Why I Think the Current Uncanny X-Men Should Be the Blueprint for the MCU’s X-Men

The X-Men are coming to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and for some fans, it can’t happen soon enough. The FOX X-Men movies made some momentous mistakes, and everyone is excited to see what Marvel Studios can do with the merry mutants, especially after X-Men ’97 and Deadpool & Wolverine. However, there is still some trepidation among comic fans about how Marvel Studios will handle the X-Men, and I have the perfect idea for how to do the X-Men right – just have the directors, writers, actors, and crew read Gail Simone and David Marquez’s Uncanny X-Men.

Gail Simone Understands the X-Men

One of the things that always stuck out to me about the X-Men is the relationship between the members of the team. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby brought humanity to superheroes, digging into their personal lives and mining them for entertaining drama. This worked wonders with many characters, giving readers an in into the lives of these extraordinary people. The X-Men truly became popular under the pen of writer Chris Claremont, and Claremont took the Lee/Kirby approach – focusing on the people in the costumes – and took it to the ultimate degree.

[Related: Marvel’s New X-Men Are Hunted by a New Breed of Sentinels]

Like many, I love the X-Men because as I was reading their books, I felt like I was a part of their lives. I went with them to Harry’s Hideaway, I hung out with them as they played sports together, as they trained, as they sat around the mansion and talked about their lives. The X-Men are at their best when the creators can make the readers feel like they’re in the room with the characters. Gail Simone gets that. While many contemporary superhero stories in general, are more focused on the events, the larger than life conflicts, the craziness of the war between good and evil, Simone incorporates all of that, and also remembers that what we love about these characters is getting to see them as people. Simone’s best comics all work because she finds the humanity in every single character she writes and puts it on display. And that’s why her Uncanny X-Men is easily the best X-Men comic of the current From the Ashes publishing initiative.

Simone’s X-Men feels like the way the X-Men used to feel without copying it. Reading her issues, I get the sense of her team – Rogue, Gambit, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, and Jubilee – as people who have known each other for years. They have a familiar way of speaking to each other, and there’s a genuine affection between them. There are plenty of scenes of the group just hanging out and talking. That’s what the X-Men need and that’s what Simone gives them. However, she doesn’t stop there.

As the soap opera drama was a great part of the X-Men, their adventures were also pulse-pounding and sort of insane, and Simone does that very well. The first issue sees Rogue, Wolverine, and Gambit fight a massive dragon. She pits the group against new villain Sarah Gaunt, who runs roughshod over Wolverine and Rogue, which shows how scary she is as an antagonist. All the while, Simone is building up the threat at Graymalkin Prison, the former X-Mansion, sowing the seeds of the X-Men’s future conflicts with anti-mutant forces.

On top of that, Simone introduces a group of new young mutants, because the X-Men have also always been about training the new generation. Called the Outliers, these four young mutants – Calico, Jitter, Deathdream, and Ransom – all have unique powers and personalities and one of them is going to be the “Endling”, the final mutant as prophesied by that first issue dragon. Simone fully realizes each of these characters, and plays them off each other and the main team beautifully. Every time I pick up a new issue of Uncanny X-Men, I feel like I’m getting the kind of X-Men books I fell in love with years ago.

The MCU Needs To Take Notes From This Run

I know that the MCU isn’t going to go completely faithful with the X-Men, but they need to get some things right. And this run of Uncanny X-Men is what they should read to see how to do it. The X-Men became the biggest name in superhero comics as much because of who they were as what they did. Simone and Marquez’s Uncanny X-Men gets that and the MCU’s X-Men needs that as well.

If Marvel Studios wants the X-Men to succeed, they need to remember the soap opera, the interpersonal relationships, the brilliant drama of the X-Men books. We want to see the team in quiet moments, and we want to feel their relationships. The X-Men are at their best when they feel like we’re a part of their lives, all while dealing with the kind of insanity that makes superhero stories so fun. Uncanny X-Men is giving us that and the MCU should take that approach, and put it on the big screen.