An Introduction to X-Men Revolution

Revolution was a 2000 soft reboot of the X-Men that, at a key moment of cultural awareness for the franchise with the release of the first X-Men movie, saw X-author Chris Claremont return to the title that he had once helped elevate to rare heights of industry success. #XMen 1/9

After a 16-year run on X-Men comics from 1975-1991, Claremont had been driven out the door of Marvel Comics due to creative differences with editor Bob Harras. A decade later, however, he returned to Marvel as a story editor. 2/9

In “Marvel Comics: The Untold Story,” Sean Howe quotes an anonymous editor stating that “Technically, Chris was not supposed to be involved in the X-Men, but there was no way to keep them away from him.” 3/9

Thus, May of 2000 saw the launch of Revolution, in which Claremont teamed with a new generation of artists in order to recapture the magic of previous years and to reposition the franchise as the tentpole property that Marvel needed it to be. 4/9

Claremont’s triumphant return failed to triumph however, and, in doing so, it offers scholars an important object text by which to complicate readers’ presumptions about the manner in which comics are often perceived as an exclusively auteur form. 5/9

Consideration of Claremont’s return to the X-franchise in Revolution can also be seen to frame a number of questions about the construction of cohesion in comics and the ways that we draw boundaries around comics storytelling by author, by era, or by continuity. 6/9

Revolution is by-no-means bad – indeed it features a wealth of characters and ideas that continue to play a key role in modern X-Men comics – but its inability to recapture the lightning-in-a-bottle success of Claremont’s original X-Men run is telling of some sort of absence. 7/9

In this sense, Revolution, through contrast, can serve as a useful foil by which to provide insight into the original Claremont run on X-Men comics and what made it so special in the first place, making Revolution worth study for both itself and for other comics. 8/9

Thus, in the unit ahead, Sequential Scholars will look at the series through a variety of lenses and considerations with an aim toward finding the revelation behind the revolution. 9/9