The X-Men are in a rather strange place. Marvel’s lack of the X-Men’s film rights meant that they got heavily marginalized in the comics. It wasn’t until Marvel parent company Disney purchased 20th Century Fox that they regained them and everything changed for the X-Men. Marvel got superstar writer Jonathan Hickman to bring together a group of creators to reboot the X-Men and readers got the most inventive X-Men comics ever in what became known as the Krakoa Era. The X-Men were back at the top of the sales charts, but this wasn’t to last, as the departure of Hickman began the fall of the Krakoan status quo. Sales came back down to Earth, and the coming of X-Men ’97 meant that Marvel wanted a status quo that was more familiar to casual fans. Thus came “From the Ashes”, the latest X-Men status quo, led by legendary Marvel editor Tom Brevoort.
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“From the Ashes” began with a lot of fanfare, and some big sales successes, but it also came at exact wrong time. DC released their Absolute line and that, along with the successes of the Marvel’s Ultimate line, quickly squeezed the X-Men books out of the top ten, and now they’re mostly back where they were at the end of the Krakoa Era, with several X-Men books getting cancelled already. “From the Ashes” is on the ropes, and it’s time to ask — has this newest status quo failed the X-Men?
“From the Ashes” Borrows From Giants but Rarely Impresses
Let’s start with the pros of “From the Ashes”. This won’t take long, honestly. Uncanny X-Men is phenomenal, Wolverine is doing interesting things with the character’s mythos, and Storm is finally making Storm feel like the goddess she’s always been. That’s basically it. That’s not to say that there aren’t people who like some of the other books — Jed MacKay’s X-Men gets some praise from fans — but there’s a huge problem with much of “From the Ashes” and that problem definitely hurt the comics in the days after the Krakoa Era. “From the Ashes” is basically a Frankenstein’s monster of previous X-Men status quos.
Uncanny X-Men is basically the Claremont book, starring characters made famous during Chris Claremont’s landmark first run on the original Uncanny X-Men and feeling like one of his later status quos where the team was no longer at the X-Mansion. X-Men lifts the Brian Michael Bendis Uncanny X-Men status quo whole cloth — Cyclops leading a militant team of mutants from a base in a frozen tundra that used to belong to the team’s enemies — then combined it with some of the elements of Morrison’s New X-Men, like Cassandra Nova and the U-Men. X-Force and X-Factor, two of the books on the chopping block, are basically just the ’90s status quos of both books with a few different characters. Wolverine takes Wolverine back into the woods, hearkening back to every savage Wolverine status quo since he first got his own solo book. “From the Ashes” brings very little new to the table.
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Now, this sort of thing isn’t rare when it comes to status quo reboots in superhero comics. It’s not even all that rare with the X-Men; for example, Morrison’s New X-Men isn’t remarkably different from what came before, and uses concepts like the Phoenix Force, the Xavier Institute, the Shi’Ar Empire, and Weapon X. However, there’s a feeling that Morrison is taking familiar pieces and using them in new ways, something that never really shines through with “From the Ashes” books. So many of the books reuse ideas in exactly the way they were used before. Plus, it all feels like it’s leading back to the X-Mansion.
See, Marvel does this thing that annoys comic readers to no end. Since the MCU is more popular, Marvel seems to believe that if they change the comics to be more like the movies, then movie fans will start picking up comics. This never works; the amount of bleedthrough from the movies to the comics is infinitesimal at best. “From the Ashes” feels like it’s trying to subtly maneuver the X-Men back to the X-Mansion, with Xavier back as their mentor, for the first time in ages. The reasoning for this is simple — Marvel is definitely going to start the X-Men in the MCU in the classic status quo and the comics have to be brought into line with that. “From the Ashes” doesn’t have any ideas behind it, unlike Morrison’s era or the Utopia era or Krakoa, and it shows through in every comic. So, while there are some decent X-Men stories in the bunch, none of them are going to be remembered in twenty or thirty years.
“From the Ashes” Forgets the Fundamental Rule of Mutation — Change
Looking at the history of the X-Men, there is one constant — change — and when things stop changing is when the stories get stale. This is exactly what happened in the ’90s; the X-Men were the highest selling book, so Marvel basically just let them coast along, never really changing, and the quality of the books suffered immensely. “From the Ashes” has somehow managed to make the line feel stale and it hasn’t been going on for even a year yet. There are some bright spots, but they’re lost in a morass of X-Men cliches that longtime fans of the franchise have seen a million times before.
“From the Ashes” has failed the X-Men books. Now, one could make the argument that if the Absolute and Ultimate books weren’t taking up all the oxygen in the room, then “From the Ashes” would still be at the top of the charts. However, the fact that three of the books are already being cancelled shows this not to be the case. “From the Ashes” just doesn’t have anything to really hook readers; sure, many older reader hated Krakoa and they’ve come back, but a lot of the younger readers, drawn to the energy of the Krakoa Era, have left. The usual suspects — Uncanny X-Men, X-Men, and Wolverine — all sell well (though they’re selling nowhere near what Krakoa Era books were in their first year), but the rest of the line is limping along. Marvel obviously wants the X-Men to be a success, but if they think that “From the Ashes” is going to path to that, they have another thing coming. It feels like 1996 in the X-Men books and that’s a bad thing.
