UPDATE: episode 6 of X-Men '97 pulled even more references from here. Direct lines from when Prof X senses the massacre, the classroom, and some modified Trask stuff. Very cool and with a lot of emotional weight.
I'm guessing some of Forge's tech went into creation of the wild sentinel. And, I'm REALLY wondering if Sinister didn't clone Xavier, but make the clone female because, IDFK, Sinister's gonna Sinister. It would be a way to introduce Cassandra Nova. The nosebleeds the telepaths got when the attack happened.... I feel like that must have been caused by another telepath.
True story, I was the intern in the X-men editorial office during the time Grant took over. The editors did NOT know what to make of Grant’s stuff. I still have a photocopy of his original idea somewhere. There were a few ideas that never made it into the run.
@@Alice-me2qk I was an editorial intern for Mark Powers, one of the two X-group editors at the time. Was there the day Claremont lost his honorary editorial position…it was a time of extreme transition. Bob Harras was EIC one semester and next term Joey Q had moved from the little marvel knights corner of the bullpen to the big office.
The X-Men movies really did a number on Marvel. It wasn't just the switch to the New X-Men, but also the creation of Ultimate X-Men that tried to capitalize on that movie's popularity.
@@Tamlinearthly It gets me how the fandom now insists the early Ultimate X-Men comics were awful and a mistake. I think they're fairly timely despite the PG attempts of swearing.
To be fair, this was a time period where the first movie is the ONLY successful super-hero movie, before Spider-Man. They panicked fired Bob Harris & did whatever they could to mirror what connected with a mainstream audience.
Emma Frost got her diamond form because Morrison couldn’t use Colossus… thus another entry in the “comics history changed because this creator can’t use this character”… it happens more often then I realized lol
@@cujohjosefumi1252 he was thought dead in the comics, sacrificed himself to help with experiments to cure the Legacy virus, and Marvel had a no bringing back dead X-men policy back then. Which is ironic considering that just a couple of years later they allowed Joss Whedon to revive Colossus to make Shadowcat's Astonishing X-men storyline more interesting. Also they let Chris Claremont kill and bring back Psylocke in only a timeframe of a couple of years, and make it a while storyline for her character. Which I guess it's better they let Claremont do that than anyone else, since he knew the character so well, but geez did it have to be such a narrow window in which all these deaths and reboot rebirths of major X-characters happened. I think it sort of did break Marvel continuity in a way, since it did do away with any pretense of suspense over certain characters' deaths and probably ushered us into storylines like the one during the Krakoa era.
I’ve always enjoyed how much this run truly changed Emma frost, and it was interesting to see how the relationship between her diamond form and her telepathy would shift as the run went on and gotta love the platform boots
This was a fascinating look into an X-Men era that I missed entirely. I know you're not a big fan of this era, Sasha, but I appreciate your objective approach. And thank you for the copious quotes. The thoughts expressed in Morrison's pitch are seemingly ubiquitous in the industry today: Go for a younger audience; screw the older fans. While Morrison had a commercially successful run on the X-Men, that approach doesn't seem to be working for the industry as a whole. Or the movie industry. Or really, anyone. I think you can reach out to new audiences without alienating your base.
I'm not too detailed familiar with the X-Men comics, so maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but this honestly feels like a setback more than anything? Like, Genosha as mutant nation was a recent development at the time, so just destroying it seems more than a violent return to the status quo rather than "shaking it up"
That´s the irony, isnt it? Their attempts to shake the status quo almost alway ends up in something that has being done before, thus making comics feel cyclical and stuck.
I hate how Wolverine complains about Charles making him wear the previous uniform. My dude, THAT WAS YOUR UNIFORM! You came to the team wearing it. Blame alpha flight or department H if you must, but don't pretend that was the professor making you wear that outfit.
Morrison is notorious for not actually researching anything before writing their story. They just kinda write what they remember being true, whether or not it actually happened that way.
@@sw-uj2oh Which was kinda dumb too. Because in a world with no superheroes why does Scott's mind go to blue and yellow spandex? IDK, seemed a bit ashamed of the source material, and I hate that.
@@mitch-TO I love Morrison, but yeah. They wrote a JLA story where Mirror Master and Doctor Light teamed up, then in Final Crisis they team up again and describe it as their first team-up. Didn't even remember their own story. 🤣
@@mitch-TO to be fair, that's most writers. I will not forgive Hickman for what he did to Beyonder, but if you can be interesting writer, you get a pass.
Can’t help but notice that Morrison kinda echoed the same toxic mentality to the fandom that allot of writers and directors have now. The “take what you want and change what you want, do whatever. And if the fans don’t like it F-Em.”
@@blackrazer22 Not really. New X-Men was successful, but X-men have always been a stellar seller. At the time, we also had X-Treme X-Men that was doing well and Uncanny X-Men which sold rather well despite Chuck Austen being on writing and some incredibly.. badly written scenes.
Okay, as someone whose primary influence regarding X-Men is X-Men Evolution, what is it with writers and trying to make the X-Men separate from humanity or a different species or whatever? I thought the entire point was they were in fact people just like an average person, just with the occasional lightning bolt coming out of their butt? (Or you know, like a regular superhero or supervillain?). For that matter, why the heck is it that writers insist on playing up characters like they're too cool for their own genre conventions? (Like, I get that for the 90's/2000's cause Xtreme and faux-Rebelliousness was the in-thing for the time, but even nowadays we're getting a lot of that. I don't understand how the same guy who wrote All-Star Superman wrote any of that bit about the costumes)
@@SpaceJawa Yes. But they were right that if you just keep on catering to that base it's not gonna evolve. I was around back then, and people thought Lobdell and Nicieza had changed too radically and they had to return to Claremont. The contempt was not good, but they were right that the property needed to.... *ahem*.... mutate and evolve rather than move backwards. And that the fanbase needed to expand, because it was dwindling and growing ever more entrenched in its ways. I just wish Morrison was able to do so with a better attitude.
Maybe it’s because my primary influence is the 90s animated series, but I would have expected something more along the lines of a Hamlet reference from Beast while holding the skull.
I remember I stopped reading x-men when this came out as it seemed completely alien to me with the huge shift. I finally read years later and enjoyed, after getting back into X-Men with Astonishing X-Men
I really liked Astonishing. Cassady's art was great, I felt like it modernized the costumes better than New X-Men had, and it had quippy dialogue without completely betraying who the characters were.
I would really love it if you made a follow-up video examining New X-Men #132. It sees the X-Men revisiting Geonosha some time after the destruction. People are hearing voices they think are ghosts but it’s actually Polaris who preserved the final words of everyone killed with her powers. It’s about grief after mass disaster and reads like Morrison addressing the glib treatment of the genocide you brought up in the wake of 9/11. Loved this vid! My first X-Men comic was volume one from this run and the first Omni I ever bought was for this run. Given that I’m a massive X-Fan now, I’m a little biased toward this run because it ignited my love of the franchise. That said, I do think it can get a little overly melodramatic and think it’s cleverer than it is, as you pointed out. What I think stands the test of time from this run, though, is how it made Xavier’s school an actual school with a large student body and fleshed out mutants as a minority group with their own culture, music, fashion, etc.
I couldn't afford a lot of comics as a kid and this was the first X-Men arc I read. I was a big fan of the 90's and Xtreme X-Men cartoons. I ended up having very mixed feelings after reading the series, with my biggest takeaway being "man, the X-Men are jerks". Haven't really read them since then...
You know, now that I actually think about it, I have to admit for as big a shake-up as the Genosha genocide was ... I have to admit I don't really 'hear' that much about it, it's never talked about, especially not as much as House of M. The only time I recall Genosha being a more modern thing was during the "Danger" arc (which I won't spoil, but I remember loving that arc). You just assume that 16 million mutants dead this must have been like a huge comic event ... and instead it was just like a blip of 'well that happened'. I'm glad X-men '97 could really put us in the middle of the genocide as it was happening. Also, thank you for explaining that it was the "Wild Sentinels" that were responsible for the genocide (as in what weapons were used), I've always been curious. I thought it was some sort of augmented tri-face Sentinel for awhile cause I couldn't find what kind of them did it.
I'll say this: after 15 straight years reading the X-books, with many highs & lows, this was where I finally jumped off (I believe the "Nuff Said" issue being the last". Morrison wanted readers like me to leave and he finally succeeded not long into his run. (Edit: IT seems I also get all of dissatisfaction with Morrison's run confused with what Casey was also doing in Uncanny at the same time.)
I never liked the whole "Mutants are definitely going to replace Humans" thing. The "Evolutionary Levels" trope bugs me in general, but here in particular I think it comes too close to accidentally promoting eugenics.
I was one of those long time fans that just stopped reading. I was already burned out by the Onslaught storyline and this finished it. Going back, there are a lot of elements I really like, but the parts I dislike are so jarring, and this is a run that really pushed the idea of evil Beast into the forefront as later writers kept riffing and adding more
God I hated this run. Its so.. early 2000s. Plus the art style. Eve of Destruction, even if uncreative, was fun. Then we have cheating, genocide, character sabotage...
I got re-introduced to X-men with the '97 cartoon because... y'know, i liked the 90s run. This video has given me interest to go read some of the newer stuff with an open mind. Thanks!
This arc is one of the things that makes me hate Krakoa. The Krakoans go on about how "humans" were responsible for the massacre on Genosha. But really Cassandra Nova was and they BROUGH HER BACK TO LIFE. Its just stomach turning. Like the propaganda aspect I kind of get but bringing Cassandra back is way too much especially when Genosha is this horrible thing they're harping on about/
I believe Cassandra came back before the Krakoa era, specifically in X-Men Red. They kept her around so they could watch her, plus she had some nannites or something in her head that prevented her from harming others. Every one hated her, and no one forgot what she did. Especially Shadowcat, whose father died on Genosha. Read the Marauders for more details.
Ugh, hated the Morrison run. He alienated me in his Wizard interviews, but I gave it a shot… but nope. He clearly didn’t like a large portion of the audience. Everything wasn’t horrible… I liked them getting the students back in the mansion, the proliferation of mutants with minor abilities not likely to lead to combat members, and finally fulfilling their implied obligation to provide a home for less than attractive mutants, as called out by Callisto and the Morlocks. I still don’t like secondary mutations, and have noticed their fading from reference. Beast is my poster child for why it was a bad concept. In a Wizard interview Morrison said when people thought of Beast, they thought of Disney’s Beast, and he wanted that recognition… completely ignoring decades of description of being ape like, his large hands and feet being replaced by small feet and undextrous hands. That’s the kind of writing decision and use of deus ex machina explanation that usually gets criticized, but it’s Morrison, so… it must be brilliant! Whatever. Morrison’s characterization of the X-Men he used was more what he wanted them to be rather than what they had always been. The gallows humor from Beast didn’t fit… yes, he’d been a cut-up, but he also had the wisdom to know what he needed to be serious and somber. Scott was a cheater… but only for Jean… but then he’s cheating on Jean? Please. I did stop reading New X-Men until Morrison left. And it’s funny tome that so much of what he did has faded away. Unfortunately, though, that includes his good elements… the new students who are only used as scenery… Beak, Glob, Radian, Basilisk, Angel (who was in a movie!)… well, Quentin… he’s still around. Yay, Quentin!
The concept of beasts devolution was interesting but it's only mentioned once. That eventually his mind would start to become primal and he would devolve over time removing who he is from his brain and becoming only an animal. It's a decent tragedy since his whole career has been him being completely unlike how he looks
Man, I think he looks so cool! I’ve been reading through the whole x-saga and once I got the the feline beast look I just wished he looked like that forever. I think it fits his personality well
My understanding of Cassandra Nova is that she's a Murmummdi. Some kind of psychic parasite I think. I know one lived in Lady Mastermind's brain for a bit and Cable said they were the same thing
I enjoyed this video and breakdown and reflection. Morrison's run isn't for me, but the impact of Genosha as long lasting even after No More Mutants. I'm hoping that eventually we can get back to the X-men being cool again and not just someone's experiment/playground for shock value. Maybe the new runs coming out can be a step in that direction.
I was stationed overseas when this came out and comics were not easy to get, so I missed out on the entire Morrison run. Listening to the video, it may have got me to jump back into X-Men after having been out for the entire 90’s. (Jim Lee never did much for me and I didn’t want to have to follow two main titles) As always, very informative summation of the start of it.
Thank you for your points on what Morris said. Yes, he had a lot of points, but he's coming from it from the wrong direction and it could have gone so badly wrong.
This was the run that made me stop reading X-Men comics for years. It was clear that they were trying to piggyback off of the movie but they did it a little too hard. Add to that, the weird, scrunched baby face most of them had been drawn with and I felt like this wasn't my X-Men anymore. I was glad to see them return to a more comic book style later.
Learning about Morrison's manifesto, particularly his attitude towards the fanboys and how the X-Men shouldn't emphasise being superheroes, explains so much about why 11 year old me hated this run and why Marvel of the 2000s-now has slide into the mud. What utterly toxic, misguided notions he had.
I think the fans Morrison was talking about is different in the context of early 2000s. We were transitioning from letters pages to online forums but most readers weren’t online but Marvel was going to get that feedback first
i do think its interesting how hoxpox, while having a similar effect, is like the opposite of morrison's outlook. While Morrison was all about appealing to mainstream and maximizing appeal to get attention, HoxPox was all about diving into the depths of the fandom/comic lore to establish a new status quo without necessarily removing anything off the board.
Morrisons New X Men is my favorite X saga. It stands shoulder to shoulder with the best Claremont and Hickman books. It is a lot of fun and has some of the best character beats. So much of the new x men 97 and Krakoa era mine this book for inspiration. Please give it a shot! ❤
Those comments about the fans always complaining and otherwise ignoring them seems like a haunting prelude to the kind of attitude that is way too present with far too many creatives today.
Dang, this story is so sad, it makes me break down, but I don't really want it. I'm truly not the same as yesterday. I hope at least one person gets that reference
The Grant Morrison/Frank Quietly are such an iconic duo, that DC did it again with All-Star Superman. It changed the X-Men so much, that it made the Academy... and actual full on public school, which the movie did, and I thought it was weird the school didn't have many students in it, and most were just... adults. Even the directors and writers even had to go out and say they aren't using Cassandra Nova, since Deadpool and Wolverine has that covered. So they're doing the story, and doing something different, so I better expect some Bastion play!
The destruction of Genosha is also used in Wolverine and the X-Men. Though they didn't go all the way, some named characters did get killed. That plot line was one of the better arcs from the show.
Nope. Not a GM fan. I hate Cassandra Nova. To me, she's as dumb an idea as Wolverine & Sabretooth being 'Lupine'. All the characters feel off and it feels 'dirty', not 'gritty' to me. To each their own, though.
Other than the outfits I LOVED the New X-Men back when it first came out. It brought back the series and the teams core issues of being a mutant in the world, while the 90s “extreme era” just had big events one after the other to introduce big baddies like Onslaught and what not. Also this introduced me to Frank Quietly’s art which I love still till this day
I remember getting this trade paperback for Christmas after I stopped collecting comics the first time around, and looking at the interior art and thinking why do the X-Men look so old.
Honstly I vaguely remember buying floppies of E for Extinction through the Days of Future Present Silvestri story, and it’s some of my favorite Xmen/mutants tales. Its all so weird and different. First omnibus I gladly bought retail.
I remember coming back from living in Latin America, starting college again, and being told by my first roommate that if I liked the X-Men then I just HAD to read the Grant Morrison run. It had just ended, so i figured I'd get the TPBs and see what all the fuss was about. I remember being extremely disappointed, feeling like I was reading one long protracted "What If...?" story. The X-Men didn't feel "Cool," they felt "Hipsterish." It felt like the sort of thing some trust-fund putz from Williamsburg would think was "profound." So I dipped out...for over a decade. And when i finally decided to check back in it was the "Mustard and Bigotry" era. So I guess I stopped being a fan of the X-Men right around when Marvel & co. started hating their own audience. In the end, Morrison's run feels like what it is -- embarrassingly dated in its desperate desire to chase the then-Modern Audience.
I really appreciate your take on the first major story arc in Morrison's run! It was incredibly well researched with a good mix of summary and analysis, not to mention I like the idea of going over why specific changes happen, and the differing interpretations of what they mean, something I tend to really enjoy in a lot of game reviewers I follow, like SomeCallMeJohnny. As for my thoughts on this arc, I think it did its job well enough, personally I'm like, incredibly mixed on Morrison's run as a whole. I love the additions it added to mutants as a culture, but I'm not big on the idea of separating mutants from humans on a conceptual level, because mutants are still human. I also just, really really hate the way they made Scott/Emma a thing. Even though Emma is still growing from her time as a villain thanks to her work on Generation X, I think the sudden shift into trying to get Cyclops to engage in a psychic affair with her while he's emotionally compromised really made me dislike her character and made it harder for me to root for her when Jean was going too far with psychically assaulting Emma. It's really hard for me to like anyone much in New X-Men, at most, I liked Cyclops when he stopped Xorn from committing suicide, I appreciated the brotherly banter Wolverine has with Cyclops that pretty much gets shafted for a bit when Astonishing X-Men comes around, and appreciated him deciding not to engage in an affair with Jean out of respect for them both, showed how much he'd grown during the 90s to the then present.
This video's title really reminded me of what went down with w.i.t.c.h. season 2. As each of those we're alphabetized, and thematically corresponded with them each episode("L is for Loser")!
Great discussion of this classic storyline, really thoughtful. I'd always followed X-Men comics and bought some around the Onslaught storyline, but Morrison's run was the first I really started collecting.
I remember reading this run for the first time and thinking, "WTF did I miss something or did a genocidal event happen for mutants and everyone missed it?". Even Hickman references the event years later in HOX/POX when he re establishes the X lore!
I remember during the "Cosmic Adventure" arc in Spiderman when he was attacked by Magneto Magnus left thinking that Spiderman's new powers were too varied for him to be a mutant since mutants normally only have one power.
@@niteriemcfarlane5285 Basically the X-Men get impregnated with alien parasites trying to take over the galaxy. Highlights include Kitty getting a pet dragon (sadly for only one issue), Scott Summers' daddy issues and and Storm becoming the prophet-messiah of an enslaved race of space whales. Crazy stuff.
I have always maintained that Marvel could have gone with a massive population drop after House of M (no more mutants) (stillbirths, childhood cancers, etc.) due to the strong use of chemicals, radiation, etc. caused mutants instead of death. This E for Extinction with the "Mutants will replace Homo Sapien Sapiens in four generations" practically confirms that hypothesis.
If I didn't dislike Morrison after their GL run, reading them say "the [X-Men] movie got it almost right" in regards to costumes definitely pushed me into it.
I read these in trades in the 2010s, when I got back into X-books after a gap (Excalibur had ended, and nothing else pinged my interest at the time), when I found them 2-for-1 at my localish comic shop (it was an hour away). I liked the stories, but Quitely's art isn't a style I enjoy. I haven't revisited the New X-Men in a few years. Maybe once I catch up on my literal year's worth of X-related floppies, I'll go in for a reread.
Hugh Jackman's Wolverine may or may not have been an attractive awakening for me when I was younger, and *immediately* loving Emma Frost's skin-becoming-her-own-best-friend power and "welbred bitchiness" was what had me start reading X-Men at a younger age. Morrison's comments about pre-existing comic fans were definitely arrogant, but his advertising interests definitely did work on me! -Demographic man attracted to shirtless Wolverine.
The problem is Disney and Warner Bros. took these Morrison quotes and used it for the garbage movies and shows we’ve been getting lately. “Let’s make it different to bring in more fans.” What about your core audience. “I don’t even like them!”
Thanks for diving into the comics giving episode 5 of X-'97 a lot more context. The commentary is S-Tier btw 😁👍👏! Last point: Morrison's comments seem even more ironic as Hollywood today thinks EXACTLY the same way. Disregard and disrespect the core audience and then become shocked when they lose money 🤦♂️
I really liked the Morrison run... until the end, when he wrote Magneto so much of character that it was retconned almost immediately. I have a volume of numbers 114 to 117 but the Morrison's Manifesto is on the New Worlds volume (Portuguese edition by Devir)
I didn't know Emma's secondary mutation or secondary mutations in general came from a run in the 2000s. It's so integral to her character now that every adaptation highlights it. If I'm not mistaken, her cameo in X-Men Origins: Wolverine only shows her diamond skin power and not her telepathy
![[MV] A leap of faith...ความเชื่อใจครั้งสุดท้าย (From "Petrichor the series")](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/U1piZH2CNXA/mqdefault.jpg)
UPDATE: episode 6 of X-Men '97 pulled even more references from here. Direct lines from when Prof X senses the massacre, the classroom, and some modified Trask stuff. Very cool and with a lot of emotional weight.
I'm guessing some of Forge's tech went into creation of the wild sentinel. And, I'm REALLY wondering if Sinister didn't clone Xavier, but make the clone female because, IDFK, Sinister's gonna Sinister. It would be a way to introduce Cassandra Nova. The nosebleeds the telepaths got when the attack happened.... I feel like that must have been caused by another telepath.
THEYWEREDANCINGDRINKINGTEAMAKINGLOVE!!!
CereBruh 🤣
True story, I was the intern in the X-men editorial office during the time Grant took over. The editors did NOT know what to make of Grant’s stuff. I still have a photocopy of his original idea somewhere. There were a few ideas that never made it into the run.
Really, what were you doing at marvel as an intern?
@@Alice-me2qk I was an editorial intern for Mark Powers, one of the two X-group editors at the time. Was there the day Claremont lost his honorary editorial position…it was a time of extreme transition. Bob Harras was EIC one semester and next term Joey Q had moved from the little marvel knights corner of the bullpen to the big office.
"Breeding darling, top class breeding", that panel gave me LIFE
See she was so bitchy because of high-quality sex?
Lol
You, me, and also pretty much every queer comic nerd I know. Emma becomes an utter icon with this.
@@cassiedevereaux-smith3890read that for the first time today i wss shook 😂
The X-Men movies really did a number on Marvel. It wasn't just the switch to the New X-Men, but also the creation of Ultimate X-Men that tried to capitalize on that movie's popularity.
That movie shook them up lol
It is so wild how much sway the Ultimate comics had over Hollywood productions...and how utterly obscure and opaque they've become ever since.
@@Tamlinearthly It gets me how the fandom now insists the early Ultimate X-Men comics were awful and a mistake. I think they're fairly timely despite the PG attempts of swearing.
To be fair, this was a time period where the first movie is the ONLY successful super-hero movie, before Spider-Man. They panicked fired Bob Harris & did whatever they could to mirror what connected with a mainstream audience.
@@CasuallyComics In what way?
Emma Frost got her diamond form because Morrison couldn’t use Colossus… thus another entry in the “comics history changed because this creator can’t use this character”… it happens more often then I realized lol
why he couldn't use Colossus?
@@cujohjosefumi1252 he was thought dead in the comics, sacrificed himself to help with experiments to cure the Legacy virus, and Marvel had a no bringing back dead X-men policy back then. Which is ironic considering that just a couple of years later they allowed Joss Whedon to revive Colossus to make Shadowcat's Astonishing X-men storyline more interesting. Also they let Chris Claremont kill and bring back Psylocke in only a timeframe of a couple of years, and make it a while storyline for her character. Which I guess it's better they let Claremont do that than anyone else, since he knew the character so well, but geez did it have to be such a narrow window in which all these deaths and reboot rebirths of major X-characters happened. I think it sort of did break Marvel continuity in a way, since it did do away with any pretense of suspense over certain characters' deaths and probably ushered us into storylines like the one during the Krakoa era.
@cujohjosefumi1252 He temporarily died due to the Legacy Viru, he got revived during Joss Whedon's run of Astonishing X-Men
@@invidusspectator3920ok, thanks for the answer
Morrison also invented Zauriel because DC wouldn't let them use Hawkman on JLA.
"Miss Nova, I'm a dentist."
Gives off strong "Ma'am, this is a Wendy's" vibes
This made me want to see a comic just focusing on the daily life of the people of Genosha before the sentinel attack, but that's just a dream.
District X is about the closest we got.
"... an after-school club with a good jacket budget." 😄😄😄
Q is for Quotes; lots of them.
I was 12 when this dropped. It's what solidified my trajectory as a lifelong comic fan, and more specifically, a lifelong X-Men fan.
The way the faces are drawn here,,, is something,,, something unsettling about them
I've always found that about Quitely's art as well.
Such is the power of Frank Quitely. His art of Damian still haunts my dreams...
Everyone has these squished baby faces.
It's the chins. The massive, blocky chins. And the squished up, extra wrinkly faces
Anthropomorphic oatmeal.
I’ve always enjoyed how much this run truly changed Emma frost, and it was interesting to see how the relationship between her diamond form and her telepathy would shift as the run went on and gotta love the platform boots
It wasn't much of a change since it was just a mildly toned-down version of her from "Generation X"
C is for Comics, that’s good enough for me!
I love the story of X-men comics being banned onset and hearing that Kevin Feige (producer on first 3 films) would sneak comics to the cast
This was a fascinating look into an X-Men era that I missed entirely. I know you're not a big fan of this era, Sasha, but I appreciate your objective approach. And thank you for the copious quotes. The thoughts expressed in Morrison's pitch are seemingly ubiquitous in the industry today: Go for a younger audience; screw the older fans. While Morrison had a commercially successful run on the X-Men, that approach doesn't seem to be working for the industry as a whole. Or the movie industry. Or really, anyone. I think you can reach out to new audiences without alienating your base.
I'm not too detailed familiar with the X-Men comics, so maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but this honestly feels like a setback more than anything? Like, Genosha as mutant nation was a recent development at the time, so just destroying it seems more than a violent return to the status quo rather than "shaking it up"
That´s the irony, isnt it? Their attempts to shake the status quo almost alway ends up in something that has being done before, thus making comics feel cyclical and stuck.
I hate how Wolverine complains about Charles making him wear the previous uniform. My dude, THAT WAS YOUR UNIFORM! You came to the team wearing it. Blame alpha flight or department H if you must, but don't pretend that was the professor making you wear that outfit.
I definitely think this is based off how the film also mocks the costumes also
Morrison is notorious for not actually researching anything before writing their story. They just kinda write what they remember being true, whether or not it actually happened that way.
@@sw-uj2oh Which was kinda dumb too. Because in a world with no superheroes why does Scott's mind go to blue and yellow spandex? IDK, seemed a bit ashamed of the source material, and I hate that.
@@mitch-TO I love Morrison, but yeah. They wrote a JLA story where Mirror Master and Doctor Light teamed up, then in Final Crisis they team up again and describe it as their first team-up. Didn't even remember their own story. 🤣
@@mitch-TO to be fair, that's most writers. I will not forgive Hickman for what he did to Beyonder, but if you can be interesting writer, you get a pass.
Can’t help but notice that Morrison kinda echoed the same toxic mentality to the fandom that allot of writers and directors have now.
The “take what you want and change what you want, do whatever. And if the fans don’t like it F-Em.”
At least Morrison did not attack the Fans publicly at the time.
My biggest question is did these changes increase sales?
@@blackrazer22 Not really. New X-Men was successful, but X-men have always been a stellar seller. At the time, we also had X-Treme X-Men that was doing well and Uncanny X-Men which sold rather well despite Chuck Austen being on writing and some incredibly.. badly written scenes.
RTD is being a bit like that rn with Doctor who, well Wild Blue Yonder was good so he gets the benifit of the doubt for now.
X-men fans are like Star Wars fans; they lose their shit when they encounter a good story.
@@muddi900 Bad take.
A is For...Apocalypse!
B is For …..Bastion
C is For.... Cassandra Nova
D is for... D'Ken
F is for... Forget-Me-Not.
_Title of...video._
Okay, as someone whose primary influence regarding X-Men is X-Men Evolution, what is it with writers and trying to make the X-Men separate from humanity or a different species or whatever? I thought the entire point was they were in fact people just like an average person, just with the occasional lightning bolt coming out of their butt? (Or you know, like a regular superhero or supervillain?).
For that matter, why the heck is it that writers insist on playing up characters like they're too cool for their own genre conventions? (Like, I get that for the 90's/2000's cause Xtreme and faux-Rebelliousness was the in-thing for the time, but even nowadays we're getting a lot of that. I don't understand how the same guy who wrote All-Star Superman wrote any of that bit about the costumes)
Oh no! I'm not a real world person now?! Can I still be a real world Casually Comic fan? 😢
Nice to be reminded that having total contempt for your fan base isn't a modern invention.
Well, it wasn't *Morrison's* fan base, so.....
@@chuckenigma But it was contempt for the fan base of the property he was writing.
@@chuckenigmaNot necessarily. After all, Morrison was fresh off their JLA run, which was *highly* popular among spandex fans.
@@SpaceJawa Yes. But they were right that if you just keep on catering to that base it's not gonna evolve. I was around back then, and people thought Lobdell and Nicieza had changed too radically and they had to return to Claremont. The contempt was not good, but they were right that the property needed to.... *ahem*.... mutate and evolve rather than move backwards. And that the fanbase needed to expand, because it was dwindling and growing ever more entrenched in its ways. I just wish Morrison was able to do so with a better attitude.
Harlan Ellison actively hated his fans.
I always hated that panel of Beast holding the skeleton and making the “joke”. Just felt so discordant with the rest of it.
Maybe it’s because my primary influence is the 90s animated series, but I would have expected something more along the lines of a Hamlet reference from Beast while holding the skull.
@@JoRoq1 I don't think 90s cartoon Beast would use a corpse for a prop comedy routine.
This storyline really changed the X Men forever when they needed it the most. Genosha basically just got replaced by Krakoa which was too bad
I find it insane how the Mutants had 3 nations, it's like how Red Hood makes up with Batman and fights him every few years
My FAVORITE run! I loved every arc all the way up to Riot at Xavier’s omg.
There was already an event called Xtinction Agenda where the human-led government of Genosha tried to enslave the X-Men.
I remember I stopped reading x-men when this came out as it seemed completely alien to me with the huge shift. I finally read years later and enjoyed, after getting back into X-Men with Astonishing X-Men
I really liked Astonishing. Cassady's art was great, I felt like it modernized the costumes better than New X-Men had, and it had quippy dialogue without completely betraying who the characters were.
I would really love it if you made a follow-up video examining New X-Men #132. It sees the X-Men revisiting Geonosha some time after the destruction. People are hearing voices they think are ghosts but it’s actually Polaris who preserved the final words of everyone killed with her powers. It’s about grief after mass disaster and reads like Morrison addressing the glib treatment of the genocide you brought up in the wake of 9/11.
Loved this vid! My first X-Men comic was volume one from this run and the first Omni I ever bought was for this run. Given that I’m a massive X-Fan now, I’m a little biased toward this run because it ignited my love of the franchise. That said, I do think it can get a little overly melodramatic and think it’s cleverer than it is, as you pointed out. What I think stands the test of time from this run, though, is how it made Xavier’s school an actual school with a large student body and fleshed out mutants as a minority group with their own culture, music, fashion, etc.
I couldn't afford a lot of comics as a kid and this was the first X-Men arc I read. I was a big fan of the 90's and Xtreme X-Men cartoons. I ended up having very mixed feelings after reading the series, with my biggest takeaway being "man, the X-Men are jerks". Haven't really read them since then...
I got an ad for Marvel Snap while you mentioned that Emma’s part of the neck snap club 😂
Cat Brast reminds me of the Hrothgar from Final Fantasy 14.
You know, now that I actually think about it, I have to admit for as big a shake-up as the Genosha genocide was ... I have to admit I don't really 'hear' that much about it, it's never talked about, especially not as much as House of M. The only time I recall Genosha being a more modern thing was during the "Danger" arc (which I won't spoil, but I remember loving that arc). You just assume that 16 million mutants dead this must have been like a huge comic event ... and instead it was just like a blip of 'well that happened'. I'm glad X-men '97 could really put us in the middle of the genocide as it was happening.
Also, thank you for explaining that it was the "Wild Sentinels" that were responsible for the genocide (as in what weapons were used), I've always been curious. I thought it was some sort of augmented tri-face Sentinel for awhile cause I couldn't find what kind of them did it.
Based on Morrison's notes, He was planning this before Magneto Rex as that story was Scott's return since his merging with Apocalypse was undone.
I'd love more new x men content - always found this run interesting.
I was reading uncanny 186 today for the forge storm goodness. Fun stuff
This run was one of the first Omnis I bought. I really enjoyed it and I am forever scarred by the grotesque artwork of the “auntie Emma” page.
I'll say this: after 15 straight years reading the X-books, with many highs & lows, this was where I finally jumped off (I believe the "Nuff Said" issue being the last". Morrison wanted readers like me to leave and he finally succeeded not long into his run. (Edit: IT seems I also get all of dissatisfaction with Morrison's run confused with what Casey was also doing in Uncanny at the same time.)
I never liked the whole "Mutants are definitely going to replace Humans" thing. The "Evolutionary Levels" trope bugs me in general, but here in particular I think it comes too close to accidentally promoting eugenics.
I was one of those long time fans that just stopped reading. I was already burned out by the Onslaught storyline and this finished it. Going back, there are a lot of elements I really like, but the parts I dislike are so jarring, and this is a run that really pushed the idea of evil Beast into the forefront as later writers kept riffing and adding more
This is probably one of my favorite videos you’ve ever put out because new x men holds a very special place in my comic book loving heart
I love when you narrate panels from a comic. Youve got a talent for that.
God I hated this run. Its so.. early 2000s. Plus the art style. Eve of Destruction, even if uncreative, was fun. Then we have cheating, genocide, character sabotage...
I got re-introduced to X-men with the '97 cartoon because... y'know, i liked the 90s run. This video has given me interest to go read some of the newer stuff with an open mind. Thanks!
This arc is one of the things that makes me hate Krakoa. The Krakoans go on about how "humans" were responsible for the massacre on Genosha. But really Cassandra Nova was and they BROUGH HER BACK TO LIFE. Its just stomach turning. Like the propaganda aspect I kind of get but bringing Cassandra back is way too much especially when Genosha is this horrible thing they're harping on about/
I believe Cassandra came back before the Krakoa era, specifically in X-Men Red. They kept her around so they could watch her, plus she had some nannites or something in her head that prevented her from harming others. Every one hated her, and no one forgot what she did. Especially Shadowcat, whose father died on Genosha. Read the Marauders for more details.
Ugh, hated the Morrison run. He alienated me in his Wizard interviews, but I gave it a shot… but nope. He clearly didn’t like a large portion of the audience. Everything wasn’t horrible… I liked them getting the students back in the mansion, the proliferation of mutants with minor abilities not likely to lead to combat members, and finally fulfilling their implied obligation to provide a home for less than attractive mutants, as called out by Callisto and the Morlocks. I still don’t like secondary mutations, and have noticed their fading from reference. Beast is my poster child for why it was a bad concept. In a Wizard interview Morrison said when people thought of Beast, they thought of Disney’s Beast, and he wanted that recognition… completely ignoring decades of description of being ape like, his large hands and feet being replaced by small feet and undextrous hands. That’s the kind of writing decision and use of deus ex machina explanation that usually gets criticized, but it’s Morrison, so… it must be brilliant! Whatever. Morrison’s characterization of the X-Men he used was more what he wanted them to be rather than what they had always been. The gallows humor from Beast didn’t fit… yes, he’d been a cut-up, but he also had the wisdom to know what he needed to be serious and somber. Scott was a cheater… but only for Jean… but then he’s cheating on Jean? Please. I did stop reading New X-Men until Morrison left. And it’s funny tome that so much of what he did has faded away. Unfortunately, though, that includes his good elements… the new students who are only used as scenery… Beak, Glob, Radian, Basilisk, Angel (who was in a movie!)… well, Quentin… he’s still around. Yay, Quentin!
The concept of beasts devolution was interesting but it's only mentioned once. That eventually his mind would start to become primal and he would devolve over time removing who he is from his brain and becoming only an animal. It's a decent tragedy since his whole career has been him being completely unlike how he looks
I gotta check out the omnibus so that I can read Morrison's notes. Thanks for letting me know about that!
Every time I think of this era I just remember how much I hate the cat look for Beast.
Man, I think he looks so cool! I’ve been reading through the whole x-saga and once I got the the feline beast look I just wished he looked like that forever. I think it fits his personality well
I'm curious to know how the reboot actually affected sales in the years that followed it.
My understanding of Cassandra Nova is that she's a Murmummdi. Some kind of psychic parasite I think. I know one lived in Lady Mastermind's brain for a bit and Cable said they were the same thing
I enjoyed this video and breakdown and reflection. Morrison's run isn't for me, but the impact of Genosha as long lasting even after No More Mutants. I'm hoping that eventually we can get back to the X-men being cool again and not just someone's experiment/playground for shock value. Maybe the new runs coming out can be a step in that direction.
I was stationed overseas when this came out and comics were not easy to get, so I missed out on the entire Morrison run. Listening to the video, it may have got me to jump back into X-Men after having been out for the entire 90’s. (Jim Lee never did much for me and I didn’t want to have to follow two main titles) As always, very informative summation of the start of it.
Thank you for your points on what Morris said. Yes, he had a lot of points, but he's coming from it from the wrong direction and it could have gone so badly wrong.
This was the run that made me stop reading X-Men comics for years. It was clear that they were trying to piggyback off of the movie but they did it a little too hard. Add to that, the weird, scrunched baby face most of them had been drawn with and I felt like this wasn't my X-Men anymore. I was glad to see them return to a more comic book style later.
Yeah, me too. I didn't find any of the new characters interesting and the concept of secondary mutations was not handled well in my opinion.
Learning about Morrison's manifesto, particularly his attitude towards the fanboys and how the X-Men shouldn't emphasise being superheroes, explains so much about why 11 year old me hated this run and why Marvel of the 2000s-now has slide into the mud. What utterly toxic, misguided notions he had.
I think the fans Morrison was talking about is different in the context of early 2000s.
We were transitioning from letters pages to online forums but most readers weren’t online but Marvel was going to get that feedback first
i do think its interesting how hoxpox, while having a similar effect, is like the opposite of morrison's outlook. While Morrison was all about appealing to mainstream and maximizing appeal to get attention, HoxPox was all about diving into the depths of the fandom/comic lore to establish a new status quo without necessarily removing anything off the board.
Morrisons New X Men is my favorite X saga. It stands shoulder to shoulder with the best Claremont and Hickman books. It is a lot of fun and has some of the best character beats.
So much of the new x men 97 and Krakoa era mine this book for inspiration. Please give it a shot! ❤
Those comments about the fans always complaining and otherwise ignoring them seems like a haunting prelude to the kind of attitude that is way too present with far too many creatives today.
Dang, this story is so sad, it makes me break down, but I don't really want it. I'm truly not the same as yesterday.
I hope at least one person gets that reference
The Grant Morrison/Frank Quietly are such an iconic duo, that DC did it again with All-Star Superman. It changed the X-Men so much, that it made the Academy... and actual full on public school, which the movie did, and I thought it was weird the school didn't have many students in it, and most were just... adults.
Even the directors and writers even had to go out and say they aren't using Cassandra Nova, since Deadpool and Wolverine has that covered. So they're doing the story, and doing something different, so I better expect some Bastion play!
How in the world did this not end up "X Is for Xtinction?"
There was already an event called Xtinction Agenda where the human-led government of Genosha tried to enslave the X-Men.
I need "Evil in a good way" on a t-shirt.
The destruction of Genosha is also used in Wolverine and the X-Men. Though they didn't go all the way, some named characters did get killed. That plot line was one of the better arcs from the show.
Nope. Not a GM fan. I hate Cassandra Nova. To me, she's as dumb an idea as Wolverine & Sabretooth being 'Lupine'. All the characters feel off and it feels 'dirty', not 'gritty' to me. To each their own, though.
Perfect thing to walk home to. I got a Morrison/Quietly book waiting for me
Other than the outfits I LOVED the New X-Men back when it first came out. It brought back the series and the teams core issues of being a mutant in the world, while the 90s “extreme era” just had big events one after the other to introduce big baddies like Onslaught and what not. Also this introduced me to Frank Quietly’s art which I love still till this day
I remember getting this trade paperback for Christmas after I stopped collecting comics the first time around, and looking at the interior art and thinking why do the X-Men look so old.
i was looking at the quote from morrison about uniform and my eyes kept going to emma. yeah that is certainly a look.
Honstly I vaguely remember buying floppies of E for Extinction through the Days of Future Present Silvestri story, and it’s some of my favorite Xmen/mutants tales. Its all so weird and different. First omnibus I gladly bought retail.
Du you think Prof X manipulates insurance adjusters from discontinuing his coverage?
Lol it would explain a lot
Thanks Sacha! One of the coolest videos I've watched about the x men and the history of comics
I remember coming back from living in Latin America, starting college again, and being told by my first roommate that if I liked the X-Men then I just HAD to read the Grant Morrison run. It had just ended, so i figured I'd get the TPBs and see what all the fuss was about. I remember being extremely disappointed, feeling like I was reading one long protracted "What If...?" story. The X-Men didn't feel "Cool," they felt "Hipsterish." It felt like the sort of thing some trust-fund putz from Williamsburg would think was "profound." So I dipped out...for over a decade. And when i finally decided to check back in it was the "Mustard and Bigotry" era. So I guess I stopped being a fan of the X-Men right around when Marvel & co. started hating their own audience.
In the end, Morrison's run feels like what it is -- embarrassingly dated in its desperate desire to chase the then-Modern Audience.
I really appreciate your take on the first major story arc in Morrison's run! It was incredibly well researched with a good mix of summary and analysis, not to mention I like the idea of going over why specific changes happen, and the differing interpretations of what they mean, something I tend to really enjoy in a lot of game reviewers I follow, like SomeCallMeJohnny.
As for my thoughts on this arc, I think it did its job well enough, personally I'm like, incredibly mixed on Morrison's run as a whole. I love the additions it added to mutants as a culture, but I'm not big on the idea of separating mutants from humans on a conceptual level, because mutants are still human. I also just, really really hate the way they made Scott/Emma a thing. Even though Emma is still growing from her time as a villain thanks to her work on Generation X, I think the sudden shift into trying to get Cyclops to engage in a psychic affair with her while he's emotionally compromised really made me dislike her character and made it harder for me to root for her when Jean was going too far with psychically assaulting Emma. It's really hard for me to like anyone much in New X-Men, at most, I liked Cyclops when he stopped Xorn from committing suicide, I appreciated the brotherly banter Wolverine has with Cyclops that pretty much gets shafted for a bit when Astonishing X-Men comes around, and appreciated him deciding not to engage in an affair with Jean out of respect for them both, showed how much he'd grown during the 90s to the then present.
I always hoped the Morrison run would get an animated movie in the same style as the comics. Excited to see where 97 goes!
This video's title really reminded me of what went down with w.i.t.c.h. season 2. As each of those we're alphabetized, and thematically corresponded with them each episode("L is for Loser")!
Great discussion of this classic storyline, really thoughtful. I'd always followed X-Men comics and bought some around the Onslaught storyline, but Morrison's run was the first I really started collecting.
while e for extinction was good and frank quietlys art was awesome, hearing Morrisons thoughts seems like he realllllly did not understand xmen
I remember reading this run for the first time and thinking, "WTF did I miss something or did a genocidal event happen for mutants and everyone missed it?". Even Hickman references the event years later in HOX/POX when he re establishes the X lore!
I remember the art from this era, and Emma looking like she was made of melted ice cream.
I was so glad I read e is for extinction like a Month b4 the episode came out lol
I remember during the "Cosmic Adventure" arc in Spiderman when he was attacked by Magneto Magnus left thinking that Spiderman's new powers were too varied for him to be a mutant since mutants normally only have one power.
But lot of mutants have multiple powers and many powers require others to function...
Tell that to David Michelinie who wrote the issue.
I need S is for Shi'ar Empire Shenanigans lol. I just finished the Brood Saga and have been craving some X-Men in space adventures.
I need the tldr version of what happened in the brood saga
@@niteriemcfarlane5285 Basically the X-Men get impregnated with alien parasites trying to take over the galaxy. Highlights include Kitty getting a pet dragon (sadly for only one issue), Scott Summers' daddy issues and and Storm becoming the prophet-messiah of an enslaved race of space whales. Crazy stuff.
@@booksvsmovies That sounds like the most excellent thing ever written.
Easily the best X-Men saga, change my mind (Uncanny #137 is the best single issue, though).
I have always maintained that Marvel could have gone with a massive population drop after House of M (no more mutants) (stillbirths, childhood cancers, etc.) due to the strong use of chemicals, radiation, etc. caused mutants instead of death. This E for Extinction with the "Mutants will replace Homo Sapien Sapiens in four generations" practically confirms that hypothesis.
Synchronistic.. had the urge to reread all of New Xmen too
Morrison’s stuff was brilliant. Only downside is the quick retcon of magneto at the end; but otherwise it reads beautifully
There are some cool ideas hidden by some really dumb ideas in this series.
If I didn't dislike Morrison after their GL run, reading them say "the [X-Men] movie got it almost right" in regards to costumes definitely pushed me into it.
I read these in trades in the 2010s, when I got back into X-books after a gap (Excalibur had ended, and nothing else pinged my interest at the time), when I found them 2-for-1 at my localish comic shop (it was an hour away). I liked the stories, but Quitely's art isn't a style I enjoy. I haven't revisited the New X-Men in a few years. Maybe once I catch up on my literal year's worth of X-related floppies, I'll go in for a reread.
It wasn't done by the scary bald lady who's suddenly our crazy...grandaunt?
Hugh Jackman's Wolverine may or may not have been an attractive awakening for me when I was younger, and *immediately* loving Emma Frost's skin-becoming-her-own-best-friend power and "welbred bitchiness" was what had me start reading X-Men at a younger age. Morrison's comments about pre-existing comic fans were definitely arrogant, but his advertising interests definitely did work on me!
-Demographic man attracted to shirtless Wolverine.
"Taking the existing fanbase for granted." - "If you change something to much, you'll alienate your base." I'm looking at you Dr. Who.
I loved Morrisons run especially when Quitely was involved. I didn’t like the Cat Beast change though.
C is for condescending.
He’s probably named Ugly Jon after he Australian anesthesiologist "Ugly John" Black in the first season of M*A*S*H.
If Grant Morrison wanted to make X-Men sexy to the mainstream public, Frank Quitely was exactly the wrong artist for the job.
Lol true
Great video as always, though I will say that my feed is so full of Xmen stuff right now I'm starting to feel a little like Wanda
Lol! No more mutants
Kowtow! Now that's a word I haven't heard in a while. My dad used it all the time when I was a kid lol
The problem is Disney and Warner Bros. took these Morrison quotes and used it for the garbage movies and shows we’ve been getting lately. “Let’s make it different to bring in more fans.” What about your core audience. “I don’t even like them!”
Imperial next?
Thanks for diving into the comics giving episode 5 of X-'97 a lot more context. The commentary is S-Tier btw 😁👍👏! Last point: Morrison's comments seem even more ironic as Hollywood today thinks EXACTLY the same way. Disregard and disrespect the core audience and then become shocked when they lose money 🤦♂️
I really liked the Morrison run... until the end, when he wrote Magneto so much of character that it was retconned almost immediately. I have a volume of numbers 114 to 117 but the Morrison's Manifesto is on the New Worlds volume (Portuguese edition by Devir)
I didn't know Emma's secondary mutation or secondary mutations in general came from a run in the 2000s. It's so integral to her character now that every adaptation highlights it. If I'm not mistaken, her cameo in X-Men Origins: Wolverine only shows her diamond skin power and not her telepathy