What Constitutes a "Bad" X-Man?

Originally posted by Gremlin Where's Tag, the guy whose mutant power was to make people run away?

Tag's powers would be a godsend for the X-Men these days.  It wasn't just "running away" but psionically compelling an individual or whole groups of people to move toward or away from something.  Used to effect, you can control the enemy's movements to shuffle them into position to be taken out with minimal effort and injury.  Tag would actually be on any tactician's dream team.

Tag's larger problem is that he was normal, reasonably smart for his age, not a jerk, not manipulative, no psychological problems, no ridiculous teen uberdrama... basically, he was a regular teenage boy with no glaring personality flaws.  But being a regular teenage boy with no glaring personality flaws, in the X-Men, means that you have to die.

Originally posted by Anna Raven Any Worst X-Men list without Stacy X is automatically disqualified isn't it?

I agree that her behavior was at times over the top cheesecake, but you have to admit that there really was no "sexually liberated" X-woman before or since Storm until they happened upon Stacy X.  She had useful powers (controlling the hormones in people's bodies -- Emma Frost makes use of this tactic as well, it's just that she also has general telepathy and diamond invulnerability so nobody thinks much about it) and indeed she was one of the few mutants out there who used her powers to make a living without having to be on a superteam first.  There was no real gray area there -- she was completely legal and above board until some people burned down her place of employment, and only then did she end up under the X-roof.

In the sense that Stacy X represented more of the actual reality of mutants living on the ground (do what you have to do to get by, mostly just leaves people alone) she was more true to mutanthood than the elitist X-Men could have ever hoped to be.

Maybe not the best execution of the character, but she had her merits.


Edited by Ciel - 18-Jun-2012 at 12:51am

Originally posted by Blackcyclops You know i never thought about how...muted Callisto was. So why do you thinl Claremont fancied her? I mean he has used her quite a bit for a c-lister, yet she's never been Silver Sable, Colleen Wing, Iron Fist, Cat or Shanna the She-Devil bad-ass...

He created her, right? I have to think that has a lot to do with it.

This is a pretty good list, but like someone said earlier, it's more of a "which mutant powers would I not want to have relative to all the others" list.

Has anyone seen Cracked.com's list? It's hilarious, and well-researched. There is a lot of overlap between the two lists, unsurprisingly.

Originally posted by Ciel Originally posted by Gremlin Where's Tag, the guy whose mutant power was to make people run away? Tag's powers would be a godsend for the X-Men these days.  It wasn't just "running away" but psionically compelling an individual or whole groups of people to move toward or away from something.  Used to effect, you can control the enemy's movements to shuffle them into position to be taken out with minimal effort and injury.  Tag would actually be on any tactician's dream team.

I'm with Ciel on this. Tag's power were actually some of the most interesting of the student body. Yes, they required a bit of tactical thinking behind it but were far from being lame. Just read the Hellion mini and the House of M arc of Academy X. He kept his team from being arrested at gun point, was actually a nuising that had to be taken out first by Palladin and Diamondback (Mercury, Rockslide and Wither with their "kickass powers" were non-threaths) and single handedly defeated the big bad in House of M by making the master manipulator Sean Garrison kill himself.

We were just starting to see what he could do with his powers as well. He could tag objects and people so potentially he could be a great tracker. His powers could have easily developed into other types of mental commands (he was already starting to diversify before he was depowered/killed).


I think Weir and DeFilippis did a great job in creating characters whose powers went a little further away from the slash/smash/shoot type of mutants. There was a great diversity between back then. For me, one of the biggest problems with the "no more mutants" is that a lot of characters with the most "unique" powers disappeared. We were mostly left with the "easy" to get powers. It's like someone decided fans were too stupid to understand anything that strayed to far from the normal type of telepathy, energy shooting, strength/invulnerability, agility/senses or teleportation powers.

These are mutants. They should have all kinds of powers. Some of them might not have straight forward applications in combat (which doesn't mean they can't be used) but that doesn't make them lame or uninteresting. I would much rather read about powers like Tag's, Prodigy's, Cypher's, etc than another strong guy or feral character. Don't we have enough of those?

Longneck. Forearm. They were "X-Men" for even less time than Paulie Provenzano and their powers are even worse than their on-the-nose codenames.

Joseph wasn't a bad character per se, but he could never become his own character. He was supposed to be a Proteus clone. Proteus is mcuh more fun as a sadistic bastard, so his new personality wouldn't have stayed & the extra magnetism would've made him way too powerful. Just making him a Magneto clone was lazy. It was a superficial way to add some friction between Gambit & Rogue. Rogue dating him because he was young & amnesiac with forcefield powers seemed like an ethical timebomb waiting to blow. If it was a superhero dating a de-aged amnesiac supervillianess, you'd never hear the end of how skeevy that hero was. It would've been more interesting if he was a character to earn Rogue's interest instead of coasting on her affection for Magneto. Joseph felt redundant because not only had Magneto been heroic in the past, but Polaris already existed. In summation, I would've preferred to read a Rogue/Polaris slashfic. Havok & Polaris were broken up when Joseph was introduced, so Roglaris could've worked out timingwise.

Some of these characters weren't "X-Men" per se. If we are expanding the list to the known X-Men universe there are tons of stupid villains and throwaway characters I can think of. For example, most of the Savage Land Mutates. Amphibius anyone?

Is it possible you could interpret "Worst X-Men" as characters that sucked as X-Men but were okay characters otherwise? For instance Sabertooth may be a cool character but he was a lousy X-Man, since he was only ever there by force, and didn't do much or tried to kill team members.

Madelyne Pryor is another.

And also, what about Gateway? His "enigma wrapped in a loincloth" bit is old.

Originally posted by sixhoursoflucy This is a pretty good list, but like someone said earlier, it's more of a "which mutant powers would I not want to have relative to all the others" list. Has anyone seen Cracked.com's list? It's hilarious, and well-researched. There is a lot of overlap between the two lists, unsurprisingly.

Edited by cloneX - 18-Jun-2012 at 7:30am

For Sabertooth, Phalanx Covenant?

Originally posted by Stellaire For Sabertooth, Phalanx Covenant?

More of an involuntary team-up I'd say. (The enemy of my enemy etc.)

As this started he was a prisoner, right? And didn't he also go away on his own after the most critical part was done with?

No, I love Madelyne. I meant more as "Worst X-Men" being someone who totally tried to kill all of them, and with her the rest of reality.