Generation X (comics)
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Generation X was a Marvel Comics superhero team, featured in an eponymous monthly series from November, 1994 until June, 2001. The series, created by writer Scott Lobdell and artist Chris Bachalo, was one of many spin-offs of the hugely popular X-Men franchise, featuring a team of mutant superheroes who defend a world that hates and fears them.
Generation X featured a team of teenage mutants, designed to reflect the cynicism and complexity of the series' namesake demographic. The series was one of the most distinct and acclaimed X-Books during its first few years but floundered after its original creators left in 1997, leading to cancellation in 2001.
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The team
A superhero team consisting of teenage mutants was nothing new in 1994. The original X-Men of the 1960s had been teenagers and another group of teens, the New Mutants, existed from 1983 until 1991.
Unlike the X-Men and New Mutants, however, Generation X did not attend Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters in upstate New York or learn from Professor Xavier himself. Instead they were located in Boston and mentored by the X-Men member, Banshee, an Irish mutant who possessed a “sonic scream,” and the former villain Emma Frost, a sexy, aristocratic telepath.
Furthermore, the team's creators intentionally avoided the trend in X-Books and other comics in which each super hero team includes a "Wolverine character" (rebellious loner), a "Cyclops character" (stoic leader), a "Colossus character" (soft-hearted strongman), etc. Generation X consisted of:
- Husk (Paige Guthrie), who could shed her skin, revealing a stronger substance beneath; she was the younger sister of The New Mutants' Cannonball.
- Skin (Angelo Espinosa), a former teenage gangster on the streets of Los Angeles who possessed six feet of extra skin. He could stretch his extremities but mostly considered his mutation, which caused him to have sagging gray skin and painful headaches, a curse.
- M (Monet St. Croix), a “perfect” young woman born into a rich Algerian family who could fly, possessed super strength and had telepathic abilities. Her somewhat uppity manner was an annoyance to her teammates and her habit of going into deep trances was a mystery to her teachers. Mysteries surrounding the St. Croix family would play a big part in the series.
- Jubilee (Jubilation Lee), a Chinese-American “mall rat” who could produce sparks from her finger tips. Jubilee had been a junior member of the X-Men in the early 1990s.
- Chamber (Jonothon Starsmore), a British mutant who produced huge blasts of energy from his upper chest. When his powers first manifested, they destroyed the lower half of his face and left him only with his limited telepathic powers with which to communicate. Because of this, he is characteristically sullen and bitter
- Synch (Everett Thomas), an African-American teenager, known for his pleasant, supportive temperament, who could copy the powers of other mutants in a close physical radius of him.
- Penance, a silent, childlike and mysterious mutant who possessed diamond hard, red skin and razor-sharp claws. Penance appeared mysteriously at the Boston Academy and at first, little was known about her.
- Mondo, a laidback Samoan mutant who could take on the texture of objects he touched. Mondo was apparently killed in Generation X #25 (1997), but apparently that was a clone and the real Mondo appeared two years later.
The series
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In September of that year, Generation X #1 was published, establishing the team at Xavier’s Boston Academy. It also introduced their arch-nemesis Emplate, a vampire-like mutant who sucked the bone marrow of young mutants. As the series continued, fans and critics raved about Bachalo’s quirky, complex artwork and Lobdell’s realistic teenage characters. The series soon became one of the most popular X-Books.
Lobdell and Bachalo departed in 1997, leaving writer Larry Hama and artist Terry Dodson to reveal the long-standing mysteries behind M, Penance and Emplate. Hama revealed that M was in fact an amalgamation of Monet St. Croix’s two younger sisters who could merge as part of their mutant powers (one was autistic explaining the trances), Emplate was their brother who, after experimenting with black magic was caught in a strange limbo and needed mutant bone marrow to escape, and Penance was the actual Monet St. Croix, transformed under one of Emplate’s spells. All of this was revealed in a surreal, mystic epic in Generation X #35-40 (1997-1998) that was greeted with disapproval by most fans (Lobdell's original plan had involved the twins, but did not include a "real" Monet).
The saga ended with the actual Monet St. Croix taking on the role of M, but fans' reactions did not get much better and sales began to dip. Hama’s successor Jay Faerber attempted to revive the title, bringing in a regular human student population at the school and making Emma’s sister Adrienne Frost another head-mistress in Generation X #50 (1999).
In 2000, writer Warren Ellis, known for his dark, sarcastic style, was hired to revamp Generation X, along with two other X-Books, under the heading Counter-X. Fans approved of Ellis’ stint, largely because he was the first writer since Lobdell to write these teenagers without resorting to cliché. However, in early 2001, Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada cancelled Generation X, in addition to five other X-Books, arguing that so many mutant superhero books had become redundant. Also X-Men writer Grant Morrison wanted to add a new cast of teenage mutants to the Xavier Institute in New York. In Generation X #75, the team disbanded and the Massachusetts Academy closed.
Post-Series
Since Generation X ended, Chamber and Husk each had a brief stint in the X-Men, while M, Jubilee and Skin have also appeared in Uncanny X-Men (although Skin only appeared to be killed by a hate group in 2003, and, infamously, Chuck Austen even got his name wrong on his gravestone).
Chamber also had a four-issue mini-series, written by Brian K. Vaughan, and Jubilee also briefly had her own series, written by Robert Kirkman (While it was originally supposed to be an ongoing series, Marvel Comics retroactively dubbed it a miniseries and cancelled it with issue #6).
In addition; Chamber underwent a mission for the X-Men {under Wolverine's 'guidance'} to infiltrate Weapon X, to learn the truth about the team. During his time there, Chamber had his face and most of his body restored by Weapon X, as an incentive to join them, and later disappeared with the rest of Weapon X when trying to contact Logan about 'Neverland'
Subsequently, he reappeared as an attendee of the Excelsior support group {with his mouth & chest destroyed once more, supposedly in a bar fight} within the Runaways series, claiming he was "only there for the free pizza" despite once again no longer having a mouth to eat with.
The TV film
In February of 1996, the Fox Network aired a made-for-television Generation X telefilm, produced by Marvel Entertainment. The film featured Banshee and Emma Frost as the headmasters of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters and M, Skin, Mondo, Jubilee and two new characters Buff and Refrax as students. The team battled a mad scientist who used a machine to develop telepathic powers. The extremely low-budget film was scoffed at by fans and plans to develop a syndicated series were abandoned.
Cast
- Finola Hughes - Emma Frost/White Queen
- Matt Frewer - Russel Tresh
- Heather McComb - Jubilation Lee
- Bumper Robinson - Mondo
Crew
- Jack Sholder - Director