Its not a question of seeing the character, it is a matter of them doing something interesting. What good is it seeing a character appear every now and them if they never do anything interesting or important in their appearances?
Well, at least you know they're not in limbo.
t: I jest, I jest. Really. I kid the fans.
The writers are only focusing on a small group of characters. In true storytelling, a writer tries to write every major character well and give them significance. It seems to me that the X-writers are not concerned with doing any such thing at the moment.
I'd call that a pretty haphazard definition of "true storytelling," which in and of itself I'd call a pretty haphazard term. I mostly just wanted to use "haphazard" twice in that sentence, honestly. Or - and don't take this the wrong way - you have no idea how to plan out a serialized 22-page format.
This definition might work if you were working with a small cast of characters. Let's say, a Bat-family book meant to use every major character of the Bat-family, so, let's say, Batman, Robin, Nightwing (well, let's go with before Final Crisis, shall we?), Gordon, Oracle, and maybe Huntress. And maybe some others for random cameos. Even in that case, with such a small cast, I don't imagine readers seeing their favorite character on an issue-to-issue basis. Not to mention, room for the villains? And not every arc would feature each character in some level of significance.
Over on IDW's new G.I. Joe, Chuck Dixon's not doing a half-bad job. Yes, laugh if you will at G.I. Joe, and while he went very, very, very decompressed on some of the initial issues which did not work so very well at all, he's done a decent job of handling what is, in actuality, a huge cast on par with the X-Men whole, and introducing some of those characters. But you know what? Certain characters are more important, and are featured more often. Duke's been in almost every issue thus far, if not all of them, as has Scarlett. Snake Eyes has been in only a few. Stalker? Only a few. Flint? Barely any. Shipwreck? One or two, depending on whether you count the introductory #0. Cover Girl just got introduced and has been in maybe ten panels total between two or three issues. The only villains we've met are The Baroness and Destro. And no, not every Joe is doing something "significant" as per your definition of "true storytelling."
There's a vast difference between the two books - well, between the real book and the hypothetical book. But G.I. Joe is closer to the reality of Uncanny X-Men. Like I've already said, Fraction can't use -everyone.- I suppose he could go on a month-to-month basis highlighting individual characters or certain characters, but then everyone would complain that the book isn't going anywhere, and rightly so. With such a large cast, there's only so much juggling that can occur, and that juggling is embodied by the X-Club stories, as that's where the current extra focus is. Maybe you don't like that, but like or dislike has nothing to do with the value of the title.
A large cast changes the rules entirely. Most of Charles Dickens's fiction - which, yes, was serialized in publication - dealt with smaller casts and focused on specific characters, and even in small casts a number of characters were glossed over to make more room for the more central cast. Look at "Hard Times." What Dickens wrote, and who Dickens wrote, he made sure he had enough room for. A 22-page serialized medium has even less room, even if it comes out more often.
I dunno, I was going somewhere specific with that, but I got sidetracked with a phone call and don't remember. Oh well. Someone come tell me I'm wrong and Iceman's more important than narrative structure or sensical writing.
