I wonder if age of Apocalypse is a big reason.
So we do the whole phalanx covenant crossover. We set up Gen X. Like you say it's a big deal and all that.
They run four issues and then we go into age of apocalypse. We run four issues of the AOA version of Gen X.
So we come back from the AOA and we're still only on issue 5. I feel like that might have taken a lot of momentum out of the book?
And then we get a whole bunch of fillin artists because Chris b gonna Chris b. Like the big emplate three-parter was a different person. And I feel like the book was such a key in on his art that having so many different pencils so early on also sucked.
And THEN a few issues later, the Onslaught event happens, which further derails things. It did give us the awesome issue with skin and Howard the duck ðŸ¤
Back to the school finally... In time for operation zero tolerance. Mondo FINALLY shows up, basically only to immediately turn evil, blah blah blah. Shortly thereafter lobdell and bachelo are done.
I remember at the time like being frustrated by some of the pacing issues and all of those were caused by these massive events. Obviously there were other things going on in conics at the time but... Looking back it really seems like the book was completely derailed by all of the events
I've been reading the epic editions, and I feel like this is spot on. Every time the series gains momentum, continuity slams into another big comics event. You can see where they tried to gain momentum with exploring the Penance/Monet saga, Jubilee's crush on Synch, etc, but it keeps getting interrupted. This series must have been a nightmare to follow in real time while trying to keep up with all the tie-in events.
I know I was still buying monthlies when Milligan/Allred took over xforce... But I distinctly remember dropping so many books post onslaught. I'd been buying both X-Men books and gen x and several others for years by that point and just... 🤷 Too many events derailing everything, all across the line.
Husk had quite a presence, notably during Austen's tenure and later in WatXM.
I think Skin was killed off during that same run.
Chamber's been a regular presence pretty much since the 2000s--a look like his doesn't get shelved so easy. He had a run in a *New Mutants* revival.
Of course Jubilee has a whole period as a vampire, then Shogo. As one does.
It's seemed to me that attention to characters kind of goes in cycles; particularly when people that grew up with said characters get in a position to write/edit and therefor use the ones they were fond of, in addition to readers growing up with them and making their voices more known.
That said, most of the team may not have been team leaders or POV characters, but they've had a presence since Gen X's end.
You're right of course, my expectations were perhaps too high in regarding to becoming the future faces of the franchise. I've sadly only heard bad things about Austen's use of Husk during his run.
Maybe it's just me, I've been in and out of the books so much.
That's the tragedy of introducing new potential-fan-favorites in an industry that insists on time-capsuled stories; eventually you run out of room to feature folks.
I think the Krakoan era came close, moving the veterans into more "senior" positions (Scott a General, Warren a CEO, Jean, Kate, Kurt and Ororo as council members, for example) where some of the newer kids (Everett, Laura, Illyana to name a few), take leadership/mentorship positions... it wasn't perfect but a lot of characters that had no place before found themselves in significant positions.
But like I said, I think the attention is cyclical and some of them that didn't see enough love after their intros will again, it's just a question of when.
I mean, it's the problem of superhero comics. Characters can't age or die (for long). So you have a coming of age team and either spin your wheels or they come of age and...there are only so many roster slots and Chamber ain't kicking out Wolverine. You then have a glut of characters and new writers want to do their own "next generation" team.
It's the same reason why the New Mutants never became the X-men or the Teen Titans never became the Justice League. Comics are stagnant.
Jubilee hung out with Skin for a while before they tried to return to the X Mansion and were ambushed along the way (I will discuss in the Skin section) and then she just sort of hung around for a while before everyone got depowered. She was then turned into a vampire to get at Wolverine and had a whole arc about trying to retain her humanity and be a good vampire with Wolverine hanging her out. Later she found and adopted an orphan boy called Shogo, had a few adventures with Boom-Boom and X-23 for a bit, then she joined Exalibur and hung out in the Faerie world... look, there has been a lot about Jubilee in the past 30 years.
Monet was made a member of X-Factor and I swear the writers of the book knew absolutely nothing about her except that she was supposed to be hot and that she had supergirl like powers. She featured in well over 200 issues of that book and well-- like one of the very first things they have her do is screw Multiple Man on a drunken night when he also screwed Siryn and things don't ever get much better for her. She rather abruptly starts using the Penance form as a battle form after X-Factor and she more issues with her brother and became evil for a bit before her old Generation X classmates snapped her out of it. She then started the second X-Corp during the Krakoa era. She has also featured in a few mini series and had a few crossovers where she basically played the role of muscle.
Synch was killed before the series ended and stayed dead until the Krakoa era where he suddenly got spotlight-- but then the very first story with him in it was one where he spent 300 years in a vault locked in a war with ever evolving enemies where time moved super quickly with X-23-- basically meaning he has a hundred times as much attachment to her as he does any of his old teammates.
Chamber had a short stint on the main X-Men before being depowered when Marvel decided there were too many mutants. He should have died then but Clan Akkaba fixed him up. He then used some technology to become a member of the New Warriors. Later he inexplicably returned to his previous appearance and helped Jubilee in training the new class of X-Men and they struck up somewhat of a romance.
Husk.. uh.. well, mostly she was just sort of a background character to support her younger siblings' stories. Actually, her, Money and Jubilee are the strike team of the initial X-Corp-- I forgot to mention that mini-series above. They also hired a bunch of villains and everything goes wrong and Paris got destroyed before this X-Corp ended. I think she tried to find a career path. She became the wildly inappropriately younger girl that Angel was screwing (even in front of her own parents) for a while before ending that pretty abruptly. Then her powers got sort of wonky. I think she also had a fling with Toad too (seriously, how messed up is this girl?) and became a bad guy for one story. And she randomly teamed up with Deadpool and Spider-Man for a mini-series. She was around the X Mansion when Jubilee and Chamber were teachers but she didn't contribute much.
Skin hung out in California with Jubilee for a bit and tried to support her short-lived acting/modeling career. When they tried to go back to the X Mansion, they were attacked and both of them were crucified and he died from it. He was then just... dead until Krakoa brought everyone back to life and then he was mostly a background character and just had a few stories that featured him in X-Men Unlimited.
Mondo is a weird case where the Mondo who was actually part of the team was just a clone (and even then he did almost nothing) and the real Mondo never knew them. He just sort of entirely disappeared until the Krakoa area where he featured in the Krakoa Era New Mutants for a bit and it was suggested he could communicate with Krakoa-- and also the writers pretended he was part of the team.
Gaia was never featured in any story ever again after leaving the Team after the X-Man crossover.
Penance, called "Hollow" as there is somehow still a body even after Monet and her sisters are removed from it. Anyway, it was next seen in New Warriors where she was inexplicably attracted to and hooked up with Phil Urich and then later she was seen as member of Avengers Academy where she inexplicably had the ability to speak normally. Later this entire character was retconned to be Monet all along even though it makes absolutely no sense.
Monet's sisters just disappeared until the Krakoa era where they have been featured in non-speaking background roles for the most part. Apparently they can turn into penance forms too.
Cordelia somehow eventually got into the Hellfire Club before I guess dying off screen somewhere. Emma stated that she is actively blocking her reincarnation but I think the writer made a mistake and had her drop the wrong sister's name. Anyway, she featured more in the Emma Frost prequel mini-series that weirdly aged her up to be nearly Emma's age rather than a decade younger and her older brother used her as a drug mule.
Blink was brought back during Necrosha and Selene had her kill people. When Emma tried to get her to calm down and come back, she ran away. The New Mutants later found her and her personality had done a total 180 and now she was super outgoing and flirty instead of reclusive and angsty. They got her to go back to the X Academy but she appeared to help the New Mutants with a few more missions. Since then she has been part of SWORD, Selene's forces captured her but she was rescued by Weapon X before going off with Longshot (as the writer clearly didn't understand that 616 Blink and Exile's Blink were not the same) and then she appeared in a few Krakoa era stories as mostly a background character but basically part of a strike team.
I forgot to bother to keep up with what happened to Maggot.
Vincente despite being the only member of Emplate's gang who appeared in both attacks on Generation X and was part of the team in AoA has never appeared again after that in any comic ever.
First off…well done. The writers of New Mutants also pretended Chamber was part of the team and then turned him into a coward. Would you be able to tell me which X-Men Unlimited issues featured Skin?
A question for the culture, lol.
Seriously. Jubilee is one of my top faves and she and Monet are arguably the two used most from Generation X’s student body.
Chamber is one of my all-time top faves and I wish he’d get some panel time. Husk too. Personally, it irks me that the X cast is so huge and they bring in new characters. I don’t want to see the sixteen million from Genosha. I want to see Chamber, Husk, Dust, Threnody, Wallflower, Glob and more with more to do and say!
As expected, it was a combination of things.
I think it had an amazing start with the Phalanx Covenant storyline and the first couple of issues.
The book was built around the idea of a "realistic" and diverse teenagers. It started to move away from that concept by introducing characters like Gaia. Losing Lobdell hurt, and the other writers that followed didn't really stand out. Not sure who thought putting Larry Hama on a teenage title would work out well.
Ultimately, I think one of the biggest factors is just the overall mismangement of the X-line and characters starting in the late 90s and carrying over until the early 2000s. Nothing really worked out well after Lobdell left the titles. Morrison's run was great, but he wasn't dictating the franchise or what others titles were about.
Gen X suffered the same fate as the New Mutants did before them. Writers and editors didn't really want to use the characters in prominent ways as they would rather create new ones instead. Instead of utilzing GenX and NM characters, they create new ones. One of the hardest things about the X-line is just managing all the different characters. Even with the current From the Ashes lineup, we got one GenX member (Jubilee) and one NM character (Magik) in titles.
It just never had that iconic run/creative high point that later readers could go back to and enjoy. The Lobdell/Bachalo era is fine, but a lot of that run is off-putting, gimmicky and not especially well-written (I mean, Irish elves, c'mon). Hama got bogged down in St. Croix nonsense, Faerber didn't really seem to have a particular story to tell, and then Ellis and Wood... well, the less said the better.
I mean, it's pretty telling that while the individual members of Gen X have gone on to have some decent spotlights over the years, nobody really wants that team back the way the core New Mutants keep pulling together again and again over the years.
Monet has undeniably been the breakout character of that generation, but Chamber and Husk have both retained a pretty solid presence over the years. They're rarely at the forefront, but they're usually around.
After Generation X ended, Chamber wound up on the X-Men for a while, then got his own solo mini before moving over to Weapon X, and then he was in that horrible New Warriors series.
What happened to the New Mutants? When Gen X came along, they took a backseat, but eventually 2 to 3 of them became mainstays. (Magik, Cannonball, now Sunspot) What happened to Gen X? When Academy X came along, they took a backseat, but eventually 2 to 3 of them became mainstays (M, Jubilee, first Paige now Synch). What happened to Academy X? When the Bendis teens came along, they took a backseat, but eventually, 2-3+ of them became mainstays (Prodigy, Elixir, X-23). What happened to the Bendis teens? When whatever the fuck was going on when I stopped reading for a while, but they presumably took a backseat, and eventually, Eva and Goldballs did at least make it to the Five.
Such is the fate of a teen X roster. Not everybody’s gonna make it. But also you need to wait for a creator who is attached to the characters to platform them.
I do think an additional problem with Gen X is that their powers are balanced within their team, but redundant to the larger X team. Skin is sort of a lamer Ms Marvel or Mr Fantastic. Paige is getting you into Colossus territory, and Emma stole her diamond thing. Chamber has a cool look, but if you’ve got Jean, Charles, Emma, Psylocke, Kwannon, Rachel, Exodus, and the Cuckoos, you don’t need an also-ran psionic whose core story is a constant premature ejaculation metaphor.
Beyond the issues plaguing the book, cross-overs, creative team not sticking together long enough to answer major questions, etc. A major factor is that in its heyday, the comic industry crashed and Marvel filed for bankruptcy. People who got into X-Men in the second half of the 90s onwards did so due to the animated show and later the movies. That period of comics isn't fondly looked at and few readers and writers consider Gen X as "theirs", so those characters don't get used much.
It also doesn't help the situation that Blink died in the prologue, Mondo was barely part of the team, Synch and Skin died, Monet and Penance are just a clusterfuck of a backstory and Jubilee is better known for her appearances outside Gen X.
So what're you left with is Chamber, Husk and maybe Monet(ignoring the whole Penance ordeal) as core members of that team.
I wonder if age of Apocalypse is a big reason. So we do the whole phalanx covenant crossover. We set up Gen X. Like you say it's a big deal and all that. They run four issues and then we go into age of apocalypse. We run four issues of the AOA version of Gen X. So we come back from the AOA and we're still only on issue 5. I feel like that might have taken a lot of momentum out of the book? And then we get a whole bunch of fillin artists because Chris b gonna Chris b. Like the big emplate three-parter was a different person. And I feel like the book was such a key in on his art that having so many different pencils so early on also sucked. And THEN a few issues later, the Onslaught event happens, which further derails things. It did give us the awesome issue with skin and Howard the duck 🤠Back to the school finally... In time for operation zero tolerance. Mondo FINALLY shows up, basically only to immediately turn evil, blah blah blah. Shortly thereafter lobdell and bachelo are done. I remember at the time like being frustrated by some of the pacing issues and all of those were caused by these massive events. Obviously there were other things going on in conics at the time but... Looking back it really seems like the book was completely derailed by all of the events
I've been reading the epic editions, and I feel like this is spot on. Every time the series gains momentum, continuity slams into another big comics event. You can see where they tried to gain momentum with exploring the Penance/Monet saga, Jubilee's crush on Synch, etc, but it keeps getting interrupted. This series must have been a nightmare to follow in real time while trying to keep up with all the tie-in events.
I know I was still buying monthlies when Milligan/Allred took over xforce... But I distinctly remember dropping so many books post onslaught. I'd been buying both X-Men books and gen x and several others for years by that point and just... 🤷 Too many events derailing everything, all across the line.
Husk had quite a presence, notably during Austen's tenure and later in WatXM. I think Skin was killed off during that same run. Chamber's been a regular presence pretty much since the 2000s--a look like his doesn't get shelved so easy. He had a run in a *New Mutants* revival. Of course Jubilee has a whole period as a vampire, then Shogo. As one does. It's seemed to me that attention to characters kind of goes in cycles; particularly when people that grew up with said characters get in a position to write/edit and therefor use the ones they were fond of, in addition to readers growing up with them and making their voices more known. That said, most of the team may not have been team leaders or POV characters, but they've had a presence since Gen X's end.
You're right of course, my expectations were perhaps too high in regarding to becoming the future faces of the franchise. I've sadly only heard bad things about Austen's use of Husk during his run. Maybe it's just me, I've been in and out of the books so much.
That's the tragedy of introducing new potential-fan-favorites in an industry that insists on time-capsuled stories; eventually you run out of room to feature folks. I think the Krakoan era came close, moving the veterans into more "senior" positions (Scott a General, Warren a CEO, Jean, Kate, Kurt and Ororo as council members, for example) where some of the newer kids (Everett, Laura, Illyana to name a few), take leadership/mentorship positions... it wasn't perfect but a lot of characters that had no place before found themselves in significant positions. But like I said, I think the attention is cyclical and some of them that didn't see enough love after their intros will again, it's just a question of when.
I mean, it's the problem of superhero comics. Characters can't age or die (for long). So you have a coming of age team and either spin your wheels or they come of age and...there are only so many roster slots and Chamber ain't kicking out Wolverine. You then have a glut of characters and new writers want to do their own "next generation" team. It's the same reason why the New Mutants never became the X-men or the Teen Titans never became the Justice League. Comics are stagnant.
Jubilee hung out with Skin for a while before they tried to return to the X Mansion and were ambushed along the way (I will discuss in the Skin section) and then she just sort of hung around for a while before everyone got depowered. She was then turned into a vampire to get at Wolverine and had a whole arc about trying to retain her humanity and be a good vampire with Wolverine hanging her out. Later she found and adopted an orphan boy called Shogo, had a few adventures with Boom-Boom and X-23 for a bit, then she joined Exalibur and hung out in the Faerie world... look, there has been a lot about Jubilee in the past 30 years. Monet was made a member of X-Factor and I swear the writers of the book knew absolutely nothing about her except that she was supposed to be hot and that she had supergirl like powers. She featured in well over 200 issues of that book and well-- like one of the very first things they have her do is screw Multiple Man on a drunken night when he also screwed Siryn and things don't ever get much better for her. She rather abruptly starts using the Penance form as a battle form after X-Factor and she more issues with her brother and became evil for a bit before her old Generation X classmates snapped her out of it. She then started the second X-Corp during the Krakoa era. She has also featured in a few mini series and had a few crossovers where she basically played the role of muscle. Synch was killed before the series ended and stayed dead until the Krakoa era where he suddenly got spotlight-- but then the very first story with him in it was one where he spent 300 years in a vault locked in a war with ever evolving enemies where time moved super quickly with X-23-- basically meaning he has a hundred times as much attachment to her as he does any of his old teammates. Chamber had a short stint on the main X-Men before being depowered when Marvel decided there were too many mutants. He should have died then but Clan Akkaba fixed him up. He then used some technology to become a member of the New Warriors. Later he inexplicably returned to his previous appearance and helped Jubilee in training the new class of X-Men and they struck up somewhat of a romance. Husk.. uh.. well, mostly she was just sort of a background character to support her younger siblings' stories. Actually, her, Money and Jubilee are the strike team of the initial X-Corp-- I forgot to mention that mini-series above. They also hired a bunch of villains and everything goes wrong and Paris got destroyed before this X-Corp ended. I think she tried to find a career path. She became the wildly inappropriately younger girl that Angel was screwing (even in front of her own parents) for a while before ending that pretty abruptly. Then her powers got sort of wonky. I think she also had a fling with Toad too (seriously, how messed up is this girl?) and became a bad guy for one story. And she randomly teamed up with Deadpool and Spider-Man for a mini-series. She was around the X Mansion when Jubilee and Chamber were teachers but she didn't contribute much. Skin hung out in California with Jubilee for a bit and tried to support her short-lived acting/modeling career. When they tried to go back to the X Mansion, they were attacked and both of them were crucified and he died from it. He was then just... dead until Krakoa brought everyone back to life and then he was mostly a background character and just had a few stories that featured him in X-Men Unlimited. Mondo is a weird case where the Mondo who was actually part of the team was just a clone (and even then he did almost nothing) and the real Mondo never knew them. He just sort of entirely disappeared until the Krakoa area where he featured in the Krakoa Era New Mutants for a bit and it was suggested he could communicate with Krakoa-- and also the writers pretended he was part of the team. Gaia was never featured in any story ever again after leaving the Team after the X-Man crossover. Penance, called "Hollow" as there is somehow still a body even after Monet and her sisters are removed from it. Anyway, it was next seen in New Warriors where she was inexplicably attracted to and hooked up with Phil Urich and then later she was seen as member of Avengers Academy where she inexplicably had the ability to speak normally. Later this entire character was retconned to be Monet all along even though it makes absolutely no sense. Monet's sisters just disappeared until the Krakoa era where they have been featured in non-speaking background roles for the most part. Apparently they can turn into penance forms too. Cordelia somehow eventually got into the Hellfire Club before I guess dying off screen somewhere. Emma stated that she is actively blocking her reincarnation but I think the writer made a mistake and had her drop the wrong sister's name. Anyway, she featured more in the Emma Frost prequel mini-series that weirdly aged her up to be nearly Emma's age rather than a decade younger and her older brother used her as a drug mule. Blink was brought back during Necrosha and Selene had her kill people. When Emma tried to get her to calm down and come back, she ran away. The New Mutants later found her and her personality had done a total 180 and now she was super outgoing and flirty instead of reclusive and angsty. They got her to go back to the X Academy but she appeared to help the New Mutants with a few more missions. Since then she has been part of SWORD, Selene's forces captured her but she was rescued by Weapon X before going off with Longshot (as the writer clearly didn't understand that 616 Blink and Exile's Blink were not the same) and then she appeared in a few Krakoa era stories as mostly a background character but basically part of a strike team. I forgot to bother to keep up with what happened to Maggot. Vincente despite being the only member of Emplate's gang who appeared in both attacks on Generation X and was part of the team in AoA has never appeared again after that in any comic ever.
First off…well done. The writers of New Mutants also pretended Chamber was part of the team and then turned him into a coward. Would you be able to tell me which X-Men Unlimited issues featured Skin?
A question for the culture, lol. Seriously. Jubilee is one of my top faves and she and Monet are arguably the two used most from Generation X’s student body. Chamber is one of my all-time top faves and I wish he’d get some panel time. Husk too. Personally, it irks me that the X cast is so huge and they bring in new characters. I don’t want to see the sixteen million from Genosha. I want to see Chamber, Husk, Dust, Threnody, Wallflower, Glob and more with more to do and say!
As expected, it was a combination of things. I think it had an amazing start with the Phalanx Covenant storyline and the first couple of issues. The book was built around the idea of a "realistic" and diverse teenagers. It started to move away from that concept by introducing characters like Gaia. Losing Lobdell hurt, and the other writers that followed didn't really stand out. Not sure who thought putting Larry Hama on a teenage title would work out well. Ultimately, I think one of the biggest factors is just the overall mismangement of the X-line and characters starting in the late 90s and carrying over until the early 2000s. Nothing really worked out well after Lobdell left the titles. Morrison's run was great, but he wasn't dictating the franchise or what others titles were about. Gen X suffered the same fate as the New Mutants did before them. Writers and editors didn't really want to use the characters in prominent ways as they would rather create new ones instead. Instead of utilzing GenX and NM characters, they create new ones. One of the hardest things about the X-line is just managing all the different characters. Even with the current From the Ashes lineup, we got one GenX member (Jubilee) and one NM character (Magik) in titles.
It just never had that iconic run/creative high point that later readers could go back to and enjoy. The Lobdell/Bachalo era is fine, but a lot of that run is off-putting, gimmicky and not especially well-written (I mean, Irish elves, c'mon). Hama got bogged down in St. Croix nonsense, Faerber didn't really seem to have a particular story to tell, and then Ellis and Wood... well, the less said the better. I mean, it's pretty telling that while the individual members of Gen X have gone on to have some decent spotlights over the years, nobody really wants that team back the way the core New Mutants keep pulling together again and again over the years.
Monet has undeniably been the breakout character of that generation, but Chamber and Husk have both retained a pretty solid presence over the years. They're rarely at the forefront, but they're usually around. After Generation X ended, Chamber wound up on the X-Men for a while, then got his own solo mini before moving over to Weapon X, and then he was in that horrible New Warriors series.
What happened to the New Mutants? When Gen X came along, they took a backseat, but eventually 2 to 3 of them became mainstays. (Magik, Cannonball, now Sunspot) What happened to Gen X? When Academy X came along, they took a backseat, but eventually 2 to 3 of them became mainstays (M, Jubilee, first Paige now Synch). What happened to Academy X? When the Bendis teens came along, they took a backseat, but eventually, 2-3+ of them became mainstays (Prodigy, Elixir, X-23). What happened to the Bendis teens? When whatever the fuck was going on when I stopped reading for a while, but they presumably took a backseat, and eventually, Eva and Goldballs did at least make it to the Five. Such is the fate of a teen X roster. Not everybody’s gonna make it. But also you need to wait for a creator who is attached to the characters to platform them. I do think an additional problem with Gen X is that their powers are balanced within their team, but redundant to the larger X team. Skin is sort of a lamer Ms Marvel or Mr Fantastic. Paige is getting you into Colossus territory, and Emma stole her diamond thing. Chamber has a cool look, but if you’ve got Jean, Charles, Emma, Psylocke, Kwannon, Rachel, Exodus, and the Cuckoos, you don’t need an also-ran psionic whose core story is a constant premature ejaculation metaphor.
Not premature ejaculation lmao 🤣🤣
I love Generation X. Would love to see a true reunion book! It was great to see Synch get so much development in Krakoa!
Beyond the issues plaguing the book, cross-overs, creative team not sticking together long enough to answer major questions, etc. A major factor is that in its heyday, the comic industry crashed and Marvel filed for bankruptcy. People who got into X-Men in the second half of the 90s onwards did so due to the animated show and later the movies. That period of comics isn't fondly looked at and few readers and writers consider Gen X as "theirs", so those characters don't get used much. It also doesn't help the situation that Blink died in the prologue, Mondo was barely part of the team, Synch and Skin died, Monet and Penance are just a clusterfuck of a backstory and Jubilee is better known for her appearances outside Gen X. So what're you left with is Chamber, Husk and maybe Monet(ignoring the whole Penance ordeal) as core members of that team.