Since buying Fox last year, there have been many questions about Disney’s now almost complete monopoly on the pop culture industry. But we’re here to talk about one of the least worrisome ones: what are Marvel Studios doing with the strangest superheroes of all, the X-Men?
Since Len Wein, Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum resurrected the dying estate in 1975 – a rare case in which Stan Lee / Jack Kirby’s blitz only hit a decade ago – the X-Men are a symbol of House’s superhero approach of Ideas stories. The Ragtag team fought as well as the bad guys. They were afraid to save the world as well as their romantic entanglements. Spinoff series and dangling story threads weaved together for decades, forming what was probably the closest Gordian knot in the web of superhero comic continuity.
Since the Merry Band O mutants will eventually invade the MCU, the question remains simple. How can you do that? Given Marvel Studios’ history of synthesizing decades of comics – and probably wanting to distinguish their franchise from the Fox series, we have some ideas.
Dave Cockrum, Bob Wiacek / Marvel Comics
The Brutsaga
The X-Men go a lot into space, and not just when one of their founding members is possessed by a flaming bird of cosmic energy. And in The Brood Saga, Claremont and Cockrum introduced the Titular Aliens to the cosmic Marvel Pantheon.
These creepy bug monsters are an attenuated, but no less terrifying, reef on the xenomorph, planting an egg in each life form that then grows to gain control of the host and provide information to the queen through a shared hivemind. In the “Brood Saga”, Cyclops, Wolverine and the others battled the monsters on their terrible home planet “Sleazeworld” while Storm became friends with a space whale, and Carol Danvers experimented to become the almighty Binary and Kitty Pryde met her dragon mate Lockheed ,
So it could work in the MCU: It’s not too hard to imagine the Guardians of the Galaxy bumping into Sleazeworld or anywhere else on the Brood, especially given that both of the GOTG films pay homage to the alien franchise in subordinate terms. It’s not hard to imagine Captain Marvel (who’s unlikely to be captured by insect monsters) recruiting Star Lord and Co., including Thor, to find the X-Men there as prisoners / hosts. Do not you want to rocket Rocket Racoon and Wolverine aliens? Do not lie to me.
Esad Ribic / Marvel Comics
House of M
The 2005 Brian Michal Bendis / Olivier Coipel short version says that a spiritually unbalanced Scarlet Witch has rewritten reality to make mutants the dominant species of life on Earth. Every superhero got what it always wanted: Spider-Man was married to Gwen Stacy, while he was basically John Cena; Emma Frost was a psychotherapist who was married to Cyclops in Connecticut. Carol Danvers was the most popular super heroine in the world.
The only one who knew something was wrong was Wolverine. With the help of Layla Miller, a young mutant who could force others to remember the real world, Logan brought back the rest of the heroes and put the world in order. Except for the part in which Scarlet Witch decimated the mutant population from millions to hundreds.
So it could work in the MCU: Although it was never really clear how the Scarlet Witch powers work in the movies, we saw her invade Iron Man and persecute him with his imaginary mistakes in Age of Ultron. Who is going to say that, given the right reinforcement and pushing her just far enough, can not she do the same across the planet? And vice versa: What if there were now millions, if not billions, of reducing the number of mutants if things got back to normal?
Marc Silvestri / Marvel Comics
Deadly Genesis
X-Men: Deadly Genesis was the first major post-house of M-event by writer Ed Brubaker and artist Trevor Hairsine. And it turned out that everything we thought we knew about the X-Men was wrong.
In particular, the famous team from Wolverine, Banshee, Storm, Nightcrawler, Thunderbird, Sunfire and Colossus, who rescued the original X-Men in their first adventure from the mutant island of Krakoa, was not the first mission team to be sent. It turned out that Cyclops had led an earlier rescue mission that had gone terribly wrong, and Professor X had erased his memories of it. House of M woke Vulcan, one of the alleged dead members of this massacre, and returned to avenge the professor.
So it could work in the MCU: Vulcan was still easily triggering global alarm bells with his arrival. And the rest of the movie saw Spider-Man track him down as he chased the mutants, revealing that they actually existed in the process. Not only does it have immediate operations, it’s also a quick way to familiarize yourself with characters we do not know for the most part.
Marc Silvestri, Dan Green and Alex Jay / Marvel Comics
The case of the mutants
In 1987, a series of overlapping storylines from Uncanny X-Men, The New Mutants and X-Factor came together in a fight against a demon known as the Adversary. The fight was televised worldwide. Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Longshot, Rogue, Dazzler, Psylocke, Havok and Cyclops then Madeline Pryor sacrificed themselves to save humanity.
However, the goddess Roma, touched by her selflessness, brought her back to life and made her invisible to all types of surveillance that were out of sight. With the whole world believing they were dead, the X-Men moved to Australia, where they could teleport anywhere with the help of the mutated gateway (whose power sounds like this) to help mutants in distress.
So it could work in the MCU: The X-Men’s “Australia Era” also brought with it the cool, teen-incarnated jubilee that had survived as a small Southern California rat that X-Men followed after a mission back to Australia and had been hiding in their base a while before They found her out.
This is a perfect setup for a movie. With Jubilee as a POV figure, the audience could then get to know the new MCU X-Men in the same way it does. Even if some details have to be obviously falsified (Madeline can be exchanged for Jean Gray, Gateway must have more agency and the whole business with The Adversary and Roma can be modified), it would not hurt to have a figure that was the previous one Regime of Short X-Movies gets its main role.
David Finch, Danny Miki and Jason Keith / Marvel Comics
Messiah Complex
According to House of M, the mutant population had shrunk drastically to only 198 people, apparently no new mutants were born. That was when Cerebro, the X-Men’s mutant-hunt computer, discovered a birth in Alaska and exploded the mutated power it contained. This triggered a huge fight for the little girl between the X-Men, the xenophobic Purifiers, and the vicious Maruaders. All ended with Cyclops Cable donating the baby she raised in the future while being persecuted by X-ally and his time travel colleague, Bishop.
The baby named Hope later returned to the present as a teenager and became a conflict center in Avengers Vs. X-Men, with the two superteams battling for her when the Phoenix Force hit Earth, seemed to pursue them.
So it could work in the MCU: Regardless of whether the Scarlet Witch is responsible for bringing mutants to the forefront, this story can easily be thought of as another entry point, such as the anniversary scenario above.
The fact that the mutant race has drastically reduced their numbers following a catastrophe, be it the Wanda or a devastating plague, brings the story straight to the point. In addition, this would be a chance to give the youthful Hope an act of her own and more than just a plot device that she often fell victim to during the decade of X-Men storylines in which she found herself.
Tom Speelman is a freelance author for publications such as Polygon and Comic Resources. He also adapts Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka from Makoto Fukami & Seigo Tokiya for Seven Seas Entertainment and shouts about Comics @tomtificate on Twitter. His favorite X-Men is Nightcrawler, followed by Gambit.
