Austen off X-Men

[Phil]

http://www.newsarama.com/pages/Marvel/Austen_Leaves.htm

NRAMA: What plans did you have for them that the readers would not see in the pages of the monthlies, or sometimes, bi-weekly comics?

CA: So many. Soooo many. I even have a few scripts that Marvel owns that will probably never see print. I had a lot of plans for Warren and Paige, more emerging angels, and Warren becomes reclusive as a world of infirm and cripples make pilgrimages to him for him to attempt to heal them. The return of Azazel. Sinister's death camps. Big things for Havok and Annie and Carter. Some surprises with Polaris. Some twists with the new Xorn. A relationship for Northstar. Josh Guthrie was going to have a lot happen to him. Mindee, one of the cuckoos, had a growing role. There's a few jolts coming with Juggernaut, that would have played out differently if I'd stayed. My head was loaded with X-stuff for years. I loved all the characters, really, and had plans for them all. As I said, this was a tough decision, and I had to remove my personal feelings from it. In the end, it's business.

I'm guessing the rumours about him being allowed to do very little with NS because of editorial may well have been true then.

[SwiftFox]

Uhh... how old is Josh?

[Phil]

The two aren't connected :P
Josh was just the last in the section I'd pasted.
I've added the whole paragraph now.

[ladymako71]

Interesting...So Marvel's policy changes are hurting creativity are they?

[Phil]

There have been rumours in various places that unless your surname is Whedon, Bendis, Millar or Straczynski yer monitored quite closely these days...

Not a clue if there's anything solid in them mind.

[ladymako71]

*shakes head* It's a shame really that there is talent out there and they're monitored in what they do. =/

[SwiftFox]

The two aren't connected :P
Josh was just the last in the section I'd pasted.
I've added the whole paragraph now.

LOL okay... that makes more sense...I guess you can see how I read it before....

[kozzi24]

May Mr. Austen travel far with the best of luck. And with the Juggernaut-beating armor in his bags, never to be seen again.

[Mystic]

I'm gonna wish Mr. Austen the best of luck with whatever he'll be doing next to the tune of 'Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead'.

-Mystic

[kozzi24]

Marvel's loss is DC's gain, and it's good to know he left on his own terms.

[Sir John A.]

I absolutely hated his run on X-Men. I dumped it from by subscription because of his writting.

[beetleblack]

I absolutely hated his run on X-Men. I dumped it from by subscription because of his writting.

I've only recently picked up the back issues of X-Men from when Northstar joins to pre-reload and have to say that Austen has a very different way of writing to how I imagined. I don't think that it is nessecarily bad but the title is more of a soap opera than it has ever been. I think there have been some interesting ideas (as far as I've read) although there have also been some bad ones too. Hated the Alpha Flight appearance (when they come to take the children into custody), liked the relationship between Juggernaut and Sammy, not sure what I think of the whole Nurse Annie/Havok/Polaris storyline (a friend of mine particularly hates what's been done to Polaris - but every soap opera needs a crazy b*tch I suppose!). It doesn't help when the team is pretty much made up of second rate characters who seems to have been dumped together. I have to say that if I had been reading it at the time I would probably have dropped it myself, there is not much that I find interesting and most of the characters just come over as jerks a lot of the time.

[Sir John A.]

Beetleblack,

That's almost exactly how I felt about it. Not just like a soap opera but I found that he was perhaps trying to mimic some styles of manga writting.

I find manga to be often a very superficial form of writting with little character development.

All these "soap opera" situations could have come right out of Sailor Moon and many of long established characters just weren't acting as if they were the same person.

PS: I liked Sammy and Jugs too

[kozzi24]

Austen had a couple good ideas with bad executions, and, unfortunately, just too many bad ideas. I like a lot of villain redemption stories (thus do I curse John Byrne for ruining the Sandman progress) and am still waiting for someone to take the reigns of the Constrictor redemption.
I do not think Juggernaut was necessarily a good choice, particularly as he had to be depowered to keep from overshadowing the team. (Anyone else remember the Captain Britain fight from early ExcaliburL
long-range view
CB attacks: TAP TAP TAP TAP
Jugs punches back POW!! CB in orbit!
Maybe Jugs would be better off in the new Excalibur?

The writer of X-statix is taking over for Austen. Hopefully, unlike Austen, he will adapt his storytelling to be appropriate for the characters he is writing. I liked Austen's War Machine--a lot--but he should have been more on the superheroics and less on the soap. X-Men is not X-Statix, and as long as the writer realizes that, everything should be ok.