100 X-Men: Rating Armor, Oya, Deadpool, Monet And Cyclops

Who are the greatest ever X-Men? We’re going to try to answer that question with your help, by putting the spotlight on different individual X-Men from across the franchise’s long history and pairing up your votes with the votes and opinions of our panel of highly opinionated X-Men fans. Your scores will be added to ours to determine the top 100 X-Men.

Today we assess the character that many people regard as the anchor of the X-Men, the stalwart hero who has arguably ndefined the team for generations. Yes, it's time to decide Deadpool's place in the ranks of the all-time greats. Also today: Cyclops.

ARMOR, HISAKO ICHIKI

Andrew: Joss Whedon’s attempt at a Kitty Pryde feels to me like one of the less successful examples of the trope, but I think Armor is an interesting enough character, with a truly inventive power signature. If another writer adopts her, Armor could be a real X-Man yet. 5/10

Elle: The saddest thing about this project has been seeing how many of these young mutants were created during specific runs, and never put to any good use afterward. It’s even sadder when you notice how many of them are people of color. Armor has way more potential than has ever been realized. Sadly, that’s not rare in this franchise. 7/10

Steve: She was okay, a not-that-successful new iteration of the Kitty Pryde character, as Andrew says. For a while she was ‘the’ teenage character of the X-Men, before becoming the teenager character of the X-Men who stood in the team splash pages but didn’t get to talk. Then she vanished almost completely. It feels a shame, but she was stuck in that Astonishing X-Men book for so long that nobody else really got to pitch in and define the character. By the time she was free of Joss Whedon’s unique work schedule, everybody had moved on to other student characters instead. 5/10

Katie: Such a cool powerset. 6/10

Aaron: There’s so much potential in her abilities, I’m surprised another writer hasn’t dusted her off the shelf and given her new purpose. 7/10

OUR SCORE: 30/50

OYA, IDIE OKONKWO

Andrew: Idie has potential, right? Her powers are a little odd, since they’re technically very specific and effectively very broad. But placing her at the centre of a debate over whether or not X-Men kill, and making her the unwitting puppet between warring adult ideologies, made her more compelling and sympathetic to me than many of her peers. I’m curious to see how she turns out. 6/10

Elle: I like Idie! And again, she’s exactly the sort of young mutant of color that every writer creates and the next writer ignores, except that somehow Idie has stuck around for multiple runs and continued to develop. She’s come to feel like an important figure in the next generation of X-Men, which I’m totally into. If this were a world in which time actually passes, she would lead the X-Men one day. 9/10

Steve: Idie is an enjoyable character right now in All-New X-Men. I feel like her main character traits were ones that were problematic and had to slowly be eroded and replaced, which means she’s slightly hollowed-out in terms of actual personality right now. I’m invested, though, and interested in where she might go. I get the feeling that place will ultimately be “wherever Armor went,” but fingers crossed that’s not the case. 6/10

Katie: I like Idie a lot. She reminds me a lot of Rahne, as both started out as religious teenage girls who believe that their powers make them sinful and unworthy of love. I loved her growing dynamic among her peers at the Jean Grey School (especially her friendship with Broo), and gosh darn it, I want all those characters to be featured prominently again! 8/10

Aaron: I love Idie, particularly her relationship with religion and divinity. Named after the Nigerian goddess Oya, Idie has a powerset that challenges her faith. I come from an atypical Christian background, and I’m all too familiar with what it’s like to refer to yourself as something impure and sinful. I remain hopeful that she doesn’t become a castaway on the island of forgotten misfit teen mutants. 9/10

OUR SCORE: 38/50

DEADPOOL, WADE WILSON

Elle: I have nothing against Deadpool, but I’m not that excited about him either. Also, he’s not really an X-Man. He’s X-Men-adjace. 4/10

Steve: The guy knows how to rock a leotard, that’s for sure. The most X-Manny thing he’s ever done was the arc of Cable & Deadpool where he recruited himself into the team for an attack on Cable and Providence --- not least because he squeezed himself into Jean’s old costume. He’s also a surprisingly good love interest for Siryn. 5/10

Katie: I don’t dislike Wade, but I can only take him in short bursts (and only when he’s written by writers who keep him kind to women and children). He’s really only as much an X-Man as Carol Danvers is, and she’s not on this list, sooooo … 4/10

Aaron: Do I have to? He’s an awesome character, he truly is. But he’s the quintessential Dennis the Menace antihero, that I’d rather take a breather from. 5/10

Andrew: At the risk of sounding all “I liked him before he was popular”, those Joe Kelly/Ed McGuinness comics are still some all-time favorites, but this guy is Wolverine-levels of over-exposed now, and whatever cult his fans belong to, I am not at home to their newsletters. 5/10

OUR SCORE: 23/50

M, MONET ST CROIX

Aaron: I just wanna go shopping with her on 5th Ave and talk debutante stuff, like, what’s Alexander Wang like, at dinner. She’s a Heather of the X-Men and I’m here for every bit of it. 10/10

Andrew: Our own Chris Sims calls her “Veronica Lodge from Krypton”, and that’s a good encapsulation of why I love her, though she’s also a Muslim woman of color, and I love that about her too. Heck, I love everything about her. 10/10

Elle: I feel like M’s real heyday was mostly in stuff I haven’t read. But when I have encountered her, I’ve always enjoyed her, and listening to everyone else describe her makes her sound like exactly the sort of character I tend to be into. 8/10

Steve: Monet’s wonderful because she refutes any definition that’s thrown at her. She started off marvelously in Generation X, then things took a turn. She was marvelous in X-Factor… then things took a turn. Also she was in other comics recently apparently. But those don’t matter --- Monet's development from student to young woman felt natural and smooth. There aren’t many characters who are capable of that. Then again, there aren’t many characters with the sheer charisma and stride of Monet. She’s not someone who needs to step into the spotlight --- the spotlight should be doing everything it can to find her. 8/10

Katie: I’m with Elle on this --- most of M’s highlights were in books before I was into comics. But she seems really cool and frankly, I want to see Marvel highlight more than one Muslim superheroine at a time, so giving Monet a larger role is A-OK by me. 7/10

OUR SCORE: 43/50

CYCLOPS, SCOTT SUMMERS

Katie: It’s really easy to make Scott Summers the butt of the joke (both in fandom and in comics), but at his best he cares a lot and wants to do the best he can. It would be nice if his self-loathing stopped getting in the way of all of his personal relationships. 8/10

Elle: To begin with, I love Cyclops, but if I’m being really honest, a lot of that is because Jay Edidin (of Jay And Miles X-Plain The X-Men) really loves Cyclops, and I love Jay. So anything I say about him is going to sound a lot like stuff Jay’s said before. Cyclops is a great character not because he’s good at anything, but because he tries so hard despite how bad at most things he is. He takes responsibility for the X-Men, and at times for the fate of mutantkind as a whole, not because he’s the best choice to do it, but because he knows somebody needs to. I don’t go around arguing with people that think Scott’s the worst. Being the worst is part of what makes him the best. 9/10

Steve: I like Cyclops, and I like his journey over the years. While everything was painted to try and suggest that this was some kind of dangerous, dark path we shouldn’t respect him for going down… he’s felt like a direct in-universe rebuttal to Marvel editorial. As they wound away the X-Men and replaced them with The Avengers, he was the character standing up against them and calling them out. We were meant to find this aggressive and bad, but actually? It was amazing. 9/10

Aaron: If you watched the animated series before you read the comics like myself, then your views of Cyclops may have had a rocky start. I originally thought he was an absolute bore until I began reading multiple X-books. But he’s proved me wrong on multiple occasions. He’s a phenomenal leader, and his willingness to sacrifice for his family and for his team has been immeasurable. I even named my late cat after him. R.I.P. Scott. 9/10

Andrew: Someone has to speak up for the haters here, and honestly, Scott Summers turns my stomach. I think he’s the ultimate avatar of self-righteous patriarchal hypocrisy, and I'd be perfectly happy to never see his smug face again. 1/10

OUR SCORE: 37/50