ComicBook talks about the X-Mens latest battle with themselves, which is meaningless, and brings up a most eyebrow raising problem with the stories one of Marvel’s worst editors, Tom Brevoort, has been helming for nearly a quarter century:
The X-Men comics have jumped into an all-new alternate universe storyline — “The Age of Revelation”. This is just the latest change to the books, which started with 2024’s “From the Ashes”, a new publishing initiative meant to bring the X-Men comics back to a more traditional X-Men status quo, something that X-Men fans really haven’t gotten since the end of House of M way back in 2025. The X-Men line was given to Marvel bigwig editor Tom Brevoort, an editor who is known for his encyclopedic knowledge of comics, and a love of the old school Marvel Universe. However, there’s another thing that Brevoort loves, and it’s been a part of nearly everything that he’s edited in the 21st century — heroes clashing with heroes.
“From the Ashes” established that the X-Men had separated, with Cyclops leading one team, Rogue leading another, and a young mutant training team led by Emma Frost and Kitty Pryde. Right off the bat, we were shown that there was a grudge between Rogue and Cyclops, as each of them thought the other was making a mistake. “Raid on Graymalkin” pit the two teams against each other, and “X-Manhunt” showed the differences between the teams again. However, Amazing X-Men #1 shows that this grudge is basically meaningless, proving that the Brevoort approach to the X-Men is a mistake.
And that’s why Marvel’s lost much of their audience over the years. When Brevoort originally began working for Marvel over 35 years ago, whatever he edited then may not have been the forced embarrassment it is now, but anybody who’s going to devote their time almost entirely to depicting heroes clashing with themselves far more than villains has certainly brought down artistic quality very badly, and made a joke out of the original premise. Even DC’s had examples of heroes fighting each other in the past 2 decades, and that’s dragged down the meaning of their comics horribly too. To be sure, if this is how Brevoort’s been going about producing stories for the past quarter century, it’s dubious whether he really has an “encyclopedic knowledge” and “love of old school” storytelling. Especially when the stories become so meaningless.
Amazing X-Men #1 proves that Brevoort’s pet idea is exactly the wrong one for the X-Men. Two X-Men teams doing different things is a fine idea, but it’s when you get to making the teams fight that fans have a problem. The popularity of the X-Men has always been about the way the X-Men work together despite having different methods and goals. We want to see the X-Men debate their points, fight evil as a family, and then get back to their arguments. They’re family; it takes a lot to make a family fight each other.
When Brevoort was announced as editor of the X-Men books, fans knew it would only be a matter of time before factions of X-Men would end up fighting. However, that’s against the natural state of the team. They may get mad at each other, but they love each other. They know their strengths and weaknesses, and that they’re stronger together. X-Men fans don’t want this sort of thing, and it looks like the creators of the books don’t either. Hopefully, this plot line will end sooner rather than later.
Brevoort used to be an editor of Avengers-related titles, and one could say he helmed preludes to the current situation with series like Avengers: Disassembled, where it came close as the “culprit” turned out to be Scarlet Witch. When the story makes it look like somebody who’s written as a reformed crook who became an admirable heroine is far more the problem than even villains like Thanos, something is definitely wrong. There was nothing respectful of “tradition” back then, and no chance the X-Men will ever see a convincing return to it now either, what with the way Marvel is micromanaged these days. Interesting the news site acknowledges the fanbase, but it’s important to note many have stopped reading Marvel as a result of these humiliatingly bad storylines.
Originally published here
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