The Ex-Men

I was out round a mates when someone introduced me to these Ex-Men clips from Pete Holmes's comedy show, aired in America. I haven't seen the show but I have seen his Dark Knight piss take vids with College Humor and I thought they were good.

Here's Holmes laying into the X-Men and doing a pretty good job. The best, by far is Wolverine, but the rest are good too. Let's go hero by hero shall we?

P.S They are a bit rude and sweary, so be warned.

GAMBIT

For me, Gambit needs the sack for sure. Is it that he came in at a point when the Uncanny X-Men was at a real low point? Is it that he entered the team as another loner, in a team of loners, when all the characters seemed to be written to be as much like Wolverine as possible... because he was popular, and so to make a another character popular you just copy some of the traits of a popular character?

He can be written well, but for the most part he's just a bit crap from where I'm sitting. He's a Longshot/Wolverine hybrid, with none of the originality of either of the characters he's based on. 

ICEMAN

Okay, there have been times when Bobby Drake has been a bit shit. The whole early period when he was covered in snow, because he couldn't form ice over his body yet, but was called Iceman? That wasn't good. I suppose they didn't want him to be called 'The Snowman.'

Forget that and though he may be a tad dull... okay, very dull, I don't think he needs to go. Just perhaps be less... Dull.




ANGEL

We do have to remember that Angel was the scrapper of the team before Wolverine turned up. He was the one throwing punches around with Beast, as Cyclops, Marvel Girl and Iceman did their thing from range. Is he the force Wolverine is? Or even half the modern characters really? No. But he's a hero from a different time.

In the comics he's been made to be a bit cooler at times, but for the most part, he's not got anything on the second big wave of X-Men like Colossus, Nightcrawler, Storm, Wolverine or Banshee.




JUBILEE

She was always shit. I hated her from the start. I always will. There is no middle ground here.




WOLVERINE

This one is complicated.

Wolverine is a great character and for one hundred issues he existed in the X-Men as the loner, later complimented by Rogue and Rachel Summers. Around the issue 200 mark the team changed and the direction of the X-men did too. We had the Massacre, which was a huge event in my young comic reading mind, and the Fall Of The Mutants that followed up the Massacre incredibly quickly.

The team changed and with that change came a harder edge, a  tougher X-Men and the characters seemed ever more likely and willing to kill or maim to get the job done, and though it wasn't the characters fault the popularity of Wolverine seemed to completely overshadow the entire X-universe.

Now things are pretty much the same. He's in several X-comics, two teams of Avengers and is one of the most overused and stereotypically written characters.

I'd fire his ass because in all reality Wolverine doesn't need to be in the X-Men. His star burns brightly and the light it casts unbalances a team book which should see characters moving forward and developing together, but Wolvie can't, because he's in all these other places and so he has to be a constant.

Recently I got over some of my irritation with the character by reading Paul Cornell's brilliant run on the Wolverine comic. It's great and I found I started to like the character again, so I would fire his ass. For sure.

I really enjoyed this one.



Right. Thanks to Mr Holmes and his comedic sketches and thanks for reading.