X-Men Headcanon 7: The Fall Of The Mutants

This era of X-books is so full of Huge Events that there's barely time to breathe between The Mutant Massacre, The Fall of The Mutants, and The Inferno. And while there are some huge shakeups during these events, it's tough to recommend them. There are so many characters involved with intricate backstories who just keep repeating the same expository dialogue in every issue while chaos occurs around them. If you keep counting how many times Jean Grey or Scott Summers explains their history and Cyclops's abandoned family, you'll get lightheaded and pass out two issues in.

​This is also the beginning of The X-Men are "dead" and living in the Australian Outback era, which has not yet been collected in trade paperback form, which says a lot about its importance to canon.

No books in this section end up making my Headcanon, even though a couple of them have plot points that have major impacts on the X-Universe. 

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X-Men Fall Of The Mutants Vol 2 by Louise Simonson, Walt Simonson, Ann Nocenti, Peter David, and Marc Gruenwald
X-Factor: Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, Iceman, Rusty, Skids, Artie, Leech, Caliban, Rictor, Boom-Boom
1st Appearances: 
Also Featuring: Angel, Apocalypse, Cameron Hodge, Trish Tilby, War, Pestilence, Famine, Starstreak, Molecula, Counterweight, Destroyer, Hulk, Rick Jones, Clay Quartermain, Hulkbusters, Betty, Doc Samson, Daredevil, Black Widow, Karen Page, Captain America, Falcon, Redwing, Nomad, Vagabond, Battlestar, Black Panther, Thing, Human Torch, Crystal, Carol Danvers, Dr Doom


This will probably not come as a shock to people who've spent years reading Marvel and DC graphic novels: This should actually be volume one of Fall Of The Mutants as all the stories take place before the events in X-Men: Fall of the Mutants, Vol. 1. I often wonder if the collection editors at The Big Two comic companies even read comics.

This volume mainly focuses on X-Factor's first major battle with Apocalypse (they faced him once before in X-Factor Epic Collection, Vol. 1: Genesis & Apocalypse but he's a much bigger threat in this collection). We also see Warren as Archangel/Death for the first time.

This is a battle scene comic where much of New York is destroyed in a battle between mutants. We even get to see the events from the perspectives of Captain America, Daredevil, and the Power Pack. It's...fine. Like most of the early X-Factor run, Scott and Jean Grey spend a great deal of time talking about the various Jean Grey clones that Cyclops dated and/or married while she was "dead". And there's a b-story where X-Factor is hired to hunt down a mutant who turns out to be the new grey Incredible Hulk. Those stories are also okay.

Despite the big stakes, and the Worthington storyarc, not much of this volume grabbed me. I mentioned this in my review of the other Fall Of The Mutants story: I just don't know if I can get excited about any of these X-books until we're past X-Men: Inferno, which I remember hating when I've tried to read it before.

If you like X-Factor or Apocalypse, this is a nice little romp, even if it's not quite as good as its much more concise Animated Series counterpart.​

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X-Men: Fall Of The Mutants Vol 1 by Chris Claremont, Louise Simonson, Peter David, Marc Silvestri, Todd McFarlane, Kerry Gamill, Bret Blevins, and June Brigman

X-Men: Storm, Wolverine, Rogue, Havoc, Psylocke, Dazzler, Longshot, Colossus, Kitty Pryde, Nightcrawler, Madelyne Pryor
New Mutants: Magneto, Dani Moonstar, Cannonball, Wolfsbane, Sunspot, Magma, Magik, Warlock, Cypher, Bird Brain
Also Featuring: Forge, The Adversary, Mr Sinister, Sabretooth, Malice/Polaris, Vertigo, Scrambler, Arclight, Scalphunter, Harpoon, Hulk, Mystique, Destiny, Blob, Pyro, Spiral, Avalanche, Crimson Commando, Stonewall, Super Sabre, Roma, Moira MacTaggert, Lila Cheney, Cameron Hodge, Empath

​We have officially entered the era where I think Chris Claremont overstayed his welcome as X-Men writer. While I enjoy his continued fleshing out of the X-Men characters, I think his villains get stale and silver-agey, and his transition from science fiction comic to magic comic annoys me. I just don't care about magic tropes in a superhero comic, it reminds me of reading the very science-forward A Wrinkle in Time, getting to the end and seeing science fall to the Christian Power Of Love, and losing all interest in continuing to read that series.

The X-Men portion of this story just didn't gibe with me. Claremont had done an effective job of taking a number of characters off the board, and it felt odd how he threw Colossus back into the mix just in time for his weird Outback Reboot stage. The use of The Adversary as a villain made me less engaged with Storm's storyline, and adding in Roma from Captain Britain didn't help.

This is supposed to be an epic story where characters are forever altered because of the enormous stakes but it was so boring that I had to struggle to not just skip several pages at a time to get to the end.

It's certainly nowhere near the worst X-Men story ever written but it becomes clearer that this book is becoming less Marvel's Awesome Mutant Superhero Team and more What Is Chris Claremont Thinking About This Month.

It has taken me much longer to slog through this because I also know that it's not going to get better for a while, X-Men: Inferno, one of my least favorite Comic Events of all time is on the horizon.

The New Mutants portion of the story is a really focused tale that hits a lot of YA tropes of the time: don't do drugs, don't disobey your adult supervisors, don't rescue an artificially created humanoid bird creature and feed him junkfood, and other things you see on Saved By The Bell. In many ways, it's better than the X-Men story, even if I did find the Birdbrain character, and the The Island of Dr. Moreaustyle villain extremely annoying.

While there are Important Plot Points for both the X-Men and New Mutants in this collection, I don't think it's a necessary read if you're just reading X-books for fun.

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X-Factor Epic Angel Of Death by Louise Simonson, Walt Simonson, Marc Gruenwald, Tom DeFalco, Sal Buscema, Jon Bogdanove, Terry Shoemaker, Steve Lightle, Tom Artis, and Paris Cullins
X-Factor: Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, Iceman, Rusty, Skids, Artie, Leech, Rictor, Boom-Boom
1st Appearances: Ship, Infectia, N'Astirh
Also Featuring: Caliban, Angel, Cameron Hodge, Trish Tilby, Apocalypse, Pestilence, War, Famine, Energizer, Lightspeed, Zero-G, Mass Master, High Evolutionary, Blob, Mystique, Destiny, Spiral, Avalanche, Pyro, Crimson Commander, Super Sabre, Stonewall, Thor, She-Hulk, Black Knight, Dr Druid, Lord Zano, Tower, Time-Shadow, Frenzy, Orphan Maker, Nanny, Candy Southern

This volume leans heavily on the X-Factor trainees: Rusty, Skids, Victor, and Boom-Boom, as they try and navigate their relationships with their mentors while also being curious teens. We see them help the rest of X-Factor bond with their new base of operations: Ship, a piece of Apocalypse's technology that almost literally fell into their hands.

The focus on this book is X-Factor deciding to try and win people over by publicly working to repair a city broken by a fight with a supervillain, as opposed to their previous plan: pretend to be humans hunting dangerous mutants, and then training them. The new technique works much better.

While the Archangel version of Angel is on the cover, and the book is named after him, he's really more of a background character in this book, trying to decide how reintegrate into society with his new appearance and wings.

While this didn't quite make it into my headcanon, it's a solid read that I recommend to fans of B-level mutants having some main character moments.

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X-Men issues #228-234 (Not collected in trade yet) by Chris Claremont, Tom DeFalco, Rick Leonardi, and Marc Silvestri
X-Men: Storm, Wolverine, Colossus, Havok, Rogue, Psyclocke, Dazzler, Longshot, Madelyne Pryor
1st Appearances: Gateway, Bonebreaker, Pretty Boy, Skullbuster, Wipeout
Also Featuring: The Brood, Henry Peter Gyrich, Roma, Dani Moonstar, Cannonball, Wolfsbane, Sunspot, Magik, Warlock, Magneto, S'ym, Jean Grey, Cable (as Baby Nathan), Trish Tilby, N'astirh

​There's a lot of story packed into these ten issues as Claremont bridges X-Men: The Fall of the Mutants and the first part of the X-Tinction Agenda. The heroes end up in Australia, then Genosha. The world believes them dead, so a bit of magic makes them invisible to technology, enabling them to operate with more impunity.

It's an interesting concept that I don't really remember, even though I'm pretty sure I've read much of this era before. There is also the best pre-Broo Brood storyline I remember reading. It's not a classic but it's not as formulaic as most of the X-Men vs Brook encounters, as the Brood in this instance are all made from mutants so they have different powers and personalities. It was fun to read.

I have a newfound respect for Claremont's run because of this read-through. I've always been impressed by his decade plus run on the flagship book but I don't think I've read it as closely. Very little of it is bad. I understand why both X-Men The Animated Series and X-Men '97 draw so heavily from this era of stories.

If you can find these issues in a library or a comic book store, by all means grab them, or check them out online. But it's not The Best of Claremont's run.

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X-Men X-Tinction Agends by Chris Claremont, Rick Leonardi, and Marc Silvestri
X-Men: Storm, Wolverine, Colossus, Rogue, Havoc, Psylocke, Dazzler, Longshot, Madelyne Pryor
1st Appearances: Jenny Ransome, Genegineer, David Moreau, Chief Magistrate Anderson 
Also Featuring: Carol Danvers (sort of) 

This is just a review of the first quarter of this book, as it takes place well before the rest of the book, which is also collected in New Mutants Epic Collection, Vol. 8: The End of the Beginning.

The crux of this part of the book is that the X-Men, currently believed dead but actually operating out of a ghost town in Australia, witness a Genoshan expatriate mutate be kidnapped by the government, and follow them all to Genosha, a nation where mutants are a slave caste to a military junta who try and pretend their nation is a paradise.

While the rescue mission is going on, Madelyne Pryor, who's been working as a tech advisor to the X-Men slowly evolves into The Goblin Queen, as this story dovetails into X-Men: Inferno.

The X-Men is about to get very silly to me as Claremont goes further and further afield from his original stories. I do like the Genosha element in this book, though, and wish he'd handed the title over to Jim Lee after the end of this storyarc.

This is also the basis for a storyline in X-Men The Animated Series, and while most of The Animated Series episodes take Claremont stories and vastly improve them, I think this arc is on par with the Animated Series version.

If you enjoy your X-Men comics politically progressive, and action packed, this is for you, if you're the kind of person who thinks comics are too woke right now....why are you even bothering to try and read the X-Men?

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