14 Years Ago, Avengers vs X-Men Inspired a Marvel Mistake That Lasted 102 Issues

The last 21 years of X-Men comics have been something of a roller coaster ride for fans. House of M kicked off the beginning of the marginalization of the mutant side of Marvel, moving the team into Decimation and the Utopia Eras. This would end with the 2012 event Avengers vs. X-Men. This story put the capstone on those eras, and ended with a huge status quo shift. Cyclops was imprisoned after going Dark Phoenix, Professor X was dead, and the mutant race’s flame had been rekindled by Hope Summers and Scarlet Witch. In the real world, writer Brian Michael Bendis was moved from the Avengers books to the X-Men, writing two flagship titles: All-New X-Men and Uncanny X-Men. Uncanny was a Cyclops book, following him as he recruited new mutants to fight in his revolution. All-New X-Men, though, made a much bigger change, one that would prove to be a massive mistake.

This book saw Beast decide that the only way to bring Cyclops back into the fold was to go back in time and bring the teenage versions of the original five X-Men to the past. On the surface, this seems like a fun idea, one that would be cool for a story arc or two. However, it didn’t last a story arc or two. It lasted for a 102 issues over three ongoing series and one miniseries (as well as a couple of solo books and general X-books and Champions), six years of stories that stretched credulity far beyond the breaking point. The return of the O5 was meant to bring about a new era of the X-Men, but it did exactly the opposite and showed one of Marvel’s more distressing tendencies.

The Return of the Original Five X-Men Never Felt as Interesting as It Seemed It Should

Avengers vs. X-Men gets a lot of flack, but it did a good job of ending one of the most depressing eras in X-Men history. The Decimation/Utopia Eras had some great series and stories, but it was remarkably uneven and X-fans wanted something a little less dark and a little more like classic X-Men — character-focused stories with cool fights. Avengers vs. X-Men left a lot of potential for cool new stories. Fans were cautiously optimistic, especially since Bendis was an architect of ’00s Marvel and the publisher usually put him on the books they were pushing.

The return of the O5 was actually pretty cool at first. X-fans are used to time travel stories and people from different times joining the group, so bringing back the original X-Men was an idea that had legs. For a time at least. Back then, fans were all afraid of the thing that was going to happen: keeping them there for too long. The idea is really only good in whether it works or not to fix the problems of the X-Men. As far as it goes, seeing a bunch of lesser developed characters in the present had a short shelf life, because fans knew that nothing could be changed all that much. Everyone but Marvel knew that milking the idea would have been a mistake, so obviously, that’s what they did.

Sales were good at first, but the whole thing ran out of steam rather early. The problem was simple: the original five X-Men weren’t all that interesting to begin with when they were teens (which was why their book didn’t do so well compared to other Silver Age Marvel books) and we knew that none of the changes to the characters would stay in canon. Creators tried to take them in new directions, like the Beast learning magic, Jean Grey learning about her history, and Angel getting fire wings, but none of these were going to matter in the long run. The only change that stayed was Iceman being gay.

One of the biggest problems with Marvel in general is the lack of any actual change to characters anymore. Readers nowadays know that most changes are going to go away when the next creators come aboard, and this went doubly for the O5. Marvel wasn’t going to massively change the past versions of the O5 and couldn’t keep them in the present. Everyone knew that for the most part, nothing in this story was going to matter. The ’10s were not a great time for the X-Men, and the O5 was basically the Clone Saga for the team: a story that started out well but was stretched out long past when it should have ended.

Bringing The O5 Back Was Always Going to Be a Mistake

After the dark years of the Decimation/Utopia Eras, fans wanted something new and the O5 felt like a step in the right direction. If it was a two year story arc that ended with the X-Men coming back together, fans would have liked the whole thing more. Instead, the early successes of All-New X-Men, and the tendency of Marvel to buy books they hate, meant that we got six years of stories that would never really matter very much. It even kept the overly dark tone of the earlier eras that fans were tired of.

The ’10s were the decade that Marvel did their best to push the X-Men below the tide line, as it were, so that characters they owned the film rights to would get more attention. The O5 was yet another problem for fans of the time that never seemed to go away. There are exactly two reasons it matters: Iceman being outed by Jean Grey and Cyclops being friends with Ms. Marvel. None of their stories are very fondly remembered and if you skipped the entire six years they were around, you’re basically missing nothing important to the history of the X-Men. It committed the greatest sin a comic can — it didn’t matter and was never going to.

What do you think about the return of the O5? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!

10 Best X-Men Comics Of All Time (#1 Will Never Be Matched)