Full-New X-Men Full New Storytime (#1-6)

Hey, there Sup Forumsmrades. It's been a month or two since the last time we did one of these threads and they've always been well-received. And given that we just hit the milestone of 100 pages, it seemed an opportune time to once again storytime all of Full-New X-Men here.

What is Full-New X-Men, you ask? A perfectly valid question and I applaud your interrogative spirit. Full-New X-Men is a comedy re-write of Brian Michael Bendis's controversial run of All-New X-Men, starting from issue 1 (as one does) and moving onwards from there at a rate of one page per day, every day. We're currently mid-way through issue 6, and if all goes according to plan we'll be storytiming up to the current page over the course of the morning.

For those who care to follow the work as it unfolds, you can do so at unxannyrewrites.tumblr.com/

And now, on with the show.

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I actually really enjoyed doing this page for the simple fact of having this totally throw-away character who's nameless and never appears again, so I could just do whatever I wanted with her story and characterization and could kind of go nuts with it.

I've done this a few times since, most significantly at the end of issue 6 with what may be my single favourite page of the entire series.

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One of our readers recently commented on this as being the greatest Brood Saga reference of all time. As an old-time continuity nerd, I was just delighted that someone got the specific reference.

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And at last the actual main cast of the book begins to appear. Bonus points to anyone who can pick out the two art edits on this page. Hard mode: Do so without having been informed that they're present (sorry to anyone who's reading this and are thus denied that accomplishment).

I just want to say right now that young Hank is by far my favourite character to write.

I like this. Reminds me of that Civil War edit from years back. Wish those guys came back to do one for Civil War II.

That was by a guy named MightGodKing. He's a big influence on what we're doing with this, alongside Nuzzlocke's "Muh Phoenix" and "Illuminating Comics." With the latter having ceased their parody with Secret Wars, there was a void we felt we needed to fill.

Agreed. Sadly both them and the guy who did "Illuminated Wars" seem to be on permanent hiatus. These guys at least appear to be putting good effort into filling that void, if nothing else.

And with that, the scene is set for the beginning of the second issue! I'll be back to pick up on that in ten or fifteen minutes.

You're doing good work here. It's not an easy task making the worst of Bendis entertaining.

I know that Nuzzlocke and Illuminated have in the past spent time on Sup Forums. I'm not too proud to admit that I have very fond hopes of them someday seeing this stuff and getting half the laughter out of my work as I got out of either of theirs.

>Notice me, senpai!

It's a bit of a mixed blessing, working from Bendis's material; on the one hand it provides LOTS of material to make jokes about, but on the other hand the wild inconsistency of the plot sometimes makes for some very difficult challenges in terms of actually producing a coherent plot. Let me revisit that topic when we get to issue 4.

I screwed up the filenames here; don't worry, there isn't a page missing.

And now we return to the main cast. I love this page for the sheer density of jokes I was able to pack into it. The scenes with more characters present and talking are always the most fun to write.

I can definitely see the challenge in making an actual story out of this mess instead of just lampooning it 100% of the time.

Poor Warren. Ah, well. I'm sure once he gets to the future people will be nicer to him.

There's a certain tension between the two goals here; writing a coherent story which stands on its own merits and also making with the funny. Again, MightyGodKing and Nuzzlocke and to a lesser extent Illuminated all managed it with their projects and I knew that I could aspire to no less.

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Teen Jean. Pure class, and such respect for the dignity of those around her.

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Well so far I'm enjoying everyone shitting on Warren.

But I guess he gets the last laugh cuz he gets to bang X-23.

I just want to take this moment to say that anyone who has any interest in storytiming really ought to think about shelling out the pittance to get a year-loing Sup Forums pass. Foregoing captchas is such a relief.

You have no idea how much I'm looking forward to that part of the story, where the guy at the bottom of the pecking order gets the hot crazy girlfriend who doesn't give a shit about the pecking order. If this were a proper highschool the two of them would be out in the smoking area every lunch break complaining about the cool kids.

Extra bonus points for anyone who gets all of the references in Logan's lecture two pages ago, by the by.

>If this were a proper highschool the two of them would be out in the smoking area every lunch break complaining about the cool kids.

Just like one of my John Green books!

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>Just like one of my John Green books!

Great, now I'M the one not getting the reference.

(Also, another page I fucking love. These pages with a dozen characters in the scene together practically write themselves, whereas one-on-one conversations can be a drag)

Oh, good, Jean is apparently a telepath all of the sudden now. That shouldn't cause any problems.

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>Do you think he looks like a "Lance?"

I think he does, Jean.

When I sent the rough draft of this page to my editor to make it all professional-looking, he immediately replied to the Warren joke with "Jesus fucking christ!" which was one of my favourite moments in the entire re-writing process.

Issue 3, motherfuckers! Time to spend some more time with the Unxanny C-Men.

Illyana is another character I love to write, and it's a sad thing that she's not on-page very much. Nevertheless, her presence is always felt when the C-Men are around.

Like a thin, viscous fluid.

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More time spent with nameless throw-away characters!

And here we have our first real sense of the massive power upgrades which the C-Men got from their exposure to the Phoenix. Man, they're having a good time there.

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Who could it be???

A sad statement on this PC age we find ourselves in; Emma is giving this cool new orange costume, but it's so form-concealing compared to any of her classic looks.

Has it ever struck anyone else as odd that they would have chosen "Limbo" as the name of the demon-realm Illyana grew up in given the actual origins of that name in Catholic mythology? It seems weird to me. Ah, well. I have too much respect for organized religion not to pay tribute to that in my re-written dialogue.

And this was the last page we were up to in the last storytime, in case anyone who read that far previously feels like jumping in where they left off.

Illyana: Seldom seen, but always felt.

I have a friend who refuses to read past the opening scene of issue 1 because he views the "face-full of C-Men" joke as - and I quote - "reinforcing traditional gender roles." I have to admit that he's right; having the buffoonish, foolish clown of a man getting put in his place by the quick-witted female is a pretty standard comedy trope and perhaps a bit lazy on my part.

I hope that if he reads up to this page, it'll have him rethinking his stance on the topic.

Credit for all of the protest signs (and most of the ideas for the visual edits which are in and of themselves jokes) here goes to my editor; there's nothing I love more than getting a page back from him and being able to laugh at a gag that I didn't see coming.

Oh my God that sounds positively in character for Hank.

I like to think that to a certain large extent we're returning Hank to his pre-1990s characterization here, with the bullshittery and humour he had when he was in the Avengers for the first time rather than the dolorous oaf he's since become.

Cyclops Was Right!

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First panel in this page: Another art edit I didn't see coming and which cracked me up.

Oh hey, it's these guys! Remember them from issue 2?

With that we're done with issue 3. I'll be back in half an hour or so to get on with issue 4. Keep the thread bumped for me while I'm away and you'll earn an unprecedented FIVE bonus points for each participant.

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Bumped. This shit is hilarious.

Fucking Bobby with the mythology burn.

Also I love you just having Teen Jean immediately go supervillain, as sad as I am that Professor X's mentoring relationship with all five of these kids has been retconned into borderline villainy by crazy ass writers/fans.

Fun fact: as far as classic "star-crossed lovers" couples are concerned, "Orpheus" would've been roughly a million times less embarrassing than "Romeo" for Bobby's current Inhuman beau.

I mean Cathloicfag here Limbo was p much dropped from the canon by the 80s anyway. People use it because it's a cool name.

Illyana getting in on that crazy ass Orthadox shit would be hilarious though. They bless space rockets with frigging relics like its the dark ages, bless 'em.

I think he's referring to the Kitty/Colossus stuff.

I mean its Illyana she thinks she's real clever right until she starts unleashing hell on the earth and her brother has to put her in time out.

Like legit that's what's missing from a lot of her modern appearances, we've got the hellion but not the teenager half. It's been happening to ALL of Marvel's females lately, all of their fun, interesting character shit getting sanded off in the name of making them into cookie cutter YA protagonists.

Also your friend sounds like a real laugh at parties. How the fuck did he not get that the joke was Cyclops being pompous and desperate for his own branding because killing Xavier won't kill his daddy issues with the man.

You mean like he's actually in character and deals with his issues through endless high bro nonsense instead of shouting at the Watcher? Fuck what a bold approach.

>Also I love you just having Teen Jean immediately go supervillain, as sad as I am that Professor X's mentoring relationship with all five of these kids has been retconned into borderline villainy by crazy ass writers/fans.

Well, it's worth saying that these X-Men are pulled out of continuity at the beginning of X-Men #8, at which point they'd only known Xavier for like a few weeks. He hadn't had a chance to be a mentor to them before they came to the future. They barely even knew the guy.

>Illyana getting in on that crazy ass Orthadox shit would be hilarious though. They bless space rockets with frigging relics like its the dark ages, bless 'em.

I kind of think that the proud communist family that the Rasputins were, they'd be atheists. And even with the sliding timescale of the Marvel Universe, I think that at least their parents would have been born and raised in the Soviet Union and passed those values on to their kids.

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Like legit that's what's missing from a lot of her modern appearances, we've got the hellion but not the teenager half. It's been happening to ALL of Marvel's females lately, all of their fun, interesting character shit getting sanded off in the name of making them into cookie cutter YA protagonists.

It must be said that Bendis just fundamentally did not get Illyana's character. When he was asked about giving her a love interest, his response was "No, she's a little girl in an adult's body. That would be gross." To which I say, first, that he's wrong, and second, that Spider-Woman was certainly written as super-sexy in his run of New Avengers and she is LITERALLY a child in an adult's body.

This is literally what the Cyclops going evil plot should've been about.

Magneto replacing Xavier as Cyke's mentor and molding him into a gun to point at the world. Hell it READS that way until Marvel goes "oh fuck whoops." and wimps out on letting Magneto be evil again.

>I think he's referring to the Kitty/Colossus stuff.

Ding ding ding!

By the way, I love that in the course of these next three pages there's a bunch of jokes which will take multiple issues to pay off, including one which occurred to me before I started writing issue 1 and had been bouncing up and down with anticipation to finally include in the comic.

Man that shapeshifting dude and his horrible girlfriend are kind of sweet.

For what it's worth, I really enjoy Cullen Bunn's multi-series Magneto epic, so I'm pretty happy to excuse whatever decisions went into bringing it about.

This said, you could not force a more sinister monkey's paw wish upon me than telling me that Bunn's next Magneto series will co-star the O5 X-Men. What am I to do???

>Also your friend sounds like a real laugh at parties. How the fuck did he not get that the joke was Cyclops being pompous and desperate for his own branding because killing Xavier won't kill his daddy issues with the man.


This is a guy who is nearly 40 years old and unprompted decided to e-mail me a few months ago to let me know that he's decided that he is - and I am quoting him here - a "social justice warrior," apparently not realizing that this is a pejorative term used to describe these people mockingly. I think he might be going through a mid-life crisis or something.

I mean farmers would probably say they're atheist and go to secret church anyway in the soviet days, but I meant more like an antagonist or just the cosmology of Limbo reflecting Orthadox art and spiritual writings a bit more.

Nothing terribly overt, but its a rich tradition and could look amazing on a comic page.

It took me a while to figure out what to do with that whole conversation since the character only appears in like three or four pages total before vanishing forever, but I kind of like what I came up with.

Also, I had almost as much fun writing their absurd bullshit Texas dialogue as Eva's absurd bullshit Australia dialogue in issue 1.

You're probably right, but sadly I'm just not familiar enough with the Orthodox church to be able to do the sorts of jokes about it which I'd like to.

Also, this page is the first of many times where I just have to grapple with the fucking incomprehensible nature of Bendis's plot in a way that required me to specifically address it.

Yeah, I'm just saying you can have your cake and eat it too. Magneto's best when he's pretending to be righteous right up until he goes full mad despot.

Plus with release date fuckups Marvel's timeline is ridiculous anyway blah blah enjoying your work.

Eh. I grew up in the Claremont era (thus my having friends who are nearly 40), and I like me a morally complex Magneto. But I see what you mean.

> magnetic somersault

magneto trying to save face

I have an acquaintance around the same age who up out of nowhere began to describe himself in the same fashion too.

Alright, so I'm not a big Marvel reader, and I've always avoided anything with Kitty Pryde in it.

Can her dumb dragon thing talk, but Bendis forgot that? I don't think I get the joke here.

After I sent this to my editor, he actually sent me a bunch of memes using that image in the final panel, which cracked me up. I'll see about posting them later if we don't hit the image limit first.

Is his name Paul, by any chance? Wouldn't that be a crazy small-world coincidence?

In fairness it's not JUST Bendis; there have been like three or four writers who have written him as speaking and a number of others who have written him as being at least able to understand English, but most writers seem to ignore this and write him as a flying, fire-breathing cat.

Nope, not him.

But I guess people that age can't unlearn or think outside the muh progressivism box.

Ah, I'm a big left-winger myself. I just think that the antics of college-aged kids these days are for the most part an embarrassment to more mature socialists like myself. But I guess every generation feels that way about those who come after them.

I guess my point is that there's a line between moral complexity and keeping your best villain from moving your franchise's stories forward. Like Magneto on the X-Men is a big deal because it forces the X-Men to change their priorities; they aren't in that position of standing between a humanity that hates and fears them and a mutantkind full of potential but so much of it turning out rotten.

Instead a lot of times they just sort of feel like the Brotherhood, only caring about mutants instead of caring about humans AND mutants and trying to resolve the differences between the two by showing that we're fundamentally the same species in the same boat. Which is the big difference between 80s X-Men and today, they've lost their heroic drive and are constantly stuck playing a defensive war.

Like God Loves, Man Kills is my favorite take on complex Magneto. He can work with the X-Men but ultimately he is as much a temptation as he is an asset and can never be allowed to linger because of this; he nearly turns the Professor before Scott gives the best speech of his life and reminds Xavier of his own morals. Admittedly GLMK is using the heavy artillery early but it's the best one I can think of on no sleep.

Also their bullshit texas dialogue is pretty great. It's just weirdly cute in that awkward college romance sort of way. "Just give up yer manhood silly!" made me chuckle and this topic so rarely does with how insane it's driven the frigging country.

I just love this scene; it's only two pages long, but it's the point where I feel like my version of these characters are well-enough established that I can just start writing banter for them which feels natural and organic in and of itself. Also, bunch of easter eggs in all those thought balloons there.

I don't mind people's beliefs right until they become saturday morning cartoon caricatures not realizing.

Like how I had a crowd of friends as white as the driven snow say one acquaintance of ours "doesn't know how it is to be black" because she isn't starving and had a decent upbringing because her parents worked for it.

Because if there's something well adjusted fresh out of college kids (in their mindsets anyway) can talk about is what someone who's ethnicity differs from them is a "proper specimen" or not, especially how the closest to their own definition of what 'being black' is consists of going to national attractions known for slums and drug trafficking exactly to... buy drugs and feel the rush of being "subversive".

tl;dr: if you're not on the run from the cops or stealing for a living, you're not black enough. Signed: enlightened liberal white people.

>Like God Loves, Man Kills is my favorite take on complex Magneto. He can work with the X-Men but ultimately he is as much a temptation as he is an asset and can never be allowed to linger because of this; he nearly turns the Professor before Scott gives the best speech of his life and reminds Xavier of his own morals. Admittedly GLMK is using the heavy artillery early but it's the best one I can think of on no sleep.

While I didn't overall think that Matt Fraction's run on Uncanny was fantastic work, I do enjoy the way he managed Magneto's face-turn there and the fact that no writer since then has undone it is impressive to me just in terms of the fact that the temptation seems ALWAYS to revert to the status quo, and since then everyone has resisted it.

Also, Jean is really learning to use her powers in some pretty enlightened ways here.

Scott's look of horrified disgust in that final panel was the icing on the cake for this page. I would have written the dialogue the same way with or without it, but it really sold the moment.

>Shut up, whatever your name is.

I actually just made myself snort with laughter re-reading that panel.

The worst part is how the kids then immediately vote for whatever corp-dem spits the freshest memes and then go "what the fuck happened?" when the right gets a net victory out of it.

Like there are OTHER issues but this is a relatively happy thread. I dunno why 40 year olds are joining the bandwagon they should literally be able to know better.

I will be so sad if nobody gets the "degenerate, mindless eloi" joke in panel 1.

There's issue 4 done with! On to issue 5 and the conclusion of the first story arc!

By the by, there's an art edit cunningly hidden somewhere in this issue which occurred to me whilst writing issue 2. When my editor returned the page with the edit in place, I laughed so hard I literally saw stars. I hope that someone here actually spots and appreciates it.

Couple of jokes set up on this page that are going to take a long, long while to pay off.

Great thought balloons.

Also in general All New X-Men shows pretty completely, again, why Xavier made the right call to ease Jean into telepathy. TURNS OUT ITS REALLY FUCKING HARD TO DEAL WITH GUYS AND TRAINING WHEELS HELP.

God I love writing both Hanks at once. You can practically feel their desperate desire to constantly one-up each other with their pointless bullshittery.

I think it says something about how much Logan's mellowed that he didn't gut Hank for the backsass.