Marvel's Superman and what's wrong with the X-Men

In 1963, Stan Lee created a comic. Well, he created a lot of them around that time, but this one specifically was with a certain purpose. See, over in DC Comics, they had a character who was more or less the perfect superhero. So instead of straight ripping him off, Stan decided go about it a little differently. His Superman would be cut into 5 pieces: Superman's 5 powers. Enhanced human characteristics would be one (strength, agility, durability, intelligence), Flight would be one, heat vision, cold breath, and an intangible power. And so the X-Men were born. Now obviously you can't make a superhero who can only see through walls, so he upgraded this one to straight telekinesis.

But this is what made the X-Men great. They were a real team. They weren't a super team of accomplished solo acts that teamed up to defy cosmic beings, they were broken parts that fit together properly. There was great drama in that, which Marvel seems to be straying away from. Back in the 60's, 70's, and 80's, no X-Man (aside from maybe Wolverine) was a one man show. You could overtake an Iceman with a direct slap to the face. Not anymore, he's pure ice now. If you ever caught Angel, you could have your way with him. Not anymore, he's Archangel, and he could kill you 100 different ways. Cyclops' blasts were great, but not like they are now. He's clearing fields, decapitating Sentinels, it's a little much. Jean used to be just a one trick pony, if you could avoid the vase flying at your head, she's pretty defenseless. Not anymore, now she's dead.

Do you get what I'm saying? Colossus went from being a reliable bruiser to now being on Thing and She-Hulk's level. And that's BEFORE you factor in the gem of Cyttorak. Wolverine is now healing from insane injuries like they never happened. That's not fun, now it's just stupid. I remember a scene in the Hulk Vs movie where Deadpool's arm is severed from his body, he puts it back and he's fine. And everyone's reaction was, "Sounds about right. It's just Deadpool being Deadpool." Think about that... it's what's killing X-Men comics. Havok absorbing a star, Gambit now being able to charge items telepathically, Multiple Man's sperm making duplicates... this is getting way out of control.

What used to make the X-Men great was that 1 couldn't do anything, 2 were somewhat useless and 4 had mixed results. But when you got the whole team of 6-8 together, they were dreamcrushers. That's great comics. Now we're watching Magik cut holes through time and space. And the fact that Namor is even on the team. Even the newer characters they're coming up with like Pixie are getting massive upgrades. And what's worse, the guys like Beast and NIghtcrawler who aren't overpowered machines are getting killed off.

Do you guys remember when the X-Men were essentially a bunch of kids in way over their heads? Now they're matching blow-for-blow with the Avengers, absorbing Pheonix forces and traversing the universe taking down empires. It kills me a little bit inside.

@Havenless said:

In 1963, Stan Lee created a comic. Well, he created a lot of them around that time, but this one specifically was with a certain purpose. See, over in DC Comics, they had a character who was more or less the perfect superhero. So instead of straight ripping him off, Stan decided go about it a little differently. His Superman would be cut into 5 pieces: Superman's 5 powers. Enhanced human characteristics would be one (strength, agility, durability, intelligence), Flight would be one, heat vision, cold breath, and an intangible power. And so the X-Men were born. Now obviously you can't make a superhero who can only see through walls, so he upgraded this one to straight telekinesis.

But this is what made the X-Men great. They were a real team. They weren't a super team of accomplished solo acts that teamed up to defy cosmic beings, they were broken parts that fit together properly. There was great drama in that, which Marvel seems to be straying away from. Back in the 60's, 70's, and 80's, no X-Man (aside from maybe Wolverine) was a one man show. You could overtake an Iceman with a direct slap to the face. Not anymore, he's pure ice now. If you ever caught Angel, you could have your way with him. Not anymore, he's Archangel, and he could kill you 100 different ways. Cyclops' blasts were great, but not like they are now. He's clearing fields, decapitating Sentinels, it's a little much. Jean used to be just a one trick pony, if you could avoid the vase flying at your head, she's pretty defenseless. Not anymore, now she's dead.

Do you get what I'm saying? Colossus went from being a reliable bruiser to now being on Thing and She-Hulk's level. And that's BEFORE you factor in the gem of Cyttorak. Wolverine is now healing from insane injuries like they never happened. That's not fun, now it's just stupid. I remember a scene in the Hulk Vs movie where Deadpool's arm is severed from his body, he puts it back and he's fine. And everyone's reaction was, "Sounds about right. It's just Deadpool being Deadpool." Think about that... it's what's killing X-Men comics. Havok absorbing a star, Gambit now being able to charge items telepathically, Multiple Man's sperm making duplicates... this is getting way out of control.

What used to make the X-Men great was that 1 couldn't do anything, 2 were somewhat useless and 4 had mixed results. But when you got the whole team of 6-8 together, they were dreamcrushers. That's great comics. Now we're watching Magik cut holes through time and space. And the fact that Namor is even on the team. Even the newer characters they're coming up with like Pixie are getting massive upgrades. And what's worse, the guys like Beast and NIghtcrawler who aren't overpowered machines are getting killed off.

Do you guys remember when the X-Men were essentially a bunch of kids way over their heads? Now they're matching blow-for-blow with the Avengers, absorbing Pheonix forces and traversing the universe taking down empires. It kills me a little bit inside.

Not bad, actually I like what you said!

@Havenless said:

In 1963, Stan Lee created a comic. Well, he created a lot of them around that time, but this one specifically was with a certain purpose. See, over in DC Comics, they had a character who was more or less the perfect superhero. So instead of straight ripping him off, Stan decided go about it a little differently. His Superman would be cut into 5 pieces: Superman's 5 powers. Enhanced human characteristics would be one (strength, agility, durability, intelligence), Flight would be one, heat vision, cold breath, and an intangible power. And so the X-Men were born. Now obviously you can't make a superhero who can only see through walls, so he upgraded this one to straight telekinesis.

proof?

@Havenless said:

In 1963, Stan Lee created a comic. Well, he created a lot of them around that time, but this one specifically was with a certain purpose. See, over in DC Comics, they had a character who was more or less the perfect superhero. So instead of straight ripping him off, Stan decided go about it a little differently. His Superman would be cut into 5 pieces: Superman's 5 powers. Enhanced human characteristics would be one (strength, agility, durability, intelligence), Flight would be one, heat vision, cold breath, and an intangible power. And so the X-Men were born. Now obviously you can't make a superhero who can only see through walls, so he upgraded this one to straight telekinesis.

But this is what made the X-Men great. They were a real team. They weren't a super team of accomplished solo acts that teamed up to defy cosmic beings, they were broken parts that fit together properly. There was great drama in that, which Marvel seems to be straying away from. Back in the 60's, 70's, and 80's, no X-Man (aside from maybe Wolverine) was a one man show. You could overtake an Iceman with a direct slap to the face. Not anymore, he's pure ice now. If you ever caught Angel, you could have your way with him. Not anymore, he's Archangel, and he could kill you 100 different ways. Cyclops' blasts were great, but not like they are now. He's clearing fields, decapitating Sentinels, it's a little much. Jean used to be just a one trick pony, if you could avoid the vase flying at your head, she's pretty defenseless. Not anymore, now she's dead.

Do you get what I'm saying? Colossus went from being a reliable bruiser to now being on Thing and She-Hulk's level. And that's BEFORE you factor in the gem of Cyttorak. Wolverine is now healing from insane injuries like they never happened. That's not fun, now it's just stupid. I remember a scene in the Hulk Vs movie where Deadpool's arm is severed from his body, he puts it back and he's fine. And everyone's reaction was, "Sounds about right. It's just Deadpool being Deadpool." Think about that... it's what's killing X-Men comics. Havok absorbing a star, Gambit now being able to charge items telepathically, Multiple Man's sperm making duplicates... this is getting way out of control.

What used to make the X-Men great was that 1 couldn't do anything, 2 were somewhat useless and 4 had mixed results. But when you got the whole team of 6-8 together, they were dreamcrushers. That's great comics. Now we're watching Magik cut holes through time and space. And the fact that Namor is even on the team. Even the newer characters they're coming up with like Pixie are getting massive upgrades. And what's worse, the guys like Beast and NIghtcrawler who aren't overpowered machines are getting killed off.

Do you guys remember when the X-Men were essentially a bunch of kids way over their heads? Now they're matching blow-for-blow with the Avengers, absorbing Pheonix forces and traversing the universe taking down empires. It kills me a little bit inside.

I agree man. A team should be a team because they need each other. Just like basketball, who cares about your team if Jordan does all the work?

Like I've said before, I will read X-Men books again when there is one central team instead of 2-3 different teams. Call me old fashioned but I want Cyke and Logan on the same team, Xavier with them, and Magneto as a villian again.

What made the X-men great was Chris Claremont. Stan Lee my of come up with the idea, but Chris made it awesome. The X-Men was pretty much cancelled in till Chris Claremont rebooted it with a whole new team......

@Jorgevy said:

@Havenless said:

In 1963, Stan Lee created a comic. Well, he created a lot of them around that time, but this one specifically was with a certain purpose. See, over in DC Comics, they had a character who was more or less the perfect superhero. So instead of straight ripping him off, Stan decided go about it a little differently. His Superman would be cut into 5 pieces: Superman's 5 powers. Enhanced human characteristics would be one (strength, agility, durability, intelligence), Flight would be one, heat vision, cold breath, and an intangible power. And so the X-Men were born. Now obviously you can't make a superhero who can only see through walls, so he upgraded this one to straight telekinesis.

proof?

I don't think anyone will ever admit to ripping off another company, but if you think that assessment is farfetched, then you are allowed to your opinion.

@Timandm said:

So, how do you slow down the escalation?

Hopefully not by going the 52 route. I want them to completely blow up the X-Men, figuratively. Everyone leaves. Bring back Xavier, and have him start over. Move back into the mansion, get on the phone, and start recruiting some friends who believe in the dream. It's strayed so far from this it's incredible. What did fighting Vulcan 2 galaxies away have anything to do with the mutant-human epidemic, the entire reason Havok is a superhero to begin with? Why couldn't Carol Danvers do it, or Reed Richards? This isn't the X-Men.

@Timandm said:

So, how do you slow down the escalation?

Instead of climbing up, go sideways. Don't go for the bigger difficulty, localized, small things can be just as hard, if not harder than something big.

So, instead of having Cyclops fight Abomination after fighting Scorpion, slide to the side and have him fight Hydroman. Simply put, Marvel needs to use the Hydromen of the world rather than the Abominations and the Dr. Dooms.

@Timandm said:

So, how do you slow down the escalation?

Instead of climbing up, go sideways. Don't go for the bigger difficulty, localized, small things can be just as hard, if not harder than something big.

So, instead of having Cyclops fight Abomination after fighting Scorpion, slide to the side and have him fight Hydroman. Simply put, Marvel needs to use the Hydromen of the world rather than the Abominations and the Dr. Dooms.

@Havenless: While this doesn't really disprove your theory, I just want to point out that with Colossus at least, he was always suppose to be around Thing/She-Hulk level. Even in his very early appearances the dude would often get into boxing matches with guys like Juggernaut and Gladiator. I think back then it wasn't that he lacked power so much as he lacked experience.

For the most part though, I agree with what you said. As others have stated, however, it's not really a problem isolated to the X-Men.

@Timandm:

Think of it like gun laws. You're fine with hunters and soldiers and policemen with guns right? They know how to use them, they're professionals. What if it was law that at 13, 1 out of every 1,000 children was given a handgun, it went off randomly and the only way to take it from them was to kill them. This is why people fear mutants. It's because of that boy in your son's soccer game who suddenly catches fire. It's the girl in Venezuela who is telepathically pushing cars off of the rode her school bus is on and can't stop doing it.

The difference between Iron Man and these mutants is that he was ready for it. He chose Iron Man, he is more prepared than anyone on the planet to deal with what that entails. It's the purpose for Xavier's school. Not to shelter the oppressed, but to get them ready to rejoin society.

@Timandm:

Think of it like gun laws. You're fine with hunters and soldiers and policemen with guns right? They know how to use them, they're professionals. What if it was law that at 13, 1 out of every 1,000 children was given a handgun, it went off randomly and the only way to take it from them was to kill them. This is why people fear mutants. It's because of that boy in your son's soccer game who suddenly catches fire. It's the girl in Venezuela who is telepathically pushing cars off of the rode her school bus is on and can't stop doing it.

The difference between Iron Man and these mutants is that he was ready for it. He chose Iron Man, he is more prepared than anyone on the planet to deal with what that entails. It's the purpose for Xavier's school. Not to shelter the oppressed, but to get them ready to rejoin society.

@Timandm:

Even still, in each of those situations they accepted their fate.

I think a far worse problem isn't the supervillain, the man with direct intent, it's the guy with unheralded potential whose head was spinning and he had no idea what was going on.

I definitely agree with everything you said. The problem with having overpowered characters in a team setting is that sometimes the stories tends to focus on that one character because they are the most powerful member of the team. I have seen so many power upgrades towards Wolverine where he could heal himself from absolutely anything and it's getting to the point where you can't really take the stories seriously because of that.

@Havenless: I agree with everything you said

@spinningbirdcake said:

Like I've said before, I will read X-Men books again when there is one central team instead of 2-3 different teams. Call me old fashioned but I want Cyke and Logan on the same team, Xavier with them, and Magneto as a villian again.

I definitely want this too! Although, I wouldn't mind having one other team book like X-Force right next to the X-Men.

Yep. It's all flash and no story telling. No beating impossible odds. The problem now is "How do they GET to the villains?" and not "How are they supposed to beat them?".

@Med said:

Yep. It's all flash and no story telling. No beating impossible odds. The problem now is "How do they GET to the villains?" and not "How are they supposed to beat them?".

Yeah, I find the getting to the villains part more boring then how they defeat them.

@Havenless said:

@Jorgevy said:

@Havenless said:

In 1963, Stan Lee created a comic. Well, he created a lot of them around that time, but this one specifically was with a certain purpose. See, over in DC Comics, they had a character who was more or less the perfect superhero. So instead of straight ripping him off, Stan decided go about it a little differently. His Superman would be cut into 5 pieces: Superman's 5 powers. Enhanced human characteristics would be one (strength, agility, durability, intelligence), Flight would be one, heat vision, cold breath, and an intangible power. And so the X-Men were born. Now obviously you can't make a superhero who can only see through walls, so he upgraded this one to straight telekinesis.

proof?

I don't think anyone will ever admit to ripping off another company, but if you think that assessment is farfetched, then you are allowed to your opinion.

not farfetched. rather, super unlikely. Superman wasn't THAT famous then, even if he was one of the top characters DC had in that time. Cyclops vison has nothing to do with heat vision, other than they shoot out of eyes, going from X ray vision to telekinesis is farfetched, and the overall idea seems to be more conjecture than anything. why would Stan only "rip off" (which in this case would be more inspired by, than actually ripping since the similarities are so small) the powerset of Supes and then just kinda divide it? it seems much more likely he came up with the powers for the original X-men rather than just rip them off in a much smaller scale and slightly modified from a rival company's character.

I mean, you are okay to believe what you want, but it seems kinda wrong to just start a topic saying stuff like this without a shred of proof, with affirmative sentences. you could have said it was your POV of what happened

That is something I never considered, about how the X-Men have all of his powers.

@Rabbitearsblog: pretty much about the time that magneto turned good, it started being more about "feelings" then action.

I never thought of the X men as being a rip off of superman. I always thought of them as a ripoff of the legion of superheroes. I do agree with some of your assessment, but I actually think that the problem with the X books is that that so many of them feature the same characters, when there are so many mutants to be used, take Brian Wood's new X book debuting next month. I understand that for an all female x team, you need kitty, rogue, psylocke, storm etc, but all A list teams aren't that interesting, I like teams with b-list characters because there is more that you can do with them creatively.

@GundamHeavyarms said:

I never thought of the X men as being a rip off of superman. I always thought of them as a ripoff of the legion of superheroes. I do agree with some of your assessment, but I actually think that the problem with the X books is that that so many of them feature the same characters, when there are so many mutants to be used, take Brian Wood's new X book debuting next month. I understand that for an all female x team, you need kitty, rogue, psylocke, storm etc, but all A list teams aren't that interesting, I like teams with b-list characters because there is more that you can do with them creatively.

I agree with this. I understand that the X-Men characters they are currently using are popular with the fans, but there are so many other X-Men characters that are just as interesting that aren't being used well. Like, what happened to the New X-Men who were introduced years ago? They're just as interesting as the older X-Men.

@Havenless: What you're getting at isn't just a problem with the X-Men.  it's a problem that happens in ALL comic books.  " Escalation." 
 
Consider Superman.   When he first came out he : 1: Could leap a tall building in a single bound.  2: was more powerful than a speeding locomotive, and 3: was faster than a speeding bullet.   
What is he like today?  He can FLY?!  Heat Vision.  Freeze breath.  Fly faster than light (that speeding bullet is pathetic.) He can move entire moons... 
 
Escalation always happens.  A character becomes popular.  We the reader like them  But they start winning all the time and so the villains have to become more powerful or evil...  Then our hero has to become more powerful... Then the villains become more powerful... Then...  You see how it just snowballs out of control?
 
Stan Lee created a character (long ago) that was going to be "THE STRONGEST THERE IS!!!"   No, not Howard the Duck, I'm talking about The Incredible Hulk...  After the Hulk became popular they faced the problem of having others that were strong enough to stand against the Hulk...  I saw Stan in an interview talking about that.  They needed a hero who was STRONGER than the Hulk, but how could they have a hero who is stronger than the 'strongest there is?'   Answer - You make him a god!   Hence, Thor was created.  So, then you had a character stronger than The Hulk.  But with the creation of characters like The Hulk, Juggernaut, the Abomination, the writers then have to make the Hulk even STRONGER... and it goes out of control..
 
Ben Grimm, at first, could lift 5 tons.  And now?  100 tons.
Wolverine almost died when he was stabbed through the heart with a Katana (back in the Wolverine/Kitty mini-series)  In fact, it was implied that he WOULD have died, if his girlfriend hadn't knocked Kitty out.  (Kitty, being possessed at the time, was the one that stabbed Logan through the heart)...  but NOW Wolverine heals from a NUCLEAR BLAST at point blank range...
 
Escalation.  Many people want to see their characters become more powerful, but they don't realize that characters can become terribly uninteresting if they are too powerful...  While I like Superman, I find Superman comics boring...  I think the suspense disappears because you know he HAS to win because, quite frankly, there's no real way he could possibly lose...  If the character becomes TOO powerful, there's no real challenge for them to overcome.  If there's no real challenge, there's no suspense... If there's no suspense, the story becomes boring...
 
I can't really relate to Superman  or Blue Marvel or Hyperion, etc...  But seeing Daredevil leap from rooftop to rooftop while dodging bullets and fighting thugs and ninjas... I can 'grasp' that mentally.  I can envision it and understand why it's kewl and intense...
 
So, how do you slow down the escalation? 

@Timandm: i don't think you can slow it down i think it has reached the point especially in marvel when it has begun to plateau but another thing is we as readers want to see our heroes get more powerful i have always wanted to see iceman reach his full potential or maybe even Cyclops not need his visors for two reasons when reading the comics you always imagine seeing your favourite character evolve and become better and the second is that the must become stronger the X-men in particular were teens when they first started spidey two even if they were "normal" they wouldn't be at there physical or intellectual prime so escalation of powers and their uses must occur for development purposes but back to why you cant slow down escalation it has come to far we have seen the examples OP has listed the only way to see these characters go back to "how are we going to defeat this guy" attitude is to make a new foe that is even more powerful but that would only increase escalation or to do a full reboot not a new 52 but a complete restart and the uproar that would cause if the got rid of the 616 or the bat family and other supporting members of the DC universe would be so monumental it wouldn't be worth their time or money

Used to be Thor according to Stan Lee, now I don't even know.