Finally got done taking pictures of Fans Hobby's Power Baser.

I celebrated by this.

 

Thanks for the confirmation!
It tells A LOT that the only good thing is a focus on a Scott Lobdell character  

 

Lobdell had his moments, but it all went downhill when Nicieza left (see also: X-Force, Cable & New Warriors; all of which really struggled after he left.). He did great character issues though - Uncanny 297 & 308/9 were pretty damn good, and the death of Illyana (in 303?) was heartbreaking!

 

Basically this is how I do the wingpack, instead of tabbing the first section of the wing flat onto the peg below/behind the smokestacks...

I let 'em vector to form this diamond cross-section, that the jet portion when properly extended can fold it's fins to sit against...

...and the sword side peg and hilt stop it dropping through.

 

After Onslaught is the point I gave up on collecting x-books. Love eveything Peter david did - got into him with star trek novels - and the xfactor therapy issue perfectly expained why quicksilver is such a dick.

 

... He's the Barber of the X-Men !

 

 

That X-Factor issue was fantastic. It's a shame his original run got cut short.

I think I'm forgiving of anyone who isn't Chuck Austen. That was a dark time. Althought the entire 1999 output was pretty damn dreadful!

I tortured myself with bad X comics for far too long...

 

It really is an absolute nightmare and really hard not to be cynical about the govt's intentions in providing welfare for those in need. As far as 'fooling the system' goes I'd say the cases were extremely rare (at least in the area and demographics I worked with: small community based advice agencies in high ethnic minority areas). You need a lot of skills, effort and time to be able to fake you your way through that quagmire. In fact I can say with conviction, the system literally kills people. I used to be able to ream off empirical evidence but it's been a while. We did do some interesting work with an LSE research team who were looking at welfare systems across the country. Check it out if you have time http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/69502/1/blogs.lse.ac.uk-The end of austerity Not for the most needy.pdf

 

Merci!

 

I'd click that link but I think I'd fimd a bit to depressing. Fittingly.

I've largely avoided the whole mental health thing thus far partly because I feel like I tend to bang on about it a lot, and partlt because my head isn't quite in the right space for it (mainly due to having fucked my back which is making it hard to sleep.)

Discussing mental health is a terrifying thing for a lot of people. While those of us with the dodgy brains are encouraged to be open about it, we never know how it's going to be received. I've lost friends by being open about it.

It's partly due to the stigma that comes with it - people are conditioned to react in a certain way, primed by media, goverment, and prevailing cultural norms. There's still an element of the freakshow in the way the mentally ill are regarded. Hell, mental illnesses are still used as an insult - you can find people calling others bipolar/off their meds on this very board.

We're edging slowly towards acceptence, but the other half of the problem is that people with mental illnesses are the least likely to complain about how they're treated. You know, what with the dodgy wiring and all.

I guess what I'm trying to get at (if anything) is that people should think twice before questioning someones mental health or using it against them. It's bloody horrible knowing that you're limited by something out of your control.

Amyway, that's me off my soapbox. This thread has been a light in the dark for me at times.  

 

Thomas/Adams - Clarmont (1) - Morrison. And that's it. Honestly.
Sure there are some good stuff in others runs, like with Kelly or even Carey (mostly because Ramos/Bachalo <3) and Fraction, but at the end of the day, that's it, that's the three essentials.
That's strickly X-Men speaking.
Mutants-wise, PAD both runs with X-Factors are fantastic (X-Amination is indeed a classic!), I do give credits to Lobdell about some stuff with Gen X (to me the best part of AoA), New Mutants by Clarmont and Simonson, Excalibur by Davis is love, Aaron's Wolverine (& the X-Men include) is awesome, still have a fondness for the Clarmont/Silvestri issues of Wolverine (Silvestri and Green at their best), Adam Pollina's X-Force are interesting (and if not, cool to look at), Miligan and Allred X-Force/X-Static are priceless, some Exiles by Winick aren't that bad, a good portion of Remender's Uncanny X-Force is great and... That's it ? Mantlo's Alpha Flight, sort of.


Ouh right, Spurrier's Legion.
And Millar's Wolverine might be the only thing I like from him at Marvel (Ultimate X-Men has aged horribly). It's stupid, really, but stupid good. The kind I like. + Romita Jr in shape.


And you could argue that Morisson's Doom Patrol is the best X-Men run buuut that would be an endless discussion.

 

I'd add Nicieza's Gambit run, Kelly's vable and Milligan's highly underrated X-Men run in as well. Oh, and Gillen's Uncanny run was pretty decent, hampered by AvX though it was.

The X books have sadly been in the doldrums for years. Which is why Marvel should pick up my six year rescue plan!  

 

You know what, I've never read those Gambit comics. It was a dark age for me... 17... All those beers... Erm, anyway, I did some catch up later but not with those ones (same about this Alex Summer team which name I can't remember).
Ouh, speaking of Fabian, soooome cable & Deadpool were alright. And speaking of Deadpool, the Lapham and Baker run is a must that i didn't mention.
Miligan could be an interesting discussion (I don't like most of it, and I ADORE Miligan, but yeah, this is a run which contains things to discuss and just for that it is much much worthy than, I don't know... Hum. Whedon)

Anyway, time to retire now, work is calling (12 years later I still don't know why though), but I do want to say this: It's been a "eh" weekend, very sick, stuck at home, worrying about serious stuff, and popping in this thread did some real good.
As was, between two posts, randomly watch some Brad Jones (the Cinema Snob) videos and damn I laught so hard it physically hurts sometimes. I forget how funny he was.
Highly recommended for your next cold or bad mood day.

 

Other fave X-runs not mentioned thus far - Whedon's Astonishing, PAD's Madrox series that preceeded X-Factor Investigations and the orginal Longshot series (Art Adams!). I really liked Nicieza's Cable and Deadpool, and Brian Vaughan's Chamber mini.

As for worst X-book?

Howard Mackie's Mutant X. Even worse than Chuck Austen. Truly, truly abysmal.

 

Yeah I do include the Maddrox mini when I speak about X-Factor, but you are right to mention it, in any cases.
Longshot, for sure <3 Adams, and Nocenti is as good as she is an incredible person. let's include the X-Babies while we're at it.
Whedon's run on the other hand... Huuuuuuuuum, I still feel nothing muuuch about it. It's not bad at all, really, oh man, we had far worse, waaaay worse, and it still very enjoyable, but... Yeah, I still don't see the mass appeal about it. It's good but... Very forgettable ?
I have a massive complain about how it was perceived as a "return to the classic X-Men" approach after Morisson, when in fact... Morisson WAS -his entire tenure- a massive CLASSIC X-Men approach. That's the core of his entire run damnit.
Every single page of Morisson's run is a love letter of the X-Men past. You've got the Magneto reveal twist like the Thomas/Adams issue, you've got the most SOAP opera X-Men ever (I mean, the evil twin twist alone would be enough), and X-Men at his core was a soap, you've got Shiars Vs Phoenix, you've got the new generation, you've got the so promised "Mutants will be the next step" finally being here with thousands and thousands of them everywhere, you've got Sentinels, Wolverine's past, Frost as the "enemy who becomes a X-Men", you've got a bactery as their worst enemy. A bactery. Against evolution. And yes time travel and dystopian future. I mean, it's SO "X-Men: The Tropes" it's almost boring ! (It's not, but you see what I mean).
But Whedon put Kitty Pride remembering the past in one page and boum "This is classic X-Men!"
... Damn you people.
Of course this has nothing to do with the quality of the run itself, evidently (it's just that... Damn this piss me off), and to be honest I kind of like it (I remember defending it something like 8 years ago on a french board when I saw critics I didn't find fair), there's real good stuff in it but at the end of it it still... I don't know, not THAT good. Enjoyable, yeah, even with the awkward stuff like Piotr return or the "Sniff sniff, hum, you two had sex I see" (really ?), there's still a lot to like, but, to me anyway, I can't put it in the classic stuff. But I understand why some do, and I'm very cool with it, because it's still a good comic.
It's kind like Whedon's (first) Avengers movie in a way. I really like it, really, it's a really good fun action movie, but it's really not my favorite in the MCU. While not being the least enjoyable, far from it. Age of Ultron is something else.

Sorry this was too long a post for nothing really interesting for you to read but I'm currently supposed to count newspaper packages to dispatch from a truck and believe me, this post is not long enough to me right now.

This is why tomorrow night I'll be reviewing Thor: Ragnarok and oh boy, you're in for a treat.

 

Last Marvel comics I read was Ultimate X-Men and Ultimate Spiderman. Yeah, I’m old and I don’t read that much.


Robits wise I’m actually really struggling selling my IF dudes + BC Sunsurge on eBay or Twitter. Have more interesting prices than Chinese sellers and still no touch. Quite tough to sell these days.


Other than that I’ve decided to not focus on lines anymore. I want to enjoy on the moment. It’ll probably make my collection small groups instead of big families like I used to think. But it’s definitely where I want to go now.
Perfect example is future T-Beast GT figs. Absolutely no interest in BW things but man I love how good sleek and dynamic these Optimus and Sideswipe look. Seem to just come out of the Zukan illustrations.


Bonne journée tout le monde!

 

Gambit was a great series. Far better than the Mackie miniseries. I've never reax the Lapham Deadpool, but I've long rated the Kelly Deadpool run as one of the best superhero comics of the '90s. I've quite enjoyed what I've read of the Duggan run so far too.

Christ, Mutant X was bad. Oddly, Bloodstorm seems to be making a come back in the new Exiles series. It's by Saladin Ahmed so should be worth a look!

(The Winick Exiles was pretty decent too. It went downhill after he left though.)

Morrison was the last writer to get that the X-Men are supposed to be proactively seekimg change. Everything since has pretty much cast them in the traditional superhero role. By far the worst thing to happen post-Morrison was the junking of his new concepts in favour of the back-in-spandex approach from Whedon. Followed closely by Decimation.

(Whedon's run is a bit slight. It doesn't feel like the big event that Marvel promoted it as, and a lot of the story could be told with any characters slotted in place of the X-Men. It was a bit of a lost opportunity, really.)

Morning all! Welcome to the newly derailed X-Men appreciation thread!  

 

Pardon my french, but I'm super fucking tired.

Have a good day people. You, I love.

 

This is how I'm starting to think of approaching the hobby, too. Selling off a lot of stuff, and just picking up things which look nice. Not worrying about completing lines or anything, just picking and choosing. So my last few purchases have been quite random but all quite lovely.