Over the past five decades and counting, the X-Men comic books have built a dubious reputation for featuring long-running, convoluted narratives that leave casual fans completely lost. Indeed, even the notoriously broken timeline of the X-Men film franchise seems like relatively straightforward storytelling compared with that of its source material.
Seriously, Marvel’s Merry Mutants have seemingly confronted every single scenario capable of over-complicating an otherwise thrilling superhero yarn. Whether it’s time-travelling clones, long-lost family members or some other wildly implausible plot device, X-Men stories tend to get really confusing, really fast – as this list makes abundantly clear!
10 Who Is The Third Summers Brother?
The Summers family tree – which includes Cyclops and Havok among its branches – is as perplexing a genealogy as you’re likely to encounter. The “Third Summers Brother” plotline certainly didn’t help on this score, gradually devolving from a compelling mystery to a muddled mess after its instigator, writer Fabian Nicieza, departed the book without officially confirming that Adam-X the X-Treme was Scott and Alex Summers’ long-lost brother.
In Nicieza’s absence, the storyline (and Adam-X) fell off the radar, although other writers would occasionally drop clues that implicated the likes of Gambit or even supervillain Apocalypse as being the sequestered Summers sibling. Finally, scribe Ed Brubaker brought this festering subplot to a definitive end with 2006’s Deadly Genesis, which established newly introduced character Vulcan as Summers Bro #3 – which made matters worse, as this didn’t really jibe with all the evidence pointing to Adam-X.
9 Cannonball: External Or Not?
The Externals are a rare sub-species of mutant blessed with immortality who have (in grand Marvel Comics tradition) secretly manipulated humankind for their own ends for centuries. So, they’re not exactly the most original bunch on the block, but at least they make sense – or at least, they did, until Cannonball was thrown into the mix.
The young X-Force member learned from Cable that he was an External after recovering from a mortal injury. Cannonball’s immortality was taken as gospel from that point on, until another External, Selene, dismissed the very idea as ridiculous. That’s all well and good, except now we’re a bit bamboozled regarding how this kid from Kentucky survived not only his first brush with the Grim Reaper, but other subsequent mortal injuries, as well!
8 Who Is Madelyne Pryor?
Madelyne Pryor’s story started out simple enough. The spitting image of then-deceased Jean Grey, Madelyne was nevertheless a totally separate person who ended up marrying Jean’s grieving partner, Cyclops, which is beyond weird (but whatever, love is strange). So although the tease of Madelyne being Jean reborn was just a fake-out, she was still a worthy recipient of Scott’s affections, and a happy ending appeared to be on the cards.
However, Jean eventually was resurrected to appear as part of the X-Factor line-up. In one of his lowest ever moments, Cyclops promptly abandoned poor Maddie and their newborn baby to reunite with his former flame – which was “justified” by exposing Madelyne as a clone of Jean after all. The ex-Mrs Summers then went mad and was destroyed, although she would inexplicably resurface every so often.
7 What Is Exodus’ Backstory?
When Exodus made his debut in the pages of X-Factor back in 1993, he was portrayed as an uber-powerful antagonist of Native American heritage who claims to speak for the younger generation of mutants. As the years went by, new layers would be added to his characterization – notably, he claimed that his mentor Magneto bestowed upon him the “Exodus” moniker, while his distinctive facial markings would be used to link him to the X-Men’s other archfoe, Apocalypse.
Yet virtually everything we knew about Exodus’ backstory was retconned in a single issue, 1996’s Black Knight: Exodus #1. Here, we discover that he was born in France over 800 years ago, that the “Exodus” handle was first dreamed up by an overgrown scarab (seriously!), and that the marks above each of his eyebrows were just old battle scars.
6 Is Xorn Really Magneto Or Not?
A key moment in Grant Morrison’s acclaimed New X-Men run sees benevolent healer Xorn unmasked as none other than Magneto, who adopted this unassuming alter-ego to infiltrate the Xavier Institute. It was a stunning twist…until the powers that be at Marvel decided to undo it, largely so that Xorn could take the blame for the massacre in New York City ostensibly carried out by the Master of Magnetism after his unveiling.
Now, the notion that Xorn was really somebody impersonating Magneto didn’t 100% tally with Morrison’s original tale, where it was pretty clear upon re-reading that Xorn was only ever meant to be a cover identity. But things really went off the deep end with the introduction of Xorn’s identical twin brother, at which point, the character (or rather, characters!) became the subject of an increasingly nonsensical series of continuity revisions.
5 What Was The Church Of Humanity Thinking?
There are so many confounding elements about the Church of Humanity’s scheme to destroy the Catholic Church from Chuck Austen’s controversial tenure as writer on Uncanny X-Men, it’s hard to know where to begin. For starters, there’s the certainty on the part of the parties involved that they can have Nightcrawler appointed Pope for their own nefarious purposes – without any obvious strategy in place to pull off such a tricky logistical feat.
The biggest logical hurdle to clear here is that the Church’s wider conspiracy would hinge on orchestrating a faux-Rapture event that has absolutely zero basis in accepted Catholic doctrine! True, this isn’t the same kind of confusion generated by the other entries on this list, but it had us genuinely puzzled, nonetheless.
4 What’s The Deal With Psylocke?
When we first met Psylocke, she was a blonde Caucasian lass named Elizabeth Braddock with precognitive abilities and a British accent (her twin brother is Captain Britain). Slowly but surely, almost everything in that last sentence other than Betsy’s name was altered, making her one of the most confusing characters in X-history.
We’re not exaggerating, either. By the time Psylocke joined the X-Men in 1986, she was a purple-haired Asian woman who boasted formidable martial arts skills, and whose power set moved away from precognition to telepathy, before finally settling as a unique brand of telekinesis. It’s hard enough keeping track of all these changes as a long-time comics reader, but for a newbie? Forget about it.
3 How Are Longshot And Shatterstar Related?
We’re going to be completely honest for a moment: we’re still struggling to understand the Longshot/Shatterstar connection. But do you really blame us? Different writers have disclosed that Longshot is a clone of Shatterstar from the future, that Shatterstar is in turn the son of Longshot and Dazzler, and so on.
And let’s also not overlook the weird link between Shatterstar and another mutant, Benjamin Russell – his exact physical match and someone with whom he bizarrely shares memories. The bond between Shatterstar and Russell has never been satisfactorily explained, and we’re still not sure how we’re supposed to connect the dots between that pair and Longshot!
2 Is Joseph Really A Younger Magneto?
When Joseph arrived on the scene way back in 1996, he was intended to be a decades-younger incarnation of Magneto stricken with amnesia. There wasn’t any ambiguity about this, either – heck, introductory text in at least one of Joseph’s earliest appearances explicitly confirms that he’s the real deal, and not some kind of phoney.
On the contrary, Joseph’s story became tangled after Marvel editorial got cold feet about the concept of a fresh-faced Magneto and set about building a sense of mystery around Joseph’s origins. Ultimately, they went down the tried and true route of making him one more clone in the X-Men canon, dishing out yet another hard-to-follow storyline in the process.
1 Is Cable Or Styfe The Clone?
At the height of Cable’s popularity, fans discovered that the perennial thorn in his side, Stryfe, was also his evil doppelganger. This led to intense speculation over how the two men were related, with the available evidence suggesting that one of these gents was a clone of the other, or hinted at a time travel-based solution.
Ironically, the subsequent X-Cutioner’s Song storyline – which promised to resolve this tantalizing plot point once and for all – only muddied the waters further, serving up “clues” that didn’t seem to add up. How could such confusing storytelling see the light of day? Chalk it up to debate at the time between X-editor Bob Harras, writer Fabien Nicieza and artist Rob Liefeld over whether Stryfe was a clone of Cable (or vice versa), or whether the they were actually the same guy all along!