Bendis makes Teen-Iceman gay in All-New X-Men

Uncanny X-Men vol. 3 #12



It's like a morning shock jock on a radio show is writing comics.

I had an epiphany while cleaning my cat's litter box(there's something about ideas coming in conjunction with toilets, apparently, even those of a different species). I realized if I were just discovering the X-Men in comics today(meaning the last several years), I would probably not be a fan. I think for the most part much of the appeal, even the basic likability, of many of today's characters comes from coasting off the qualities established in stories decades ago or even in the 90's cartoon.

Back when I was growing up, fans and writers both generally tried to elevate characters, tried to show them as something admirable, as heroes and as people, not perfect by any stretch, but still respected.

The respect is gone. Fans have given way to trolls who want to mock everything, tear everything down until there is nothing left, and writers and editors who play increasingly to that. Look at Beast as a prime example, easily one of the wisest and most respected of the X-Men, and they have turned him into a joke and a fool to play to the trolls, and that is one huge example among many. Iceman from unlucky in love to closeted, Gambit from smooth charmer to smarmy, Nightcrawler from principles and faith to naive...there are more characters being screwed up than there are not, and things being done with several characters that, unless an entire universe gets rebooted at some point, are not easy to fix. Professor Xavier is pretty much completely trashed. And even if there is an eventual reboot, what good is that if there's no one left who is invested in or really cares about these characters?

When I started with comics and for years after, it was common to have issue numbers into the hundreds, and there was a sense of history, and of being part of something bigger, and everything built on a firm foundation laid years before. New characters would get added and the old ones would be respected and they would co-exist naturally. And once you developed a loyalty to a title, you were loath to let it go. You started to remember how long in a run it was since you missed an issue, tried to fill those gaps in your collection...

That's gone. There's a new number one every time you turn around. There's no loyalty to a title, there's no sense of legacy or a respect for the past or the history of the characters or even the characters themselves. It use to be that the writers and editors tried to elevate the characters, now it seems they try to tear the characters down, deliberately stripping them of the qualities fans like most, as a way to elevate themselves. Like, Wolverine's not a badass, look what I just did to Wolverine, I'm the badass...

When Disney acquired Marvel, they should have started installing their own people from the top down. Disney is not perfect by any stretch, but one thing they do know how to do is protect and guard the legacy of their characters.