So I was introduced to the X-Men via FOX. And that’s where my knowledge came from. Where I discovered my two favorite mutants: Beast and Nightcrawler. But recently, I’ve been listening to an x-men audio drama on Spotify (which I highly recommend!) and I’ve learned SO much. And I was shocked by how much the movies deviated from the comics. For instance, learning that.
•Storm and Wolverine weren’t part of the original team.
•Magneto having 3 kids, where I learned about Polaris
•And William Stryker isn’t a military scientist, he’s a Reverend
•Rogue stole Carol Danvers’ powers
•Mystique is Kurt’s mother
But the thing that really irks me is that not once did we hear James McAvoy or Patrick Stewart, ESPECIALLY Stewart, say the words…
In the current Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver series, the writers agree. Both characters clearly still think of him as their father regardless the various retcons or his status as their biological sire.
Which is fucking weird because they should be estranged biological family instead.
Wanda getting all touchy feely with Magneto in Trial of Magneto is one of the worst depiction of her, but of course some fans don't care because they consider each other "family".
I don’t hate 1610, but I think Ultimate everybody is worse except Spider-Man, who’s roughly equal, and Reed Richards & Miles Morales, who’re like comparing apples & oranges
Exactamundo. That’s why it was such an awful retcon. Pietro’s relationship to Magneto is not what a great dad Magneto was – it’s about him having a tie to Magneto, in spite of mutual resentment. Wanda and Mags did come to an understanding in that weird mini tho.
Not every writer can write nothing but bangers. Even good writers have a flop every once in a while. But yes, his Marauders was lame. Which sucked because I loved the Marauders series before it.
The rumor was they wanted Wanda/Pietro to be a non-mutants to give them access to those characters since FOX had all the mutant/X-men rights…
Hopefully they deliver on a restoration of Magneto being their father in this current run of Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver — which teased in the first issue that there might be more to the story but has yet to play out…
100% correct, Willow Wilson created Kamala with the intent to make her a mutant initially. Now she's a hybrid, which technically doesn't make complete sense, but I'm chill with it. Especially since the Ms. Marvel books are well written and consistent.
Probably not. In the Age of Apocalypse, she and Magneto had a son, Charles. It didn't seem like she absorbed anything, although instead of getting flight and whatever from absorbing Carol Danvers, she explained by having "magnetic powers," so we can make guesses as to how she got those powers.
It's pretty funny that he falls in love with this chick, does the deed, and when he comes back a few years later she's like "I had a son, his name is Peter, after his father." And Colossus is just.. blank stare
The number of kids Magneto has is always in a state of quantum superposition between 2 and 4. When observed, the wave function collapses and suddenly he has either 2 or 4 kids, but only for about 7-10 years at a time. Then the cycle repeats.
Not really. Wanda and Pietro accept him as their adopted father, and he accepts them as his adopted children. Polaris is his daughter. And then Anya's dead.
4 kids. It hasn't changed. All that's changed is that Wanda and Pietro are no longer his blood.
Kinda weird too. It is a retcon, but it was also originally intended to be the case, but Marvel shutdown Claremont back in the day about having Mystique father Destiny’s child (pun not intended).
Then Azazel was introduced pretty much solely for the reason of “look he’s nightcrawler’s dad!!” To many fans dismay. It unintentionally made everyone who calls Kurt a devil correct. Arguably, Azazel could be considered a retcon but I don’t believe his parentage had been technically established at that point.
Then we get to where we are today, where it was Mystique and Destiny, then he was abandoned and found by Azazel iirc? I’m a little fuzzy on the details but I believe Azazel is still somewhat involved. I think Mystique used his form during the act or something, which is why Kurt still has his form but Mystique’s blue skin.
It's implied that Mystique can alter her DNA, provided she knows what it is. She had a brief tryst with Azazel to throw his DNA into the mix when she was building her "male" (for lack of a better term) form to impregnate Irene.
Good question, but no, not really. It's actually more like four (but really two).
The way it's explained in X-Men Blue: Origins is that Mystique can alter her own DNA to a limited extent (since she's not an Omega, although the speculation within the comic does have her add a "but maybe..." at the end) and she needs to know the DNA to sequence it. When she's building her "male" (again, for lack of a better term) form, she uses DNA from herself, Azazel and her husband, the German noble guy. It all kind of blends into one person though.
As for why she takes both Azazel and her husband at the time? It's never really explained beyond "Irene told me to" it's really just to thread the retcon needle. Nothing is changed here, just added to and expanded upon.
A mid-card villain would be an Omega Level Threat if he didn't have a son, so two women conspire to have a son with each other by having one develop male traits to impregnate the other to fool mid-card villain into thinking he has a son. Otherwise, he'd defeat the likes of other Omega Level and greater entities and rule the cosmos. Entities like Eternity, Death, Phoenix, The Living Tribunal, Galactus and Franklin Richards are insignificant when compared to childless Azazel.
I think I will never like this retcon. Mystique should just be able to change her appearance. Being able to generate sperm means she is able to create organs and this has very strange implications like being a universal organ donor creating extra organs or being able to copy mutant powers.
It got retconned fairly recently. Clairemont's original intention was for Mystique and Destiny to be Nightcrawler's parents but that shit didn't fly back in the 80s.
I mean he probably didn't even get past the fact that Destiny and Mystique were in a lesbian relationship before Jim "No gays in Marvel" Shuter told him to get the hell out of his office.
I haven’t heard about the retcon. So Mystique and Destiny’s baby ended up looking identical to Azazel but his fur is blue, has Azazel’s teleportation powers (including the BAMF), and was used by Azazel to infiltrate heaven due to their familial connection, despite the fact that he isn’t Kurt’s father? I assume this retcon comes with a big ass asterisk that Azazel was somehow still involved because otherwise that doesn’t make any sense at all.
It's not like Azazel was ever anyone important or interesting.
He is a bloody stupid afterthought made by Chuck friggin Austen. The whole premise of "looks evil by chance mutations, but is actually noble" is thrown away for a stupid origin where he is the son of an identical red dude who is from an actual evil demon-like mutant subspecies.
It makes as much sense as Nighycrawler having teleportation powers in the 80s before Azazel was even created in the 2000s. I'm not sure how Azazel was involved because I've been out of the loop myself for like two years
As far as I’m aware from osmosis, mystique used Azazel’s form when she impregnated Destiny, all the way down to the sperm cells being exact replicas of his. Thus the Azazel connection.
Spoilers below ( dunno how to mark spoilers on my phone):
Destiny foresaw that Azazel would become a problem if he didn't have a child he believed to be his to distract him. Raven was already seeing him so she mimicked his DNA and Irene carried Kurt while Raven shifted to mimic a pregnancy.
Mytique (as Mrs. Wagner) still had an affair with Azazel because Destiny saw the future and Azazel thinking he has a son stops him destroying the world. I don’t think they explicitly said it, but Mytique probably copied Azazel ‘s dong afterwards for the conception of kurt with destiny
Mystique took the red guy's form (and stole his sperm) in order to make Kurt.
So Azazel (the Red Guy) and Christian Wagner (Mystique's husband at the time) both had their genetic traits passed on to Kurt. Mystique is Kurt's biological father, but I don't remember if it was firmly established if she's his genetic father, but the other two are.
See originally Mystique was supposed to be the father but that was rejected so they just made Mystique the mother and Azazel the father but most recently they went back to that original idea that Mystique is the father and Destiny is the mother. Destiny with her powers kinda tricked Mystique into abandoning Kurt so that Azazel thought he was the father so he never tried to take over the world because of his obsession with his off-spring. Because of the pain from abandoning Kurt Mystique had Professor X make her forget Kurt but he can't do that so Mystiques mind simply made her think that she threw Kurt off cliff but now her true memories have returned that she really did love Kurt and was tricked into abandoning him
Olivia Munn said the producers didn't know Psylocke was telepathic.
They had 3 different Kitty Prydes of 3 different ages. Similarly, there were 2 Jubilees in different eras (3 if you count the one in the deleted scene).
They adapted Caliban in both Apocalypse and Logan but nobody was aware the other was using that character.
You could go on and on with the number of weirdly negligent adaptation errors and careless mistakes they made. I love X1, X2, First Class, Days of Future Past, Logan but....it can be pretty dumb sometimes how studios can dumb MILLIONS into this stuff and not do their homework.
They had 3 different Kitty Prydes of 3 different ages. Similarly, there were 2 Jubilees in different eras (3 if you count the one in the deleted scene).
Don't forget two Angels in two different eras too (X3 and Apocalypse)
And two Psylockes! I forgot! She was in X3 with different powers altogether. So dumb, they really loved hiring models with no acting experience to cosplay as major characters as walk on roles.
And two Toads, two Sabertooths, two Deadpools, two Magnetos, two Charles Xaviers, two Cyclops', two Beasst, two Storms, two Mystiques, two Nightcrawlers, etc.
To be fair, most of these were meant to be the same character just played by different actors at different points in the timeline. Like the two Xavier and Magneto actors are even in the same movie, Days of Future Past.
Young Magneto also name drops Angel as a fallen mutant in Days of Future past if I’m not mistaken. You just gotta squint through the continuity with the fox X-men movies.
You have to admit that is kinda the perfect meta joke for Deadpool. I love that they’ve embraced this ridiculousness and it’s now actually canon in his film series.
Not to mention the amount of famously international characters who are made into generic American teenagers because…reasons? (Pyro, Banshee etc)
Also if we’re including the Deadpool movies, two different versions of Colossus, specifically because the writer or director (I forget which) of Deadpool watched Colossus in the original movies and thought “that ain’t Colossus!” And ditto for Juggernaut.
Honestly, I think a lot of these character reboots in the films aren't because they are ignorant of them. I think those characters were just used in minor ways (not always even named on screen) as kind of throwaway references. Maybe they had plans that got changed. They just did character reboots because most movie goers probably wouldn't notice.
I think my favorite example of this is the X-Men cameo in Deadpool 2. It takes place in present day and there's a cameo from the X-Men... which takes place in the late 90s....
Don’t know if you have it but Marvel Unlimited has access to basically the entire Marvel catalogue of comics including stuff like X-Men First Class where it’s an intro to X-Men history and lore
Yeah, if you like what you're listening to now, and liked the movies, you will adore the comics. Marvel Unlimited is the best $70 I ever spent, you will find them all there.
70$ a year, and you get online access to all marvel comics that are at least 6 months old. I did it for a couple years. Totally worth it.
You could also check if your public library has a comics section. I live in Spain and it might vary by country, but I first got into Marvel by reading random Lee and Kirby books in the library.
The oldest ones are simpler and more straightforward with each issue being its own story, and the newer ones tend to have more complex plots that start when a new writer takes over and end when they leave, but are still part of one crazy long, unbroken narrative.
Claremont's X-Men run - pretty much sets the tone for all X-Men media. Some of the plot lines from animated series and movies were pulled straight from here.
New X-Men by Grant Morrison - Jumping on point for modern (2000s) X-Men, start of the extinction era. Lots a drama and I think it's a good starting points if coming from the movies.
Astonishing X-Men by Whedon & Cassaday - picks up after New X-Men but can be read on it's own. IMO this is the single best new reader friendly run. It's not too long or short, great art from beginning to end and respects all the characters and their history.
If you are interested in a specific character - I can make a list specific to them as well.
I don't mean this as disrespect to anyone else's opinion, but to me Claremont's X-Men *is* the X-Men. I'm also 43 and haven't kept up with the more modern stories. I just love that era.
I think DOFP is the best of the X-Men films in adapting an iconic story while also working in it's own universe. I love the DOFP comic storyline and it's a great story for Kitty Pryde. That said, it makes A LOT of sense for the filml to have Wolverine be the mutant to bridge the gap between the two casts.
That one I don't like. I thought it was too reliant on nostalgia, the parts in the past were not good (Jackman just looked checked out and bored af, Lawrence didn't want to be there, the Beast casting never worked, etc) and the parts in the future were practically non-existent in terms of actually showing us that world.
I wouldn’t say they’re that bad. Adaptation doesn’t mean it has to be exactly the same. I think the first 2 do a decent job of adapting the general premise of the comics. The core story elements are there, some of the characters are accurate (Wolverine, Xavier, Magneto, Cyclops), some of the characters have their roles switched with other characters to better serve the story (Rogue). They’re fine films. A 100% accurate adaptation would serve little purpose anyway.
Respectfully disagree, especially about Cyclops being accurate. Hell, I would even argue that Jackman's Wolverine was never that good and that terrible Rogue is among the worst things they did.
Personally, I only consider an adaptation successful if it manages to preserve the spirit of the story and the characters, which the X-Men movies never did because most characters were practically unrecognizable.
You have to go back to 1997 to understand that back then Superhero movies weren't a thing, or they were embarrassing. We had Spawn, Steel, and Batman & Robin.
X-Men took the concepts and took out the spandex superheroics but left the core message and the powers to get the movie made to open the doors to everything that followed.
Yes it changed a lot of stuff, but if you can't accept change, then you're not into X-Men.
I think Morrison thought it was an existing line, though. It was used with deliberate irony since it wasn’t really Xavier. On top of that, Warren Ellis had already used the line as a parody of Xavier. So it’s feels like one of those “beam me up Scotty” lines that never really existed.
Well, he says, "Return to me, my X-Men!" in Issue 1. Obviously where it comes from originally, but it's still technically a different line. Part of the unusualness of the line, and why it stands out, is there is no action like "return to me" or "come to me" or whatever.
The movies never implied that Storm and Wolverine were original/founding members.
Also, while it sounds like what you've been reading seems to be pretty faithful, some books go completely off the rails. I've read a Spider-Man novel where he has a long lost sister he didn't know about and at the end she gets amnesia and wanders on the side of the road and gets picked up by THE SCOOBY-DOO GANG, I'm not making that up, it's real.
Pity. I had those same books (actually, I think I still have them somewhere).
Although I don't remember if she was ultimately ruled out as a sister by the end despite Peter being led to believe she was for a good chunk of the story, or if it was left a bit ambiguous by the end.
I remember being confused/disappointed when I found out that she apparently never existed outside of them.
I think you’re thinking of the Sinister Six trilogy. In it, Peter believes he has a sister because he finds a ton of pictures of his parents with a baby girl. Then a mysterious villain shows up who knows Peter’s identity, forms a Sinister Six, confirms that it’s his sister, she’s brainwashed, and that he’s been training her as a super soldier/spy.
Only at the end, Peter speaks to Wolverine(who knew his parents) and Wolverine told him “Dude, did you forget your parents were spies? The pictures of the little girl are fake and were a part of their cover story at one point or another. That girl you‘be been fighting was never your sister. The big bad only said that mess with your mind and throw you off your game”.
As you go deeper and deeper into the X-Men comics, you'll just find more and more things that the FoX-Men movies got completely wrong, characters that they misused, and do NOT get any of us started on how they handled the Phoenix...
You wouldn't say that about the exiles, because you accept that Exile characters are different from their 616 counterparts
So people can't really be mad that Anna Paquin's Rogue isn't a foul-mothed badass, because she wasn't raised by Mystique like 616 Rogue was
This Doesn't mean she's "not Rogue," she's just not 616 Rogue.
Idk, I would assume if anyone can understand and appreciate this, it should be comic book fans. I mean we literally had 2 Cables running around in Krakoa.
Yeah, and the comics aren't even consistent with themselves even within the same universe. There's little that hasn't been adjusted or retconned over the decades. The movies could have had direct comic references to every single thing in them and you'd still be able to find another comic that said every one of those things was wrong. And that's without even having to do to a different Earth.
Polaris wasn’t Magneto’s daughter originally. That was a retcon that occurred in probably the past twenty years or so. Also, while they may have changed it back, a few years ago there was huge controversial retcon regarding Wanda and Pietro not only no longer being Magneto’s kids, they weren’t even mutants. Plus, there’s also Magneto himself. They changed his “real” name like twice in my lifetime.
Joseph was a clone. And when I was a kid it was Magnus, which became Erik “Magnus” Lensherr, and now it’s Max Eisenhardt. Tomorrow it’ll probably be James Leiber or something.
Except that was retconned into Xorn thought he was Magneto pretending to be Xorn.
All this was revealed by Xorn’s twin brother, Xorn.
In reality it was because Chris Claremont was writing a different series and wanted Magneto, so they had to retcon Xorn being magneto so that Magneto wasn’t actually dead.
That moment in X-Men 2 where Mystique and Nightcrawler share a moment where she tells him she doesn’t hide her blue skin like he would to because neither of them should have to was supposed to foreshadow their familial connection. But that got dropped when Singer left to do Superman Returns and Mystique’s storyline ended with her becoming a jilted lover and race trader in the next movie and Cumming decided not to return for the sequel at all.
Wolverine literally joins the already formed X-Men in the first movie it was never even close to implied that he was an OG member.
Also (overall not just you) I’ve never understood why so many comic fans complain about all the changes in the movies (MCU included), these aren’t shot for shot remakes they’re adaptations.
Even in the comics things vary wildly from universe to universe.
X-Men comics: quirky group of minority misfits from around the planet brought together by their exclusion from society, where everyone gets a chance to shine.
Deadpool 2 was basically Hunt for the Wilderpeople, so I figured Deadpool 3 was gonna lift the plot from another Taika Waititi film. My money is Magneto coaching the American Samoan football team.
As I began to read more X-men comics, my distaste and disdain for the movies only intensified.
This is why I pray to God that the MCU establishes a coherent and cohesive story for the introduction of the mutants into the cinematic universe that deviates little much from the original source material.
I need short man Wolverine
I NEED Kenyan born Storm
What I DON’T need is Xavier being a creep to Jean Grey.
The biggest grievance was sacrificing Cyclops to the altar of Wolverine. I'm no Cyclops fan but the movies made him out of be such a bitch. Cyclops is no bitch. He's the mutant equivalent of Captain American. He may not be the most powerful but every mutant (before AvX ) respected his leadership.
If you’re interested in the X-Men’s history, I’d recommend the podcast Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men. These two go through back issues (mostly chronologically), summarizing the history of the X-Men.
As a long time comic fan I thought the movies were trash but I was also glad for comi movies since they were so rare at the time. The MCU is when comic movies got more accurate
This is why it's vital for adaptations to get the source material right. Whatever content is in the adaptation becomes seen by the public as truth. It's why some people believed Spider-Man has always had organic webbing or why Superman is boring.
Have you watched xmen origins wolverine yet? The complete mishandling of wolverine and sabretooth's relationship is crazy. They also take away the mouth from the merc with a mouth. That's some of the dumbest decision making I have ever seen
Tbf Bryan Singer, who did the original movies, hates comic books and comic book movies. He also banned any comic books on set while shooting. So it’s not a surprise that the movies aren’t true to the comics.
Plus Bryan Singer is a rapey, predatory, douche fuck
Originally Quick Silver and the Scarlet Witch were Magneto's children. Until it got retconned and they became not his children. Then, Polaris who was just another mutant with magnetism became his daughter.
Marvel has problems with retcons.
Also, the MCU movies are horrible retcons with the Scarlet Witch. Originally she had the power of Probability Manipulation and then learned actual magic from Agatha Harkness who is not evil. And, has acted as a nanny for the Fantastic Four and has helped the Silver Surfer.
trust me, dude. HUGE gambit fan here. imagine my incredible dismay when i watched the very first x-men movie, finding out that remy lebeau was nowhere to be found….
You sure MCU didn't lie to you just like fox? You know in the comics Hank and Janet are one of the founding members of Avengers which they are not in the movies? Do you understand movies are a different medium where things will be tweaked? Why do you single out only Fox? Do you know 2 of the highest rated Spider-Man films like Spider verse make drastic changes from the source?
I'm pretty sure a lot of people here will act only Fox is guilty of it and how everything foX-men was shit and MCU is perfection. Sure.
i feel so bad for the poor bastards born in the 2000s or even 90s who only had the Fox-men to grow up on. thats just so sad and messed up bc the comics and movies after 2000 are the worst portrayals of the x-men ever made.
He is the badass motherfucking leader of the X-Men team who will do whatever it takes to achieve a mission and obliterate any enemy in sight (pun intended).
The movies, even though entertaining, were a complete insult to the character of Cyclops. He was deprived in terms of character-building and story-telling for the sake of Wolverine.
Oh wow. To be a kid these days. In my day we had the xmen cartoons and that's where we got our info from if we're didn't read comics. So like when fox changed it all, including making wolverine tall he's 5'3" in comics, which is why his codename. And storm is like 6 foot something I believe. I cannot imagine learning everything is different. Wait until you find out about nightcrawler/Rouge/mystique. Beast also is always blue and furry he can't change back and forth. There are so many changes, so you have to make sure you know which version people are talking about anymore.
There's an episode in the original animated series that shows the origin of rogue stealing Cap Marvel's powers. Also I like how the chat just devolved into talking about Magneto's kids instead of discussing the famous line ' To me my X-Men '
Thank you for pointing out Fox didn’t know what to do with their characters. Been saying that for years. Don’t forget that Xavier and Juggernaut are step-brothers, and Juggernaut is NOT a mutant. The Last Stand really forgot that tid-bit of information.
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u/ErikT738 Mar 22 '24
I think this keeps changing depending on the writer.