Started working with Alan Moore ---> Later did porn comics ---> Immediately illustrated for a Little Mermaid comic You're right, I DID get whiplash from that.
It almost feels like somebody came by when Austen was writing the comic and was like, "So... he can heal people by bleeding on them? What about like...AIDs?" To which Austen was like "....mutants can't catch HIV...>.>"
Why not just say Angel's blood is immune to diseases? Infinitely more palatable than *"mutants can't get AIDS"* lol? Sometimes comic writers don't understand how ridiculous their own writing can come off as
"is the healing factor in my blood?" 'Proceeds to stab self'. That is the coolest/comicsest way to check if someone in a comic universe has a healing factor
JoGeJo Probably just cut my finger. It’s a small enough wound so that if I don’t have a healing factor I won’t die and it would normally stay for a few days to a week. If a healing factor is present, the wound should heal fairly quickly.
The panel he does it in is also weird, since it looks like he's slashing himself backwards with a carpet knife, i.e. using the non-sharp back side of the blade
"Hope" was literally the first comic I bought when I was a kid. I thought it was confusing because I hadn't read the previous stories. Turns out it was just confusing and bad!
Now I think I would be the opposite if I wrote a major comic, basically writing done-in-one stories where the hero fights a villain with a little beat in his regular life, rinse & repeat. One of my favorite runs is when Paul Dini wrote _Detective Comics_ following the One Year Later and that's all he did baring a two-parter with the Joker and a 5 parter finale with Hush. He didn't rock the boat but his stories were so good that they almost felt like lost TAS episodes.
If someone said to me: here, you're in charge of the X-men now, I'd probably go for a long long hours long walk to think something real worthy of the series, but knowing the industry I know those guys are in constant pressure for time and are not given that luxury
it feels like he just wasn't a very nuanced thinker. So to him Nightcrawler had to have demon parentage because he looks like a demon. Stacy X had to be obsessed with sex and porn and relationships because she was a hooker. In fact all women had to be obsessed with relationships because they were women. Angel had to have healing blood because I mean come on he's a fuckin' angel right? Iceman is made of ice, cause his name is *Iceman*, and Zorn is a real person because I mean we saw him in all those places. It all probably seemed deep to him.
I mean, they probably did. We know they didn’t want to imply Mystique... you know, a shapeshifter... couldn’t possibly be male at any point. If we got his more insane stuff, it might have at least been glorious nonsense rather than dull nonsense.
Back when this run originally came out, I can remember more than one online review site repeatedly asking what sort of blackmail material Austin had on Marvel's higher ups that allowed him to keep getting work.
To be fair, Teen Titans are the X-Men are a bit similar seeing how their best run was during the 80s/90s and they have nostalgic cartoons, X-Men during the 90s and Teen Titans during the early 2000s. Plus both X-Men and Teen Titans have a diverse cast of characters, both human and non human.
The sad thing is I can see that being a kinda interesting side story. Learning to accept mutants based on her experience with Alex, and then later realizing he was a mutant the whole time. It could be a kinda cool arc showing someone's viewpoint change throughout various story arcs, helping in the background and growing more accepting. 'Course that was sorta just dropped so we could focus on Angel seducing a teenage girl, because that's what I wanna read.
"That was actually Xorn's twin brother, possessed by the sentient mold Sublime, pretending to be me pretending to be Xorn." "That defies all logic." "Oh, like none of YOU have ever died before!"
Regarding Nightcrawler's age, I'm pretty sure Marvel has officially stated that certain characters will always remain the same age, and that their pasts retroactively move forward with them. So Punisher originally started as a Viet Nam vet, but since they don't want an wrinkly old octogenarian hobbling around with an M50 in one hand and a cane in the other, he's now a Gulf War vet, and so on. It's not consistent, though, so some characters are allowed to age and some aren't, which is why Spiderman is no longer a geeky teenager, but Nightcrawler is still in his youth.
Nightcrawler being 20 just makes no sense though. He’s supposed to have gained all this wisdom and have all this romantic history. 20-year-olds are not wise. And you can’t have characters who are so intimately linked like Kitty Pryde and Nightcrawler treated differently as far as aging. Nightcrawler being in an older brother relationship with Kitty is important for both characters.
+Learn 2 Crawl The M50 is apparently a Second World War submachine gun. What I meant, of course, was a M60 and then suffered a catastrophic brain implosion.
I remembered that holy war issue. I saw it in the supermarket and I was like "What? 25 cents?" I hadn't read Xmen in forever, due to having lost my job and falling behind with it. So I picked the issue up and read some of it. I saw crucifixions and killer priests and I was just like "What the eff has happened to this book?" I then slowly put it back. IT WAS 25 CENTS AND I PUT IT BACK.
Chuck Austen's run is an absolute nadir for the X-Men. He ruined what was an interesting arc for Nightcrawler: a mutant who looks like a demon is in fact religious and joins the priesthood. What was gained by retconning that into a bizarre conspiracy theory? Not to mention that the conspiracy theory only works if you ignore that a) Catholic dogma doesn't include the Rapture, b) Nightcrawler has been a public superhero for years, especially in the UK as part of Excalibur, and c) the communion wafers that make people disintegrate would need to be distributed globally. If you ignore all of these elements, sure maybe mass hysteria will break out. Or Reed Richards will go on TV and explain what's really happening. Then there's Azazel, who for some reason made it into the X-Men movies. He's a one note villain, created just to give Nightcrawler angst about his father.
No, the priest thing is silly, Nightcrawler is more than just a religious demon looking guy, he's a swashbuckling charmer ladiesman, him being a priest just feels off.
@@FUTBALLZAK Just because he is religious doesnt mean he cant be a charmer. The problem I think writers have is lack of nuance. This character is the angry character this character is the sexy character there is no nuance, everything is extreme and stereotypical.
@@willamdafoe9300 I know, that's not what I mean, he's always been a very religious character and simultaneously a total ladiesman, and that's cool, the problem is specifically him becoming a priest and swearing off his desires and future sexual relations, it didn't feel right to me.
I remember that story arc - it is when I finally stopped buying comics. I was unemployed, had moved to the middle of nowhere (it is complicated) and I has to take the car and drive 30 miles to downtown to find a comics shop. One day I went, bought a bunch of X-men comics and headed back home. And it was Chuck Austen stuff... I felt it was not worth the time and the money that I had lost to get them, and lost what little steam I had left.
Chuck Austen worked with Alan Moore for his first comics, ...from what I've heard about the entertainment industry you have to start at the bottom and climb your way up but Chuck Austin has shown us you can start at a relative decent point and then started digging down.
If you believe that working with Alan Moore is a decent starting point you've never seen/read an Alan Moore interview. Does not really seem the most positive person to be around.
@@JamesSerapio Yeah, but his position in the comics industry, regardless of his attitude, is pretty high up. He's respected for his excellent writing, being an angry old curmudgeon notwithstanding
Is working with Alan Moore really a huge jump from working on porn comics? Alan would be the first to classify some of his output as porn and he certainly doesn't shy away from including sex in his other work when it's relevant.
Moore is well known to be an asshole in person. Great writer (v sucks and killing joke is over done but over all top notch) but toxic person. Same is said about Neil gaimen
Can you imagine Wolverine helping out the X-Men in a world saving battle, only for an alarm on his phone to go off to remind him he needs to help The Avengers?
I had to pause this for a moment to weigh in on the Juggernaut joining the X-Men: I actually really, really liked it. I'm a sucker for redemption arcs, or seeing an "evil" character listening to the angels of his better nature. I've always felt like Cain could be one of those characters, much like Sandman or Rhino, where sometimes they do good because they can't bring themselves to allow bad things to happen to innocents. It's bearing fruit in the current run as well, as Cain has rejoined the X-Men after finding out that the "Magneto" he was following was actually Joseph. He wants to make a difference, and he thought he'd do so alongside Magneto. I like that Cain has a motivation to help bring about change now. I'd honestly love to see more of him in the role of "bad guy seeking redemption."
Jonothan Thrace Now that got me thinking... what would a book written by Austen & ”drawn” by Land look like? It’s almost impossible to imagine such horror.
My sources say that Stacy X is still locked in her room in the X Mansion, watching porn. Somehow her room has remained untouched, all the times the place blew up in the years since. Scientist seem to think it's her secondary mutation.
Austen got a couple notes for you. A character’s sexuality is not a personality trait. So you have to try a bit harder to make these characters believable and well rounded
I think the problem isn't that his sexuality is mentioned a lot, it's just that most of the time it's just people reacting to that fact like it's the weirdestand shocking thing in the world, which is kind of uncomfortable.
@Nick Fanchette that's my whole point though. Iceman is a developed character which is why suddenly making him gay and changing his mannerisms and the way he talks is out of left field. The whole thing feels kind of tacked on.
@Nick Fanchette i agree with you about the healthy growth. Iceman has always been in my top 3 X-men. Nothing will ever change that. Besides, now if I were a comic character, I might actually have a shot with him lol.
Mephisto isn't ACTUALLY the Devil, he's an interdimensional being that modeled himself after the local perception of the Devil to mess with people and took up the gimmick, neither is his dimension actually "Hell", he just calls it that because he's that devoted to his schtick. That being said, Azazel is still a lame ripoff of Trigon though
@@ALIEN-DUDE hell but marketing didn't want to piss off christians or anti christians so like d n d when they changed it so not demons or devils just other dimensional beings.
Some things I credit Chris Claremont for are taking a lot of plot elements (some of which were completely forgotten) and weaving them back into current stories with in an interesting and beneficial way. His attention to detail is phenomenal. There were times when I wasn't exactly taken by the ways characters changed and grew, though in the vast majority of times, I was. Austen is essentially the antithesis of that. He created a lot of new plot lines that went nowhere, accomplished nothing but confusion (and maybe a little nausea), and actually broke continuity in some ugly ways. Under Austen, characters changed, but I can't say they grew and almost every change was one that didn't make sense given past character development and didn't improve the character either. I've read better fan-fiction.
Marvel hasn't had a real editor in chief in a long time which is why the last couple decades has been plagued with so many bad stories and crazy retcons and just problems out the yin yang. I've never read any of Chuck Austen's X-stuff but it's legendarily bad and the fact that a guy who's prior credits include a sting on Miracleman, porn comics, and Disney's The Little Mermaid is handed the reigns to one of Marvel's flagship titles is a pretty huge problem.
@@MrSafior bro comics don't even sell over the inflation rate now, and Cebuslki stopped being helpful after he removed most of the bad titles, which ironically came back. The last 3 decades were a blessing if you tell me. Besides, Chick Austen does not represent all of X-Men or Marvel in that time period.
"Hi I'm Northstar, and I'm gay!" yes, we know, we've known for years. "I'm Gay!" yeah, okay, so are a bunch of other comic book characters "But I'm the first Gay comic book character. I'm Gay!" Sigh..
This is why I am usually worried when a gay character is introduced, not because I care that they’re gay but because often that one fact will consume the entire rest of the story.
Wasn't there any editors or overseers that would look at this stuff and say, "Ummmm no. You're screwing up not just your story, but whole timelines that other people worked really hard on."
The video briefly touched on it, but Quesada was an artists and thought artists got the short shift in the creative experience so he was going out of his way to give artists a break as writers, thinking that they would be good at it....after all, drawing is hard, and writing is easy.... (this was somewhat in response to the image guys leaving.)
I saw your title, and when I thought of worst, all I could think of was the awful 6 months I read where Havok falls in love with someone while in a coma, causing Polaris to become psychotic (maybe that was Claremont's?), Nightcrawler's horrible father reveal that undermines his metaphoric appararance...wow, it was this one. Nice video and review.
Ugh! The Draco. Because the Marvel Universe really needed yet another stand-in for Satan. To say nothing of two sub-varieties of mutantkind (which is a concept that makes zero sense to me) that are also expies of things that already have a presence in 616.
Regarding She-Hulk & Juggernaut could have been a good story arc. She decides to represent Him, after meeting and hearing his case. After sometime of getting to know Cain better they begin to bond and the relationship grows organically. Perhaps Jennifer convinces Cain to be a better person, serve his time, repay society. The whole time she's there for him. Maybe even have Chuck show up and begin to repair their relationship. The goal here would not be to turn Cain into a hero but an Anti-Hero similar to Venom. The thing here is if you step back and look at some of Austens plot threads, they're not bad, just ignored & forgotten, or just poorly executed. If Angels blood can heal, or X-gene is a cure for AIDS awesome. Follow up on that. If certain characters are Gay awesome develop it, organically. Tell their story. If Stacy X is a prostitute trying to leave that life behind her, tell her story. Develop the characters, tell the stories, create the Arcs. We as X-Fans are pretty understanding. We want continuity & good stories. We understand about taking chances, but take your time telling the story. Leave wiggle room if it doesn't work you can get out of a bad story...
Marko was going through a redemptive arc through Austen's run, so it's not a complete stretch to think they'd hooked up (no more than Mystique/Wolverine or Xavier/Wolverine lol). Retconning seems not only unnecessary, but lazy and a bit petty.
Plus he could give her a really good pounding, and he wouldn't have to worry about breaking her. Probably destroy most the furniture, and half the house though. I'd imagine sexual relationships must be pretty difficult for people with super strength.
@@Pantherblack well not to be that guy, but what was really petty was slut shaming her afterward, her and Wolvie being a good example or people floating the rumor about her and Tony Stark. First off she's a fucking adult and wouldn't owe tons of explanations to anyone whom she casually teams up with, and second all of that stuff is kinda shit writing and focusing on things that just don't matter for the "shock" and "comedy" of it at the expense of one of Marvel's really fun and interesting characters. MvC got it more right than Marvel did, where She-Hulk explains to Deadpool that once upon a time she would have been the one hitting him with a health bar. But yeah it matters who she's banging evidently more so than the stories behind any of that.
I think I remember at the time this happened, Avengers (Geoff Jones's run?) was presenting SheHulk as having casual sex with any man who caught her eye. So in Austin-Land, where everyone has only a single character trait, this was hers.
Baldi Locks It's funny but the story arc you described about She-Hulk and Juggernaut is pretty much the same as the one presented in the MC2 comic J2, who was the son of the Juggernaut and his lawyer who helped rehabilitate him. My biggest problem with the the two hooking up is that it is a HUGE ethics violation on She-Hulk's part. Heck, she could be disciplined by the court or even disbarred. Lawyers are not supposed to have intimate relationships with clients. Another example of bad writing.
I was a huge Generation X fan, so you can imagine how much I hated every single thing Austen did with some of my favorite characters, especially poor Skin. And dear God, how I hated Husk and Angel. So creepy.
His Action Comic run was so bad that some fans, me included consider it to be the Worst Run on Superman ever, so yeah the guy has a notorious reputation but hey it's not all bad, he's a producer on Steven Universe then again he's not involved creatively so...
@@orinanime post crisis Superman era specifically during the 2000s, he basically made Superman come across as jerkishly agressive that it felt out character because he was having a "bad day" and Lois had an unflattering portrayal during this run because Austen didn't like Lois Lane and the marriage, the backlash from Superman fans was so bad along with baggage of his X-Men run that DC cancelled his run after around 10 issues. New 52 Superman acted rash but at least he still felt like Superman, Austen's Superman didn't feel like Superman at all.
It'd be super-awkward if Greg Land "drew" a Chuck Austen-written comic using images traced from a Chuck Austen-drawn comic. I mean would Greg even get a credit?
Not to be a contrarian, but that's not a bad X-team. If anything I feel like the dynamic between Bobby and Jono could carry a lot of that book. Bobby is your happy go lucky guy with a ton of raw power if only he'd be more serious and Jono is cranky, jaded, and rightfully disillusioned because of what his mutation means for him and the people around him. That's an amazing dynamic already. Kurt can also be jokey, so him and Bobby are your team goof offs with Kurt being the team morality. Logan balances on the side of Jono, hard as nails and also disillusioned. But he and Kurt are good friends, so that means that Kurt probably gets more laughs and smiles out of him than anyone else in the world, so that means we have part of the team to take the lead when things get dark and part of the team to take the lead when you want more lighthearted stories. My issue is that I know literally nothing about Stacy X, she'd have to be a character I'd learn to write and I kinda agree with you about Angel. I'm not sure how Angel works as an X-Team leader. He's not usually that interesting to me, and he's not usually straight man or authority figure enough to be a foil for the more anti-establishment members. I guess a good answer would have been for him to maybe be a bit too daring as a leader and have to learn to restrain himself. Not really sure, but I don't figure they're a bad team.
Her introduction with the brothel left much to be desired. She's a pheromone manipulator but she's introduced as one of a number of prostitutes funded by individuals misusing Angel's fortune. The X Ranch promptly gets destroyed and her entire character arc before Chuck Austen's run was trying to prove that she could be an asset to the team. Incidentally her name kind of works better when you invert it to X-Stacy.
@@MorinehtarTheBlue You're right that does work better and a pun I didn't get. Also, while this comment was a long time ago, I'll admit that I missed the obvious parallel between her and Daken. Daken also has pheromone powers and he uses them for absolute evil, you see all the ways in which such a power can be abused, so Stacy's power being potentially dangerous and her having to figure out the morality of seems like a character beat. Essentially being a telepath, if there weren't so many other telepaths. You have this power that you are going to have to struggle with the ethics of. Maybe even have vast parts of it or some of its effects be involuntary. That could be very interesting, especially with the idea that she initially was struggling to prove herself. So you go from feeling useless to being worried you might be an actual monster if you don't pay enough attention to your own motivations.
Austen also wrote a prequel comic to the X-Men 2 movie featuring Nightcrawler -- and that is BAD. It hits all the tropes of his writing - sex, religion and gore - and of course, handles it terribly.
7:36 I've read somewhere that one of the reasons they decided to bring Juggernaut over to the good guys was because Austen had wanted to use Colossus on the team, but Colossus had recently died (sacrificing himself to help cure the Legacy Virus) and Marvel didn't want to resurrect him right away (of course, they ultimately did, but not that soon). Seems a bit of a pity that Juggernaut got picked just because he could fill the "team muscle" slot - as much as Juggernaut isn't a particularly smart dude it could've been fun to have him realise "Hey, I can help WITHOUT smashing stuff!" at some point.
Ugh... I love the X-Men I really do. But Chuck Austen made me quit as in, stop reading comics for years. It was so trash I couldn't even believe the gall of Marvel to publish that at the time. I was just a young grasshopper at the time and wanted to "read it all no matter how bad it was" and that was my downfall. To try to stomach a bad run of a book. Now I pick and choose the runs I spend my hard earned money on. So at least this taught me a lesson. If it is trash, just drop it and read something else. The X-Men as a whole are a great comic book series, with years worth of good runs like way back in the 70's and 80's. You just have to find a run that's for you.
This had the same affect on me. I quit xmen from a combination of Austin's terrible writing and also there were so many X titles at the time. If I didn't buy all of them I'd miss some important event, like Jean coming back to life (again) or Magneto joining the team.
I was lucky that I missed out on that run when I was getting into comics. Too bad thanks to a combination of me being a completionist in reading all comic runs from beginning to end and my discovery of torrents, I came across his run of the X-Men (as well as Avengers which was at the tail end of Kurt Busiek’s awesome run). All I could say was that I wouldn’t still be reading comics to this day if my introduction was through that shit.
Same here, never connected it at the time, but it was so bad I just decided it was kind of upsetting to see where they were taking characters. In a way, I'm actually a bit grateful, it saved me a lot of money going forward, as it broke my comic collecting habit and I never went back. Only ever picked up the odd Graphic Novel anthology since.
Editorial mandated the Xorn retcon but the rest cant be explained for lol Austen just decided to run it into the ground as best he could and he succeeded. Good riddance hes not longer near any comics
I been a fan of X-Men since 1989 from when my dad brought me my first comic. When I think of my time reading X-Men the Chuck Austin period is always the biggest "What were the smoking" period for me :P
A note on Stacy X: she lost her powers on M-Day and became part of the post Civil War I, anti-registration New Warriors. I'm not sure what happened to her after that. I guess she's just a character no one cares about.
Her powers were restored under mysterious circumstances; she was last seen at a support group for mutants with abnormal appearances (run by Nightcrawler) in Domino's 2018 ongoing series.
I disagree that having Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Archangel, Iceman, Chamber, and Stacey X would be a problem. Any good writer can make characters work. The problem was the writing, not the characters.
Well not everything. Secondary mutations were a half-baked idea to begin with. In Beast and Iceman's case they were handicaps that boosted their regular abilities. And a number of others including Black Tom and Polaris already had explanations that got co-opted to prove a non-existent point. The only one that panned out was Emma Frost's diamond form.
@@MrPineapple045 Honestly, I do actually like her character and I feel like she had a big potential. The idea of a flawed person who is trying to overcome her prejudices for her son's sake is really interesting. If only Austen explored her inner conflicts more, instead of delivering a soap opera drama, it would be really cool. I really hate how her story arc was left on a cliffhanger, I feel like Marvel really could do something more interesting with her character. Ugh, wasted potential.
"Northstar has a huge ego, but Austen doesn't use that..." "...Northstar insists he's the only one who can survive the boy exploding." You don't think that sounds like a huge ego?
It only seems like a good point because Northstar's powers aren't explained in the video. He's your typical flying brick so he should've just been making a matter of fact statement about his abilities. Granted because the writing is bad they conveniently don't work or are inadequate to the task.
I see he has an X Patrol comic from Amalgam comics. I wonder if it could be that. Imagine X-Force and Doom Patrol mixed together. I heard it is gloriously bad. ShatterStarFire sounds like the worst Marvel/DC combination ever!
I kinda blame Marvel editorial for the debacle that was Chuck Austen's X-Men run. It was like he was writing scripts with almost zero editorial input. I get that Mike Marts, the X-Men editor at the time, had his hands full dealing with Grant Morrison as well as Chris Claremont at the time as well as editing the new Ultimate X-Men title that was having problems finding big name writers to do the book after the first arc, but still.
I was getting back into comics in my early 20s around the time of Austen's run on Uncanny. Morrison was on New X-Men, if I'm not mistaken (edit: and you confirmed), which was a contributing factor to my picking comics back up again, and the Ultimate line was fairly new and doing really well. I remember picking one or two up in the hopes it was up to the standard of Morrison's stint. It wasn't, and it has not aged well, though it is nostalgic thinking about it years later
Marvel Finally scrapped the Azazel retcon, Mostly. Mystique had Kurt with Destiny as a man while she was in a sham relationship with Azazel. Let’s fix the other problems (cough, Warren, cough)
Compared to the rest of that new X-Men team, Kurt and Peter were the odd men out. Claremont loved Storm and focused heavily on her. Wolverine is a comic selling character. Cyclops was the O.G. Kitty was the youth demo. Kurt had his image/esteem problem and Peter was the lug and Russian farmboy. I could do a whole book on how they were unable to use Nightcrawler without overshadowing the rest of the team, so they sidelined him a lot. He would get injured more often than the others and take longer to heal. Tactical teleportation is overpowered as a superpower. So teleporters are resigned to transportation and crowd control.
So Nurse Annie “doesn’t like mutants, she has her reasons.” yet falls in love with the Mutant Havok? She also willingly moves into a place full of mutants?
This was truly bad. But not really much worse than the stuff contained in The Twelve omnibus, or Revolution, or Eve of Destruction, or the horrible run by Peter Milligan. There have been so many awful X-Men runs! Oh wow, forgot about the exploding communion wafers.
I was re watching this video yesterday and today i put steven universe to my kid and in the end credits sudenly apears Chick Austen as “supervising producer” damn!
@@jorge_villarreal It gets better. I've read comment posts from people he's worked with in the show that just "lord" over him that he used to work in comics. I guess they never heard about Angel and Husk in that one issue.
Writers casually throwing away decent designs/characters because they're not interested is not great. As someone new to xmen, i actually like chambers look and how it plays with his drama. But i guess whatever potential he had for this book was gone the moment Austin *"didnt feel like it"*
Sammy Pare and his relationship with Juggernaut is probably the best part of the run. Sammy himself is actually a really good character. He's the perfect audience surrogate because he's just a normal kid who mostly just LOOKS different. So he can easily be a stand-in for any child who feels like an outcast, or who's a minority. No real fancy special powers like Xavier or Cyclops (albeit breathing underwater but that's not so special a power), and he's frequently picked on for looking different. It's a damn shame he got killed off.
I just took it as he could only leave for short periods and there was something about the realm itself that kept pulling him back. Something he hoped he could use his teleporter children to solve.
Stacy X recently appeared in 2018's Domino annual 1 where she no longer has her power and is human looking. She attended a support group that Domino and Nightcrawler created. Nurse Annie was last seen in 2013 Astonishin X-Men vol 3# 62-64 where she wad captured by an insane Iceman. Its nice to see that these characters arent forgotten.
I don't really see much of a problem with the Xmen offering Juggernaut a place on the team. Out of the names you mentioned who've had multiple second chances, magneto and Mystique were both international terrorists, and Sabertooth was a homicidal psychopath. Outside of his ongoing blood feud with the xmen, Juggernaut tends to stick to D-list villainy such as bank robbery, and the occasional henchman for hire job. Which is kinda smart on his part. Who's gonna mess with someone that powerful unless their trying to take over the world, or blow up half the city. The only thing is I really can't see Juggernaut accepting the olive branch. At his core Cain Marko is a vary proud angry man. While he might occasionally join forces with the Xmen over a common foe, is grudge against professor x, and by extension the xmen, as well as his constant insistence that he's not a mutant would make it very hard for him to be a permanent member. Also mutants being immune to AIDS sounds like a stupid thing that was only thrown in so they could have plenty of random sex without consequences. That being said there is precedence for mutants responding to certain health issues different than regular humans. I seem to remember mutants having a high tolerance for radiation. Something that first came up with the Changling's chemo treatment being completely ineffective against his cancer.
I doubt it was there for sex, but more so that Archangel's new blood power wasn't just spreading disease everywhere, but the issue is that it gives a healing factor so one would assume that's not really an issue. But also, as people have pointed out it was also likely a call back to the Legacy Virus.
I dunno, even if Chuck Austin was limited with what he could do with Wolverine, I still think a good writer could have certainly made the most with Archangel, Ice-man, and particularly Nightcrawler. Also it could have been an opportunity to give StaceyX more depth…but no.
Austen's first arc was one of the few X-Men trades my local library had growing up, and to this day 15+ years later all I can distinctly remember is Wolverine's narration describing Stacy X as "slutty, but fun." Truly, a bastion of quality female characterization.
this team is crazy dope imo…many of my all-time favs…obviously the characters weren’t used properly & the writing is horrendous, but the roster is top tier
Juggernaut also isn't technically a mutant so that for me is another reason I wouldn't put him with the team. However, if he and Professor X can finally bond as brothers (and they need to have a great reason and story for doing it)I think I could enjoy it
I recently read this run as a part of my current X-Men read through. It really isn't very good. Worth mentioning is the horrible almost wedding of Havok and Polaris where Polaris becomes a jilted lover and attacks a human in nurse Annie.
Yeah, I gotta ask, "Where the hell were the damn Editors?!?" They are always in there trampling on GOOD ideas, but then they turn around and let THIS crap slip past. As for the art, some of it looked like it was drawn by my cat! (AFTER a night of heavy drinking.) _GEEEZ._
Congrats on the amazing videos you're putting out. As soon as I'm financially stable I'll be going to your patreon because I need you to keep them coming :p
BTW Kia is not Asiyama is actually Asamiya which I personally adore in his original manga environment but in the X-Men was IMO much worse than Philip Tan
When I was a pre-teen I read some comics at the library. I read Geoff Johns Teen Titans, a Batman comic here or there, and this. This was my first X-men comic run. Suffice to say I did not read a lot of X-men for a while after this.
So he wrote a bad x men comic doesn’t mean he deserves to loose his job. Frank Miller wrote Holy Terror, but that didn’t stop Dc continuing to hire him.
Wow, this brought back some memories...none of them being good. I was a huge X-Men fan in the 80s and 90s, and this run pretty well killed my desire to collect and read comics.
Man you are so funny on these videos. “Jean Grey should probably quit the mutants and join a CSI team if she can just look at blood and determine its mutant blood”. Love your videos.
"StaceyX goes to watch porn and is never seen again" how many lives have ended this way 😭
Some people say she’s still watching porn to this day.
@@Codarius
she died from a belt because she was "almost there"
What a legend
She went to watch snuff porn and got killed by the videodrome
Hello, is someone there? I'm down here!!!
I don't like Chuck Austen's run as well...
*I have my reasons*
I wonder if your reasons will ever be revealed
@@GiubileiFernando LMAO
Does this have to do with Nightcrawler?
Probably.
You don't Even NEED reasons
Started working with Alan Moore
--->
Later did porn comics
--->
Immediately illustrated for a Little Mermaid comic
You're right, I DID get whiplash from that.
It almost feels like somebody came by when Austen was writing the comic and was like, "So... he can heal people by bleeding on them? What about like...AIDs?"
To which Austen was like "....mutants can't catch HIV...>.>"
I mean to be fair if they're mutated enough some diseases wouldn't effect them lmao
Why not just say Angel's blood is immune to diseases? Infinitely more palatable than *"mutants can't get AIDS"* lol?
Sometimes comic writers don't understand how ridiculous their own writing can come off as
"is the healing factor in my blood?"
'Proceeds to stab self'.
That is the coolest/comicsest way to check if someone in a comic universe has a healing factor
JoGeJo Probably just cut my finger. It’s a small enough wound so that if I don’t have a healing factor I won’t die and it would normally stay for a few days to a week. If a healing factor is present, the wound should heal fairly quickly.
The panel he does it in is also weird, since it looks like he's slashing himself backwards with a carpet knife, i.e. using the non-sharp back side of the blade
@@Agamemnon2 could be stabbing himself with the point first.
Remember the guy from Bloodlines who just chopped off his hand in front of a TV executive to show it grows back?
That's like some Naruto logic right there.
"Hope" was literally the first comic I bought when I was a kid. I thought it was confusing because I hadn't read the previous stories. Turns out it was just confusing and bad!
I am sorry for you.
I feel like this is what would have happened if I had found myself at the helm of a major comic. In over my head, trying stuff that just doesn't work.
Now I think I would be the opposite if I wrote a major comic, basically writing done-in-one stories where the hero fights a villain with a little beat in his regular life, rinse & repeat. One of my favorite runs is when Paul Dini wrote _Detective Comics_ following the One Year Later and that's all he did baring a two-parter with the Joker and a 5 parter finale with Hush. He didn't rock the boat but his stories were so good that they almost felt like lost TAS episodes.
Is therobotspajamas website going to come back, or is it done for? Asking for a friend :)
@@kaltech04 Coming back soonish?
If someone said to me: here, you're in charge of the X-men now, I'd probably go for a long long hours long walk to think something real worthy of the series, but knowing the industry I know those guys are in constant pressure for time and are not given that luxury
it feels like he just wasn't a very nuanced thinker. So to him Nightcrawler had to have demon parentage because he looks like a demon. Stacy X had to be obsessed with sex and porn and relationships because she was a hooker. In fact all women had to be obsessed with relationships because they were women. Angel had to have healing blood because I mean come on he's a fuckin' angel right? Iceman is made of ice, cause his name is *Iceman*, and Zorn is a real person because I mean we saw him in all those places. It all probably seemed deep to him.
Random (scary) thought: What if Marvel Editorial did nix in Austen's crazier ideas and what we got was the "good" bits?
Morten what the actual fudgecake
I mean, they probably did. We know they didn’t want to imply Mystique... you know, a shapeshifter... couldn’t possibly be male at any point. If we got his more insane stuff, it might have at least been glorious nonsense rather than dull nonsense.
@@willowbarrelmaker8269 damn I'd read that 😆
Back when this run originally came out, I can remember more than one online review site repeatedly asking what sort of blackmail material Austin had on Marvel's higher ups that allowed him to keep getting work.
Like the coked-out weirdo space aliens, who just happen to be Industry Executives, at a comic-con?
*Chuck Austin wanted to turn Nightcrawler into Bootleg Raven.*
*_He had his reasons._*
... Granted, they weren't very good ones, but he had 'em.
He totally did!!!☠️☠️☠️☠️
To be fair, Teen Titans are the X-Men are a bit similar seeing how their best run was during the 80s/90s and they have nostalgic cartoons, X-Men during the 90s and Teen Titans during the early 2000s. Plus both X-Men and Teen Titans have a diverse cast of characters, both human and non human.
There was a Teen Titans/X-Men crossover at one point.
@@samflood5631I don't have any nostalgia for the 90's X-Men. My X-Men was Evolution.
Annie hates mutants... but is in love with Havoc, a mutant.
She has her reasons.
@@mayssm LOL
Wasn't Annie yet another one of Bobby's failed crushes?
The sad thing is I can see that being a kinda interesting side story. Learning to accept mutants based on her experience with Alex, and then later realizing he was a mutant the whole time. It could be a kinda cool arc showing someone's viewpoint change throughout various story arcs, helping in the background and growing more accepting.
'Course that was sorta just dropped so we could focus on Angel seducing a teenage girl, because that's what I wanna read.
Her son was also a mutant; I think that was the reason.
"That was actually Xorn's twin brother, possessed by the sentient mold Sublime, pretending to be me pretending to be Xorn."
"That defies all logic."
"Oh, like none of YOU have ever died before!"
Don’t forget later it also turned out it really was Xorn all along again
So…he was a dude, playing a dude disguised as another dude 😂
@@boot_leg_ramen_noodle -- DISGUISED AS HIMSELF LMAOOOOOOO
Inception of himself lol
Regarding Nightcrawler's age, I'm pretty sure Marvel has officially stated that certain characters will always remain the same age, and that their pasts retroactively move forward with them. So Punisher originally started as a Viet Nam vet, but since they don't want an wrinkly old octogenarian hobbling around with an M50 in one hand and a cane in the other, he's now a Gulf War vet, and so on. It's not consistent, though, so some characters are allowed to age and some aren't, which is why Spiderman is no longer a geeky teenager, but Nightcrawler is still in his youth.
That's sad
It’s called a floating timeline
Nightcrawler being 20 just makes no sense though. He’s supposed to have gained all this wisdom and have all this romantic history. 20-year-olds are not wise. And you can’t have characters who are so intimately linked like Kitty Pryde and Nightcrawler treated differently as far as aging. Nightcrawler being in an older brother relationship with Kitty is important for both characters.
+Learn 2 Crawl The M50 is apparently a Second World War submachine gun. What I meant, of course, was a M60 and then suffered a catastrophic brain implosion.
Marvel has a sliding timeline. They have stated so many times.
I remembered that holy war issue. I saw it in the supermarket and I was like "What? 25 cents?" I hadn't read Xmen in forever, due to having lost my job and falling behind with it. So I picked the issue up and read some of it. I saw crucifixions and killer priests and I was just like "What the eff has happened to this book?" I then slowly put it back. IT WAS 25 CENTS AND I PUT IT BACK.
Chuck Austen's run is an absolute nadir for the X-Men. He ruined what was an interesting arc for Nightcrawler: a mutant who looks like a demon is in fact religious and joins the priesthood. What was gained by retconning that into a bizarre conspiracy theory?
Not to mention that the conspiracy theory only works if you ignore that a) Catholic dogma doesn't include the Rapture, b) Nightcrawler has been a public superhero for years, especially in the UK as part of Excalibur, and c) the communion wafers that make people disintegrate would need to be distributed globally. If you ignore all of these elements, sure maybe mass hysteria will break out. Or Reed Richards will go on TV and explain what's really happening.
Then there's Azazel, who for some reason made it into the X-Men movies. He's a one note villain, created just to give Nightcrawler angst about his father.
So what, after all the work the Simonson put into making Arch Angel cool, that hack Lobdell, undid all that character growth in one short sided issue.
No, the priest thing is silly, Nightcrawler is more than just a religious demon looking guy, he's a swashbuckling charmer ladiesman, him being a priest just feels off.
@@FUTBALLZAK Just because he is religious doesnt mean he cant be a charmer. The problem I think writers have is lack of nuance. This character is the angry character this character is the sexy character there is no nuance, everything is extreme and stereotypical.
@@willamdafoe9300 I know, that's not what I mean, he's always been a very religious character and simultaneously a total ladiesman, and that's cool, the problem is specifically him becoming a priest and swearing off his desires and future sexual relations, it didn't feel right to me.
@@FUTBALLZAK ok yeah, I agree with you.
I remember that story arc - it is when I finally stopped buying comics.
I was unemployed, had moved to the middle of nowhere (it is complicated) and I has to take the car and drive 30 miles to downtown to find a comics shop.
One day I went, bought a bunch of X-men comics and headed back home. And it was Chuck Austen stuff...
I felt it was not worth the time and the money that I had lost to get them, and lost what little steam I had left.
Chuck Austen worked with Alan Moore for his first comics, ...from what I've heard about the entertainment industry you have to start at the bottom and climb your way up but Chuck Austin has shown us you can start at a relative decent point and then started digging down.
If you believe that working with Alan Moore is a decent starting point you've never seen/read an Alan Moore interview. Does not really seem the most positive person to be around.
@@JamesSerapio Yeah, but his position in the comics industry, regardless of his attitude, is pretty high up. He's respected for his excellent writing, being an angry old curmudgeon notwithstanding
Is working with Alan Moore really a huge jump from working on porn comics? Alan would be the first to classify some of his output as porn and he certainly doesn't shy away from including sex in his other work when it's relevant.
tf2godz to be fair he run on exiles is pretty good
Moore is well known to be an asshole in person. Great writer (v sucks and killing joke is over done but over all top notch) but toxic person. Same is said about Neil gaimen
Id like a comic about wolverine franticly jumping from all the teams hes been on.
Hes finishes an issue with Xmen and hes like, "shit, I'm on the avengers at three! Shit, shit, shit..."
Twisted Toyfare Theatre did a "day in the life of Wolverine" comic that was pretty much that. Well worth tracking down. :)
@@niallreid7664 well one of his best friends is a teleporter so that should be easy
Can you imagine Wolverine helping out the X-Men in a world saving battle, only for an alarm on his phone to go off to remind him he needs to help The Avengers?
*before clicking the thumbnail* It's Chuck Austen isn't it
*clicks* Yep.
You read my mind.
Chuck Austen made me quit X-men. A comic I had been collecting since a child. That says it all.
@@dodgyb2001 Lobdell got me to quit once Nicieza left. For all of Austen's faults, Claremont and Morrison were killing it at the same time!!
Every time I think of this dude, I think of the last thing Matt Smith's Doctor says to Richard Nixon.
"Oh, Dickie. No one's ever going to forget you."
Lol, same!
I had to pause this for a moment to weigh in on the Juggernaut joining the X-Men: I actually really, really liked it. I'm a sucker for redemption arcs, or seeing an "evil" character listening to the angels of his better nature. I've always felt like Cain could be one of those characters, much like Sandman or Rhino, where sometimes they do good because they can't bring themselves to allow bad things to happen to innocents. It's bearing fruit in the current run as well, as Cain has rejoined the X-Men after finding out that the "Magneto" he was following was actually Joseph. He wants to make a difference, and he thought he'd do so alongside Magneto. I like that Cain has a motivation to help bring about change now. I'd honestly love to see more of him in the role of "bad guy seeking redemption."
Agreed, and the scene where he talked to a post-plant-monster Black Tom about what it takes to redeem yourself was really cool.
Me too he looks awesome as well
Honestly, when porn comics were mentioned, I thought Greg Land had somehow blackmailed someone into letting him write.
Jonothan Thrace Now that got me thinking... what would a book written by Austen & ”drawn” by Land look like? It’s almost impossible to imagine such horror.
My sources say that Stacy X is still locked in her room in the X Mansion, watching porn. Somehow her room has remained untouched, all the times the place blew up in the years since. Scientist seem to think it's her secondary mutation.
Austen got a couple notes for you. A character’s sexuality is not a personality trait. So you have to try a bit harder to make these characters believable and well rounded
this is exactly what i thought when they suddenly made Iceman gay
Hugh Jardon
cool, but it shouldnt be their only personality trait. its like what OP said, you need to round them out more to make them more nuanced
I think the problem isn't that his sexuality is mentioned a lot, it's just that most of the time it's just people reacting to that fact like it's the weirdestand shocking thing in the world, which is kind of uncomfortable.
@Nick Fanchette that's my whole point though. Iceman is a developed character which is why suddenly making him gay and changing his mannerisms and the way he talks is out of left field. The whole thing feels kind of tacked on.
@Nick Fanchette i agree with you about the healthy growth. Iceman has always been in my top 3 X-men. Nothing will ever change that. Besides, now if I were a comic character, I might actually have a shot with him lol.
The way he writes Northstar straight up reminds me of that one vine: "move, I'm gay." *Shoves* " being gay in the workplace just has it's perks."
Mephisto isn't ACTUALLY the Devil, he's an interdimensional being that modeled himself after the local perception of the Devil to mess with people and took up the gimmick, neither is his dimension actually "Hell", he just calls it that because he's that devoted to his schtick.
That being said, Azazel is still a lame ripoff of Trigon though
So if his dimension isn't hell then what is it?
@@ALIEN-DUDE Just a random pocket dimension Mephisto lives in full of fire
Mephisto would never deny being the devil because he likes it when people believe he's the epitome of all evil
I never caught that! You are right, a total Trigon ripoff!
@@ALIEN-DUDE hell but marketing didn't want to piss off christians or anti christians so like d n d when they changed it so not demons or devils just other dimensional beings.
Some things I credit Chris Claremont for are taking a lot of plot elements (some of which were completely forgotten) and weaving them back into current stories with in an interesting and beneficial way. His attention to detail is phenomenal. There were times when I wasn't exactly taken by the ways characters changed and grew, though in the vast majority of times, I was.
Austen is essentially the antithesis of that. He created a lot of new plot lines that went nowhere, accomplished nothing but confusion (and maybe a little nausea), and actually broke continuity in some ugly ways. Under Austen, characters changed, but I can't say they grew and almost every change was one that didn't make sense given past character development and didn't improve the character either. I've read better fan-fiction.
Marvel hasn't had a real editor in chief in a long time which is why the last couple decades has been plagued with so many bad stories and crazy retcons and just problems out the yin yang. I've never read any of Chuck Austen's X-stuff but it's legendarily bad and the fact that a guy who's prior credits include a sting on Miracleman, porn comics, and Disney's The Little Mermaid is handed the reigns to one of Marvel's flagship titles is a pretty huge problem.
Thankfully Cebulski seems to know what he done.
@@MrSafior bro comics don't even sell over the inflation rate now, and Cebuslki stopped being helpful after he removed most of the bad titles, which ironically came back. The last 3 decades were a blessing if you tell me.
Besides, Chick Austen does not represent all of X-Men or Marvel in that time period.
Jojobizad Chick Tracts. 😬
Sorry.
@@cha5 tbh, I'd piss myself laughing if those sell more than anything comics. The Family Guy tract is probably the best one.
I couldn't agree more. It's stunning that this has gone on for DECADES.
"Hi I'm Northstar, and I'm gay!"
yes, we know, we've known for years.
"I'm Gay!"
yeah, okay, so are a bunch of other comic book characters
"But I'm the first Gay comic book character. I'm Gay!"
Sigh..
well to be honest, modern writers just have gay characters kissing or something every couple pages so we know instead of saying it.
Lil heezy modern straight writers
The greatest fantastic4 Torch -That was cancelled 2 years ago
The greatest fantastic4 Torch -Why would I read it if it’s bad?
This is why I am usually worried when a gay character is introduced, not because I care that they’re gay but because often that one fact will consume the entire rest of the story.
Wasn't there any editors or overseers that would look at this stuff and say, "Ummmm no. You're screwing up not just your story, but whole timelines that other people worked really hard on."
The video briefly touched on it, but Quesada was an artists and thought artists got the short shift in the creative experience so he was going out of his way to give artists a break as writers, thinking that they would be good at it....after all, drawing is hard, and writing is easy.... (this was somewhat in response to the image guys leaving.)
I'm guessing the Xorn/Magneto retcon probably came from editorial.
I saw your title, and when I thought of worst, all I could think of was the awful 6 months I read where Havok falls in love with someone while in a coma, causing Polaris to become psychotic (maybe that was Claremont's?), Nightcrawler's horrible father reveal that undermines his metaphoric appararance...wow, it was this one. Nice video and review.
Wait, Azazel was NOT a demon? My brain must have stopped recording and processing when I read these when they came out.
Ugh! The Draco. Because the Marvel Universe really needed yet another stand-in for Satan.
To say nothing of two sub-varieties of mutantkind (which is a concept that makes zero sense to me) that are also expies of things that already have a presence in 616.
Regarding She-Hulk & Juggernaut could have been a good story arc. She decides to represent Him, after meeting and hearing his case. After sometime of getting to know Cain better they begin to bond and the relationship grows organically. Perhaps Jennifer convinces Cain to be a better person, serve his time, repay society. The whole time she's there for him. Maybe even have Chuck show up and begin to repair their relationship. The goal here would not be to turn Cain into a hero but an Anti-Hero similar to Venom.
The thing here is if you step back and look at some of Austens plot threads, they're not bad, just ignored & forgotten, or just poorly executed. If Angels blood can heal, or X-gene is a cure for AIDS awesome. Follow up on that. If certain characters are Gay awesome develop it, organically. Tell their story. If Stacy X is a prostitute trying to leave that life behind her, tell her story.
Develop the characters, tell the stories, create the Arcs. We as X-Fans are pretty understanding. We want continuity & good stories. We understand about taking chances, but take your time telling the story. Leave wiggle room if it doesn't work you can get out of a bad story...
Marko was going through a redemptive arc through Austen's run, so it's not a complete stretch to think they'd hooked up (no more than Mystique/Wolverine or Xavier/Wolverine lol). Retconning seems not only unnecessary, but lazy and a bit petty.
Plus he could give her a really good pounding, and he wouldn't have to worry about breaking her. Probably destroy most the furniture, and half the house though. I'd imagine sexual relationships must be pretty difficult for people with super strength.
@@Pantherblack well not to be that guy, but what was really petty was slut shaming her afterward, her and Wolvie being a good example or people floating the rumor about her and Tony Stark. First off she's a fucking adult and wouldn't owe tons of explanations to anyone whom she casually teams up with, and second all of that stuff is kinda shit writing and focusing on things that just don't matter for the "shock" and "comedy" of it at the expense of one of Marvel's really fun and interesting characters. MvC got it more right than Marvel did, where She-Hulk explains to Deadpool that once upon a time she would have been the one hitting him with a health bar. But yeah it matters who she's banging evidently more so than the stories behind any of that.
I think I remember at the time this happened, Avengers (Geoff Jones's run?) was presenting SheHulk as having casual sex with any man who caught her eye. So in Austin-Land, where everyone has only a single character trait, this was hers.
Baldi Locks It's funny but the story arc you described about She-Hulk and Juggernaut is pretty much the same as the one presented in the MC2 comic J2, who was the son of the Juggernaut and his lawyer who helped rehabilitate him. My biggest problem with the the two hooking up is that it is a HUGE ethics violation on She-Hulk's part. Heck, she could be disciplined by the court or even disbarred. Lawyers are not supposed to have intimate relationships with clients. Another example of bad writing.
“So much for Northstar supposedly being able to take an explosion.” Lol
I remember Chuck Austen"s run...
I totally agree with you. Really low point for the X-Men.
Chuck Austen is also a producer on Netflix's She-Ra show which is like... what is this man's career?!?!
Seems like he just keeps failing upwards.
About Kurt's father, in Age of Apocalypse Mystique heavily hints to Sabretooth, but I guess no one cared
I was a huge Generation X fan, so you can imagine how much I hated every single thing Austen did with some of my favorite characters, especially poor Skin. And dear God, how I hated Husk and Angel. So creepy.
"You sure you wouldn't rather read smut? It's good for you."
Why was she recommending smut to a child???
Just Chuck advertising his "other work" in a cost effective way. Subliminal messaging and what not.
And this women who’s a supporting character we’re suppose to like is essentially outing herself as a pedophile by distributing porn to this child?
"Presumably she's still watching porn somewhere." That got me! 😂
In a different dimension probably
His Action Comic run was so bad that some fans, me included consider it to be the Worst Run on Superman ever, so yeah the guy has a notorious reputation but hey it's not all bad, he's a producer on Steven Universe then again he's not involved creatively so...
Which Superman is that?
@@orinanime post crisis Superman era specifically during the 2000s, he basically made Superman come across as jerkishly agressive that it felt out character because he was having a "bad day" and Lois had an unflattering portrayal during this run because Austen didn't like Lois Lane and the marriage, the backlash from Superman fans was so bad along with baggage of his X-Men run that DC cancelled his run after around 10 issues.
New 52 Superman acted rash but at least he still felt like Superman, Austen's Superman didn't feel like Superman at all.
@@Elementa2006 New 52 Superman doesn't feel like Superman at all.
@Lawrence Morgan Awful only in Bizarroverse
@@Pixxeria Still felt like Superman to me especially compared to Austen's Superman
Let's hope Marvel doesn't acknowledge this ark when they bring the Merry Mutants into the MCU.
when younger friends ask me what is the worst i have read in comics, chick austen always comes to the talk,
It'd be super-awkward if Greg Land "drew" a Chuck Austen-written comic using images traced from a Chuck Austen-drawn comic. I mean would Greg even get a credit?
Not to be a contrarian, but that's not a bad X-team. If anything I feel like the dynamic between Bobby and Jono could carry a lot of that book. Bobby is your happy go lucky guy with a ton of raw power if only he'd be more serious and Jono is cranky, jaded, and rightfully disillusioned because of what his mutation means for him and the people around him. That's an amazing dynamic already.
Kurt can also be jokey, so him and Bobby are your team goof offs with Kurt being the team morality. Logan balances on the side of Jono, hard as nails and also disillusioned. But he and Kurt are good friends, so that means that Kurt probably gets more laughs and smiles out of him than anyone else in the world, so that means we have part of the team to take the lead when things get dark and part of the team to take the lead when you want more lighthearted stories.
My issue is that I know literally nothing about Stacy X, she'd have to be a character I'd learn to write and I kinda agree with you about Angel. I'm not sure how Angel works as an X-Team leader. He's not usually that interesting to me, and he's not usually straight man or authority figure enough to be a foil for the more anti-establishment members. I guess a good answer would have been for him to maybe be a bit too daring as a leader and have to learn to restrain himself. Not really sure, but I don't figure they're a bad team.
LupineShadowOmega You are correct. Sadly, Austen has a terrible memory. He forgets a lot of the potential seeds he sets up.
Her introduction with the brothel left much to be desired. She's a pheromone manipulator but she's introduced as one of a number of prostitutes funded by individuals misusing Angel's fortune.
The X Ranch promptly gets destroyed and her entire character arc before Chuck Austen's run was trying to prove that she could be an asset to the team.
Incidentally her name kind of works better when you invert it to X-Stacy.
@@MorinehtarTheBlue You're right that does work better and a pun I didn't get. Also, while this comment was a long time ago, I'll admit that I missed the obvious parallel between her and Daken. Daken also has pheromone powers and he uses them for absolute evil, you see all the ways in which such a power can be abused, so Stacy's power being potentially dangerous and her having to figure out the morality of seems like a character beat. Essentially being a telepath, if there weren't so many other telepaths.
You have this power that you are going to have to struggle with the ethics of. Maybe even have vast parts of it or some of its effects be involuntary.
That could be very interesting, especially with the idea that she initially was struggling to prove herself. So you go from feeling useless to being worried you might be an actual monster if you don't pay enough attention to your own motivations.
Dude this whole story is just wtf
Austen also wrote a prequel comic to the X-Men 2 movie featuring Nightcrawler -- and that is BAD. It hits all the tropes of his writing - sex, religion and gore - and of course, handles it terribly.
The three elements sex religion and gore!
7:36 I've read somewhere that one of the reasons they decided to bring Juggernaut over to the good guys was because Austen had wanted to use Colossus on the team, but Colossus had recently died (sacrificing himself to help cure the Legacy Virus) and Marvel didn't want to resurrect him right away (of course, they ultimately did, but not that soon). Seems a bit of a pity that Juggernaut got picked just because he could fill the "team muscle" slot - as much as Juggernaut isn't a particularly smart dude it could've been fun to have him realise "Hey, I can help WITHOUT smashing stuff!" at some point.
Ugh... I love the X-Men I really do. But Chuck Austen made me quit as in, stop reading comics for years.
It was so trash I couldn't even believe the gall of Marvel to publish that at the time. I was just a young grasshopper at the time and wanted to "read it all no matter how bad it was" and that was my downfall. To try to stomach a bad run of a book.
Now I pick and choose the runs I spend my hard earned money on. So at least this taught me a lesson.
If it is trash, just drop it and read something else. The X-Men as a whole are a great comic book series, with years worth of good runs like way back in the 70's and 80's. You just have to find a run that's for you.
This had the same affect on me. I quit xmen from a combination of Austin's terrible writing and also there were so many X titles at the time. If I didn't buy all of them I'd miss some important event, like Jean coming back to life (again) or Magneto joining the team.
It never dawned on me... that run pretty much made me quit too. Between the art being awful, the story was worse.
Jean died and came back way too many times for death to mean anything @ Marvel.
I was lucky that I missed out on that run when I was getting into comics.
Too bad thanks to a combination of me being a completionist in reading all comic runs from beginning to end and my discovery of torrents, I came across his run of the X-Men (as well as Avengers which was at the tail end of Kurt Busiek’s awesome run).
All I could say was that I wouldn’t still be reading comics to this day if my introduction was through that shit.
Same here, never connected it at the time, but it was so bad I just decided it was kind of upsetting to see where they were taking characters.
In a way, I'm actually a bit grateful, it saved me a lot of money going forward, as it broke my comic collecting habit and I never went back. Only ever picked up the odd Graphic Novel anthology since.
Editorial mandated the Xorn retcon but the rest cant be explained for lol Austen just decided to run it into the ground as best he could and he succeeded. Good riddance hes not longer near any comics
I been a fan of X-Men since 1989 from when my dad brought me my first comic. When I think of my time reading X-Men the Chuck Austin period is always the biggest "What were the smoking" period for me :P
What weren't they smoking?
That intro was so aggressive.... I LOVE IT!
A note on Stacy X: she lost her powers on M-Day and became part of the post Civil War I, anti-registration New Warriors. I'm not sure what happened to her after that. I guess she's just a character no one cares about.
Her powers were restored under mysterious circumstances; she was last seen at a support group for mutants with abnormal appearances (run by Nightcrawler) in Domino's 2018 ongoing series.
blackphoenix77 Thanks for the information! I thought there might be more to her history, but I wasn't sure.
Turns out she had AIDS all along but it was in remission due to her being a mutant. When she lost her powers that shit came back with a vengeance.
@@kyriss12 huh, that is strangely interesting.
What even are her powers?
I disagree that having Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Archangel, Iceman, Chamber, and Stacey X would be a problem. Any good writer can make characters work. The problem was the writing, not the characters.
I'll file this under Comic Nopes.
I've no interest in comics in general but i love the amount of info and comic industry history, cant stop watching
I knew it was going to be Chuck Austen's garbage.
He completely ruined everything Morissons amazing run setup :/
Well not everything. Secondary mutations were a half-baked idea to begin with.
In Beast and Iceman's case they were handicaps that boosted their regular abilities.
And a number of others including Black Tom and Polaris already had explanations that got co-opted to prove a non-existent point.
The only one that panned out was Emma Frost's diamond form.
Nurse Annie character arc: fall in love with catatonic man
..................
Step 1: Fall in love with Havok.
Step 2: Live in the X-Mansion.
Step 3: ?
Step 4 : Profit.
@@MrPineapple045 Honestly, I do actually like her character and I feel like she had a big potential. The idea of a flawed person who is trying to overcome her prejudices for her son's sake is really interesting. If only Austen explored her inner conflicts more, instead of delivering a soap opera drama, it would be really cool. I really hate how her story arc was left on a cliffhanger, I feel like Marvel really could do something more interesting with her character. Ugh, wasted potential.
Funny that Azazel was in X-Men: First Class
Need guy that looks obviously evil, pick guy that looks like a Devil. Seems all too easy...
Azazel was good in the film.
And that movie showed how poorly Nightcrawler has been treated in the movies.
eric peterson it’s a shame too since Nightcrawler is a great character.
@@ericpeterson8732 Hopefully he's given better treatment in a future MCU X-Men film.
"Northstar has a huge ego, but Austen doesn't use that..."
"...Northstar insists he's the only one who can survive the boy exploding."
You don't think that sounds like a huge ego?
That’s not the point of what he said
@@pasta-and-heroin but it's a GOOD point
It only seems like a good point because Northstar's powers aren't explained in the video.
He's your typical flying brick so he should've just been making a matter of fact statement about his abilities.
Granted because the writing is bad they conveniently don't work or are inadequate to the task.
Related to X-month but not related to X-Men? My prediction: Racer X.
I see he has an X Patrol comic from Amalgam comics. I wonder if it could be that. Imagine X-Force and Doom Patrol mixed together. I heard it is gloriously bad. ShatterStarFire sounds like the worst Marvel/DC combination ever!
The band?
I hope you're trolling.
@@NoJusticeNoPeace no there's a band called Racer X. Paul Gilbert played guitar in it.
I kinda blame Marvel editorial for the debacle that was Chuck Austen's X-Men run.
It was like he was writing scripts with almost zero editorial input. I get that Mike Marts, the X-Men editor at the time, had his hands full dealing with Grant Morrison as well as Chris Claremont at the time as well as editing the new Ultimate X-Men title that was having problems finding big name writers to do the book after the first arc, but still.
I was getting back into comics in my early 20s around the time of Austen's run on Uncanny. Morrison was on New X-Men, if I'm not mistaken (edit: and you confirmed), which was a contributing factor to my picking comics back up again, and the Ultimate line was fairly new and doing really well. I remember picking one or two up in the hopes it was up to the standard of Morrison's stint. It wasn't, and it has not aged well, though it is nostalgic thinking about it years later
I stopped collecting comics in the late 90s. I'm glad to see I didn't miss anything.
"Porn comics" and "acclaimed" aren't mutually exclusive
Marvel Finally scrapped the Azazel retcon, Mostly. Mystique had Kurt with Destiny as a man while she was in a sham relationship with Azazel. Let’s fix the other problems (cough, Warren, cough)
Nightcrawler has never been very interesting?!! Seriously?!!
TheHobgoblyn Archangel and Iceman are pretty cool too, idk why he said that
@@mchlfx of course Iceman is "cool"
....
I'm so sorry
Compared to the rest of that new X-Men team, Kurt and Peter were the odd men out. Claremont loved Storm and focused heavily on her. Wolverine is a comic selling character. Cyclops was the O.G. Kitty was the youth demo. Kurt had his image/esteem problem and Peter was the lug and Russian farmboy. I could do a whole book on how they were unable to use Nightcrawler without overshadowing the rest of the team, so they sidelined him a lot. He would get injured more often than the others and take longer to heal. Tactical teleportation is overpowered as a superpower. So teleporters are resigned to transportation and crowd control.
@@ericpeterson8732 no they weren't
Nightcrawler is the best X-Man and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.
I remember reading this when I was a teenager. Man, Archangel taking off Husk’s top and pressing his chest to hers made me very . . . uncomfortable.
The story with Nightcrawler's father is why I quit buying comics for ten years. Glad to know it wasn't just me.
So Nurse Annie “doesn’t like mutants, she has her reasons.” yet falls in love with the Mutant Havok? She also willingly moves into a place full of mutants?
This was truly bad. But not really much worse than the stuff contained in The Twelve omnibus, or Revolution, or Eve of Destruction, or the horrible run by Peter Milligan.
There have been so many awful X-Men runs!
Oh wow, forgot about the exploding communion wafers.
I was re watching this video yesterday and today i put steven universe to my kid and in the end credits sudenly apears Chick Austen as “supervising producer” damn!
Funny. In the She-Ra show, he calls himself Chuckles.
@ evil dosent die then, lol
@@jorge_villarreal It gets better. I've read comment posts from people he's worked with in the show that just "lord" over him that he used to work in comics.
I guess they never heard about Angel and Husk in that one issue.
I still can't believe he got rid of that funky bass intro
Writers casually throwing away decent designs/characters because they're not interested is not great.
As someone new to xmen, i actually like chambers look and how it plays with his drama. But i guess whatever potential he had for this book was gone the moment Austin *"didnt feel like it"*
Sammy Pare and his relationship with Juggernaut is probably the best part of the run. Sammy himself is actually a really good character. He's the perfect audience surrogate because he's just a normal kid who mostly just LOOKS different. So he can easily be a stand-in for any child who feels like an outcast, or who's a minority. No real fancy special powers like Xavier or Cyclops (albeit breathing underwater but that's not so special a power), and he's frequently picked on for looking different. It's a damn shame he got killed off.
I know NOTHING about Marvel comics but your enthusiasm is infectious.
Is this worse than when the x-men ditched their uniforms and became a CORPORATION?
That made me not read X-Men comics for years.
What?
Weep: comicvine.gamespot.com/x-corporation/4060-40425/
Worst X-Men Run of all time?
"Hold my eugenics based faschist manifesto!" -Krakoa Island.
maybe Azazel didn't go to Earth, but could teleport his sperm there, which is how he made teleporting babies?
I just took it as he could only leave for short periods and there was something about the realm itself that kept pulling him back. Something he hoped he could use his teleporter children to solve.
makes sense. I like my idea better. :P
I liked the fact that night crawler got brothers like kiwi black and abyss
So azazel CAME to earth
@@manuxalunx6522 i see what you did there
Stacy X recently appeared in 2018's Domino annual 1 where she no longer has her power and is human looking. She attended a support group that Domino and Nightcrawler created. Nurse Annie was last seen in 2013 Astonishin X-Men vol 3# 62-64 where she wad captured by an insane Iceman. Its nice to see that these characters arent forgotten.
I don't really see much of a problem with the Xmen offering Juggernaut a place on the team. Out of the names you mentioned who've had multiple second chances, magneto and Mystique were both international terrorists, and Sabertooth was a homicidal psychopath. Outside of his ongoing blood feud with the xmen, Juggernaut tends to stick to D-list villainy such as bank robbery, and the occasional henchman for hire job. Which is kinda smart on his part. Who's gonna mess with someone that powerful unless their trying to take over the world, or blow up half the city.
The only thing is I really can't see Juggernaut accepting the olive branch. At his core Cain Marko is a vary proud angry man. While he might occasionally join forces with the Xmen over a common foe, is grudge against professor x, and by extension the xmen, as well as his constant insistence that he's not a mutant would make it very hard for him to be a permanent member.
Also mutants being immune to AIDS sounds like a stupid thing that was only thrown in so they could have plenty of random sex without consequences. That being said there is precedence for mutants responding to certain health issues different than regular humans. I seem to remember mutants having a high tolerance for radiation. Something that first came up with the Changling's chemo treatment being completely ineffective against his cancer.
I doubt it was there for sex, but more so that Archangel's new blood power wasn't just spreading disease everywhere, but the issue is that it gives a healing factor so one would assume that's not really an issue. But also, as people have pointed out it was also likely a call back to the Legacy Virus.
I also thought that the Juggernaut part didn't make much sense.
@@malafakka8530 Given that he's not a mutant, it would seem strange to have him on the team.
I dunno, even if Chuck Austin was limited with what he could do with Wolverine, I still think a good writer could have certainly made the most with Archangel, Ice-man, and particularly Nightcrawler. Also it could have been an opportunity to give StaceyX more depth…but no.
Chuck could've gone deep inside StaceyX
Austen's first arc was one of the few X-Men trades my local library had growing up, and to this day 15+ years later all I can distinctly remember is Wolverine's narration describing Stacy X as "slutty, but fun." Truly, a bastion of quality female characterization.
this team is crazy dope imo…many of my all-time favs…obviously the characters weren’t used properly & the writing is horrendous, but the roster is top tier
Man this sure was a terrible X-men run!
Marvel : Hold my beer
*releases Children of the Atom*
What was so bad about it?
Juggernaut also isn't technically a mutant so that for me is another reason I wouldn't put him with the team. However, if he and Professor X can finally bond as brothers (and they need to have a great reason and story for doing it)I think I could enjoy it
I recently read this run as a part of my current X-Men read through. It really isn't very good. Worth mentioning is the horrible almost wedding of Havok and Polaris where Polaris becomes a jilted lover and attacks a human in nurse Annie.
Wait, there actually WAS an X-Men character named Black Tom?
Deadpool 2, you surprise me yet again.
Evil relation to Banshee
black tom cassidy was a pretty decent B level character for about 20 years before Deadpool ever existed.
Hes banshees nephew
@@fooltheclown9004 Cousin
Black Tom exists since the 70's.
Chuck Austin seems like the kind of guy who would have a a separate Twitter account just for his NSFW art.
Is this something wrong with it?
@@oldfan4049 So you have one?
@@cheeseboi588 unfortunately, no.
@Elijah Boyd and...what's wrong with it?
@@oldfan4049
It means you're a coomer.
Just started his new series "Edgeworld" and I like it very much. I had no idea about his work history 🤯
He also worked on Steven Universe and She-Ra.
Yeah, I gotta ask, "Where the hell were the damn Editors?!?" They are always in there trampling on GOOD ideas, but then they turn around and let THIS crap slip past. As for the art, some of it looked like it was drawn by my cat! (AFTER a night of heavy drinking.) _GEEEZ._
The editors were waiting in Stacy's room.
Congrats on the amazing videos you're putting out. As soon as I'm financially stable I'll be going to your patreon because I need you to keep them coming :p
BTW Kia is not Asiyama is actually Asamiya which I personally adore in his original manga environment but in the X-Men was IMO much worse than Philip Tan
I blame Marvel for having multiple Xmen teams with multiple writers. Claremont Xtreme Xmen also was not very good.
Chuck Austen's run is a masterpiece compared to it.
Morrisons run was also not that great
@@baronvonpimp6628 it was. Not considering the ending.
@@baronvonpimp6628 yea I agree plus the art of Igor Kordy was awful too
I'd argue Claremont's XXM and Excalibur were both worse than Austen's run. I feel like the dude had gotten high off his own legend by that point.
I HIGHLY enjoy these episodes! Great channel, you cover "comic history" yet keep it entertaining. Well done keep it up man!!
I saw the title and immediately thought of Austen. So nice to see other folks agree
I remember reading his issues back in the day and being constantly surprised by how horrible things could get under his hands...
When I was a pre-teen I read some comics at the library. I read Geoff Johns Teen Titans, a Batman comic here or there, and this.
This was my first X-men comic run.
Suffice to say I did not read a lot of X-men for a while after this.
So he wrote a bad x men comic doesn’t mean he deserves to loose his job. Frank Miller wrote Holy Terror, but that didn’t stop Dc continuing to hire him.
Wow, this brought back some memories...none of them being good. I was a huge X-Men fan in the 80s and 90s, and this run pretty well killed my desire to collect and read comics.
My favorite image from this is Giant-Nose Husk and the Miraculous Faceless Nurse.
13:01
Oh god that's actually creepy
Such amazing segues lmao
Man you are so funny on these videos. “Jean Grey should probably quit the mutants and join a CSI team if she can just look at blood and determine its mutant blood”. Love your videos.