Marvel Can Succeed With Maximum X-Men Where Their DC Counterparts Failed

Marvel Comics had a great first day at San Diego Comic-Con, charting the course of the Marvel Universe in the days after Avengers: Armageddon. However, it’s not just Earth’s Mightiest Heroes that are benefiting from the sweeping changes wrought by this story, but also the X-Men. Marvel’s Merry Mutants are also getting their own new team after Avengers: Armageddon breaks the world, one that puts them in bigger shoes than ever. Maximum X-Men sees a new group brought together for Avengers-level threats, which is a huge upgrade for the men and women of X. While they always had the power to do Avengers stuff, they usually aren’t cast in that role. The closest they get is usually the Avengers Unity Squad, but now they’re stepping into the big dance.

This isn’t the first time in recent years a fan-favorite team that was huge in the early ’80s and beyond got a chance to step into the biggest shoes in their universe. Dark Crisis is unfairly maligned, as it planted the seeds for DC’s current success. It did numerous little things that helped build the current DC Multiverse and one of those was to make the Titans, the grown-up New Teen Titans, into the new Justice League. This didn’t work for a variety of reasons, which is a danger you can have when you change a team’s direction so much. Maximum X-Men feels like it could step into that direction, but there are ways to avoid the mistakes of Titans (Vol. 4). In fact, the X-Men becoming the Avengers is always going to make more sense than the Titans becoming the League. Marvel has a hit on their hands and they can succeed where DC failed.

The X-Men Have Had a More Varied Existence Than the Titans, Preparing Them Better for the Big Chair

The Titans and the X-Men have always been inextricably linked. The X-Men debuted in 1963, a new teen team that had Lee and Kirby for their first year. The Teen Titans would show up a year later and the two teams would spar for the teen readers market, a battle which the Titans handily won for years, as they never became a reprint book like Marvel’s magnificent mutants. However, the X-Men would come back as a new kind of team thanks to Giant-Size X-Men #1 and the Chris Claremont run would see them become more and more popular. Teen Titans (Vol. 1) ended in 1978 and 1980 would see New Teen Titans premiere from Marv Wolfman and George Perez, vying for sales supremacy with Uncanny X-Men.

The Claremont run and the Wolfman/Perez run defined both teams, but one of them led to stagnation. As great as the Wolfman/Perez run was, it set up Titans story tropes that other writers would try to copy, leading to Titans comics – and especially Titans (Vol. 4) – getting kind of stagnant over the years. Titans (Vol. 4) had the team deal with Brother Eternity, a new version of Brother Blood, and the Dark-Winged Queen, who was just evil Raven all over again. This wasn’t the team as adults facing the same threats as the Justice League – the one story they do is Titans: Beast World and it’s actually great – it was them facing the same villains they always did. Later in the book, they even battle Deathstroke and Terra comes back. It was just a Titans comic; enjoyable if you like that sort of thing but it didn’t do what it was supposed to do.

The reason the X-Men have thrived where the Titans haven’t is because creators have moved away from the Claremont run. There was a time in the early ’90s when the creators on the X-books were just playing the Claremont hits, but that would lead to disaster, as did the 2000 return of Claremont. However, writer Grant Morrison would find a way to remix the classics and creators after them were able to take the team in numerous directions that used the past as a spring board, not a chain. The X-Men have been able to grow and change. However, one thing that has stayed the same for the team is the caliber of threats they face, which have always top-notch.

If a team is going to step into the big shoes, they need to be able to face those kinds of threats and the X-Men have long been facing gods, universal conquerors, reality-altering shenanigans, alternate timeline versions of themselves and their enemies, and a host of other insanely dangerous threats. Numerous top level X-Men have been Avengers – Maximum has Storm and Wolverine – who are being joined by mutant Avengers Firestar and Justice, so the team has a lot of experience with those kinds of threats. The Titans also boasted members that were Leaguers, but they just slotted back into their teen roles on the team. It’s honestly not all that weird for the X-Men to face Avengers threats; they’ve been doing it for years. They have members who are experienced at the big dance. Add in the returning Christopher Yost and Tony S. Daniel, two creators who have done amazing work with the group, along with the editor of the best era of Avengers in decades in Tom Brevoort, and Maximum X-Men is a book that looks like it’s going to soar where Titans (Vol. 4) couldn’t.

Maximum X-Men Is Everything the X-Men Need

Maximum X-Men is an idea that Marvel has toyed with before – after “Onslaught”, they were the main team left in the world until Thunderbolts dropped and Astonishing X-Men (Vol. 3) had the team tell the Fantastic Four that they were about more than just fighting mutant threats – but they’ve rarely pulled the trigger. The book’s roster – Storm, Wolverine, Bishop, Iceman, Captain Britain, Colossus, Justice, and Firestar – is fantastic, bringing a varied squad of mutants that feels right for this kind of team. It feels like more than just an X-team; this is a team that could easily handle the biggest threats around. It has brilliant creators who have done fantastic work on the group before. I’ve been hard on the current X-Men books, but this is everything I want and judging from the reception, I’m not alone.

Titans (Vol. 4) also seemingly had everything that Maximum will have, but they fell on their face. The book’s creators said they were doing Justice League adventures, but they just followed the old Titans tropes and fans noticed immediately. I say this as a fan of that book – I was disappointed that only one of the stories felt like something the Justice League would deal with. The team often falls into that trap with its newer series, trying to use the past to hook readers and keep them around. Maximum X-Men is kicking off with the Negative Zone, taking the team to a new place immediately, which is a good sign. This book is already looking to avoid Titans (Vol. 4)’s fate, giving readers a new look at the merry mutants.

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