Lobdell or Nicieza?

[Dasher10]

I'm going through the X-Men starting with Proteus and I'm at the point where these two take over. Fan consensus seems to be that one of them was amazing and the other is horrible but it differs from fan to fan.

Considering how many times these two collaborated on crossovers, I'm surprised at this reaction. Which of these is the better writer and which what are the strengths and flaws of each.

Also, from what I can tell, people seem to hate 90s X-men and refer to it as a "dark time" due to all the crossovers but said crossovers are often among the most loved stories, the only real reason I can find for the 90s hate is Alan Davis' run whenever he was writing a story that wasn't part of a crossover.

And I'm fully convinced that nobody is as bad as Chuck Austen and I won't feel cheated as long as I avoid anything with his name on it.

 

[runawayboulder]

I preferred Lobdell. Nicieza had a couple of good stories but they were few and far in between.

 

[mightiest_mortal]

Right, the early 90s has a lot of fans still because they came to the comics from the Cartoon show. This was probably when X-Men hit the peak of its popularity.

TBH, I liked a lot at the time (pouches, shoulderpads and all) and there were some great stories. X-Men at its worse was still never as crossover mad as a lot of other comics at the time. Try reading some of the Midnight sons or 2099 series' now and you can barely follow a story because of all the crossovers.

After AOA, things started to go downhill; Onslaught was ok, OZT was tolerable (I actually liked the characters introduced) then TBH the comic hit ROCK bottom until Morrison took over. Not so much bad, just incredibly bland. Claremont's run at that time was almost embarrassing.

I actually didn't mind Austen, and dont get all the hate. Sure, he did some weird things occasionally but had some interesting ideas. It likely didn't help he had a lot of bizarre stuff mandated to him from editors (blinding Gambit, the new Xorn, the infamous makeout grave session, Mutant 143s appearance)

None of it came close to things like Gambit just deciding to join Apocalypse for no reason.

 

[THANOSRULES]

i really dig FabNic...did some good work on comics...I hated how he killed off Genis-Vell though..even though he was certainly ordered to do so.