X-Men FACTS!! 0:00 - The Decline of Diversity in Comic Books 0:33 - The Evolution of Comic Book Publishers 1:05 - Devaluing Tentpoles in the Comic Book Industry 1:35 - The Inactivity of Jonathan Hickman's Exit 2:11 - The Impact of New Readers on Comic Book Sales 2:44 - Response to X-Men comics 3:15 - Impact of canceled book subscriptions 3:46 - How to turn comic book readers into long-term subscribers 4:20 - The Insane Number of Cancelled Books 4:53 - Appealing to a Younger Demographic 5:24 - The Success of Jamestown's Multiple Series 5:54 - The Decline of Superhero Comic Books 6:26 - Challenges in Buying Marvel Comics 6:59 - The Overwhelming X-Men Universe 7:30 - Out of Character X-Men Actions 8:03 - Conversations about X-Men theories 8:34 - The Mystery of Prisoned Prisoner 9:06 - The Problem with the X-Men Comics 9:40 - Retailers' Experiences with X-Men Line Sales 10:14 - Marvel's Deterioration and Confusing Strategy 10:47 - Lack of Interest in Jonathan Hickman's "Gods" Project 11:16 - Loss of Revenue and Fleece Tactics in the Comic Market 11:49 - The Demand for Comic Books 12:20 - Poor Sales of "Gods" Comic 12:54 - Marvel and DC's Treatment of Fans 13:31 - Rethinking the Comic Book Industry 14:05 - The Challenge of Bringing Back Old Readers 14:35 - Reasons for the crisis and breakdown
I was commenting that the X books used to say mutants are human too and now it’s “Mutants are so much better than those stinky old hateful humans who ruin everything!” when I realized something. It used to be mutant supremacists/mutant segregationists were viewed as the bad guys, but now most of the characters- including the leader of “our heroes”- are espousing that viewpoint. If I wanted to see people crow, “We are the master race! Segregation now, segregation forever!” I’d go on Facebook .
Nietzsche's warning "He who fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you," is one too many political activists- including those masquerading as "creatives" at Marvel and DC Comics- ignore.
I mean how many times are you going to endure being wiped out before you change up the game plan besides they are literally the next step in human evolution and the humans just dont seem to want to coexist.
Well said. The only "modern audience" that "current year" writers write for, are themselves, due to their narcissism. No one else can relate to these writers; hence no one else wants to read their stories.
As a long, long term X-men die hard, this era has broken me. I have read almost every “X” book published since Giant Sized #1 and after X of swords, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I’ve read plenty of bad, dumb and convoluted X-men stories and came back for more. It honestly still hurts.
With writer talent such as Tini Howard, how can you go wrong? Her Excalibur series was so bad, I literally stopped reading in the middle of one issue and never looked back.
House and Power of X were the books that hooked me on your channel Any way not long after I started hating the X-Men and dropped pretty much all comics after 30 years. They were no longer the good guys, the fear of death was gone and once again mutants were just no longer especial with the abundance
It went from “Mutants may have different appearances and abilities, but they’re human too, and they face hardships and dangers just like anyone else” to “Mutants are so much better than anyone else, and they’re so much better than those stinky old hateful humans who ruin everything, and you should love them unquestionably and be impressed by them no matter what they do, and they’re now immortal with sovereign status and wealth due to selling their magical island crops!” yet we’re supposed to view them as the same lovable “us against the world” misfits audiences used to love.
I remember a time when X-Men books were even more popular than Avengers books. Now I can't remember the last time I bought an ongoing X-Men book. The Krakoan era has run its course.
As a former western comic reader. I was never interested in my favourite characters being turned into self centered villians going to prom, forever. Even the villians arent as bad as theye socalled heros.
It was obvious once Hickman's plan got thrown out the window that no-one else knew what to do. They thought they could just keep the gravy train going, keep things how they were when most readers were clearly expecting there would be some kind of conclusion.
New comics have gotten too expensive with lackluster creators. I'd rather spend money on back issues from back when comics were much better. No agendas. Characters acted like themselves.
Comics By Perch said it best: hey, what happens when you remove even the pretense of any consequences for the X-Men book characters, isolate them from the rest of the world, AND (as a special bonus) not have villains in the stories anymore? Here's what happens-the books SUCK because there's no reason to care about anything when there's no drama, no conflict, and no character development.
When they had Professor X forcibly modify Reed Richards' brain because Reed took steps to keep the mutants from flat out kidnapping Franklin, I gave up on House of X and the X-Men completely. They doubled down when Jean Grey decided to flat out 'change the minds' of Orchis et al at their dinner party, like it or not, before Moira killed her again. Good guys do *not* do bad guy shit, *especially* if you expect people to sympathize with them and their cause. Utter. Fail.
@@inkermoy Typical of SJWs to think the best way to make something "diverse" IN NAME ONLY, is to mind-r4pe HETEROSEXUAL people and swap their sexual orientation.
I dropped the books when I found myself rooting for Orchis and Nimrod. They actually seem like the heroes fighting against a group of self righteous bigots trying to take over the world.🤷🏾♂️
I just rewatched the first two Fox X-Men movies and I remember when the biggest problems X-Men had were people being unhappy they didn't use their canonical costumes. Lol, it's just funny to me how it puts things in perspective on how far the X-Men have fallen.
I actually contemplated checking out House of X/Powers of X at the start but with the train wreck it ultimately became, I have no regrets not spending a dime on an X book in over a decade.
I never thought there’d be any reveal that these weren’t the X-Men. Just seemed like an alternative AGE OF APOCALYPSE and AGE OF X universe type deal. Moira MacTaggert went back in time, changed history, her, Xavier, and Magneto formed the X-Men together. Seemed like Jonathan Hickman set it up to be his sci-fi Brave New World version of X-Men where Krakoa is revealed to be this World State city of London mutant dystopia. I figured it’d just do the Brave New World thing it sure seemed like it was setting up, some people would fight against it, and then after a year of this alt time stuff they’d use the built in Moira reset to put things back to normal just like Age of Apocalypse, Age of Ultron, Age of Adaline, and Age of X all did after a few months. Never thought this alt timeline thing would hang around for four years. Especially when it became clear most of the audience hated it. We’re not beyond Clone Saga levels of “what the fuck were they thinking” with how long this Krakoa stuff has gone on. If people were still reading comics in any kind of great number this Krakoa Era stuff would replace Clone Saga in talks about needlessly drawing something out that nobody wants, and that most everyone wishes would go away. And yeah, sure, there’s people out there that don’t what this Krakoa stuff to end; but then I’m sure there were people that wanted the Clone Saga to go on a few more years too.
@@paul.9828 That does definitely make Krakoa Era X-Men seemingly starting as a take on Brave New World all the funnier. I wouldn’t say Marvel’s target audience. It’s more like a very specific type of X-Men fan that you only really see in places like the X-Men sub-forum on CBR and I guess on Reddit and Twitter now. But they’re only a minor part of the fandom, (both X-Men and Marvel) which is probably why X-Men sales are in the toilet now.
@@DIOBrando-ij2bp Even though they are only a small part of Marvel’s actual audience, Marvel has decided that they are their target audience. Thus, the cratering of Marvel’s book sales as they chase this fringe group and drive away their longtime fanbase.
I’ve felt and still feel the same. There’s no good place to restart as a reader because everything seems to be a restart or contradiction to continuity
Hickman getting convoluted? No not possible. Except that is what he does , he would never have given a good pay off. When I saw Xavier looking like the maker I was done
@@EvandroACruz What gets me about Kitty's situation is that she managed to somehow be more sadistic and brutal in her killings than the actual psychotic mutant villains Marvel has in its rogue gallery. Just compare Kitty's work in current X-Men to what Maddelyn Pryor's X-Men team (which has characters like Zero, Emplate, Azazel and the Goblin Queen) did in Dark X-Men. Keep in mind that Dark X-Men is supposed to be a violent horror series.
@@spinningtornado4543 Yes what Duggan did with Kitty was just for a gratuitous pure gore feast.Keep in mind that he was writing her out your character already since Marauders 1 when she phased a weapon em the legs of two russian soldiers and was acting in a violent way since then.The last Hellfire Gala was the push that she needs to snap and becomes a sociopathic killer.I don't see how your character can come back from this anymore.
When they started, the X-Men was about the team using their powers as a way to better the world, and show mutants weren't to be feared and hated. Now they live on their own ethnostate like island, away from society. They are more like survivalists than heroes, and it sucks. It also sucks that all mutants are lumped in with it, so they basically have a standing army.
There is no fixing Marvel or DC at this point. They drove away too much of their customer base, and not drove them away from bad writing but drove them away by attacking them and making them enemies of the company not critics of specifically bad comics or writers. It doesn't matter what they do anymore, they've proven they hate the audience and only see us as either a problem or someone to fleece as hard as they possibly can. It's been years, I laugh at and celebrate every bad comic and business decision they make but I literally don't care when they make good comics, doesn't interest me at all other than enjoying you and a few other comic reviewers actually getting to enjoy a comic and reminisce about old stories I love in comparison. I've chosen Rippaverse as my new comic universe to care about, been picking up back issues of the Marvel and DC I used to love, and need to get into the Kamen America Universe. Looks ridiculously fun. Long way of pointing out that like many I'm always going to be angry because I've been attacked and I've already changed my habits for years now and humans don't change habits easily and without conscious effort. The audience they need to win back doesn't exist anymore, we moved on to places we feel wanted. I'll always have the memories of those characters and the stories that I loved but it's not them anymore, it's just a dead IP and with what they've done to the characters for more than a decade now there is no going back. Those characters as we knew them are dead and everyone who could write them is gone or moved on, so I have too. There's many like me. We hate the companies personally and are apathetic at best about the comics in general. I think the next decade of comics will be very interesting with the collapse of the big two clearing the way like a brushfire for new growth. I just feel hella bad for the comic shop owners forced into a no win situation trying to ride out the blaze.
I agree 100%. I'm also choosing to invest in the rippaverse as my comic verse. The big 2 are just absolutely defunct at this point and the only fix is through fire and ashes, and them being sold of and rebooted HARD with ACTUAL long standing and serious retcons.
I'm with ya wes. I thought it was gonna turn out Xavier was mind controlling everyone or was tweaking there minds everytime they got resurrected. But oh well. 😔
I thought this, too. It made so much sense. Why wear cerebro 24/7? Why would a multi billion dollar medical world just roll over in hand medicine to mutants? There could be so many questions answered with a simple "Yeah, Xavier's in people's minds."
This 100% I was Expecting the same thing, Xavier being compromised and using the resurrection protocol to further overtake the other mutants. But the big twist never came, nothing to explain the why and how. Completely utter BS. I drop it about 2 months before Hickman left, I had no faith in the line anymore. I’ve been buying X-Men since the mid 70s and left when I felt there was no real talent writing the books. This came back only to have this just killed it for me.
@logancm I was thinking the same thing! They had that comic with Domino and colossus PROVING that they are messing with peoples minds if cloned. On top of that, if aim (advanced idea mechanic) can have an entire storyline where they are giving people mutant powers from volunteered and kidnapped mutants for cash. Then why can't mutants with all their "mutant medicine" give mutants back their powers without making them go through ritualistic combat with Apocalypse! Combat where you get murdered to the cheering throngs of other depowered mutants who are also going to get murdered if they want their powers back!? it made no sense for people to be in an arena cheering for a literal blood sport, allowing apocalypse to do this murder hobo bullshit without any explanation. And pretending that this is all just fine. Is the most brain-dead, sick, and twisted crap I've ever read.
I'm glad I bought HoX/PoX...then saw the huge reading list for Dawn of X and NOPE out lol. It's very clear they just want to milk the hype by kicking Hickman out.
If you ever revisit it, back at Dawn of X, the only mandatory title was the main X-Men one written by Hickman. You could skip everything else. It remains the only mandatory title until Reign of X. At Reign of X, then there are three mandatory titles: X-Men, Way of X and SWORD. At Destiny of X there are four mandatory titles: X-Men, Legion of X (continued from Way), X-Men Red (continued from SWORD) and Immortal X-Men. For Fall of X to present, there are three mandatory titles: X-Men, Immortal X-Men and X-Men Red
Considering one of the “heroes” was a girl who said she missed passing gas while she was a brain in a jar, I’d say some personal fetishes were involved too. (Also, why was she considered a heroine? Just because she had been a brain in a jar? News flash, Brain-in-a-jar Girl: You’re not special. I can name at least four other characters who have been brains in jars at some pointj
I remain unconvinced Hickman had some masterplan revealing these were not the real X-Men. If his Secret Warriors and Avengers are any indication, he has no inclination for writing moral and ethical heroes congruent with established characterization.
I agree, many of the things Hickman did when he wrote X-Men read less like something with actual thought put into it/extensive planning behind it and more like something done for pure shock value. There were even moments where he went so overboard with it, it badly backfired on him. So badly in fact, he had to go on interviews stating his "true intentions" (which often completely contradicted what he wrote both in dialogue and within his speed sheets) while commenting that fans just horrendously misunderstood what he put on paper. At the end of the day, Hickman used X-Men the same way a cat would use a sandbox: He found something that remotely looks like something he knew and could use, did his thing, tried covering his messy smelly track and had others clean after him once he left the scene because he himself is unable to do so.
@@spinningtornado4543 Exactly. In the beginning of HoX/PoX, in order to justify Krakoa, he either he either completely misunderstood canon, or simply lied about it. For example, he cited the Genosha Slaughter and M-Day as two of the main reasons mutants needed to segregate away from humans. Neither incident was perpetrated by humans. Genosha was done by Cassandra Nova, a Shi-ar Mummudrai, and M-Day was done by Scarlett Witch, another mutant. Not to mention the number of characterization inconsistencies that were shoehorned to make this work. Very few of these X-Men characters would willingly live alongside these villains. Like you say, I think he simply wanted another sandbox to do the idea of multiple dimensions/timelines and incursions again, and just went with it. I don't think he cared if it made sense or was congruent with canon and continuity.
@@SamGuthrie1977 Very true. The fact is, the Krakoa era's issues were there from the very start all while under Hickman's pen, even if the reviewer here is still trying to defend his writing flaws as it being due Marvel's editorial and justify his character inconsistencies as it all being from Krakoa's influence on the cast. Both of these points get immediately contradicted when you look at how Hickman chose to write those characters outside of what was the Krakoa timeline and in their pre-Krakoa flashbacks, where they remain just as out of character, and how the stories he writes are a cesspool of plot points that lead nowhere and a testimony to his lack of knowledge on the franchise he's using. There are many examples I could give on that last point, the biggest one you already mentioned in how the finger got pointed at the wrong people for both M-Day and the Genosha Slaughter in HoX/PoX, but I'll just bring up this from one of his other Krakoa series: Hickman wants us to believe that, in the same distant past and at around the same timeframe, there were two distinct islands in the middle of the ocean no one's ever heard of before that were both only filled with mutants (Okkara and the mutant island from Chuck Austen's run). Both of those civilizations went to war against a bigger specific enemy before being magically sealed in a Hell-like dimension with those mutants having to fight for their lives while their ruler was left on Earth. Yet somehow, neither of those big prominent groups (which had telepaths, teleporters and what have you) KNEW about the other. The odds of this exact chain of events happening twice aren't just small, they are comically small.
I agree. Hickman has always been more into world-building and thinking up awesome plots than characterization. Usually his writing is good enough that I can justify it, but when he leaves and other less talented writers come onboard, it can only go downhill.
It would have been brilliant if they had revealed that Marvel universe that we know actually takes place AFTER the krakoan era, i.e. Moira dies in the krakoan era and she wakes up and our marvel universe continues from that, that could explain why none of the X-men were in character, they weren't "our" X-men. But no, that didn't happen, and it ruins HoX/PoX which is unfortunate because that was a mindblowing comic.
The only way to turn things around would be to hit a reset button on a company-wide scale. I would set things back to a continuity pre-woke era or some other version that negates the politics-driven changes to the characters that have plagued everyone from Carol Danvers to the X-Men and everything in between. You would also need to get rid of writers who are there for “agendas” and forced “diversity,” and cultivate the opposite. Pie in the sky stuff, I know, but a former comic fan can dream, I suppose.
X-Men #4 from January 2020, "Global Economics," was one of the greatest issues EVER. Professor X and Magneto at the World Economic Summit telling the assembled humans what was what wouldn't have had the same force without Apocalypse there. There was just something about the "novelty" of having Big Daddy working with the X-Men and all of mutantdom at large that lent this era a WEIGHT that it wouldn't have had otherwise. When he left at the end of X Of Swords, that was the jump-the-shark moment. I knew it would be downhill from there. And it was. It was a glorious run for a while.
The anti-thesis of Xavier’s philosophy became his philosophy. Segregation over integration and acceptance, supremacy over equality. It is a reflection of our divided society but beyond that I wouldn’t give it house room. Remember, it is in certain people’s interests to remove any hopeful philosophy from culture to demoralise us completely.
💯! I was totally waiting for a reason why the X-Men were acting out of character... and there were seeds being planted. They kept going back to how they were brought back (resurrection). And ... nothing. Just turned out to be bad writing from a clown car if bad writers
Reasons put by those posters are why I haven't really gotten into X-Men. I want to read X-Men cause I remember the characters were so cool when I was in high school. era of Claremont and Lee. Now its hard to find spot to just pick up on and so many titles. . . I got into Venom/Carnage comics but it felt easier to get into. Started with Carnage Reigns, Death of Venomverse and got the trade on Red Goblin. It is so much easier to get into than X-Men. Venom stuff has starting places but so far. . . its been good. I wish X-Men would be like that.
Krakoan X-Men post Hickman is just slashfic now. I noped out a long time ago. HoXPoX got me buying comics again (despite mostly being a DC guy) Krakoan era got me dropping comics again.
For the longest time, I was always fascinated by the X-Men but never got any of the comics. Mostly because there are no comic shops around me. I ended up getting the first 4 Uncanny Omnibus volumes digitally and it's a hell of an adventure. Absolutely loving it. Seeing some of the panels people post about new X-Men and this Krakoa era on IG gave me whiplash from all the double takes I did. It's so weak. Safe to say, I'm not going to spend any money on the new stuff.
If they leave him to his own devices, I would most definitely read his X-Men comic book. I guarantee that even with his questionable art, which admittedly is an acquired taste, and his edge lord, eXtreme! writing, that comic book would sell like hot cakes. The only thing that I would ask of him is that he only concentrates on comic book super hero characters that are his strong suit. Lol! Other than that, let him have at it, lol! The looks on all of the soy woke S.J.W.s' faces at Marvel Comics would be fuckin' hilariously priceless. 😂
@@SlashTheWeasel I would buy the book and his art is not that bad its better than the art in most Marvel book that looks like a 3 year old can do it better. Nice covers crappy art inside.
@@SlashTheWeasel Plus he is also based and red-pilled just like J. Scott Campbell so he will not make soy woke S.J.W. crap in his Uncanny X-Men comic book.
I knew it! I knew it! Wonder more comic retailers will forward the information that comics (US specifically) not doing well. Only the indies comics are doing well
From the start of the run, something just seemed...off about the Krakoan-era X-Men to me. They didn't seem like X-Men, just the ramblings that'd you'd see from someone in an insane asylum circa 1912, with an off-color X-Men coat of paint.
It would have been brilliant if they had revealed that Marvel universe that we know actually takes place AFTER the krakoan era, i.e. Moira dies in the krakoan era and she wakes up and our marvel universe continues from that, that could explain why none of the X-men were in character, they weren't "our" X-men. But no, that didn't happen, and it ruins HoX/PoX which is unfortunate because that was a mindblowing comic.
You mentioned GODS #1 being underordered by a historical margain in the video. I'll tell you why I personally didn't order it and it is simply the price point. My LCS is in Ireland and I would be all over that book but not at 10.00 for the opening chapter. Exactly the same reason why I didn't order Predator/Wolverine. I would be all over these two series at 4.99, maybe even 5.99 but not double the price.
You know things are bad when it makes you miss the Chuck Austin era. I will take the Fish Boy over anything Vita Ayala, Tini Howard, or Leah Williams any day.
I went along with it thinking that it some point it will end and with Moira's resurrection abilities the whole time line will change. But it just won't end will it. Marvel will keep teasing us that it will end but it never will.
@@StratumPress No, I promise you it's not. I was just watching his video and he said "DC & Marvel care about their fans." I just wanted to tell someone.
Couple of things. I do agree all publishers are getting ridiculous with their cover pricing now. No books should be coming out with an 8-10 dollar price tag (which works out even worse for us here in the UK). I've dropped everything now as there's just so much dross coming at you too expensively, though interestingly after what you said Wes, I always love my Spidey fix, (even though Wells run hasn't been stellar all round). I think Tom B said with regards to GODS, that they were following the creators wishes with the format to start, rather than spreading out over several issues ( so I guess how Hickman wants to do it). I still like his work and I'm intrigued to see where it will go, so am going to get issue 1 despite the price. I reckon Brevoort will bring a lot to X-Men when he takes over and there will be a soft reboot or reveal on Krakoa. He recently sited the 2005 Doctor Who revamp as something he was a big fan of, while he is working on his plan for the X line and how to approach taking over. Obviously Marvel must feel it's not working as it should in appointing him as well. Most of my comics related cash now goes on epics, omnibuses and silver age issues. I do like the reprints DC have done of 3 issues in 1 comic (JSA upcoming and DC v Vampires and Dark Knights Of Steel), they are sensibly priced and good value if you're wanting a read.
It turns out nobody wants to read about gay superheroes eating pudding. What a shock. Even back in the 90s I didn't read superhero comics due to the confusing multiple titles for a single character / team thing. With manga: If I want to read One-Piece, there's just one book called One-Piece and I just start with volume one and keep reading in numerical order, by the same author/artist the whole way through. But with mainstream American comics: "You should read so-and-so's run on The Unbelievable Who's-It, issues one through 20 from 1999-2001, before what's-his-name came along and ruined everything. No not issues one through 20 from 2015, issues one through 20 from 1999-2001! No not The Adventures of Who's-It or The Machiavellian Mind of Who's-It; You have to get The Unbelievable Who's-it! You also have to get issues 27-30 of Those-Other-Guys because important stuff happens in the Mid-Life Crisis IV event and..." And also you have to know to go to a "comic book store" to know these comics exist. When I was a kid the comics were in grocery stores so I would see them when I had to go shopping with my mom. "Oh, there's an ALF comic book! Mom, can you buy this for me?" "No, if you want that you can buy it with your own money." And the comic was $1 at most so I could afford it with my allowance.
We haven’t had a good LCS here in my town since the 90s. Troy ran Beetle Comics in town and he got me started on new titles by lending me a trade of Nick Fury vs Shield or Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters and he got me interested in Sandman by lending me a trade of Books of Magic. Our LCS’s have dwindled over the years where we have none now. I used to be like wow I can’t to read the next issue to now nothing is sparking my interest. I picked up X-Men off and On through the 2000s to the point where I don’t remember what the last issue I got was. My best reads these days are Omninbuses or Absolutes of books that originally came out in the 80s and 90s. I can’t find anything new to get interested about these days.
You know what I'm absolutely sick of hearing? "I don't want to go back to the mansion." Why? Do you think no relevant story can be told from the position of a teacher and student? Do you forget that teachers kind of nurture the children of tomorrow? Or did you forget about Harry Potter? Takes place in a school. My hero academia takes place in a school. Strange Academy takes place in the school. Did you ever wonder why most of these successful franchises take place in schools?🤡 Maybe it's because no matter who you are, what era you're from, or place the dynamic between a student and teacher is something every single person everywhere can recognize. And if you can't recognize that. It's time to go back to school.
@creepyclips9024 They could have, but they never took the time to do a real slice of life comic that showed exactly how life on krokoa functioned. I mean, ten percent of the world's population is a big number. Factor in every religion and social hierarchy from all over the world. Put on one island. I think everybody got sick and tired of hearing "it just works".... 🤨😐😶😒🙄😮💨 no it doesn't "just work"
@@grunge2001 Well said. They've gone in such an odd direction with this team. I wonder if someone with real pedigree could come in and sort this all out with a proper whiz-bang epic conclusion that will put the narrative back on the road to recovery. Perhaps Johnathan Hickman really did have a complete run planned out like Infinity or the recent Secret Wars. Instead it keeps plodding along getting more convoluted by the year. Heck, they even made all of their classic rogues gallery of villians into besties. It's like a tangled ball of wool, it'll take some time and patience to untangle it, but an unskilled hand will only make the knots tighter.
I had a great idea how to fix this and say stuff you to the crop of writers. Orcus infected Cerebro trying to make all mutants gay, in order to try and reduce the population. Literally killing the "Make more mutants" law. Add in personality trait changes from them and you can explain away everything. Hell you could even have this cycles Moira working for Orcus and she was the instigator. Infected by Nimrod or some such. 1 double size comic could do all this and have Moira fight programming blah blah and give all the X-Men back there agency.
I started basically with Jim Lee's run but I'm about to rewind and start exploring Silvestri's run and probably further back to when Claremont started in 75. There are so many threads running concurrently, but you don't have to know everything to enjoy the stories (as it should be).
Pulp716 is actually a pretty nice store, possibly the most interesting one in the Buffalo area with their two locations. They have carried out first two issues, ordering a small starter packet of them directly from us. Meanwhile, Double Midnight in NH was one of the stores that turned us down (out of 500+ stores we contacted, we got 230 to pick us up), and I've never heard of Big Pete's but we only do limited presence in Canada anyway (4 stores) since it's so damn expensive to ship there for no good reason (it's not like Seattle is really farther from us than Vancouver, for example).
Why would a long time X-men fan stick with this? X-men had some slice of life elements in regards to the Summers family drama and team as a family, but it’s now just a slice of life comic without the action that added gravitas to that. They’ve gotten rid of what made the book special. If I want pure slice of life, I go to manga where it’s done correctly and with emotional impact.
Since the 70s, the X-Men were the epitome of superhero cool. Marvel ruined that. They're trying to appeal to girls like Kathleen Kennedy's Star Wars strategy and it's been an abysmal failure for both compsnies. Girls and women have never liked superhero comics much. They prefer Archie comics which had a 60% female readership. The focus there was the Betty/Veronica/Archie love triangle and humor, not action. Marvel and DC will never win over women. It's a dead strategy but they will destroy the American superhero comic in the process. It's all in vain and it's colosally stupid.
@@thisspaceforrent5737 some girl manga is romance-oriented. I've even seen gay male romance series bought by girls in Japan. With superheroes, the focus is action, the fight between the hero and villain. Men like action-oriented entertainmebt such as sports and action movies or series. Women like romance and relationship-oriented entertainment like the famous rom- coms or romantic comedies. These different interests originate in the brain. Let the sexes be themselves and gravitate towards what they like. The idea of sameness is anti-nature.
Agreed. It was typical pseudo-intellectual masturbation by Hickman, with no real story. It also completely mischaracterized the X-Men, and ignored previous continuity and canon.
Skipped X-titles in the 90s already but really liked what Hickman did on the two minis. So they had me back in, but momentum totally got lost in the regular series, so in the end I was off again after just about six issues, not even finishing Hickmans run. The story was all over the place the moment those minis ended 🤷
i think Marvel and DC should do a shonen style monthly magazine that has a bunch of issues from different series in it.. that way people would check out a bunch of things out and for cheaper.. good value... but nothing they can do about the woke stories... they'll just keep doubling down on that
Yeah, I agree with most of what you're saying. I loved House/Powers of X. It is the most brilliant X-Men story of all time! Unfortunately, most of what followed, including Hickman's own X-Men title, were just not at the same level - although I am enjoying the Fall of X story-line. In a way, I think it is a shame that Marvel is ending the Krakoan era because they have not begun to exhaust the creative possibilities with which Jonathan Hickman presented them. But if Marvel can't do something interesting with the Krakoan X-Men maybe ending the Krakoan era is the way to go.
With the audience Marvel has been catering to for the last few years, they should just bite the bullet and make the pages look like a Twitter feed. Then maybe those people will read it. Not BUY it, but read it.
If you could hit the reset button, put the Xmen back to just before things started going off the rails, when would that be? I stopped reading in the early 2k's, when Bastion was the big bad (if memory serves). I didn't quit because of that, I just kinda moved away from collecting in general.
Mary Sue: I love comics written by me, with me as the main character, but, you know...superhero stuff. Did I tell you readers I hate you? I never liked comics, anyway.
Which only proves that maybe they got it wrong, eh? Perhaps the 1990s was not the so-called "Dark Ages" so-to-speak of comics and we're now just realizing that those '90s comic books weren't so bad after all.
I don't think so because, at the core, Krakoan Era X-men is not X-men. One reason it sold well is that it was a novel approach to X-men. The second reason it sold well is that it was Jonathan Hickman at his best when he was writing it. For Marvel Studios to to Krakoan X-men, they need a half dozen X-men movies to eatablish the premise.
since phase 4 the MCU picks specifically crappy stories just to piss off "the right crowd". That's their priority. So it makes sense they go with Krakoa. Which is unexcusable, given the many many great stories the X-books had had since their inception for decades
there is no modern audience in general... yet they still make books, movies, tv, toys, etc... for this non-existant audiance... how much money and time will they need to blow before they give up?
The Krakoan era of X-Men honestly feels like something that would have benefited and suited the Inhumans giving them something interesting and potentially making them relevant.
Any of the original X-Men left, any villains? Or are they all copies of copies of copies? It seems like they were killed a while ago and now all we have are clones - who, in our subconscious aren't the characters we grew up with, regardless of how they frame it. Those of you following closely are there any original X-Men left or have they all been resurrected on Krakoa?
I gave up on xmen last year you would think that marvel could print books much cheaper than the independent companies the quality of the spawn books is amazing compared to paper thin books at marvel
There's something absurd happening in woke X-men groups in Facebook. When a new reader asks where he/she should start reading, they would tell you to start on hox/pox and skip decades of comics that defined the X-Men as we know. I've seen this so many times. Hox/Pox is when you should actually stop...
They are Communists. They are copying Mao Tse-Dong's "Great Leap Forward" and they are trying to erase the old and totally wipe the past out of existence.
House of X and Powers of X started off interesting..and then Jordan White and his clown team came in and immediately ran it into the ground.. it literally took one event after Hox/Pox for half the readers to leave and not come back..
I wanted to buy the terror through time anthology a while back for the Tomasi short but I skipped because it’s not worth enabling the behavior. Tomasi should be writing one of the mainline titles but they don’t even have him doing back ups now. For the man that made Jon Kent and Damian Wayne desirable characters as well. Such a joke.
I remember being hated and ridiculed when I said this Krakoan era under Hickman was going to be terrible. And I still can't stand how people seem to still defend Hickman with his so called masterplan which I seriously doubt he had. His idea was, admittedly, plagiarism from some book he read, and to this day he hasn't revealed what his plan was, because he probably didn't have one. I cancelled my subscriptions shortly after it, because I couldn't remember opening an x-men comic and NOT seeing same sex relationships thrusted on characters that never used to show any interest in that. Always the woke agenda being in the forefront, smacked in your face, with the behind the scenes message of 'Like it, or be labeled sexist and racist and fascist and whatever other -ist word we can slap on you for good measure'. Not to mention the 'our books are no longer for you' message the creators sent out there.
Yeah i do that for Amazing Spider-Man it sucks but i keep buying it dont even read it. I used to love the X-Men but after Uncanny X-men the first run was done i was gone.
Written by ' writers ' with no valuable life experience or deeply reflected philosophy. No Hero's Journey. No competing points of view creating meaningful conflict. Nothing apart from shallow self absorbed narcissism.
I'm a regular reader of Saga and Something is Killing the Children, but not current X-Men. Because as you stated, there's a lack of talent there, and X-Men aren't fucking indie books. If I pick up an X book, I want X-Men not Saga.
I haven't bought a modern X-Men related comic in maybe 2 1/2 years. And I haven't touched modern Amazing Spider-Man since Zeb Wells took over. The only modern books I've been getting every so often was Superman (the actual Superman not Jon) related stuff, cuz that is actually decent.
X-Men FACTS!!
0:00 - The Decline of Diversity in Comic Books
0:33 - The Evolution of Comic Book Publishers
1:05 - Devaluing Tentpoles in the Comic Book Industry
1:35 - The Inactivity of Jonathan Hickman's Exit
2:11 - The Impact of New Readers on Comic Book Sales
2:44 - Response to X-Men comics
3:15 - Impact of canceled book subscriptions
3:46 - How to turn comic book readers into long-term subscribers
4:20 - The Insane Number of Cancelled Books
4:53 - Appealing to a Younger Demographic
5:24 - The Success of Jamestown's Multiple Series
5:54 - The Decline of Superhero Comic Books
6:26 - Challenges in Buying Marvel Comics
6:59 - The Overwhelming X-Men Universe
7:30 - Out of Character X-Men Actions
8:03 - Conversations about X-Men theories
8:34 - The Mystery of Prisoned Prisoner
9:06 - The Problem with the X-Men Comics
9:40 - Retailers' Experiences with X-Men Line Sales
10:14 - Marvel's Deterioration and Confusing Strategy
10:47 - Lack of Interest in Jonathan Hickman's "Gods" Project
11:16 - Loss of Revenue and Fleece Tactics in the Comic Market
11:49 - The Demand for Comic Books
12:20 - Poor Sales of "Gods" Comic
12:54 - Marvel and DC's Treatment of Fans
13:31 - Rethinking the Comic Book Industry
14:05 - The Challenge of Bringing Back Old Readers
14:35 - Reasons for the crisis and breakdown
The Krakoa run started 4 years ago and has been going on for a decade too long now.
Just 4 year's? Feels longer
Very well put
Sounds like Spider-Man's Clone Saga
@@Dreamfox-df6bg INDEED!
@@Dreamfox-df6bgWorse.
I was commenting that the X books used to say mutants are human too and now it’s “Mutants are so much better than those stinky old hateful humans who ruin everything!” when I realized something. It used to be mutant supremacists/mutant segregationists were viewed as the bad guys, but now most of the characters- including the leader of “our heroes”- are espousing that viewpoint. If I wanted to see people crow, “We are the master race! Segregation now, segregation forever!” I’d go on Facebook .
Nietzsche's warning "He who fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you," is one too many political activists- including those masquerading as "creatives" at Marvel and DC Comics- ignore.
@@longtsun8286Not so much ignore, as they never read anything else than yaoi and slash fiction about sexualities and self validation.
I mean how many times are you going to endure being wiped out before you change up the game plan besides they are literally the next step in human evolution and the humans just dont seem to want to coexist.
Well said. The only "modern audience" that "current year" writers write for, are themselves, due to their narcissism. No one else can relate to these writers; hence no one else wants to read their stories.
💯
Hercules and Thor are Marvel heroes. We need a Narcissus: Perfect Protagonist.
Hence, the writers promote mutant supremacy as wish fulfillment.
As a long, long term X-men die hard, this era has broken me. I have read almost every “X” book published since Giant Sized #1 and after X of swords, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I’ve read plenty of bad, dumb and convoluted X-men stories and came back for more. It honestly still hurts.
I was an X-men reader since the 90’s era started. HoX/ PoX made me drop it. Hated it so much.
With writer talent such as Tini Howard, how can you go wrong? Her Excalibur series was so bad, I literally stopped reading in the middle of one issue and never looked back.
The rhythm didn't make sense. I couldn't follow her dialogue from person to person. I'm a huge Gambit/Rogue fan and I jumped ship at like issue 3.
@@DonMegaPLP way 2 much personal agenda shenanigans in effect & EXTREMELY little storytelling!😠💯📠
Did the samething, 1/2 way through first issue and quit
@@michaelbernstein9442 1st issue that bad? Sorry.
We threw Excalibur back in the lake.
They have been chasing after the new audience so hard that they’ve forgotten about the old ones.
We've had so much deconstruction of our heroes, can we please have some reconstruction to where they were before all this?
House and Power of X were the books that hooked me on your channel
Any way not long after I started hating the X-Men and dropped pretty much all comics after 30 years.
They were no longer the good guys, the fear of death was gone and once again mutants were just no longer especial with the abundance
The characters had become a reflection of the same woke trash victim mentality of the soy S.J.W. people who were writing the comic book.
It went from “Mutants may have different appearances and abilities, but they’re human too, and they face hardships and dangers just like anyone else” to “Mutants are so much better than anyone else, and they’re so much better than those stinky old hateful humans who ruin everything, and you should love them unquestionably and be impressed by them no matter what they do, and they’re now immortal with sovereign status and wealth due to selling their magical island crops!” yet we’re supposed to view them as the same lovable “us against the world” misfits audiences used to love.
We need more Hellfire Galas.
Said no X-Men fan EVER!
I remember a time when X-Men books were even more popular than Avengers books.
Now I can't remember the last time I bought an ongoing X-Men book. The Krakoan era has run its course.
I remember when daredevil and x-men sold at similar levels
As a former western comic reader. I was never interested in my favourite characters being turned into self centered villians going to prom, forever. Even the villians arent as bad as theye socalled heros.
It was obvious once Hickman's plan got thrown out the window that no-one else knew what to do. They thought they could just keep the gravy train going, keep things how they were when most readers were clearly expecting there would be some kind of conclusion.
This.
New comics have gotten too expensive with lackluster creators. I'd rather spend money on back issues from back when comics were much better. No agendas. Characters acted like themselves.
Revolutionary idea:put someone good on x-men
And Have them in character,being good guys and fighting bad guys.
Crazy?
I hope someday Hickman talks about what his plan was originally
Comics By Perch said it best: hey, what happens when you remove even the pretense of any consequences for the X-Men book characters, isolate them from the rest of the world, AND (as a special bonus) not have villains in the stories anymore? Here's what happens-the books SUCK because there's no reason to care about anything when there's no drama, no conflict, and no character development.
But... they're coming out as gay! That's not only development, that's displaying stunning bravery!
When they had Professor X forcibly modify Reed Richards' brain because Reed took steps to keep the mutants from flat out kidnapping Franklin, I gave up on House of X and the X-Men completely. They doubled down when Jean Grey decided to flat out 'change the minds' of Orchis et al at their dinner party, like it or not, before Moira killed her again. Good guys do *not* do bad guy shit, *especially* if you expect people to sympathize with them and their cause. Utter. Fail.
"Current year" comic book writers think the good guys are bad, and bad guys are good. Hence turning the hero and villains' morality 180 degrees.
Don't forget that Jean Grey let Bobby Drake "know" he was gay.
@@inkermoy Typical of SJWs to think the best way to make something "diverse" IN NAME ONLY, is to mind-r4pe HETEROSEXUAL people and swap their sexual orientation.
I dropped the books when I found myself rooting for Orchis and Nimrod. They actually seem like the heroes fighting against a group of self righteous bigots trying to take over the world.🤷🏾♂️
Yes there no moral stakes anymore.Even Kitty Pryde becomes a murderer and gonna in a killing spree against Orchis.
If the Krakoa Era was successful, Jordan D. White would not be getting replaced as group editor of X-Titles.
Exactly.
I just rewatched the first two Fox X-Men movies and I remember when the biggest problems X-Men had were people being unhappy they didn't use their canonical costumes. Lol, it's just funny to me how it puts things in perspective on how far the X-Men have fallen.
Still consider X2 one of the 5 best superhero movies of all-times.
I actually contemplated checking out House of X/Powers of X at the start but with the train wreck it ultimately became, I have no regrets not spending a dime on an X book in over a decade.
I never thought there’d be any reveal that these weren’t the X-Men. Just seemed like an alternative AGE OF APOCALYPSE and AGE OF X universe type deal. Moira MacTaggert went back in time, changed history, her, Xavier, and Magneto formed the X-Men together. Seemed like Jonathan Hickman set it up to be his sci-fi Brave New World version of X-Men where Krakoa is revealed to be this World State city of London mutant dystopia. I figured it’d just do the Brave New World thing it sure seemed like it was setting up, some people would fight against it, and then after a year of this alt time stuff they’d use the built in Moira reset to put things back to normal just like Age of Apocalypse, Age of Ultron, Age of Adaline, and Age of X all did after a few months.
Never thought this alt timeline thing would hang around for four years. Especially when it became clear most of the audience hated it. We’re not beyond Clone Saga levels of “what the fuck were they thinking” with how long this Krakoa stuff has gone on. If people were still reading comics in any kind of great number this Krakoa Era stuff would replace Clone Saga in talks about needlessly drawing something out that nobody wants, and that most everyone wishes would go away. And yeah, sure, there’s people out there that don’t what this Krakoa stuff to end; but then I’m sure there were people that wanted the Clone Saga to go on a few more years too.
The Krakoa mutant supremacy era is wish fulfillment for current day Marvel’s target audience.
@@paul.9828 That does definitely make Krakoa Era X-Men seemingly starting as a take on Brave New World all the funnier.
I wouldn’t say Marvel’s target audience. It’s more like a very specific type of X-Men fan that you only really see in places like the X-Men sub-forum on CBR and I guess on Reddit and Twitter now. But they’re only a minor part of the fandom, (both X-Men and Marvel) which is probably why X-Men sales are in the toilet now.
@@DIOBrando-ij2bp Even though they are only a small part of Marvel’s actual audience, Marvel has decided that they are their target audience. Thus, the cratering of Marvel’s book sales as they chase this fringe group and drive away their longtime fanbase.
Killing the X-Men and then bringing them all back as clones repeatedly and making Moira a villain turned me off the X-Men. I jumped off early on.
Moira made multiple obscene clone falls.
a shop like that opened up in my hometown, they now sell mainly games and toys
I’ve felt and still feel the same. There’s no good place to restart as a reader because everything seems to be a restart or contradiction to continuity
Hickman getting convoluted? No not possible. Except that is what he does , he would never have given a good pay off. When I saw Xavier looking like the maker I was done
its sad to see the X-Men be in this sad state. :(
it's more sad to see Kitty Pryde become a cold blooded killer just like Logan in Fall of X.This made me sick.
@@EvandroACruz What gets me about Kitty's situation is that she managed to somehow be more sadistic and brutal in her killings than the actual psychotic mutant villains Marvel has in its rogue gallery.
Just compare Kitty's work in current X-Men to what Maddelyn Pryor's X-Men team (which has characters like Zero, Emplate, Azazel and the Goblin Queen) did in Dark X-Men.
Keep in mind that Dark X-Men is supposed to be a violent horror series.
@@spinningtornado4543 Yes what Duggan did with Kitty was just for a gratuitous pure gore feast.Keep in mind that he was writing her out your character already since Marauders 1 when she phased a weapon em the legs of two russian soldiers and was acting in a violent way since then.The last Hellfire Gala was the push that she needs to snap and becomes a sociopathic killer.I don't see how your character can come back from this anymore.
@@EvandroACruz that’s true
When they started, the X-Men was about the team using their powers as a way to better the world, and show mutants weren't to be feared and hated. Now they live on their own ethnostate like island, away from society. They are more like survivalists than heroes, and it sucks. It also sucks that all mutants are lumped in with it, so they basically have a standing army.
There is no fixing Marvel or DC at this point. They drove away too much of their customer base, and not drove them away from bad writing but drove them away by attacking them and making them enemies of the company not critics of specifically bad comics or writers.
It doesn't matter what they do anymore, they've proven they hate the audience and only see us as either a problem or someone to fleece as hard as they possibly can.
It's been years, I laugh at and celebrate every bad comic and business decision they make but I literally don't care when they make good comics, doesn't interest me at all other than enjoying you and a few other comic reviewers actually getting to enjoy a comic and reminisce about old stories I love in comparison.
I've chosen Rippaverse as my new comic universe to care about, been picking up back issues of the Marvel and DC I used to love, and need to get into the Kamen America Universe. Looks ridiculously fun.
Long way of pointing out that like many I'm always going to be angry because I've been attacked and I've already changed my habits for years now and humans don't change habits easily and without conscious effort. The audience they need to win back doesn't exist anymore, we moved on to places we feel wanted.
I'll always have the memories of those characters and the stories that I loved but it's not them anymore, it's just a dead IP and with what they've done to the characters for more than a decade now there is no going back. Those characters as we knew them are dead and everyone who could write them is gone or moved on, so I have too. There's many like me. We hate the companies personally and are apathetic at best about the comics in general.
I think the next decade of comics will be very interesting with the collapse of the big two clearing the way like a brushfire for new growth.
I just feel hella bad for the comic shop owners forced into a no win situation trying to ride out the blaze.
Well said sir. It’s sad seeing our heroes die
I agree 100%. I'm also choosing to invest in the rippaverse as my comic verse. The big 2 are just absolutely defunct at this point and the only fix is through fire and ashes, and them being sold of and rebooted HARD with ACTUAL long standing and serious retcons.
Mangas are the future now.
I'm with ya wes. I thought it was gonna turn out Xavier was mind controlling everyone or was tweaking there minds everytime they got resurrected. But oh well. 😔
I thought this, too. It made so much sense. Why wear cerebro 24/7?
Why would a multi billion dollar medical world just roll over in hand medicine to mutants?
There could be so many questions answered with a simple
"Yeah, Xavier's in people's minds."
This 100% I was Expecting the same thing, Xavier being compromised and using the resurrection protocol to further overtake the other mutants. But the big twist never came, nothing to explain the why and how. Completely utter BS. I drop it about 2 months before Hickman left, I had no faith in the line anymore. I’ve been buying X-Men since the mid 70s and left when I felt there was no real talent writing the books. This came back only to have this just killed it for me.
@logancm I was thinking the same thing! They had that comic with Domino and colossus PROVING that they are messing with peoples minds if cloned. On top of that, if aim (advanced idea mechanic) can have an entire storyline where they are giving people mutant powers from volunteered and kidnapped mutants for cash. Then why can't mutants with all their "mutant medicine" give mutants back their powers without making them go through ritualistic combat with Apocalypse!
Combat where you get murdered to the cheering throngs of other depowered mutants who are also going to get murdered if they want their powers back!?
it made no sense for people to be in an arena cheering for a literal blood sport, allowing apocalypse to do this murder hobo bullshit without any explanation. And pretending that this is all just fine. Is the most brain-dead, sick, and twisted crap I've ever read.
I'm glad I bought HoX/PoX...then saw the huge reading list for Dawn of X and NOPE out lol.
It's very clear they just want to milk the hype by kicking Hickman out.
Me too
If you ever revisit it, back at Dawn of X, the only mandatory title was the main X-Men one written by Hickman. You could skip everything else. It remains the only mandatory title until Reign of X.
At Reign of X, then there are three mandatory titles: X-Men, Way of X and SWORD.
At Destiny of X there are four mandatory titles: X-Men, Legion of X (continued from Way), X-Men Red (continued from SWORD) and Immortal X-Men.
For Fall of X to present, there are three mandatory titles: X-Men, Immortal X-Men and X-Men Red
Krakoan Era X-Men is LGBT fan fic. They haven’t been heroes since the crap started.🤷🏾♂️
Agreed.
100%. Bad fanfic at that.
Queers destroying everything
Considering one of the “heroes” was a girl who said she missed passing gas while she was a brain in a jar, I’d say some personal fetishes were involved too. (Also, why was she considered a heroine? Just because she had been a brain in a jar? News flash, Brain-in-a-jar Girl: You’re not special. I can name at least four other characters who have been brains in jars at some pointj
I remain unconvinced Hickman had some masterplan revealing these were not the real X-Men. If his Secret Warriors and Avengers are any indication, he has no inclination for writing moral and ethical heroes congruent with established characterization.
I agree, many of the things Hickman did when he wrote X-Men read less like something with actual thought put into it/extensive planning behind it and more like something done for pure shock value.
There were even moments where he went so overboard with it, it badly backfired on him. So badly in fact, he had to go on interviews stating his "true intentions" (which often completely contradicted what he wrote both in dialogue and within his speed sheets) while commenting that fans just horrendously misunderstood what he put on paper.
At the end of the day, Hickman used X-Men the same way a cat would use a sandbox: He found something that remotely looks like something he knew and could use, did his thing, tried covering his messy smelly track and had others clean after him once he left the scene because he himself is unable to do so.
@@spinningtornado4543 Exactly. In the beginning of HoX/PoX, in order to justify Krakoa, he either he either completely misunderstood canon, or simply lied about it. For example, he cited the Genosha Slaughter and M-Day as two of the main reasons mutants needed to segregate away from humans. Neither incident was perpetrated by humans. Genosha was done by Cassandra Nova, a Shi-ar Mummudrai, and M-Day was done by Scarlett Witch, another mutant.
Not to mention the number of characterization inconsistencies that were shoehorned to make this work. Very few of these X-Men characters would willingly live alongside these villains.
Like you say, I think he simply wanted another sandbox to do the idea of multiple dimensions/timelines and incursions again, and just went with it. I don't think he cared if it made sense or was congruent with canon and continuity.
@@SamGuthrie1977 Very true.
The fact is, the Krakoa era's issues were there from the very start all while under Hickman's pen, even if the reviewer here is still trying to defend his writing flaws as it being due Marvel's editorial and justify his character inconsistencies as it all being from Krakoa's influence on the cast.
Both of these points get immediately contradicted when you look at how Hickman chose to write those characters outside of what was the Krakoa timeline and in their pre-Krakoa flashbacks, where they remain just as out of character, and how the stories he writes are a cesspool of plot points that lead nowhere and a testimony to his lack of knowledge on the franchise he's using.
There are many examples I could give on that last point, the biggest one you already mentioned in how the finger got pointed at the wrong people for both M-Day and the Genosha Slaughter in HoX/PoX, but I'll just bring up this from one of his other Krakoa series:
Hickman wants us to believe that, in the same distant past and at around the same timeframe, there were two distinct islands in the middle of the ocean no one's ever heard of before that were both only filled with mutants (Okkara and the mutant island from Chuck Austen's run). Both of those civilizations went to war against a bigger specific enemy before being magically sealed in a Hell-like dimension with those mutants having to fight for their lives while their ruler was left on Earth.
Yet somehow, neither of those big prominent groups (which had telepaths, teleporters and what have you) KNEW about the other.
The odds of this exact chain of events happening twice aren't just small, they are comically small.
I agree. Hickman has always been more into world-building and thinking up awesome plots than characterization. Usually his writing is good enough that I can justify it, but when he leaves and other less talented writers come onboard, it can only go downhill.
It would have been brilliant if they had revealed that Marvel universe that we know actually takes place AFTER the krakoan era, i.e. Moira dies in the krakoan era and she wakes up and our marvel universe continues from that, that could explain why none of the X-men were in character, they weren't "our" X-men. But no, that didn't happen, and it ruins HoX/PoX which is unfortunate because that was a mindblowing comic.
The only way to turn things around would be to hit a reset button on a company-wide scale. I would set things back to a continuity pre-woke era or some other version that negates the politics-driven changes to the characters that have plagued everyone from Carol Danvers to the X-Men and everything in between. You would also need to get rid of writers who are there for “agendas” and forced “diversity,” and cultivate the opposite. Pie in the sky stuff, I know, but a former comic fan can dream, I suppose.
X-Men #4 from January 2020, "Global Economics," was one of the greatest issues EVER. Professor X and Magneto at the World Economic Summit telling the assembled humans what was what wouldn't have had the same force without Apocalypse there. There was just something about the "novelty" of having Big Daddy working with the X-Men and all of mutantdom at large that lent this era a WEIGHT that it wouldn't have had otherwise.
When he left at the end of X Of Swords, that was the jump-the-shark moment. I knew it would be downhill from there. And it was.
It was a glorious run for a while.
The anti-thesis of Xavier’s philosophy became his philosophy. Segregation over integration and acceptance, supremacy over equality.
It is a reflection of our divided society but beyond that I wouldn’t give it house room.
Remember, it is in certain people’s interests to remove any hopeful philosophy from culture to demoralise us completely.
💯! I was totally waiting for a reason why the X-Men were acting out of character... and there were seeds being planted. They kept going back to how they were brought back (resurrection). And ... nothing. Just turned out to be bad writing from a clown car if bad writers
😂😂😂
Reasons put by those posters are why I haven't really gotten into X-Men. I want to read X-Men cause I remember the characters were so cool when I was in high school. era of Claremont and Lee. Now its hard to find spot to just pick up on and so many titles. . . I got into Venom/Carnage comics but it felt easier to get into. Started with Carnage Reigns, Death of Venomverse and got the trade on Red Goblin. It is so much easier to get into than X-Men. Venom stuff has starting places but so far. . . its been good. I wish X-Men would be like that.
Krakoan X-Men post Hickman is just slashfic now. I noped out a long time ago.
HoXPoX got me buying comics again (despite mostly being a DC guy) Krakoan era got me dropping comics again.
For the longest time, I was always fascinated by the X-Men but never got any of the comics. Mostly because there are no comic shops around me. I ended up getting the first 4 Uncanny Omnibus volumes digitally and it's a hell of an adventure. Absolutely loving it.
Seeing some of the panels people post about new X-Men and this Krakoa era on IG gave me whiplash from all the double takes I did. It's so weak. Safe to say, I'm not going to spend any money on the new stuff.
Yeah. Soon as I saw them opining on being the 'New Gods', I was out.
I think they should might as well hire Rob Liefeld for Xmen
Rob Liefeld is a gift from God compare to the X-Crap that is being published now
If they leave him to his own devices, I would most definitely read his X-Men comic book. I guarantee that even with his questionable art, which admittedly is an acquired taste, and his edge lord, eXtreme! writing, that comic book would sell like hot cakes. The only thing that I would ask of him is that he only concentrates on comic book super hero characters that are his strong suit. Lol! Other than that, let him have at it, lol! The looks on all of the soy woke S.J.W.s' faces at Marvel Comics would be fuckin' hilariously priceless. 😂
I would love to see would Liefeld would do! He has passion and love for comics.
@@SlashTheWeasel I would buy the book and his art is not that bad its better than the art in most Marvel book that looks like a 3 year old can do it better. Nice covers crappy art inside.
@@SlashTheWeasel Plus he is also based and red-pilled just like J. Scott Campbell so he will not make soy woke S.J.W. crap in his Uncanny X-Men comic book.
I knew it! I knew it! Wonder more comic retailers will forward the information that comics (US specifically) not doing well. Only the indies comics are doing well
From the start of the run, something just seemed...off about the Krakoan-era X-Men to me. They didn't seem like X-Men, just the ramblings that'd you'd see from someone in an insane asylum circa 1912, with an off-color X-Men coat of paint.
It would have been brilliant if they had revealed that Marvel universe that we know actually takes place AFTER the krakoan era, i.e. Moira dies in the krakoan era and she wakes up and our marvel universe continues from that, that could explain why none of the X-men were in character, they weren't "our" X-men. But no, that didn't happen, and it ruins HoX/PoX which is unfortunate because that was a mindblowing comic.
the biggest comics shop in my city doesn't even do subscriptions anymore
You mentioned GODS #1 being underordered by a historical margain in the video. I'll tell you why I personally didn't order it and it is simply the price point. My LCS is in Ireland and I would be all over that book but not at 10.00 for the opening chapter. Exactly the same reason why I didn't order Predator/Wolverine. I would be all over these two series at 4.99, maybe even 5.99 but not double the price.
You know things are bad when it makes you miss the Chuck Austin era. I will take the Fish Boy over anything Vita Ayala, Tini Howard, or Leah Williams any day.
I went along with it thinking that it some point it will end and with Moira's resurrection abilities the whole time line will change. But it just won't end will it. Marvel will keep teasing us that it will end but it never will.
It could be Marvel DOES know they need to change, but as long as Black Rock keeps calling the shots, nothing's going to change.
Do y'all know this TH-camr,: Jakelong2000. I remember he saying "DC & Marvel" care about their audience - Well, he hasn't watch this great channel.
No, Marvel and DC *actually* care about their audience
They will do what they can to protect the Twitter freaks
Is this spam?
@@StratumPress No, I promise you it's not. I was just watching his video and he said "DC & Marvel care about their fans." I just wanted to tell someone.
Couple of things. I do agree all publishers are getting ridiculous with their cover pricing now. No books should be coming out with an 8-10 dollar price tag (which works out even worse for us here in the UK). I've dropped everything now as there's just so much dross coming at you too expensively, though interestingly after what you said Wes, I always love my Spidey fix, (even though Wells run hasn't been stellar all round).
I think Tom B said with regards to GODS, that they were following the creators wishes with the format to start, rather than spreading out over several issues ( so I guess how Hickman wants to do it). I still like his work and I'm intrigued to see where it will go, so am going to get issue 1 despite the price.
I reckon Brevoort will bring a lot to X-Men when he takes over and there will be a soft reboot or reveal on Krakoa. He recently sited the 2005 Doctor Who revamp as something he was a big fan of, while he is working on his plan for the X line and how to approach taking over. Obviously Marvel must feel it's not working as it should in appointing him as well.
Most of my comics related cash now goes on epics, omnibuses and silver age issues. I do like the reprints DC have done of 3 issues in 1 comic (JSA upcoming and DC v Vampires and Dark Knights Of Steel), they are sensibly priced and good value if you're wanting a read.
It turns out nobody wants to read about gay superheroes eating pudding. What a shock.
Even back in the 90s I didn't read superhero comics due to the confusing multiple titles for a single character / team thing.
With manga: If I want to read One-Piece, there's just one book called One-Piece and I just start with volume one and keep reading in numerical order, by the same author/artist the whole way through.
But with mainstream American comics: "You should read so-and-so's run on The Unbelievable Who's-It, issues one through 20 from 1999-2001, before what's-his-name came along and ruined everything. No not issues one through 20 from 2015, issues one through 20 from 1999-2001! No not The Adventures of Who's-It or The Machiavellian Mind of Who's-It; You have to get The Unbelievable Who's-it! You also have to get issues 27-30 of Those-Other-Guys because important stuff happens in the Mid-Life Crisis IV event and..."
And also you have to know to go to a "comic book store" to know these comics exist. When I was a kid the comics were in grocery stores so I would see them when I had to go shopping with my mom.
"Oh, there's an ALF comic book! Mom, can you buy this for me?"
"No, if you want that you can buy it with your own money." And the comic was $1 at most so I could afford it with my allowance.
We haven’t had a good LCS here in my town since the 90s. Troy ran Beetle Comics in town and he got me started on new titles by lending me a trade of Nick Fury vs Shield or Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters and he got me interested in Sandman by lending me a trade of Books of Magic. Our LCS’s have dwindled over the years where we have none now. I used to be like wow I can’t to read the next issue to now nothing is sparking my interest. I picked up X-Men off and On through the 2000s to the point where I don’t remember what the last issue I got was. My best reads these days are Omninbuses or Absolutes of books that originally came out in the 80s and 90s. I can’t find anything new to get interested about these days.
You know what I'm absolutely sick of hearing?
"I don't want to go back to the mansion."
Why? Do you think no relevant story can be told from the position of a teacher and student? Do you forget that teachers kind of nurture the children of tomorrow? Or did you forget about Harry Potter? Takes place in a school. My hero academia takes place in a school. Strange Academy takes place in the school. Did you ever wonder why most of these successful franchises take place in schools?🤡 Maybe it's because no matter who you are, what era you're from, or place the dynamic between a student and teacher is something every single person everywhere can recognize.
And if you can't recognize that.
It's time to go back to school.
And why don't they just build a mansion on Krakoa if they're so keen? Aren't they living in grass huts and caves there?
@creepyclips9024 They could have, but they never took the time to do a real slice of life comic that showed exactly how life on krokoa functioned.
I mean, ten percent of the world's population is a big number. Factor in every religion and social hierarchy from all over the world. Put on one island. I think everybody got sick and tired of hearing "it just works".... 🤨😐😶😒🙄😮💨 no it doesn't "just work"
@@grunge2001 Well said. They've gone in such an odd direction with this team. I wonder if someone with real pedigree could come in and sort this all out with a proper whiz-bang epic conclusion that will put the narrative back on the road to recovery. Perhaps Johnathan Hickman really did have a complete run planned out like Infinity or the recent Secret Wars. Instead it keeps plodding along getting more convoluted by the year. Heck, they even made all of their classic rogues gallery of villians into besties. It's like a tangled ball of wool, it'll take some time and patience to untangle it, but an unskilled hand will only make the knots tighter.
@@grunge2001They’re not intelligent enough to explain it. They don’t know how anything works.
Marvel and DC have ruined most of their characters. I don't even recognize most of them anymore.
David Spade - "Look children, it's a falling star. Make a wish"
_flashes a picture of Jonathan Hickman_
I hate the Krakoan era and I'm glad the Sentinels finally came.
I hope the Sentinels kill every damn mutant created after 2008
I had a great idea how to fix this and say stuff you to the crop of writers.
Orcus infected Cerebro trying to make all mutants gay, in order to try and reduce the population. Literally killing the "Make more mutants" law. Add in personality trait changes from them and you can explain away everything.
Hell you could even have this cycles Moira working for Orcus and she was the instigator. Infected by Nimrod or some such.
1 double size comic could do all this and have Moira fight programming blah blah and give all the X-Men back there agency.
The wacky villain era sad seeing this happening. I remember how much I love being in the fandom.
Been reading the Claremont / Lee uncanny X-Men and it's just so dynamic and rich.
Where have you been getting it? What issue did you start? Is there trade to start?
Just Marvel Unlimited.
I started basically with Jim Lee's run but I'm about to rewind and start exploring Silvestri's run and probably further back to when Claremont started in 75. There are so many threads running concurrently, but you don't have to know everything to enjoy the stories (as it should be).
Pulp716 is actually a pretty nice store, possibly the most interesting one in the Buffalo area with their two locations. They have carried out first two issues, ordering a small starter packet of them directly from us. Meanwhile, Double Midnight in NH was one of the stores that turned us down (out of 500+ stores we contacted, we got 230 to pick us up), and I've never heard of Big Pete's but we only do limited presence in Canada anyway (4 stores) since it's so damn expensive to ship there for no good reason (it's not like Seattle is really farther from us than Vancouver, for example).
Why would a long time X-men fan stick with this? X-men had some slice of life elements in regards to the Summers family drama and team as a family, but it’s now just a slice of life comic without the action that added gravitas to that. They’ve gotten rid of what made the book special. If I want pure slice of life, I go to manga where it’s done correctly and with emotional impact.
I was known as the "X-Men guy" at my LCBS. Keyword: was.
Now I'm only reading Wildcats. Yeah, I'm not even reading Marvel at all anymore.
Since the 70s, the X-Men were the epitome of superhero cool. Marvel ruined that. They're trying to appeal to girls like Kathleen Kennedy's Star Wars strategy and it's been an abysmal failure for both compsnies. Girls and women have never liked superhero comics much. They prefer Archie comics which had a 60% female readership. The focus there was the Betty/Veronica/Archie love triangle and humor, not action. Marvel and DC will never win over women. It's a dead strategy but they will destroy the American superhero comic in the process. It's all in vain and it's colosally stupid.
@@thisspaceforrent5737 some girl manga is romance-oriented. I've even seen gay male romance series bought by girls in Japan. With superheroes, the focus is action, the fight between the hero and villain. Men like action-oriented entertainmebt such as sports and action movies or series. Women like romance and relationship-oriented entertainment like the famous rom- coms or romantic comedies. These different interests originate in the brain. Let the sexes be themselves and gravitate towards what they like. The idea of sameness is anti-nature.
1) There are far too many X-Men comics nowadays. 2) The X-Men are like a song you are waiting for it to end but it never does.
That is why I have hard time getting into it. I want to read X-Men but . . . for those reasons. . .
I still don’t know how people even enjoyed House of X/Powers of X. It was nonsensical, nothing happened and it was a mess with its timelines.
Agreed. It was typical pseudo-intellectual masturbation by Hickman, with no real story. It also completely mischaracterized the X-Men, and ignored previous continuity and canon.
Skipped X-titles in the 90s already but really liked what Hickman did on the two minis. So they had me back in, but momentum totally got lost in the regular series, so in the end I was off again after just about six issues, not even finishing Hickmans run. The story was all over the place the moment those minis ended 🤷
The rising price of comic books is sickening.
i think Marvel and DC should do a shonen style monthly magazine that has a bunch of issues from different series in it.. that way people would check out a bunch of things out and for cheaper.. good value... but nothing they can do about the woke stories... they'll just keep doubling down on that
Yea first they should do smth about the wokeness and then all this cause that alone won't be enough to turn their badwill
I’ve never bought a comic book except bc I wanted to read it. Most of my monthly buys now are NOT Marvel and DC.
Yeah, I agree with most of what you're saying. I loved House/Powers of X. It is the most brilliant X-Men story of all time! Unfortunately, most of what followed, including Hickman's own X-Men title, were just not at the same level - although I am enjoying the Fall of X story-line. In a way, I think it is a shame that Marvel is ending the Krakoan era because they have not begun to exhaust the creative possibilities with which Jonathan Hickman presented them. But if Marvel can't do something interesting with the Krakoan X-Men maybe ending the Krakoan era is the way to go.
With the audience Marvel has been catering to for the last few years, they should just bite the bullet and make the pages look like a Twitter feed. Then maybe those people will read it. Not BUY it, but read it.
If you could hit the reset button, put the Xmen back to just before things started going off the rails, when would that be? I stopped reading in the early 2k's, when Bastion was the big bad (if memory serves). I didn't quit because of that, I just kinda moved away from collecting in general.
Heck, I am consider dropping my old standbys Thor, Doctor Strange. and Strange Academy.
Mary Sue: I love comics written by me, with me as the main character, but, you know...superhero stuff. Did I tell you readers I hate you? I never liked comics, anyway.
The Selfdestruction of all things Disney continues to be glorious!
I left after the first Hellfire Gala
Reaching into my wallet has never enthused me. Keep it simple stupid publishers. Story, art, price. What is hard?
Flip through the dollar box and pick any random comic from the 90's and you'll be a lot better off.
Which only proves that maybe they got it wrong, eh? Perhaps the 1990s was not the so-called "Dark Ages" so-to-speak of comics and we're now just realizing that those '90s comic books weren't so bad after all.
And you wanna bet the MCU is going to adapt the krakoan era. You know they will.
The way the MSHE-U is sinking fast now i doubt they will get the time to do that.
I don't think so because, at the core, Krakoan Era X-men is not X-men. One reason it sold well is that it was a novel approach to X-men. The second reason it sold well is that it was Jonathan Hickman at his best when he was writing it.
For Marvel Studios to to Krakoan X-men, they need a half dozen X-men movies to eatablish the premise.
@@doyscherr Knowing Disney they will not care.
since phase 4 the MCU picks specifically crappy stories just to piss off "the right crowd". That's their priority. So it makes sense they go with Krakoa. Which is unexcusable, given the many many great stories the X-books had had since their inception for decades
I don't think Disney would go for another hidden civilization.
there is no modern audience in general... yet they still make books, movies, tv, toys, etc... for this non-existant audiance... how much money and time will they need to blow before they give up?
of course the x-men have been out of character since hosue of x/powers of x, they are all clones, the originals are all dead.
The Krakoan era of X-Men honestly feels like something that would have benefited and suited the Inhumans giving them something interesting and potentially making them relevant.
You're right: Krakoa has had every component to perfectly fit an Inhuman kind of story, the exact same ones that would be unfit to any X-Men ones.
You're right.
They made the Inhumans X-Men and made the X-Men Inhumans.
Any of the original X-Men left, any villains? Or are they all copies of copies of copies? It seems like they were killed a while ago and now all we have are clones - who, in our subconscious aren't the characters we grew up with, regardless of how they frame it. Those of you following closely are there any original X-Men left or have they all been resurrected on Krakoa?
I gave up on xmen last year you would think that marvel could print books much cheaper than the independent companies the quality of the spawn books is amazing compared to paper thin books at marvel
Awesome work mate
Hey Pulp 716! That's a local shop for me!
Good vid. Nice editing.
There's something absurd happening in woke X-men groups in Facebook.
When a new reader asks where he/she should start reading, they would tell you to start on hox/pox and skip decades of comics that defined the X-Men as we know. I've seen this so many times.
Hox/Pox is when you should actually stop...
They are Communists. They are copying Mao Tse-Dong's "Great Leap Forward" and they are trying to erase the old and totally wipe the past out of existence.
Hardly absurd, as you said, it's woke X-men groups.
You can expect that kind of shit advice from them.
@@denkerbosu3551 Yeah I guess you have a point.
Woke has nothing to do with comics. Stop being a culture vulture and create your own terms.
@@joeparrigen4982it’s not being a culture vulture. We’ve just taken your term and rightfully reoriented it as a negative. Marxism is evil.
i also thought the xmen were imprisoned under krakoa and i still hope that is the case, otherwise, due to resurrection these are all vegetable x men.
Marvel tried so hard to get X-Men film rights back that they destroyed their own comics to achieve it. This isn't random, it's a consequence.
It's four years of destruction with more to come too...
House of X and Powers of X started off interesting..and then Jordan White and his clown team came in and immediately ran it into the ground.. it literally took one event after Hox/Pox for half the readers to leave and not come back..
I wanted to buy the terror through time anthology a while back for the Tomasi short but I skipped because it’s not worth enabling the behavior. Tomasi should be writing one of the mainline titles but they don’t even have him doing back ups now. For the man that made Jon Kent and Damian Wayne desirable characters as well. Such a joke.
I left not too soon after Hickman left. I just couldn’t anymore.
I remember being hated and ridiculed when I said this Krakoan era under Hickman was going to be terrible. And I still can't stand how people seem to still defend Hickman with his so called masterplan which I seriously doubt he had. His idea was, admittedly, plagiarism from some book he read, and to this day he hasn't revealed what his plan was, because he probably didn't have one.
I cancelled my subscriptions shortly after it, because I couldn't remember opening an x-men comic and NOT seeing same sex relationships thrusted on characters that never used to show any interest in that. Always the woke agenda being in the forefront, smacked in your face, with the behind the scenes message of 'Like it, or be labeled sexist and racist and fascist and whatever other -ist word we can slap on you for good measure'. Not to mention the 'our books are no longer for you' message the creators sent out there.
For shame, Marvel. For shame. 😔
I hate to admit the only reason that I am buying this drivel is to not have holes in my X-Men run...
Yeah i do that for Amazing Spider-Man it sucks but i keep buying it dont even read it. I used to love the X-Men but after Uncanny X-men the first run was done i was gone.
Same here.😑
Written by ' writers ' with no valuable life experience or deeply reflected philosophy. No Hero's Journey. No competing points of view creating meaningful conflict. Nothing apart from shallow self absorbed narcissism.
I'm a regular reader of Saga and Something is Killing the Children, but not current X-Men. Because as you stated, there's a lack of talent there, and X-Men aren't fucking indie books. If I pick up an X book, I want X-Men not Saga.
i miss valiant
back when marvel and dc were riding high on catering to people that dont read comics they were doing it right
I haven't bought a modern X-Men related comic in maybe 2 1/2 years. And I haven't touched modern Amazing Spider-Man since Zeb Wells took over. The only modern books I've been getting every so often was Superman (the actual Superman not Jon) related stuff, cuz that is actually decent.