I recently read X-men The End for the first time, and was wondering other people's thoughts. Because I kind of found it really bad (there were some good parts).
X-men The End is a misnomer. It's more like Claremont The End. A lot of characters (mostly villains) that feature are just Claremont creations from other non-X-men stories. Which for the end of the X-men isn't what your probably coming in to see.
I feel like the main problem with this book is the confusing plots. Because there is a lot going on and because of the many twists that occur, it gets hard to keep track on what's happening after so long. It probably got hard for Claremont too, considering so many plot points are lost along the way (eg. Storm's paralysis, Nimrod). There's also a lot of things that are so unexplained to the point that it's distracting. Like everything with that crystal palace on the mansion or why Madelyne is even alive. Speaking of which, that leads into my next point, aka Claremont is salty.
To be fair, I understand a lot of Claremont's annoyance with the state of X-men at the time. The Emma-Scott affair was really out of character for Scott, and it was definitely made worse when people tried to compare it to Scott leaving Maddie during Claremont's run (even though it was a very different scenario and I think people judge that decision to harshly). A lot of his ideas for character backstories were scrapped or changed by others. And, there was definitely weird small character decisions being made in other X-related books. Thus, Claremont really tries to kill off or somehow explain everything that he hates. Scott and Emma? Must be because Madelyne was actually Jean's love for Scott (and is unexplainably back), and that's why their relationship failed (even though they had faced so many troubles post Maddie where Jean or Scott basically saved the day in someway with their love for each other). He also loves to include ideas he had years prior, even when they don't make a ton of sense (aka Gambit being Sinister's clone). It's just a lot of a lot from Claremont.
Another complaint I personally have is the deaths. Considering this is supposed to be The End, it makes sense for a lot of characters to die. But, it really starts to border on Ultimatum. Characters are dying off way too easily, and in large numbers. It no longer feels plausible at points. And it also sometimes feels that new characters were introduced just to die, which is something I'm not a big fan of.
In the end though, my biggest problem is the end. It wraps up at warp speed, and thus leads to me being very confused. We see the Phoenix bring back to life some of the dead X-men and explains to the living X-men, now returned from dead X-men, and Cassandra Nova they are about to ascend to a higher plane of existence. I've seen some people like to argue this cheapens the story, but honestly I don't really see it that way. What I do see is that a bunch of characters ascend and then are seen 5 pages later alive and well on Earth. What? Was this ascension Human Instrumentality? Because it makes no sense for that to be the case. Why didn't all the X-men survive then? Just very confusing.
Anyway, these are my thoughts, what do y'all thinK?
