Generation X (comics)
Generation X – T.V. Pilot
Generation X is a made-for-TV film which aired on FOX on February 20, 1996. It is based on the Marvel Comics series Generation X. It was produced by New World Entertainment and Marvel Entertainment. Characters from the comics: Emma Frost/White Queen (Finola Hughes) runs the Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters with Banshee. She takes her job very seriously and wants to make sure the students are sufficiently trained for any situation. Part of the reason for this may be because in her past she trained another group called the Hellions who were lost, something she blames herself for. Before her teaching duties Emma worked as a researcher on a project to develop a “dream machine” to access the dream dimension, she came into conflict with fellow researcher Russel Tresh. Her powers include mind control.
Sean Cassidy/Banshee (Jeremy Ratchford), an Irish mutant, runs the Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters with Emma Frost. Sean is much more laid back in his teaching approach than Emma, and wants to make sure that the students bond as a team. He can produce a sonic scream that can stun people. Monet St. Croix/M (Amarilis) is one of the students at the Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, she claims that she is the perfect mutant; super intelligent, enhanced physical abilities and “level five invulnerability.” Jubilation Lee/Jubilee (Heather McComb) is the newest student at the Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, she is highly intelligent, and very curious. She can generate brightly colored bursts of plasma energy which she can fire from her hands. She also seems to have some psychic abilities.
Mondo (Bumper Robinson) is one of the students at the Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, he is hot-headed, and gets into fights easily. He has the ability to take on the properties of any organic or inorganic matter he touches. Consequently, he doesn’t like Jell-O, (though this is also a reference to Bumper Robinson’s first acting role: a Jell-O Pudding Pop commercial). Angelo Espinosa/Skin (Austin Rodriguez) has skin that can stretch in a variety of different ways, including the ability to wrap himself around objects. He has a younger sister, whom Russel Tresh threatened if Skin didn’t obey him. He seems to have some psychic abilities. Characters created for the film: Arlee Hicks/Buff (Suzanne Davis) is one of the students at the Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, she is a friendly likable person, whose mutation increases her muscle mass and strength. She is insecure about her new physique and wears loose clothing to cover it up.
Kurt Pastorius/Refrax (Randall Slavin) is one of the students at the Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, his eyes emit radiation giving him X-Ray vision and heat beams. He is a practical joker who has a crush on Buff. He wears special glasses to control his powers and is best friends with Mondo. He is probably based on Cyclops. Doctor Russel Tresh (Matt Frewer) an unethical scientist and researcher who is investigating subliminal and psychic powers. He worked on a project with Emma Frost, who got him fired for his unethical behaviour. Following this he put his talents towards the advertising industry where he uses the money to build a machine to access the “dream dimension.”
Generation X is a fictional comic book superhero team, a spin-off of the X-Men franchise published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer Scott Lobdell and artistChris Bachalo, the team formed during the 1994 “Phalanx Covenant” storyline, and appeared in their own monthly series in September 1994 with Generation X #1 (November 1994).
Generation X consisted of teenage mutants designed to reflect the cynicism and complexity of the series’ namesake demographic. Unlike its predecessor the New Mutants, the team was not mentored by X-Men founder Charles Xavier at his New York estate, but by Banshee and former supervillain Emma Frost at a splinter school in western Massachusetts.
The book’s original creators left it in 1997. The series was cancelled with issue #75 in 2001.
The team
Unlike the X-Men and New Mutants, Generation X did not attend Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters in upstate New York or learn from Professor Xavier himself. Instead, they trained at the Massachusetts Academy, located in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, and were mentored by Banshee, an Irish X-Man who possessed a “sonic scream,” and the former villain White Queen, an aristocratic telepath.
Generation X consisted of:
- Chamber (Jonothon “Jono” Starsmore), a British mutant who produced huge blasts of energy from his upper chest. When his powers first manifested, they destroyed the lower half of his face and chest, leaving him with only his limited telepathic powers with which to communicate, and releasing him from any necessity to eat, drink, or breathe. Because of this, he is characteristically sullen and bitter.
- Gaia, formerly the otherworldly Guardian of the Citadel of the Universal Amalgamator, which could potentially be misused to combine all sentient consciousnesses into a single entity. She was freed by Synch and eventually joined the team, but soon left to explore this world.
- Husk (Paige Guthrie), a Kentucky coal miner’s daughter who could shed her skin, revealing a different substance each time. She is the younger sister of The New Mutants’ Cannonball, and elder sister of Icarus.
- Jubilee (Jubilation Lee), a Chinese-American “mall rat” from Beverly Hills, California who could produce explosive energy. Jubilee had been a junior member of the X-Men in the early 1990s, and joined Generation X to learn more about her powers.
- M (Monet St. Croix), a “perfect” young woman born into a rich family from Monaco who could fly, possessed super strength and had telepathic abilities. Her arrogant manner was an annoyance to her teammates and her habit of going into deep trances or fugue states when deep in thought was a mystery to her teachers. Mysteries surrounding the St. Croix family would play a big part in the series.
- Mondo, a cheerful, laidback Samoan mutant who could take on the texture of objects he touched. Mondo eventually betrayed the team and was apparently killed by Bastion, but it was later revealed that this was a clone. The real Mondo appeared two years later, but as a villain teamed with Juggernaut and Black Tom Cassidy.
- Penance, a silent, childlike and mysterious mutant who possessed diamond hard, red skin and razor-sharp claws. Penance appeared mysteriously at the Massachusetts Academy and at first, little was known about her. According to the Generation X Ashcan, the writers originally intended her to be a girl named Yvette from Yugoslavia. A hint of this can be seen when her mind is read by Emma Frost, revealing Eastern European tanks on the march in her memories. This background was later changed by the following creative team.
- Skin (Angelo Espinosa), a former reluctant teenage gang member on the streets of East Los Angeles who possessed six feet of extra skin. He could stretch his extremities, but mostly considered his mutation, which caused him to have sagging gray skin and painful headaches, a curse.
- Synch (Everett Thomas), an African-American teenager from St. Louis, known for his pleasant, supportive temperament, who could copy the powers of other mutants/superhumans within close, physical proximity.
The series
Many members of Generation X debuted during the “Phalanx Covenant” storyline, a crossover spanning across every X-Men-related comic book in the summer of 1994. The Phalanx, an extraterrestrial collective intelligence attempted to absorb many of Earth’s mutants into its matrix and captured several of the young mutants who would make up Generation X as “practice” before moving on to the X-Men.
In September of that year, Generation X #1 was published, establishing the team at Frost’s Massachusetts Academy. It also introduced their arch-nemesis Emplate, a vampire-like mutant who sucked the bone marrow of young mutants. As the series continued, fans and critics raved about Bachalo’s quirky, complex artwork and Lobdell’s realistic teenage characters. The series soon became one of the most popular X-Books.
Lobdell and Bachalo departed in 1997, leaving writer Larry Hama and artist Terry Dodson to reveal the long-standing mysteries behind M, Penance and Emplate. Hama revealed that M was in fact an amalgamation of Monet St. Croix‘s two younger sisters, who could merge as part of their mutant powers (one was autistic, explaining the trances); Emplate was their brother who, after experimenting with black magic, was caught in a strange limbo and needed mutant bone marrow to escape; and Penance was the actual Monet St. Croix, transformed under one of Emplate’s spells. All of this was revealed in a surreal, mystic epic in Generation X #35-40 (1997–1998) that was greeted with disapproval by most fans (Lobdell’s original plan had involved the twins, but did not include a “real” Monet).
The saga ended with the actual Monet St. Croix taking on the role of M, but fans’ reactions did not get much better and sales began to dip. Hama’s successor, Jay Faerber, attempted to revive the title, bringing in a regular human student population at the school and making Emma’s sister Adrienne Frost another headmistress in Generation X #50 (1999).
In 2000, writer Warren Ellis, known for his dark, sarcastic style, was hired to revamp Generation X, as part of the Counter-X rebranding of several second-tier X-titles (the others being X-Force and X-Man). Ellis acted as ‘plotmaster’, while Brian Wood handled the actual scripting chores and later acted as sole writer of the series. Fan response was positive, largely because Ellis and Wood dealt with the teenaged cast without resorting to cliché. However, in early 2001, Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada cancelled Generation X, in addition to five other X-Books, arguing that so many mutant superhero books had become redundant. Also, X-Men writer Grant Morrison wanted to add a new cast of teenage mutants to the Xavier Institute in New York. In Generation X #75, the team disbanded and the Massachusetts Academy closed.
