Generation X #1

[iamrman]

Banshee and Girlboss Emma Frost train the next generation of cannon fodder.

Rejoice, for Emma Frost is here! (Some other people too, I guess.)

How can you not trust that face? Now, where are the stables? Those horses aren’t going to set fire to themselves.

Comments

[beyondthefringe]

To be fair, of the new characters introduced for Generation X, Monet has certainly had a lasting and lengthy presence.

Okay, so Mondo was an infiltrator, Penance a convoluted mess, Synch spent decades dead, Skin spent quite a few years dead, and both Jono and Husk had some really rough patches...

Which checks out. Out of every X-generation, there will be one who stands out, a couple who die, and a few who get horribly mistreated if not shoved into Limbo (figurative or literal).

Somewhere around here I still have my nice shiny special cover #1 of this series.
And the rest of it, to boot.

[jlbarnett]

at the time this came out the X-men who died and stayed dead was still fairly low I think.

[icon_uk]

I think the "readily dead-ily" line up was pretty static at Thunderbird, Changeling, Cypher and Magik at this point.

[beyondthefringe]

Honestly, the New Mutants are the luckiest of the X-kids in how many of them became semi-permanent mainstays of one team or another.

Certainly, Generation X didn’t fare as well, and it’s been downhill with each new generation since. You get your Pixies and Armors and Hopes… and then your Transsonics, Rubber Maids, and Nature Gi—okay, bad example… but y’know what I mean. If a character like Glob Herman is lucky, a writer or artist fall in love with their look. If not, you die horribly in a forgotten reboot of New Warriors.

[mastermahan]

Poor Skin. It's rare to have a character who's genuinely not good looking, as opposed to unconventional but still attractive, like Penance, Chamber, Nightcrawler, etc. Maybe if his powers hadn't been so underwhelming he wouldn't have faded into oblivion so hard.

[angelophile]

It's funny Monet's stayed popular with writers, given how screwed up her origin got. But maybe that's the appeal. Everyone now wants to try and 'fix' it.

Or maybe it's the connection to Emplate, who, as has been said, has such a great design.

I have to credit Lobdell with being creative with mutant powers and having the weirder stuff out there in the mainstream, rather than restricted to Morlock characters and shoved to the side.

[scorntx]

The cynical interpretation is that Monet's longevity has nothing to do with her origin, or her powers, and mostly is to with her appearance, and her personality as a distant second.

[icon_uk]

More "non-passing and not in the exotic way" mutants were definitely overdue on the X-Teams, a bugbear I have about the original New Mutants, love that team though I do, and GenX certainly did that

However, I'm not sure I'd say Lobdell was being "creative" with powers, so much as he was often "irritatingly vague".

For all his terrific visual, Chamber's powers were incredibly ill-defined, to the point there's a joke even in this issue about it. He could do whatever the plot required and when you're establishing a character that always bugs me. If they can pull unexpected powers out of the ass then a lot of the drama is gone.

Synch had the interesting limitation that his aura could approximately mimic powers, but not personally replicate them the way Rogue could... except when he could.

Husks powers changed pretty much completely from the first time they were shown a mere couple of months prior, to here. Originally she shed her old shape rather than her substance, so she still shed her skin like a husk, but might emerge as a bird or something else completely unexpected, rather than keeping her shape and changing her substance. I think this version is far more interesting, though again, it never addresses some of the basics, like... how do you shed your entire skin when you're wearing a full bodysuit even with unstable molecule costumes, and why didn't she ever pick up after herself, because the school being littered with a couple of dozen human skin castings of a naked teenage girl is just disturbing.

[coldfury]

Remember when Banshee was like a solid A-List X-Man? Or maybe uppercrust B-list at worst?

[zachbeacon]

I have issues with the Krakoa era but it was nice to finally see characters like Jubilee and Sync in the hands of people that seem to LIKE them after decades of abuse and neglect that started with the Warren Ellis Revolution.

Even with Emma, the character that faired the best after Gen X ended, it seems like Marvel wants to pretend this series never happened and her redemption began with New X-Men.

[beyondthefringe]

Unless she’s angsting over all the mutant kids lost under her care— Hellions, Synch, Genosha, depowered students post-Decimation…

Um, is she a jinx???

[zachbeacon]

No, Synch was the one that was actually her fault and they're still mostly just talking about the Hellions and Genosha.

[mastermahan]

I'd say she shares partial credit for the depowered post-Decimation students with the rest of the X-Men at the time. Just assuming they'd be safe from murderous bigots and bussing them off was not well thought out.

[numeronone]

Still love Emplate's fucked up design all thee years later. Now THAT is a silhouette!

[mastermahan]

Seconded. The gas mask, the hand mouths, the metal cords under his skin. Bachalo brought his A-game.

[harpers_child]

It's my boy! Hello!

[icon_uk]

Given the eventual many, MANY reveals about Monet... and Emplate... and Penance... and the twins... Emplate not recognising Monet here is almost hilarious.