300 mutants alive. He gets possessed by the Phoenix and manages to turn the world into basically a utopia, but the Avengers don’t like that and attack him, which leads Phoenix-possessed Scott to flip out and kill Xavier. Afterward, everyone treats him like a pariah (despite when it happened to Jean and she murdered entire worlds, everything was okay). Since then, Wolverine and most of the other X-Men are happily curled up in their school, leaving Scott as one of the few people still looking out for the defense of mutants everywhere (though admittedly, the current writer has been doing a shit job of turning this into any actually good stories).
I’m unabashedly a big Cyclops fan, but I think there’s a good argument for “he’s a jerk because someone has to be.” I think it’s a very interesting character development for the guy who was originally the Boy Scout.
There was also the Deadly Genesis storyline where it was revealed that before Xavier put together the Giant Size X-Men team (Storm, Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler, etc.) to save the original team from Krakoa, Professor X had recruited another team to save them, of Vulcan (the third Summers brother), Darwin and some others. That team got slaughtered, and Xavier ended up mindwiping everyone (especially Cyclops, who saw it all happen) of the whole incident.
Cable got sent to future, where he was actually raised for a while by Scott and Jean, whose minds had been temporarily pulled forward in time and put in different bodies. Also Cable has a clone, Stryfe, and both of them came back to the present day, but had spent long enough in the future that they came back older than their father.
Also, Xavier’s son Legion went back in time and accidentally killed his father while trying to kill Magneto, and that created a different timeline in which Scott and Jean had a son, Nate Grey, who eventually made it into the regular timeline after Legion’s changes were reverted.
Quiz time:
Q: What’s the relationship between Stryfe and Nate Grey?
A: (spoilered so no one cheats on the quiz :)) Stryfe is a clone of the son that an alternate version of Nate’s dad had with a clone of an alternate version of Nate’s mom.
I highly recommend the podcast Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men for anyone interested in the X-Men. They started at the beginning and are almost up to the Dark Phoenix Saga.
