Legion World Forums LEGION OUTPOST Bits o' Legionnaire Business An alternate X-Men timeline

Is the son Daken or someone younger readers like myself would not know about?

It's Daken. I've long found him an intriguing concept, and it all crystallized for me when Peebs recently said in the Re-Reads thread that Daken would look better in the yellow spandex than Dear Old Dad. That made perfect sense to me.

Oh, that's a neat twist on the Alpha Flight / Wolverine storyline, and a fun way to put Darkstar, Vanguard, Ursa Major, etc. on the X-radar!

Thank you, Set.

161-167: The Kree capture the X-Men's friend Carol Danvers and, under the supervision of Dr. Minerva, brainwash her and turn her into Binary, intending to use her as the linchpin of their quintuple team of heavy-hitters, the Fatal Force, in a war against the Shi'ar and their Imperial Guard. The X-Men, in trying to save Carol, are caught in the crossfire, but ultimately prevail, with a little help from the Starjammers, whose leader, Corsair, reveals to Scott that he is his father. Scott is not pleased. Carol, still possessing the full Binary power-set, joins the Starjammers.

CROSSFIRE: 168-175

Cyclops - Dealing with the revelation that Corsair is his father, getting cold feet about marriage.
Phoenix - Wants desperately to marry and settle down.
Wolverine - Dealing with the revelation that he has a delinquent teenage bastard son.
Storm - Still shaken from her manipulations by Dormammu and Umar.
Nightcrawler - Struggling to maintain his religious faith in the wake of his recent experiences.
Colossus - Unsure of his place in the world.
Shadowcat - Learning to stand on her own. Falling in love with Colossus.
Professor X - Heartbroken over Lilandra’s newfound ruthlessness.

The X-Men are attacked by the newest incarnation of the Brotherhood of Mutants, now consisting of Magneto, Pyro, Blob, Unus, Avalanche, and Rogue (Mystique and Destiny were ousted after Mystique’s loss of nerve during the last battle, and Rogue took the male members’ side against her adoptive mothers.) But the two opposing teams must work together after Emma Frost uses time-travel tech to bring forth a team of paramilitary mutant rebels from an alternate future who live only to terrorize humanity: the Mutant Liberation Front -- Cable (an alternate-future son of Phoenix and Wolverine), Powerhouse (Franklin Richards), Dazzler, Domino, Deadpool, Bishop, and Psylocke.

In the aftermath, the X-Men disperse, with Cyclops and Phoenix quitting the team to marry and settle down, Nightcrawler and Colossus joining Moira on Muir Isle, Storm returning to Africa, and Wolverine, Shadowcat and Professor X left to form a new team; the Brotherhood splits in half, with Magneto, Rogue, and Unus desiring redemption, while Pyro, Blob, and Avalanche decide to remain outlaws; Emma Frost is outed as a mutant and arrested for crimes against humanity, while the MLF are stuck in this timeline and left floundering without a leader (Wolverine killed Cable).

When Scott and Jean marry, all their former teammates are reunited one last time.

LONG LIVE ROCK AND ROLL: 176-182

Rogue joins the X-Men, as does Unus’ 19-year old daughter Carmella, who takes on the codename Armor. The X-Men’s ranks are filled out by Madrox the Multiple Man and Banshee II (formerly Siryn), who leave Muir Island for Westchester, and a brand new recruit, Cannonball.

In the new team’s first adventure, a concert by Madrox’s favorite rock star, Lila Cheney, turns into a dimension-hopping adventure when Lila turns out to be a mutant on the run from inter-dimensional police. Although Madrox lusts for Lila, it’s Cannonball who she develops an attraction to, but Cannonball turns her down; Lila’s bodyguard Guido takes pity on Madrox and they form the beginnings of a friendship, which leads to Guido convincing Lila to let Madrox join her road crew. The X-Men are left short one member.

CONTINUED...

Interesting lineup. Hi and bye, Madrox. I love SIryn joining the team, and Armor is interesting.

Thanks, Ibby. Yeah, I've always liked Unuscione and felt disappointed that she got shunted off to the sidelines while a younger mutant with the same powerset as her got all the attention. Calling her Armor was my way of rectifying this.

Siryn's a favorite of mine, and Madrox will reappear eventually.

Ooh, Unuscione! One of my all time favorites mutants-I'll-never-see-again!

Along with Frenzy (who has gotten a decent run, actually), Sabra and Scaleface.

These days with Marvel, you never know who may or may not show up. That said, with Unuscione's powerset already taken by Armor, I'm not holding my breath.

I can sort of understand why Mike Carey chose to focus on Frenzy instead of Unuscione, as Frenzy has much more offensive powers.

Sabra continues to await a writer who really cares about her. I was surprised and disappointed that Peter David, of all people, used her so indifferently in Hulk back in the early 90s.

It does bug me when that 'we can only have one mutant with power X' mindset takes hold.

We've had an array of force field ladies, from Skids to Cecelia Reyes to Unuscione to Armor, and I liked Cecelia and Unuscione more than the other two. Sue Richards could open a school entirely for abandoned force-field-characters! (And Radius, from one of the failed Alpha Flight relaunches, also purportedly a child of Unus the Untouchable, could be the token mutant force-field dude.)

Same with time travel gals, from Ilyanna and Rachel (who *could* time travel, but rarely did), to Sway to Kiden Nixon to Tempo to Lacuna to this new Tempus character. (And I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting one...)

And, of course, precognitives or astral projectors or healers. Preview vanishes mysteriously and Blindfold steps in and takes her place, same with Scanner and Trance, or Elixir and Triage.

Meanwhile, staples of psi fiction like clairvoyance or anti-psi/psi-nulls seem to be overlooked, over telepath/telekinetic number 61293.

I hear you, Set. There's room for everybody.

I have no interest in Radius, though. Carmella should be an only child IMO.

And I love Blindfold, I think she's Joss Whedon's greatest contribution to the X-mythos.

Finally ready to bring some closure to "Phase One" of this thread.

I can now admit that almost all my ideas for padding out issues 183 through 199 were either too derivative of X-Men canon, or just plain blah. Hence the thread stalling for almost 4 years.

But from the very start, I wanted 200 to be a big event worthy of an anniversary issue (and, let's face it, the canon issue 200, Magneto's trial, was pretty lame, with crap-tacular art by John Romita, Jr adding insult to injury.)

So...we've established that Jean & Scott decided to get married and assimilate into human society, about two dozen issues (chronologically a little less than one year) ago.

200 would dramatically intercut Jean's complicated delivery of baby Rachel with the death of Magneto, railroaded by the Hellfire Club into returning to villainy, so as to liberate Emma Frost, whose trial verdict has already been bought and paid for by the evil human politicians. During the battle, Xavier is publicly outed like Emma was, and he must go into hiding. This will leave *Wolverine* in charge of the X-Men, a role he's very reluctant to take on as it would require him to finally become mature and responsible. Even more ominously, the time-lost MLF mutants have rallied behind a new leader -- *Daken.* AND they have a mole in the X-Men (not Carmella, that'd be too obvious.)

If Set or Ibby or Thoth or Harbi or anyone else wants to take over this timeline from here on, they're more than welcome to.

Meanwhile, I've been playing around with the notion of seeing what I might have done if I'd been in Chris Claremont's place, way back when Len Wein decided he was too busy to stay on UXM after writing Giant-Size #1.

I don't know when I'll get to it (among other things, I also have to move my Tasmia-As-Darkseid's-Lieutenant thread forward ASAP.) But hopefully sooner rather than later.

Stay tuned.

My only AU thought on the X folk lately has been what the Marvel Universe would be like if Wanda had blamed Magneto for the grief she'd gone through in her life and said 'No More Magneto!' and made him disappear. Her power had been previously established as being retroactive, which means he'd never have been Magneto, and most likely died as a child, during the Holocaust. Wanda herself, and Pietro, and Lorna, would cease to exist, which would lead to all sorts of changes.

Who would be the Brotherhood without them? Unus, Mastermind, Toad and who? Sabertooth? Vanisher? Mesmero? One of the Resistants / Mutant Force mutants? Mystique?

Who would make up 'Cap's Kooky Quartet?' Cap and Hawkeye, obviously, but perhaps two other mutants, or even a couple of Inhumans (like Crystal and Triton) instead? Maybe some future Avengers like the Black Widow and Black Knight or Falcon could join early.

How would Vision develop as a character without the humanizing relationship with Wanda? Would he eventually go bad and become the threat he was created to be?

How would the Young Avengers look without Billy and Tommy as members? Teddy, in particular, might be a very different person without Billy by his side.

That's all very intriguing, Set...but I'd rather see you putting your creative energies into writing a DCU Crime Syndicate fic.

Man, I wish I had time to put in the effort to continue this because I love what you've done with it so far Ann and it has definitely sparked some ideas!

I feel like Banshee, Siryn, Black Tom and Juggernaut's relationships never really get much spotlight in the comics so it'd be fun to look at that...Jamie Madrox becoming more of a core character opens up a lot of possibilities, getting the New Mutants involved in different ways and doing more with the Morlocks...there's a whole lot of potential to work with in different ways than Claremont had happen

Thank you for the kind words, Raz!

Perhaps you might possibly schedule some time later this year?

I will see what I can do...I am hoping I can get my own webcomic off the ground soonish so I'm a bit preoccupied with that at the moment, but the idea is very tempting!

I reckon it would be fun writing something with such a different setting and style to the Legion, and I was honestly way more of a Marvel zombie growing up so if I can get some long-term ideas percolating I might just throw my hat in the ring!

Cool!

I'm a one-time Marvel Zombie myself! And from reading some of your posts, I get the impression we're both fans of more-or-less the same era of Marvel, circa '88-'93? I call it "The Gilded Age." Someday, I hope to write an essay for the Gy'mll's forum explaining what exactly I mean by that.

Best of luck with the webcomic!

There was a time when Chris Claremont was going to lift Alan Moore’s run on Captain Britain and use it as the main plot for the Uncanny X-Men for a few years.

It would have involved the rise of another James Jaspers along with the rising anti-mutant hysteria and end up with the team going through the siege perilous.

After Moore took issue with not getting paid for reprints of some of his earlier work, the plot shelved with Claremont reworking it.

As published, it involved Magneto taking Xavier’s place, the fight against the Hellfire Club and Nimrod, the Mutant Massacre, the new line up and the start of Excalibur.

There’s a CBR legends article with a further link out there for more details. While it’s covered in some detail, I’ve toyed with doing it issue by issue.

One thing is whether to combine it with what was going on in Moore’s stories, so you’d be seeing a parallel plot in X-Men. Or to adapt what Claremont’s plans would have been and go from there.

Interestingly, Moore jettisoned an early plot point that linked his story into a wider Marvel one. It might be interesting to see how that would have worked out too.

Apart from some Avengers franchise adventures, the Marvel RPG campaign we run when I was younger was the MX series, detailing the takeover of the Sentinels. That corresponds to the Days of Future Past and runs through Claremont’s plot of ant-mutant hysteria above.

Claremont and Davis were really the only Marvel writers for ages who treated Captain Britain as a flawed but 3-dimensional character so it would have been cool to see the X-Men interact more with Marvel's UK stuff!

And Ann, yes - New Mutants, original West Coast Avengers and that era Avengers are my jam

Ah, the X-Men of the John Romita Junior era!

Nimrod looked like a giant piece of that chalky candy that they make Valentine hearts out of. In a word, stupid.

The Mutant Massacre had a disturbing scene where Colossus kills one of the Marauders, or whatever that lot was call and it *never got any follow up.*

Yuk.

On a brighter note...

New Mutants had a lot of stuff that I really loved -- the Sienkiewicz era, the Asgardian Wars, the Alan Davis-drawn Annual where they battle Mojo (and given the horrendous fates of several former Disney and Nickelodeon TV stars, more relevant today than ever.) I even like a lot of the Weezie Simonson NM run, especially the Inferno tie-ins (though I wish they'd been drawn by someone better than Bret Blevins,) and the issue soon after that with John Byrne as guest artist, where Magneto walks out on the kids once and for all (I've never liked any writer's efforts to turn him into a full-fledged hero -- I think he has too much to answer for.)

And, Thoth, I say *go for it.* I've seen you do so much cool alternate stuff with the DCU, I'd love to see what you'd do with the MU.

Bret Blevins is definitely an acquired taste....I don't know how true it is, but I remember hearing the only reason they killed Cypher off was that Blevins found him boring to draw as he didn't have a visual power - which, if true, is disappointing because I think what made Doug such an interesting character was precisely that his power wasn't flashy or violent and he was such a normal kid in a strange world. But anyway *shrugs*

um in other news, my inner fanboy may have gotten the better of me; I sat down this weekend just gone and did an issue breakdown right up to #250 hahaha...if Thoth or anybody else hasn't gotten first dibs yet, I'd be happy to give this a shot! I would be writing it in story format like my Legion fic, with each instalment being the next issue number. If you're happy to hand the reins over, I'll start writing #183 this week!

Hey, these alternate stories are great, and as i dont really know much of the Xmens history you could claim they are canon and I'd believe you my ex husband was a huge fan but i havent read anything of their adventures since we split - my one strong memory was being bored of Wolverine, thinking there were too many telepaths and wishing Storm would relax.

Sorry i dont have time or the knowledge to contribute but if you don't mind am very happy to continue reading and enjoying what you write. Looking forward to seeing what comes next.

More, more, more

C

What bugged me about Cypher wasn't Cyper at all, it was this his power, *and* Dani's power, *and* Shan's power, and various other characters powers (like astral projector's Trance and Scanner, or the Morlock Dreamer), was that all of their powers put together were a tiny subset of the abilities that came with the bargain basement 'mutant telepath' package, which was handed out *like candy* among the X-Peeps. Even if one didn't start out a telepath, like Jean Grey, apparently the Professor could just *teach* you to be able to;

1) send thoughts and read minds, actual *telepathy*
2) mind control people (Karma's whole power), sometimes even entire crowds or angry mobs of people (as Xavier would occasionally do, as when he shut a small town down while recruiting Nightcrawler)
3) make them see things that aren't there (Mastermind and Mirage's whole powers)
4) make them not see things that are there
5) translate all languages (Cypher's whole power)
6) astral project (Scanner and Trance's whole power)
7) teach anyone any skill or language instantly
8) absorb any skill or language instantly from someone else (Prodigy's whole power)
9) alter or delete or create new memories (the Morlock Dreamer's whole power)
10) possibly emotion control (Empath's whole power)
11) mental blasts / psychic screams that incapacitate others
12) psychic shields that that they can somehow project onto other people

Yeesh. Just once I wanted to see a starter 'telepath' who could read minds and send their thoughts, with a range about the same as someone can shout out loud. No extra free super-powers. He actually has to work for a living!

That's actually a bug I have with the X-Men in general. Their powers grow and grow. When was the last time Storm bothered to *control the weather?* All she does is fly and chuck lightning, and any idiot with a blaster and a jet-pack can contribute *that* to the fight. Makes me want to see a weather controller who *can't* chuck lightning or fly, and actually *has* to control weather.

Raz, you have more than my blessing to use this thread for your take on the X-Men -- you also have my gratitude and my encouragement!

Thoth, you can still post your take on the X-Men alongside Raz's. After I make this post, I'm going to retitle this thread to reflect its new status.

Harbi, thanks for the kind words. And I agree with you on Wolverine and Storm.

Set, yeah, I have to wonder just what Claremont was smoking during the latter part of his X-Men run. It truly spiraled from the sublime to the ridiculous, but especially in terms of migraine-inducingly vague powersets.