Last week was a lot of fun for us here at the Nexus, it was the first time that we’d ever gotten together to do one big mass collaboration with our current staff, and it went REALLY smoothly! So smoothly, in fact, that the guys picked the topic for this week and pulled their lists together before I even realized it! Seriously, I can’t put over just how much of a group effort this was, and just how great all the guys are here at the Nexus.
So what topic did they go with? In honor of All-New X-Men #1, the choice wound up being the Top Seven Worst X-Men. A polarizing subject, for sure, as we all come from different backgrounds and eras with the characters, and let’s just say that it’s a very good thing that this is a group of lists, and not a debate…as one man’s hated is another man’s favorite.
Let’s open up with Skitch.
Dr Cecilia Reyes – This was the character I was least certain about on this list. I actually liked Reyes’ powers quite a bit and she had the potential to add a great dynamic to the X-Men team. So how did she end up here? To explain, I need to digress a little. For the last six years, I have run various X-Men based role playing games with friends of mine. The biggest problem has always been “characters created to join the X-Men who hate the team and have no real reason of being there.” It can create a cool dynamic in the short term, but very quickly it wears thin and you can’t help but think “if this character hates this team so much, why would they even stay?” And that is exactly how I felt about Cecilia Reyes. She really quickly went from interesting character to just being a hater.
Shatterstar – Shatterstar??? On Skitch’s list of lame X-Men characters??? How is that even possible? Mike loves Liefeld’s X-Force. And he loves Peter David’s work on X-Factor. Both true. And when I started reading comics Shatterstar was one of my favorite characters. But for a long period of time between Liefeld and Peter David, Shatterstar became an absolute mess. I don’t know why writers seemed determined to over-complicate Shatterstar. He was great as the Mojoverse warrior who kicked serious ass. But too many writers decided “that’s not good enough” and kept adding to and changing his story. I still can’t quite figure out what his story is supposed to be now, to me he is always going to be the Rock and Roll Warrior. Za’s Vid!
Doop – Now I am hating on Doop, despite my love of X-Statix. The problem with Doop was that he was never really explained in any kind of fashion. There was a lot of cool ideas going on here, but in the end they all amounted to nothing. I found that pretty frustrating. I hate unresolved mysteries. And he looks like a floating green potato. So he ends up on the list.
Daken – I am not sure what the obsession was to keep giving Wolverine bastard children and clones. I kind of liked X-23 in NYX, but Daken is just about the least interesting character in comics to me. What exactly is the point of a “more extreme” Wolverine?? He is like twenty years too late! Extreme characters went out with the 90’s…or should have.
Adam X The X-Treme – SPEAKING OF X-TREME CHARACTERS! To be honest, I don’t even hate this character. And I thought he had a pretty cool power set. It really is just his name. I know X sells in comics, but there needs to be some limits. Marvel forget this rule and the result is the worst name character in comics. And a backwards baseball cap? Really?? Unless he’s a catcher, this was just never cool.
Albert and Elsie Dee – An explosive robot clone of Wolverine and a smart talking girl robot in a pink dress with an annoying lisp. Really?? Who thought this was a good idea?? They would have be less full of suck if they showed up as one shot characters, but they kept coming back!!! And later had time traveling adventures. I couldn’t make this up if I tried, I am just not that creative.
Bird Brain – Warlock filled the annoying character quotient for New Mutants. Bird Brain literally added nothing to the comic than the ugliest character design ever and annoying screeching. Bird Brain more than any character in comic MUST NEVER APPEAR IN A CARTOON, TV SHOW, OR MOVIE. God help me, I will cut off my ears and eyes if this ever happens.
Bird Brain. I had to go and look up who that was, seriously, and I read New Mutants (where he recently appeared). Total blind spot, but then again, I’m also of the opinion that any character that causes the death of Doug Ramsey can’t be all bad.
Next up we’ve got R.J., whose list is controversial if not just because his number seven is one of my all time favorite characters.
7. X-Man/Nate Grey: Character with great potential, basically Cable without the metal and mental trauma. But he gets to this universe and turns into a whiny, emo, moping, sack of Oedipus complex mutant angst, who was written out of continuity, because no one could figure out how to make at Class 10 mutant interesting.
6. Marrow: Ahhh, the mid 90s, where grim and gritty had worn off, so did creators go the other way? HELL NO! Let’s make a character where she pulls her actual bone structure out of her body to use as weapons. Marrow was all anger no substance, and had a power that was disgusting at best and stretching the idea of believable powers to their fullest.
5. Moira MacTaggert: Don’t get me wrong, under some writers, Moira is ok. But for so many others, she’s the ultimate wet-blanket girlfriend, who fits every Scottish cliche there is. And she has no purpose of her own, just as a foil for the other characters, including her son Legion. I can hear her now, “Nay, Charles ya cannae kill aour son!”
4.X-Babies: The fact that there’s a wikipedia entry for the X-Babies, which should have been a one-shot Mojo fueled joke, but instead have stretched the sense of good taste across multiple decades, is disturbing. I get that they were a parody, but when X-Men covers have the word “Featuring the X-Babies!” on them, then you’re not only laughing at the emperor with no clothes, you’ve decided he has good fashion sense.
3. Generation X: Scott Lobdell at his absolute worst. Created six new young mutants (Husk, Skin, Chamber, Penance, M, and Mondo) for the series, and gave them dumb or extremely vague powers. And then gave them plots that were so confusing, that the powers that be killed most of them just to rid themselves of the headache. I still don’t understand the relationship between M, Penance, and Emplate to this day. (that’s not a request for explanation!)
2. Warlock: Here’s my theory. Chris Claremont was trying to appeal the New Mutants to the younger generation, and decided that a techno-organic Tex Avery cartoon was exactly what was needed. I was in my late teens, and I would look at the New Mutant covers and be immediately turned off. And terms like self-friend should be avoided unless the book was called New Mutants: Friendship is Magic.
and finally…. I figured I had to go with a fairly used character for #1
1. Illyana ‘Magik’ Rasputin: Or as I like to call her Illyana Plot Device. Originally, a fine character, sister of Colossus, who is a mutant. Ok. She then goes to a magic dimension and ages to a cuvy teenager who is learns magic and wields the Soulsword and joins the New Mutants (was X-Men lacking without a Sword and Sorcery element?). Then she becomes demon-possessed and helps bring about the Inferno crossover event where she turns back to 7 years old. THEN, she’s brought back into the X-Men’s lives just to kill her with the Legacy Virus which made Colossus join Magneto (for like 12 issues). Then she was brought back from the dead, doing the old “It wasn’t the soul of Illyana” routine, even though she supposedly contacted Wolverine and Colossus from the afterlife. And finally, this past summer, in case her powers weren’t powerful or vague enough, she became a member of the Phoenix Five, where she seems to have shown Colossus just how Nucking Futs she actually is. I hate characters used in this way, and therefore Illyana is my #1
Man, I’m also a fan of Generation X. This may have gotten heated in debate form….
Next up we’ve got Matt, who really took a passion towards this piece. The man REALLY loves his X-Men.
Joseph – Joseph came to prominence during the Operation Zero Tolerance X-Men storyline, when the conniving Bastion was orchestrating his strike against mutants to much success. Joseph was a wandering amnesiac with a terrible case of mistaken identity: the Avengers and X-Men believed him to be the mutant terrorist Magneto. He didn’t remember any of this, but to atone for his supposed past sins, he joined the X-Men. It is then that Exodus and the Acolytes, who believed their beloved leader to be dead, found Joseph and asked him to come back. So Joseph took up the mantle of Magneto and essentially turned the Acolytes towards nicer and more positive purposes. The joke was on everyone, including the readers, but mostly on poor Joseph, who spent his time atoning for all these past guilt trips: he wasn’t Magneto. He was a clone. On the plus side, he and Rogue had a thing goin’ on.
On the flip side, while he supposedly died trying to stop the returned real Magneto, he didn’t really die, instead running around as Magneto killing people to frame the real Magneto for being a dick. Except this one of those times the real Magneto was not a dick, and was working with the X-Men. And if that plan isn’t terrible enough, he made his own Brotherhood of Mutants, except they were all clones of the original lineup. We were sad for you already, Joseph, but this just…I have no words.
Rusty & Skids – These are two characters, but since they’re perpetually in tandem throughout X-Factor and X-Force when I knew them, we have to keep them that way. Rusty and Skids. Rusty and Skids. Do you know how many times I’ve heard the phrase “Rusty and Skids” throughout my X-Force readings? A lot. Rusty Collins is a young mutant who joined the US Navy at 16, but then his power to set things on fire came to light, and he burned a young woman in the third degree before running away after setting an officer on fire, which probably means he was dishonorably discharged. Sally Blevins is a teen runaway who ended up with the Morlocks. The Morlocks have a policy about needing to be ugly to hang with them, which their flesh-shaper Masque is all about enforcing, but Sally’s power of a skin tight force field kept her pretty. While Rusty was fleeing Freedom Force (because of that whole burning mishap), he ran into Sally, and she helped him evade capture until the original X-Factor rescued the pair. And so Rusty and Skids (her field is frictionless) joined X-Factor along with a young Boom Boom, Rictor, Leech, and Artie.
Most of that crew became New Mutants, until the terrorist Stryfe and his Mutant Liberation Front captured Rusty and Skids, brainwashing them into joining his cause. Since Stryfe and the MLF were the arch-nemeses of Cable and X-Force, and since X-Force consisted of the old New Mutants, this meant many an episode of X-Force had Cannonball, Boom Boom, Rictor, and Sunspot arguing about Rusty and Skids. Always together. Rusty and Skids. Rusty and Skids. We have to save Rusty and Skids. Eventually Rusty and Skids were kidnapped by the Friends of Humanity (spoiler: not so friendly), and their friends rescued them. Soon after, Exodus and the Acolytes wanted Cannonball and and Sunspot to join his party in space, but Cannonball argued for all his friends to be welcome. Of course, here Rusty and Skids decide to pledge allegiance to Magneto after he undid the trauma Stryfe inflicted on them, and once again found themselves on the outs with their friends. This proved to be a horrible decision, as eventually some death machine named Holocaust showed up in space, killed Rusty, and a distraught Skids was all that held Avalon together as it crashed to Earth.
Skids is still around, and is actually one of my favorite X-Men characters ever. She went on to do many awesome things. I really just hate Rusty. The term “Rusty and Skids” sounds like a special service you pay for in the late hours of the night behind a 7-11. And Rusty didn’t make it any better when he tried to take the name Firefist. I had a Firefist with that Rusty and Skids, I need to go to the clinic.
Bling! – Bling! (with the !) is the daughter of Marvel-verse rappers Daddy Libido and Sexy Mutha. She’s a cross between Emma Frost 2.0 and Marrow, with a diamond form that can also expel blingin’ shrapnel. While you’d think this mutant Willow Smith would be content to whip her diamond shards back and forth, the character actually defies expectations with her studious personality and disinterest in the mutant/human conflict. She actually seeks to better herself through mastery of her powers and education before throwing in. The poor kid even had her heart broken by Mystique, in one of the creepiest meddling mother plots ever (and that’s by X-Men standards). Not a bad character, but if people want to harp on Adam X for his name(s), I have took sideways at the name Bling!, because if Adam is the 90s, here we have a worse attempt at the apex of the 2000s.
Kylun – We’re going to hop into one of my time portals really quick. Let me just drain the life force from- Mmm, okay. Now we’re ready. Let’s go back to Excalibur’s original run. That book had more of a swords and sorcery take on the X-Lore, which is cool. Colin McKay was a mutant who was transported to the alternate world of Ee’rath. In this alien world, he’s treated as an omen. He is welcomed into Queen Ai’sha’s court and trained by her lizard wizard to become a warrior, skilled with a pair of magical swords that only harm those not pure of heart. As he hits his teen years, his mutant powers kick in, as happens, and he becomes a feline mutant not unlike Feral or Beast. He’s a great champion to his people. That’s all fine with me, this is typical Excalibur fare for it’s Chris Claremont/Alan Davis era. It’s his secondary mutation of sound mimicry that just seems terribly out of place. And if that isn’t enough of a head scratcher for you, of all the 198 who were spared in Decimation, this guy is one of them. Huh.
Wraith – There are so many awesome Wraiths in the Marvel universe, either in concept or costume. This Wraith is not one of them. This Wraith is Hector Rendoza, a mutant from Boston who could turn his skin translucent. That’s not even invisibility, I mean you could see his muscles and organs like that one Ninja Turtles action figure whose name escapes me. And he could do it to other people, too. That’s useful, right? That’s where Hector’s brand of suck comes in: the late Jean Grey had to break it to him that his full potential should have been to become invisible, the awesome Sue Storm kind. Instead he was depowered. At least he had an awesome name.
Ink – Forget this kid. This could be interesting, but since I’m trying to spin a list of the worst characters, I’m going to make him read like a terrible character in a bad fan fiction or roleplaying game. Ink is Eric Gitter, a smart-aleck and “bad ass” teen with a criminal background. He’s so bad ass, he debuts fighting the police in a tatoo parlor. So bad ass. And he’s not a mutant. Instead, he has a mutant tattoo artist, Leon Nunez. The way this works is Ink tells his tatoo artist what each tattoo means, and then the tattoos grant it. For example: his initial tattoo of a biohazard symbol gives everyone a mystery sickness. And he doesn’t even know this until the X-Men tell him, “Sorry, turns out you’re a flatscan”.
He quits the team, because he’s an angry young man, but he has to come back and save the day with two new tattoos. Here’s the kicker. It’s not the caduceus tattoo that lets him mimic Elixer’s healing gimmick. It’s the Phoenix Force symbol he gets over his eye. Yes, that Phoenix, the Phoenix Force symbol that floats over Rachel Summers’ eye. The same Phoenix Force that empowers hosts like Rachel Summers and Jean Grey. The Phoenix Force is omnipotent, and he can channel it with this stupid tattoo. He even uses it remove the tattoos from his rivals the Y-Men, who also have powers from Ink’s buddy Nunez. Now that I say all this, maybe Leon Nunez is the worst X-Men character by association, but he didn’t pirate the Phoenix Force through a tattoo torrent file sharing process.
Like I said, dude really loves his X-Men. I forgot Ink and Kylun existed.
Next up is an interesting take from James Fulton, who decided to take our theme to a completely different level to spice things up.
I thought, to make this more interesting for myself, that I would limit my discussion to one particular era and set of books: The Worst Characters in the X-Men books not written by Grant Morrison while Grant Morrison was writing X-Men”.
Stacy X: Joe Casey’s run on Uncanny X-Men should be remembered forever simply for the fact that it introduced an actual mutant prostitute onto the team, and made no effort to hide who and what she was. Comics – Not Just for Kids! Stacy had some potential, but it got squandered pretty quickly, as Casey’s run devolved into a morass of clashing art styles (Ian Churchill and Sean Phillips? what a weird pairing) and incomprehensible stories. Then Chuck Austen took over, and the character became pretty terrible.
Sammy the Fish Boy: Young Sammy Pare was basically just a mutant fish boy, who seemed to only exist in the comic to be the Juggernaut’s friend. It was amusing to think of him as the Kitty Pryde of a new generation – one that would have an opposite effect to that of Kitty, and not become every young girl (or boy’s) dream boyfriend, but instead the character you most hoped to see killed off with every new issue.
Annie Ghazikhanian: Annie was a nurse who was looking after Havok. I think that Havok’s mind was off in the Mutant X series or something, but somehow, Annie decided by looking at him that he was a good guy, and she fell in love with his mindless, comatose body. This led to her and her son Carter (an honorable mention) moving to the Xavier School, and taking up way too much time in each issue being melodramatic and annoying.
Husk: I know that Paige Guthrie had been around since at least the start of Generation X, but she became a truly terrible character under Chuck Austen’s tenure. She started dating Angel (who started wearing a loincloth over his costume), who had to be at least 15 years older than her, allowing for a very generous use of Marvel time. She also kept showing up naked, as Austen contrived to use her powers as a way of objectifying her over and over again, in the most puerile way possible. I still hate this character.
Jay Guthrie/Icarus: Not being content with ruining one of the Guthrie family, Austen decided it was time to mutant-ize another one of the family, Cannonball’s younger brother Jay. Basically, he has wings and a healing factor, and can play the guitar really well. He was exactly like Angel, which makes Warren’s relationship with Paige even creepier. Austen introduced him in a story that is more or less a mutant/human Hatfield and McCoy version of Romeo and Juliet. Only emo. Horrible.
Lifeguard: I think it’s not fair to just pick on Chuck Austen here; Chris Claremont was writing some pretty horrible X-Men comics during that era too (how bad were they? X-Tremely bad!). He introduced the character of Lifeguard, who was, wait for it, an Australian lifeguard in her everyday life, before developing the abilities to fly, be covered in gold, and react to threats like Darwin does. Her name alone was enough to get her on this list.
Slipstream: With a sister who’s a lifeguard, I guess it only makes sense that Slipstream would be a surfer, who when his powers manifested, stuck with the surfer motif, looking like an X-treme Norrin Radd, who could navigate wormholes on a short metal surfboard, or something like that. He became one of the best arguments for M Day I can think of.
I think he makes a good point here; that entire era that ran alongside Grant was trash. Trash that I own wayyyyyy too much of. I hate Chuck Austen, I really do. Because I own all but three issues of his X-Men tenure and, to this day, I will blame my OCD and nothing else. I had to complete the run. Bullshit, I got back onto Uncanny X-Men with that run, there was no run to break up in the first place!
Next up to bat is Joe “Don’t Call Me Joey” Smith.
Honourable mention: Angel Salvadore
I don’t hate this character. I didn’t mind her existence, but I didn’t really care much about her either. I think my dislike for her came more from the X-Men First Class movie though…I’m not sure.
7. Maggot
He name was Maggot. He had two maggots or slugs called Eany and Meany. They would eat stuff and then crawl into his stomach and feed him energy. I don’t really have to say anything more than that. A few changes though and perhaps he could’ve been a better character.
6. Sugar Man
I never liked this character and the less said about him the better. He was a stowaway from the Age of Apocalypse and of all the characters in that universe, he was one of them to come over. He had no 616 counterpart (the regular Marvel universe) because there wasn’t any reason for him to exist there! I disliked him from the get go, but I despised him after he existed beyond AoA. Even in X-Men Legends II: The Rise of Apocalypse video game he was incredibly stupid and beating him literally just took me running around in circles.
5. Feral
When I was a young kid, all I could think was that why is she even necessary to have around? They just had a longstanding character in Wolfsbane leave the group and they replaced her with this. She had trouble being in control of her impulses and even gutted Cannonball. This was so surprising and new as X-readers had no idea what it was like for a dangerous character that had control issues to be a member. Sarcasm aside, I remember thinking that she really seemed like a Wolverine rip-off. She even had the cheesiest lines and this is saying something considering she was in a ‘90s X-Force title. I was just a kid and even I could figure this out! I wish she just stayed in the Morlock tunnels.
4. Vulcan
He had the potential to be a good character, but it’s the execution that threw me off. He was such a whiny brat and I know he was angry, etc. for what had been done to him. However, at the time when I was reading his story all I could think was that my four year old nephew is more rational than this guy. I know the accelerated growth process stunted his emotional growth, but still he ended up being a poor payoff to the third Summers brother storyline introduced way back in X-Men #23. He was shipped off into deep space and might have died in a battle with Black Bolt, but Marvel brings Feral back to life so he’s coming back some time. Perhaps having either Gambit or Adam-X being the mysterious third Summers brother might not have been that bad after all.
3. Stacy X
Her power set was a different idea and I liked seeing it in action a couple of times (when she helped a terminally ill man). I just couldn’t get into the character though and when she lost her powers in Decimation turned out to be a real head scratcher. So up to this point she never actually physically had uh, relations with any of her customers because of the nature of her powers. However, she loses them and then decides to become an actual prostitute. Ugh, then later on she proceeded to engage in a threesome with Sugar Kane (like she ever needed to be brought back) and Ultimate Nullifier. I always thought that if they held back on her sexual impulses she would’ve been more interesting and had more depth. But no, she wasn’t conflicted and was just all horned up all the time. She was supposed to be a sensual character that exuded sexuality, but she just looked gross with all of her scales, snake eyes, and reptile belly.
2. Xorn
Okay, had he just stayed as Magneto in disguise he wouldn’t have been on this list. Even before it was revealed to be Magneto I still didn’t mind Xorn as he had this holistic approach to life and connected well with misfits. One pet peeve that I had about the original Xorn was that he was intended to be Magneto from the start. Why didn’t he wear gloves then? His hands looked Caucasian and not Chinese. So after the storyline ended and Morrison left the title, Xorn was now made evil by Sublime to pretend to be Magneto and then the X-Men find another Xorn who wears the same mask and is supposed to be his twin brother, but he has a huge vacuum in his mask instead of a tiny star. The last I recall seeing of this character was he needed some time away because he sucked the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants into his head. I might have seen more afterwards, but I most likely blocked it out of my head.
1. The Neo
One. Note. Characters. They were introduced after the Revolution, which restarted the X-titles and they took place six months after the end of the storyline when the High Evolutionary depowered all mutants. There was the main group, another group called the Lost Souls, a pirate group, a shock rider group, and another group called The Goth. I remember reading that they were all connected, but it was difficult to tell exactly how they were at the time. The concept was there and their connections to the future made for some interesting possibilities. I remember this one scene where Rogue was fighting a member and he wiped the floor with her and afterwards she claimed that she knew his moves now. This wasn’t apparent at all during the fight and just seemed like lazy storytelling. They were supposed to be the next level of mutants, but they were abandoned when Magneto showed up and completely obliterated two of them to bring the others under his command. They were so uninteresting and boring to read about. I also didn’t see how all of the groups needed to be members of the Neo. The execution again is what hurt a potentially good idea. The X-Men titles had any potential momentum from the revamp taken away with really flat stories.
You know what? I have never read the Neo in any form, and I plan to keep it that way.
Man, awesome lists. It’s really going to take some work on my part to anchor this, and while normally I’d try to put my entry in the middle…this time mine is inspired to find the worst seven characters that none of these guys thought about. I’ll admit it, a few of my choices have popped up already (Joseph, Maggot, and Stacy X), so this list really took a bit of work to get together.
7. Tag – His name was Tag and his power was he could touch someone and make them ‘It’ and everyone would run away from them. Not making this one up.
6. Sunfire – Can someone name something worthwhile that Sunfire has done aside from having an awesome design in the Age of Apocalypse? No? Moving on.
5. Sage – Chris Claremont’s little spy for the sake of having a telepath wound up turning into a walking plot device. Need information? Ask Sage. Need computer work? Ask Sage. Solve a murder mystery? Ask Sage. Trigger a mutation in someone? Ask Sage. She was a pet character who went to all of his books once he made his return. She was the plot device in X-Treme X-Men, the plot device in Uncanny (where she went back to the Hellfire Club to help Sunspot), the plot device in New Excaliber (where they never explained her leaving the Hellfire Club), and then someone came up with the most absurd task of all. Need someone to help defend the multiverse? Ask Sage! The best thing to ever happen to her was being frozen in the Crystal Wall in Exiles, which is easily the best part of the third volume.
4. Zero – What if the guy from Akira was an X-Man? That’s the question somebody had to ask when the creation of Kenji Uedo took place. Did you read Generation Hope? If not, you probably have no idea who he is, but go look him up. He was one of the Five Lights, and his powers were techno organic manipulation, which he used to make art. The entire series he saw himself as the villain and planned typical movie villain revenge while doing creepy things, all the way up until he made his ‘surprise’ turn to try and kill Hope. The character was creepy and forgettable, and despite how great Kieron Gillen’s run was on the book, he was the worst part of it.
3. Thunderbird – All he did was die. Period. End of story. That’s, quite literally, all he did. He made his debut in Giant Size X-Men, and then died in his first issue of the regular series. Sure, he’s had post death impact, but it’s his brother that I’d say, beyond the shadow of a doubt, is actually a solid character. Thunderbird was just a stereotype that died angry and served more purpose years after his death than he did in life, and the fact that his name is actually a legacy just pisses me off.
Especially since this spot is a tie, and the other entry is Thunderbird III, Neal Shaara. He was around when I got back into comics, and I think it took me one issue to want to knee him repeatedly in the groin. Maybe it was that he was a pompous dick, maybe it’s that his powers were lame, maybe it was the crappy costume, or maybe it was the fact that I quickly learned that he was banging Psylocke before her death and then immediately rebounded. The best thing he ever contributed was his ex-girlfriend, Prime Sentinel. One of my favorite underrated X characters.
2. Bishop – I hate Bishop. I really do. I didn’t like him on the animated series, I didn’t like him in the comics when I was a kid, and I didn’t like him when I was in my early twenties. He’s a cop from a bad future that, despite countless attempts at defining, has never been decently defined as it seems like the default apocalyptic future for any X story to go to if they want to use one. Like, currently, he’s from the future where Hope killed millions of humans and mutants are in camps…but he eventually gets out to become a mutant cop? The animated series merged Bishop with Days of Future Past, but in the comics his was unique enough. I mean, Days of Future Past was Senator Kelly getting killed causing a Sentinel Armageddon, his version was vague but eventually revealed that Hope led to the mutants in camps which in turn led to a Sentinel Armageddon. Then, apparently, the Summers Rebellion which freed the camps was what wound up putting them into camps, and Cyclops and Doctor Doom are alive and very old. There was some cool work from Peter David to come out of it, but for the most part, Bishop is just awful. Especially his villain run where he was as boring as they come. If you want an example of 90’s character gone wrong, he’s it.
1. Hope Summers – Now, let me get this straight, I do not hate Hope. Not a tiny little bit, actually, she’s a character I’ve followed since her debut in Messiah Complex, and then through the Cable series (which I was sold on just because it was Cable), and then since I read X-Men I’ve seen her ever since. So why is a character I don’t hate topping this list of the worst characters? Because she is a mass of wasted potential; a mutant messiah that sat sidekick through her own destiny to both Cyclops and Captain America. A character we were told was important, who we were beaten in the head repeatedly with just how significant she was going to be; and she was a glorified sidekick. She’s a distinctly different character depending on who is writing her, and goes from strong female lead to scared kid in a heartbeat. She should be a seventeen year old who doesn’t need powers to be badass, because she was raised by Cable in hostile environments, raised as a soldier, and didn’t even manifest her powers until he died. This isn’t a girl who is going to cower in the face of danger, or take orders she has no interest in. She isn’t going to seek someone out to fight her battles, and she isn’t going to sit by and let them do it. Unfortunately, that’s what AVX turned into. She was almost forgotten for more than half the series, before finally being used as nothing more than a simple plot device before being shuffled off to whichever writer wants to try and rebuild her.
And there you have it! It’s a lot more than seven characters, but it’s a pretty big compilation of the worst of the X-Men!
We’ll be back with another feature in a few days for Thanksgiving, and with a host of reviews for tomorrow, so have a good afternoon and keep coming back for more!
