For a large chunk of its history, Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters barely functioned as a school at all. The original X-Men were ostensibly educated there, as were the New Mutants; Generation X marticulated at Emma Frost’s Massachusetts Academy. Years – decades of real time – stretched between actual classes at Xavier’s. Fresh-faced mutants were hard to come by outside of battlefield debuts. What little young recruits the X-Men (and assorted teams) did became child soldiers.
With the first run of New X-Men, that legacy changed; writer Grant Morrison and their incredible array of artists envisioned a book with a diverse student body as the backdrop of X-Men stories, allowing for organic cast introductions and conflicts without turning one of Marvel’s two flagship X-Men books into a teen drama: this was still a book about the main guys, but Xavier’s became a vital, living school.
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This became the prevailing standard dynamic for years to come, from the second volume of New Mutants, which ran alongside New X-Men, to the second volume of New X-Men and, later, Wolverine and the X-Men. Two of the current ongoing X-Books – Uncanny and Exceptional – feature the next generation of students.
Where all that educational lineage generally led to heart-warming Kitty-and-Storm mentor/mentee relationships, Morrison’s book focused less on the teaching and more on the volatility of generational politics. Ever a book about the old in conflict with the new, New X-Men wanted revolution rather than respect. The issues in New X-Men Modern Era Epic Collection – New Worlds include a riot at the school, led by brand-new instigator Quentin Quire.
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This collection sees the student body overshadow that primary team in many ways: Emma’s Stepford Cuckoos, Quentin, Beak and Angel. The book is filled with the young undermining and out-thinking their educators. Morrison repopulated the school to call the X-Men’s goody-goody premise into question: sometimes the kids are dangerously close to right in their revolutionary leanings.
The book isn’t solely about the students: Morrison was introducing many compelling and groundbreaking ideas, from the ongoing Weapons Plus program (Wolverine wasn’t Weapon X but ‘weapon ten’) to the multi-national holdings of X-Corp. It is here that Scott and Emma begin their long affair, here that Jean accepts her returning Phoenix legacy, and here that Fantomex makes his debut.
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A lot of what Morrison set up would be dismantled and retconned (in the case of Xorn, within Morrison’s own run), deemed, perhaps, as too revolutionary, too volatile for the dynamic of a book about superheroes. But, like the returned legacy of the X-Men as educators, much of what is fresh and important in New X-Men would later be returned or revisited. The new characters became franchise mainstays: Quentin and the Cuckoos play major roles in the contemporary books.
New X-Men was a revolution, and part of its revolution came from returning simple legacies to the team; now its most revolutionary aspects have become those simple, foundational legacies themselves.
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