Favorite X-Men.

Marvel posted and article called Greatest X-Men. They polled several writers and artists and asked them to name their favorite X-Man. I was introduced to the X-Men right before the Mutant Massacre, so that team always meant a lot to me. If I could only pick one, I would probably choose Wolverine, but if I had to go with a team, I'd go with the core of Storm, Wolvie, Rogue, Colossus, Shadowcat, Nightcrawler with Phoenix (Rachel Grey) and Cyke mixing in and out. That team was never really full strength though, because Cyclops was in and out of the lineup until he lost the leadership position to Storm. Storm was de-powered at the time. Wolvie was recovering from several injuries and then ended up severely injuring Rachel who was basically dropped from the Marvel Universe after that until she resurfaced in Excalibur. Then Colossus, Shadowcat AND Nightcrawler were all seriously injured as a result of the Mutant Massacre and I don't think that team was ever reassembled again. Too bad because I think it was their best lineup; they weren't around for a very long time; and as I said, they were never full strength. I kinda sorta liked the team after that, which was together for awhile, but the story that happened after the Fall of the Mutants was really hard to stay interested in. I hung out for awhile, but then actually stopped collecting for awhile after Gambit was introduced mainly because it wasn't a team book anymore and I didn't like what they were doing with the characters. I've recently bought a run of the issues that I'm missing and I've gotta clear out a block of time to read them. It's going to take awhile.

So I think it's interesting to see that with all of this Endangered Species/Messiah Complex/Divided We Stand crossover hype, it's really nothing we haven't seen before. Basically, weren't the X-Men disassembled during The Fall of the Mutants? Professor X wasn't anywhere near earth for about 75 issues at about that time, so it's not like he had any control over the X-Men or their actions. I think it's an interesting twist right now because of they're still an endangered species, but I guess my point is, this has been done before. Obviously they're going to take it to a different place, but the X-Men have gone through this kind of flux before. I am interested to see where it goes and I'm a huge X-Men fan, but my opinion is, it's not like they're doing something totally groundbreaking here. I guess we'll see what happens.