Grant Morrison basically said that he felt Scott and Jean were a boring couple and that Emma and Scott presented better stories. So kill Jean off and have Scott and Emma get together. He said that Magneto needed to go so he killed him off to present new story ideas. Marvel decided that Jean could go and Magneto could stay but to allow a writer that much power with characters (which fundamentally changed the character of Cyclops) makes any writer think that they should have that much of a say on a title.

The problem we have with the Fantastic Four is that Marvel always tries to "fix" it. JB's run could be read along with Jack and Stan's run and you know that they're the same characters but JB added some new stuff. That formula doesn't seem to ring true in the Joe Q era. I think that Waid and Wieringo run was fun but there were some things that I wished they wouldn't have done. Jemas tried to run them off the title and take the fun out of the title. Then Marvel tried the "Big Names Creators" route with JMS and Millar/Hitch and those were pretty forgettable because the characters were written to the writers whims. Hickman had an interesting run and it was such a slow burn that you couldn't hand any single issue to a non FF fan to sell them on the title. Plus his run had the whole Death of the Torch storyline that tainted the book for me. Now with Fraction on the book, they're thinking another big name will make fans like the book. I just don't think anyone at Marvel has any idea how to write the Fantastic Four anymore. The Hickman and Fraction runs seem to be way more interested in the kids. 

QUOTE: For me, the X-Men has been broken more of less since Grant Morrison

It's where they lost me.  And driving me off was not easy.  They had me for the better part of 3 decades.  But you can't ruin Cyclops and keep me, and that is what Morrison did.

Then what CIVIL WAR did to Reed soured me on FF.  The last of my big 3, SPIDER MAN, went with ONE MORE DAY. Those were the 3 Marvel series I had always read. If I was reading Marvel comics, I was reading them first.

I hate saying it, but these stories are what seem to sell.  The last AVENGERS I read was, I thought, Bendis wrecking characters, and the series became Marvel's best seller. CIVILWAR, the same.  Okay, sales don't stop way up. Still, there is a spike.

Is it character evolution or character assassination?  I'll  peek at a Cyclops related thread on CBR and so many people love what they've done with the character.  I'm talking people whoclaim they are long time fans.  I'm like, WTF?  But they are as entitled to their view as I am to mine.

I just think, from what I've read, that these creators are too fixated on how flawed these characters are supposed to be.  That Stan and Jack gave us flawed heroes. I've seen Quesada, Millar,and Bendis use what they did to justify their characterizations multiple times.  "This is what Stan ansd Jack did."   Bullshit, that is not what Stan and Jack did.

Personally, I think that, nowdays, you are best served to be about the stories because the characters are going to do what needs to be done to advance the story.  To create a buzz, shake up that dreaded status  quo.  You can't be so protective of what you percieve as the characters' integrity.  And I can't do that.  The characters are what kept me coming back for decades.  If it had been the stories, I might have stopped reading when they didn't interest me much.  I would always stick around, though, because of my investment in the character.

It is what it is, I suppose. I'm just hoping there is some bait and switch with at least this FF story. 

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How does he drive the Batmobile?

Well, he had no control once he left.  Most characters come back in comics so it was reasonable to think that someone might bring him back.  HOWEVER, what he wrote is how he saw the evolution of the character.  The character, he and Xavier actually, are outdated.  It's time for new ideas.  He and Xavier need to step aside for this.  The idea of Magneto, using his death as a rallyng point, was more effective than him in reality when he came back.

It's one thing to decide that the character should be evil.  He made him ineffectual, almost mocking him while he did it.  His run S-U-C-K-E-D in every way.  No, I take that back.  I thought he handled Wolverine well.   Outside of that, forget it. 

Well, Emma too. He got a lot of heat for reforming her as if it was out of left field.  Lobdell had done that, but the run preceding Morrison's, part of Ellis' Counter X books, had really amped up her bitch factor again.  Morrison, I didn't feel was a real stretch from that.  Mind you, I never cared about her character much one way or the other.  So, if someone tells me she was either handled superbly or poorly, I'm not inclined to argue much.

Cyclops, Jean, Beast and Xavier.  The 4 characters in that series I was most invested in, I didn't like his handling.  Oh, I can find a bit here or there that I thought was okay or reasonably  well done.  Overall, I throughly disliked it.

In fairness,a whole lot of people, and I mean a whole lot, thought otherwise.

There are two schools of thought for me:

There is the kid who read the FF with She-Hulk on the team, who liked Spider-Man's symbiote costume, who thought Rhodey was going to be Iron Man from here on, who thought Thor's brittle bones were going to keep him in his new armor, and who thought it was cool that Xavier could now walk and even had a costume. Because of my age at the time, I thought the changes were neat and I never thought that all those things would eventually go back to the way they were. The eventually all reverted to what we knew: Ben was back in the FF, Spider-Man went back to his original costume, Tony Stark became Iron Man again, Thor healed and got his costume back, Professor X returned to the wheelchair. I bought those comics without pause at that age.

Now I prefer the classic versions of the characters and I don't like little secret origin stories wedged in. I don't like major changes. It may be that I don't trust the creators like I did back in those days and I'm worried that the almost constant retconning just ruins the characters more than adding depth to them.

As Neal Adams so perfectly put it, decades ago, there are no bad characters. only bad writers.

••

Reminds me of when Chris Claremont was convinced Reed Richards was a mutant!