Thursday 13 #7: X-Men Legends

Welcome to another Lost Hemisphere Thursday Thirteen! Are you ready? Are you psyched? Okay, Fifi! Fly! (*toss… yip yip… thud*)

…. she wasn’t ready. Well, since the turtle is nature’s suction cup, let’s get rolling.

UDE took an amazing turn with they put Marvel Legends together, creating a focus on individual characters rather than just on teams (or raw toolboxing). All of a sudden you could build a deck around Wolverine, for example, and it didn’t matter whether you were playing an X-Men deck, a Marvel Knights deck, or a Spider-Friends deck – the support cards could be used in any of them.

Case in point, my recent efforts at City Champs – though I freely admit I crashed and burned harder and faster than something that crashes and burns quite quickly, I was able to include (and effectively use) Human Torch-specific support cards in a Spider-Friends deck (specifically, I was using Firewalls).

As usual, however, you can’t please everyone. As cool as the Juggernaut cards were, for example, there was much bemoaning his inclusion as one of the Brotherhood legends, when Mystique and Sabretooth were like, right there, man!

For the sake of this list, we’re going to look at arguably one of the most popular teams in comicdom, the X-Men. In Marvel Legends, we were given Wolverine and Jean Grey legends… but with Marvel Universe just around the corner, can we expect another X-Man to be elevated? If so…. which?

In no particular order, Lost Hemisphere presents for your consideration thirteen contenders for X-Men Legend Status:

1: Angel: One of the original X-Men, Warren Worthington III has been with the team through thick and thin, has worked both sides of the fence as his regular self and the blue-skinned Horseman of Apocalypse, and has even dabbled outside the team with the Champions. He’s been around forever, has a very strong visual, and decent options from his history. Compared to some of the more popular mutants his chances may not be the best, but he’s worthy of consideration.

2: Beast: Another of the originals (yes, I’ll be listing them all), Hank McCoy’s a hoot. An X-Man, an Avenger, a Champion, a Defender – he gets around. A normal guy, a furry creature with grey skin, a blue-skinned fuzzball, and in recent years he’s even gone feline. An intensely logical individual, he’s nevertheless in many ways both the heart of the team and the rock on which it stands. You can’t deny that it’d be cool to have a card of him wearing his suit and bow-tie from the Astonishing X-Men series …

3: Cyclops: While his mutant power may not have the exciting variety of potential that some of the others have, no-one can deny Scott Summer’s place as one of the most significant Children of the Atom. Always leading, always in the forefront, he’s commands more respect from his team than any other X-Man. He got some awesome art in the X-Men starter, ricocheting his beam around the walls to smite Mystique…Word is, he also makes a mean baklava.

4: Iceman: Every team needs a light-hearted joker, and Bobby Drake filled the role first as a snowman, later as an icicle. One of the most intriguing things about Iceman is his untapped potential. He’s normally just a dude made of ice… but Emma Frost showed that he could be so much more . Probably my favourite of the original team, I’d love to see Bobby open up the deep freeze… even if they went with the Ultimate Universe variant, bandanna and all. Seriously, no pants but a bandanna???

5: Colossus: Everyone loves Piotr Rasputin, so much that they brought him back from the dead. A body of steel with the heart of a farmer and the soul of an artist, Colossus is a fan favourite that packs more than a steel-cased punch. He’s even played the other side of the fence, playing nursemaid to the vegetative Magneto after a lobotomy that didn’t last (they never do, this is comics, after all). That said, like Angel I don’t think his chances are fantastic considering the other options… but it’d still be cool.

6: Kitty Pryde: Ah, Ariel/Sprite/Shadowcat… Kitty has cycled through a few codenames over her history, but remains possibly the most popular non-headliner on the roster. I think a lot of this could be due to a lot of readers having “grown up” with Kitty… though for me, it’s all about a power that you actually need to think creatively to use (as opposed to just smashing), and her trusty sidekick, Lockheed. A fan favourite who proved in recent years that she can kick a lot more butt than you’d think for a person whose power is passive, she’d be fun to see.

7: Storm: Introduced as a semi-naive young lady, Ororo Munroe’s career started as a street rat in Africa, led her to be the ruler of the Morlocks, team leader of the X-Men, and now, Queen of Wakanda. Her powers also lend themselves to more than UDE has thus far shown – she can do a lot more than whip up a windstorm to help her teammates fly and/or ground her opponents… I’m thinking this is one character just begging to be expanded upon. Can’t say I blame UDE though, it took Marvel three movies to have her do something anywhere near ubercool.

8: Cable: Okay, this one’s a semi-cheat entry, since he was given mini-legend treatment in MVL with two versions, a support character and a plot twist… but he’s not quite there yet. I can’t say I’m a fan of Cable, but he has his horde of devotees out there, so who am I to argue? Cable entered the comic world with the New Mutants, which then led into X-Force… are we finally going to see either of these two teams? If so, then more Cableage is pretty much guaranteed, and hence he’ll reach Legend status.

9: Nightcrawler: This one’s almost a shoe-in if UDE decides to give the X-Men more Legend characters. Kurt Wagner is a HUGE fan-favourite, linked to X-Men and Excalibur, and packing more fanatical devotees than pretty much any other mutant (with the possible exception of Wolvie). Just watch his appearance in X-Men II or the cutscene from Marvel: Ultimate Alliance where he cleans house on Doombots, and you’ll understand why. Swashbuckler, Acrobat, heck, he’s even an ordained priest, for cryin’ out loud.

10: Psylocke: You know what VS needs? More poms. Betsy Braddock, sister to Captain Britain himself, joined the X-Men as a sweet, reserved, purple-haired telepath whose power was typically depicted with a butterfly-flare… before her consciousness was jammed into the body of a ninja assassin. The latter costume has led to many rather popular cosplayers at comic conventions, but still… she’s got a history that can be exploited into portfolio of Legend cards. The hotness is just gravy… though I still have a soft spot for the original costume.

11: Professor X: A little bit of a no-brainer, Charles Xavier’s intrinsic to pretty much everything that has an X in the title – X-Men, X-Statix, X-Factor, eXcalibur…  though not  XXXenophile, that’s naughty… It might be difficult building a full legend around the wheelchair-bound mutant mentor, but if UDE did decide to go that route, I don’t think we could blame them for their choice of character. Besides, they’ve already tapped into multiple aspects of his power, from card draw to burn.

12: Gambit: Ah, Remy… he has just as many haters as he does fans. Seriously, sometimes I think the only reason he has fans is because of the romantic entanglement with Rogue (who could also easilly be on this list), and female readers would swoon and imagine that New Orleans accent and get all gooey… though of course, while typing this list one female comic fan declared in a chat session that I better not put him on the list… so he’s really only here to spite her. Hee… besides, he smokes. Filthy habit, that one.

13: Emma Frost: The White Queen started off as a villain and over the years has become one heck on an intriguing scantilly-clad blonde. Is she a hero or a villain? Whose side is she really on? The mystery surrounding her motives, combined with the ever-present desire to see more card art of her, could open the door the Legendness. Her alternate foil art from MXM still reigns as possibly the coolest alternate foil in an expansion. Her secondary mutation is just rife with opportunity for bad puns for plot twist ideas too.

As always, there’s a bucket of options that could have made the list, and certainly some who would be more likely to be made legends than some of the above, but heck – I just like rambling, and by leaving some off I get to open the door for my fellow Lost to imagine their own X-Men Legends.

Now, someone go make me some Guido Carosella fantasy cards. Strong Guy FTW!

All art from the 1992 Marvel Masterpieces trading card set, and the talented hands of Joe Jusko.