All I know is, Ryan made a comment at last year's NYCC about Morrison's New X-Men having too little reuse potential. It's not true!!!!! Sunspot wore Cyclops' New X-Men look throughout Ewing's run. Make them now!!!!!!
@h-bird It's also a bit of a double edged sword. While being fans and having more than a "job" interest in the line is a good thing, it can also lead to unconscious bias against characters that the team doesn't like. Or putting certain looks/teams ahead of others because they like them.
Dan clearly has a love for the 90s animated era and that in general is a good thing, but it can also lead to him probably promoting characters/teams he favours over others choices that may have never had a figure done to date. Now that isn't a problem in general if you like the same thing (and of course he isn't the sole decision maker), but it can be an issue if you want other era looks and they keep going back to the same era with ever more obscure characters.
Same for Dwight and his supposed dislike of Banshee. How long did it take to get a Banshee finally? And then of course it was the 90s version rather than the original yellow/green look that, seemingly, a lot of the fandom wanted first.
Overall I think the ML team is doing a good job, and if they weren't fans we might have a line that is A-List heavy every wave, but being fans can also lead to blind spots.
For sure it can be a mixed bag, but it also begs the question - is there an "unbiased" way to run a line like this? There's no scientific polling to determine the exact right mix of characters that should be made - market research, sure, but a lot of it just comes down to individual tastemakers, demands from the license holder, and what they think will sell based on precedent and what's in the zeitgeist. Dan's love of the 90s may be a big part of why we got a Spider-Man retro line, but he also was clearly reading something right - those seem to sell as well as anything else they make, and the 90s animated series are suddenly all the rage with X-97. So he wasn't just being a fan, but also doing his job well.
It's also tough to know with stuff like Banshee - was Dwight *actually* holding back a figure, or was that a running joke they had with the fandom until they found a place to fit him in? I hope it's the latter, but who knows?
Does anyone know how big the ML team is? I've never given it much thought, but now I'm curious how many people are behind the scenes.
@h-bird Well I am clearly the right choice to run the ML line. My opinion on character selection and how/when/what price, etc would be completely unbiased and perfectly line up with every other collector out there.
Oh and if you believe that I also have a bridge in the Florida everglades I can sell you....hahaha
I imagine the ML team is doing a pretty great job right now. Of course there will always be those of us who feel there isn't enough representation of an era we love at any given time. However that can easily change. Also the team has to juggle comic versus MCU which a can make character selection difficult as well.
I'm sure the Dwight/Banshee thing is overblown to say the least. I doubt he doesn't like Banshee that much that it kept him out of the line. However I guess we can never really know and the whole Jesse Falcon Doom head for Galactus is an example of sometimes catering to specific tastes may not work.
If anything the biggest issue holding back characters is probably cost/popularity (and higher ups not agreeing to the cost).
All I know is, Ryan made a comment at last year's NYCC about Morrison's New X-Men having too little reuse potential. It's not true!!!!! Sunspot wore Cyclops' New X-Men look throughout Ewing's run. Make them now!!!!!!
Well, that sucks to hear. They could make Wolverine now with existing parts. The others would be more difficult. Still a no-brainer, though. New X-Men is arguably the most important X-Men story since Giant-Size.
Does anyone know how big the ML team is? I've never given it much thought, but now I'm curious how many people are behind the scenes.
Obviously I have no idea, but I get the sense that it's larger than any of us realize. Dwight probably works with an entire team of product designers. They've also carted out a few different team members over the years. (I believe they interviewed a person who does digital coloring during PulseCon(?) one year.) It's definitely much, much bigger than the three faces of the brand.
New X-Men is arguably the most important X-Men story since Giant-Size.
The word "arguably" doing so much heavy lifting in that sentence it's gonna get a hernia. If you think Morrison's New X-Men is more important than the Dark Phoenix Saga you are certifiably INSANE.
I get that there are different strokes for different folks. And Morrison's run was certainly different. And clearly it appealed to you. But MOST important? Come on man.
I wouldn't call Morrison's run more important than Claremont's objectively, but it's more important to me personally. Morrison > Claremont > Ewing/Hickman > Remender/Gillen would be my personal stack rank of X-Writers.
I wouldn't call Morrison's run more important than Claremont's objectively, but it's more important to me personally. Morrison > Claremont > Ewing/Hickman > Remender/Gillen would be my personal stack rank of X-Writers.
That's fair - there's no accounting for taste after all 😉
I really didn't much enjoy Morrison's run on the book. I recognize that the writing and ideas were miles better than stuff that guys like Lobdell or Chuck Austen or even late stage Claremont were churning out. But I didn't enjoy the direction he took the characters particularly much - I preferred Whedon's Astonishing stretch for sure. And I'm not sure how much of a lasting impact it's really had - Cassandra Nova has stuck around I suppose and there are a few things that linger but important...
Morrison's X-men comics were a kinetic shot in the arm at a point when the X-men were flatter than the paper they were printed on. If they're skittish about reuse potential about frickin' X-men of all things then they need to squint at themselves in a mirror and rethink.
I have to stop myself from making my own Morrison Jean. I love that turtleneck look. I have most of the parts to make it.
Hot take, fuck New X-Men, give me Ultimate X-Men because I love the X-Men Legends games.
I would absolutely love to get some New X-Men figures. Also I’m sure there’s some reuse potential in a jacketed male torso. C’mon now.
@h-bird Well I am clearly the right choice to run the ML line. My opinion on character selection and how/when/what price, etc would be completely unbiased and perfectly line up with every other collector out there.
Oh and if you believe that I also have a bridge in the Florida everglades I can sell you....hahaha
I imagine the ML team is doing a pretty great job right now. Of course there will always be those of us who feel there isn't enough representation of an era we love at any given time. However that can easily change. Also the team has to juggle comic versus MCU which a can make character selection difficult as well.
I'm sure the Dwight/Banshee thing is overblown to say the least. I doubt he doesn't like Banshee that much that it kept him out of the line. However I guess we can never really know and the whole Jesse Falcon Doom head for Galactus is an example of sometimes catering to specific tastes may not work.
If anything the biggest issue holding back characters is probably cost/popularity (and higher ups not agreeing to the cost).
Also, while I understand the frustration of certain fan favorites not being made, a franchise as big as X-Men is inevitable going to leave someone pissed off because there are literally dozens of members and maybe hundreds of potential costumes to choose from when all is said and done. When you factor in that we get like maybe two non-MCU (I’m counting the 97 figures as MCU for sake of simplicity) X-waves a year, I can see how there are still fan favorites missing.
Totally. But it's the Marrinas and Wolfsbanes and Rachels, over and over, that really sting. If Hasbro just finished the teams they start before starting new teams, I think the character selection complaint would be complained 75% less than it is. Keep the character ball rolling, but stop trolling, y'know?
It is extremely satisfying to complete a team. Hasbro should let us do it more often. (Hint - Gen X!)
For how important it is, Morrison era New X-Men is definitely *the* most overlooked piece of the X-Men mythos in ML. I'd buy the whole lineup in a heartbeat - and I'd take some of the younger mutant students from around that same time too.
Hot take, fuck New X-Men, give me Ultimate X-Men because I love the X-Men Legends games.
I'd much rather have Ultimate X-Men than New X-Men. Morrison's run seems important to those that genuinely like it, but it's a niche X-Men era. It always struck me that Morrison was just trying to be controversial with characters he didn't really care anything for, so he tossed out most continuity and did whatever he wanted. The designs I mostly disliked; never-in-a-shirt-but-wearing-a-leather-jacket Wolverine, Cyclops' thin visor and puffy jacket, Emma's bustier and X-diaper look, and cat-faced Beast just seemed too Ron Pearlman Beauty & The Beast tv show from the 80s. Plus the team was incredibly small, the supporting characters were just weird for the sake of being weird and counterculture and likely belonged more with the Morlocks. Visually, there were a few times I liked the designs, such as the Adam Hughes Jean Grey / Emma pinup, and I thought the VanSciver Emma cover and issue where Wolverine met Dust was interesting, but overall it was just another "A-list" writer turning X-Men into what he wanted before moving on and leaving the books to revert back to something resembling the X-Men.
I didn't find the new characters to be all that interesting either. Fantomex at least looked cool, but we already had a quasi-French infiltration artist / thief, and John Sublime to me was just absurd (an ancient sentient bacteria that hates mutants and vows to destroy them?), Xorn was interesting enough for a few issues, but like so many other "new" characters was discarded. Never really liked Angel Salvatorre, or her taking up the moniker of Angel just because.
To each their own. I enjoyed the "Here Comes Tomorrow" story mostly for the Silvestri art and the fact that is was an elseworlds story, which I think better suits writers who want to write X-Men books but don't care much about connecting or long-running lore in the 616.
I remember really liking the Ultimate X-Men stories and visuals intensely for roughly the first 12 issues at least. Ultimatum kinda ruined it all at the end though. Overall I remember reading X-Treme X-Men, mediocre as it was at times, just to have some X-Men with some color in their costumes and personalities as I remember them. Scott cheating on Jean never felt that credible to me beyond the "oh no, look what happened" aspect to it. To me it just undermined what I enjoyed in the 90s, particularly Scott and Jean finally getting married in the first place. Adjectiveless X-Men #24 and #30 were great covers and the X-Men were still a family. It wasn't continually "Just when you thought Xavier couldn't get any worse, here comes..."
Not saying they shouldn't make figures, just that I don't really want any of them aside from a Adam Hughes-styled Jean.
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