Who is the worst writer in X-Men history?

pfinnegan

So, I've been on a major Marvel reading adventure for over a year now and catching up on a lot of issues. My latest endeavor is to read all of the X-Titles I skipped the first time around. I recently dug in and read through the entire Chuck Austen run on Uncanny X-Men and New X-Men. I knew going into it that it was universally deplored and that's why I avoided it originally. But, being the completionist I am, I have to read them all.

Anyway, I didn't hate it nearly as much as I was expecting to. Sure, there were a lot of complaints if you nitpick it all apart, but maybe because I was expecting it to be so bad, that I was happily surprised to find it to be okay. I wrote in much more detail on my site: http://www.exploringmarvelu.com.

I'm curious what others thought of his run. Is he the worst? If not, who is? I don't have an official opinion yet, but I'm not sure if I would consider Austen the worst. I'm tempted to choose writers from the early-mid 1990's, only because that's what drove me out of X-men before Morrison brought me back in. But, I reserve judgement until I re-read those issues. I may feel differently now.

SolitaireRose

Scott Lobdell and Fabian Nieceza drove me off the books. Their style of scripting, combined with the early to mid 90's art style combined for utterly unreadable comics. They both excelled in endless dialogue, ploslines that went nowhere, making hash out of already hard to read pages, and some of the dumbest new characters in comics

Say what you want about Chuck Austin, at least his stories had a beginning, middle and end, and you knew what the hell was happening on the page. It may have been STUPID, but I can tell you what happened in one of his stories. I still remember reading issues of the X-Men in the early 90's more than once and still not knowing what happened other than Rogue being drawn like a Playboy model and fight scenes where no one ever won.

Side Note: At the shop I worked at back during Lobdell's run, we had him in to sign copies of X-Men Gold. Toward the end of his time, some of the fans asked what would be coming up in the next few months and he said, "I don't know. The editor tells the artist what to draw and gives me a copy of the plot notes when I'm supposed to script the book."

And that is all the people need to know.

nweathington

I'm not a fan of Lobdell or Nicieza either, but as you pointed out, the books were editorial-driven even more than DC’s New52 books. Editors were not only plotting, but I understand there was a bit of rewriting as well. So it's hard to put all the blame on Lobdell and Nicieza.

Chuck_Melville

I thought Arnold Drake's run on the book during the late sixties was kinda spinning its wheels... which was a shame, since he turned in such good fare for DC before that.

pfinnegan

SolitaireRose said:

Side Note: At the shop I worked at back during Lobdell's run, we had him in to sign copies of X-Men Gold. Toward the end of his time, some of the fans asked what would be coming up in the next few months and he said, "I don't know. The editor tells the artist what to draw and gives me a copy of the plot notes when I'm supposed to script the book."

Wow, that speaks volumes. At least they learned from their mistakes when they started hiring the right talent and letting them tell their own stories.

SolitaireRose

Chuck_Melville said:

I thought Arnold Drake's run on the book during the late sixties was kinda spinning its wheels... which was a shame, since he turned in such good fare for DC before that.

A lot of the long-time DC writers didn't do well at Marvel, and I think it’s because DC had such a different House Style for writing. Marvel was very much based on the soap opera, romance/teen humor books that Stan loved writing in the 50’s (like Millie the Model, Patsy Walker, etc…) and the DC style was plot heavy and very dependent upon twists endings. Marvel was more “hero struggles through the fight to barely eke out a win” storytelling. Gardner Fox was a great writer, but his stint on Dr Strange was short and not memorable at all.

mwhitt80

Chuck_Melville said:

I thought Arnold Drake's run on the book during the late sixties was kinda spinning its wheels... which was a shame, since he turned in such good fare for DC before that.

I've never read the Drake issues of xmen, but I've read his doom patrol. It's a shame his xmen run was not good because I really liked his doom patrol. I would go so far as to say Doom Patrol was better than xmen at the time (Drake and Stan/Jack created their respective series pretty much at the same, very swamp thing/manthing).