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10 Most Overused Tropes in X-Men Comics That Really Need to End
Stylistically, the X-Men are one of the most interesting franchises in the superhero comic industry. In the Silver Age, the Marvel storytelling method of character focused bombast didn’t make the X-Men popular, and it wouldn’t be until Chris Claremont joined the X-Men as writer that they would take off. Claremont basically created nearly everything everyone likes about the X-Men. Claremont used soap opera style character pieces and combined them with superhero weirdness, sci-fi, fantasy, psychosexual aspects, civil rights, and so much more, making a comic that has become one of the most beloved ever in Uncanny X-Men. Claremont established many X-Men tropes, and he’d be far from the last writer to do so.
Every superhero and superteam have tropes that highlight their strengths. However, there gets to be a point where these tropes become a huge problem. Some X-Men tropes that fans once loved have become overused, and these ten are the ones that we really need to be consigned to the dust bin of history.
10. Magneto Was Right
Magneto is one of the X-Men’s most complicated characters. Magneto’s belief in mutant superiority, combined with his own past as a victim of the Holocaust, has made him into a character that most fans love. Over the years, the view of Magneto has changed; he’s no longer looked at as a villain and many see him as sympathetic. In fact, there are many people out there who like to think that Magneto was right, including the characters in the comics. This has led to the “Magneto was right” trope. Characters like to hand wave Magneto’s excesses away because of his past and his fighting for the oppressed people of the world. However, Magneto is still a racist mass murderer, and it’s about time everyone remembered that. Magneto is a great character, but more because how fascinating he is, not because he’s right.
9. Unending Plot Lines
Chris Claremont made the X-Men popular, and he did so by introducing multiple long term plotlines. These plotlines would bubble in the background of stories, building and building, and would eventually become the main plot. This kept readers hooked to the X-Men books, as they would want to see how the whole thing would turn out. After Claremont left, writers have done the same thing, but it’s often a bust. The ’90s are a huge example of this; there were plotlines introduced in 1991 that didn’t get their pay off until 1999. It’s honestly pretty ridiculous, and it still goes on to this day.
8. Evil Xavier
Xavier has been made into a villain over the years, and it’s kind of gotten pretty annoying. Xavier was always shown to be pretty shady, but it became a huge plotline in the ’00s X-Men comics. It was revealed that the Danger Room had become sentient and that Xavier had enslaved and that he had created a team of X-Men to free the originals from Krakoa that was killed, everyone’s memories of them taken by Xavier. It just kept going from there. This sort of thing became the rule with Xavier; he was always doing something bad with his mental powers or had terrible secrets of some kind. This is completely different from the Xavier that most fans got to know over the years, especially if they’re coming from movies of TV. It’s time for this trope to go away, because it’s made Xavier into a very predictable character.
7. “Age of” Stories
“The Age of Apocalypse” is an X-Men classic, but it’s brought with it a very bad trope. “The Age of Apocalypse” was the first time that X-Men fans got sucked into an alternate universe, but it wouldn’t be the last. First, there was “Age of X” in the mid to late ’00s, then we’d get “Age of X-Man” in 2019, as well as several sequels to “The Age of Apocalypse”. “Age of Revelation” is the latest “Age of” story. These stories have their strengths, and a good Age of Apocalypse story is a glory to behold, but the fact that the X-Men books have gone back to this well so many times has done a lot of damage. None of them can match the greatness of the original, and have become cases of diminishing returns.
6. Dark Dystopian Futures
“Days of Future Past” was the first major dystopian future, and it birthed a host of imitators after its end. Futures where superheroes lose are pretty common nowadays because it’s interesting to see how out heroes react when things are at their worst. It’s cool to see them actually lose and die. However, we’ve seen so many of these in the X-Men comics that it’s gotten really tired. Every X-fan has their favorite dystopian future, but that’s as much a part of the problem as anything else. We don’t need these dark futures anymore.
5. X-Men Fighting X-Men
Superheroes fighting other superheroes is pretty common, but it’s gotten really tiring as the years have gone on, especially at Marvel. This has been a problem for the X-Men. Over the years, we’ve had numerous examples of X-Men teams fighting other X-Men teams. For a while, the X-Men and X-Force didn’t get along. We’ve had different factions of X-Men fighting other factions, like in the Schism Era and the current “From the Ashes” era. It’s just one of those annoying things about superhero comics in general that needs to go away. The X-Men, especially, are more fun when there’s a family vibe to the team, so this trope is especially bad.
4. Too Much Focus on Wolverine
I love Wolverine, as do many X-Men fans, but there are times when it gets to be a bit much. Wolverine is, by far, the most popular character in the X-Men mythos, so he’s often got the lion’s share of the attention. This can be cool sometimes, as Wolverine has his own history that is pretty fun. However, when Wolverine gets too much focus, characters who don’t have their own comics don’t get any spotlight. Wolverine has his own book, is a member of multiple teams, and shows up in books across the Marvel publishing line. There doesn’t need to be X-Men stories that focus on him all the time. Wolverine in team books is best when used sparingly, because otherwise he overpowers everyone else.
3. Every Non-Mutant Hero Is an Enemy
One of the problems with the Marvel Universe is that while the X-Men are feared and hated, the other superpowered heroes are treated like royalty. A team like the Avengers, for example, is super popular and known for its relationship with the government. It seems like whenever the Avengers show up in an X-Men story, they’re being played as antagonistic because of their relationship to the powerful and humanity. This is the rule with most non-mutant heroes that show up in the book. The X-Men will get all self-righteous with the other heroes, but this has honestly gotten annoying. It’s about time that non-mutant heroes stopped being the bad guys in X-Men books. In fact, it’s been past time for ages now.
2. Mutants Losing Their Powers
House of M saw the vast majority of the mutant race lose their powers, but it wasn’t the first time that mutants lost their powers. Over the years in the X-Men comics, characters have had their powers taken away many, many times. Name any major X-Men character, and they’ve all lost their powers once. All of them have had to deal with their powers diminishing at some point or another. It’s gotten pretty annoying. This trope is pretty common across superhero comics, but it needs to go away.
1. Mutant Genocide
It’s hard to pinpoint when the trope of mutant genocide started. An argument can made that “Days of Future Past” was the beginning of this trope. Some would say that “Mutant Massacre” would be the first time. However, “E Is for Extinction” is the first time that readers actually saw it happen on a massive scale, when the 16 million mutants of Genosha were killed in a few minutes. Since then, mutant genocide and the threat of mutant genocide have become a major trope in the X-Men comics. Fans hate this trope, as it usually drives things towards grimdark stories that ignore the fun X-men tropes for the dark ones. If I never see another mutant genocide story in the X-Men, I’ll die a happy man, and there are plenty of fans who feel the same way.
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