The Internet loves to make fun of the X-Men. Whether ranking the worst members of the team or the most pointless, the X-Men seem to be easy pickings for discerning Internet nerds. Well I’m a different kind of Internet nerd, and I’m here to offer my support for some of those very same X-Men! Because if there’s one thing you need to understand about comic books, it’s that there are no bad characters, only bad writers.

Some of the most overrated

By their very nature, the X-Men are going to feature some less-than-stellar characters. Most superhero teams like the Avengers or the Justice League only take the best of the best superheroes. But the X-Men are built on being a minority, featuring characters who were born with their powers. And those powers can be either a gift or a curse. Sometimes you get the power to shoot lasers out of your eyes or control the weather. And sometimes your sweat is acidic or your bones grow out through your skin.

Join me after the jump for the 6 most underestimated X-Men!

6. Jubilee

Not all heroes can pull off yellow

Jubilee gets thrown around a lot on lists of the worst X-Men, and I’ve never understood why. It’s probably because she so glaringly represents the 90s in all their excesses.  Well I grew up in the 90s, and I liked them just fine. Plus, Jubilee was the audience entry character for the 90s X-Men cartoon, one of the finest cartoons of my childhood. That alone gets her a pass in my book. But Jubilee has a lot to offer. For starters, she makes a nice entry character in the comics as well. She’s young, she’s confident and she’s not the most powerful or the weakest X-Man in the world, so there are no special restrictions on her. She’s not the most important mutant alive, or the most useless. She’s just like you or me.

And say what you will about her ‘plasmoid’ ability, but Jubilee shoots fireworks out of her fingertips. Fireworks! Just fwoosh! Right out of her hands! Granted, they’re not explosives. They’re mostly just annoying to people, but so what? It’s still a colorful, bombastic power that doesn’t make her better or worse than anybody else. And Jubilee doesn’t have to stick to the 90s. She should mold and grow, reflecting whatever generation is reading her. She’s the perfect sort of grounded character, who would rather go hang out at the mall with her friends than fight Magneto. And isn’t that something every good superhero team needs? An average person? The fireworks are just pretty icing on the cake.

5. Marrow

She’s got a little something…right there

Marrow was an X-Man for maybe two seconds in the late 90s and early 00s, around the time I started reading X-Men comics. So she has a special place in my heart. Marrow is a Morlock, a group of mutants whose powers were so hideous that they banded together to live in the sewers, away from hateful humanity. But then Marrow turned evil for awhile, what with looking pretty monstrous. Her mutant power is that her bones grow out through her skin in random ways, and then she can break them off to use as weapons or tools. So right away, she’s awesome. She not only looks visibly unique, which is important in a comic book, but she’s a walking arsenal. Marrow could produce all of the weapons of the Ninja Turtles, and they’d be made out of bone, so they’d be even more cool.

Marrow also has a great personality. She started out in comics as a grotesque villain, but turned hero to help the X-Men save the day. I love it when a villain becomes a good guy. It has such potential for a redemptive arc. And at first, Marrow was angry and abrasive. The X-Men didn’t have to take her in, but they did, because that defines the team. They took her in and put up with her attitude. She eventually got better and nicer, but then the writers at the time bogged her down with some needlessly complicated backstory, and took away her grotesque powers, making her pretty and getting rid of the abrasive attitude. See what I mean about bad writers? If you take away a character’s defining attributes, you lose what makes that character worth reading. And Marrow as a grotesque, abrasive, lonely young woman fighting for her right to belong is a great read.

4. Stacy X

Snakeskin looks good on her

Stacy X is another X-lady with a special place in my heart, though I do hate her name. I’m fairly certain somebody wanted to name her ‘Ecstasy’, but the censors wouldn’t allow it. Then they wanted to name her ‘X-Stacy’, but something went wrong at the printer and she became ‘Stacy X’. That’s one of the worst codenames ever. And considering she’s a snake woman who can control bodily functions and once worked in a brothel, there are so many better names. Stacy X is such a wonderfully off-kilter character – and again, she fits that role of someone who wouldn’t normally be on a white bread superhero team, but the X-Men take all comers. Stacy was smart, wickedly clever and not ashamed of using her pheromone powers in a mutant brothel. It happens. Sex workers are people too. And sometimes, they can be superheroes. If only the X-Men were willing to give her a chance.

3. Beak

At least they gave him a cool jacket

Just look at him. Barnell Bohusk could very well be the ugliest mutant of all time. He knows it, everyone around him knows it, but dammit, he’s still gives it his all! Obviously, Beak looks like a sickly bird. He’s got some wings, but they barely allow him to fly. He’s got that beak, double-jointed knees and a variety of other awkward mutant abilities. But what Beak had most of all was a good heart, and therein lies the worth of his character. The entire point of the X-Men is that they are born with their powers, and nobody gets to choose that sort of thing. Even though he didn’t look like your typical handsome superhero, and didn’t have great powers, Beak still stood shoulder-to-shoulder with his fellow X-Men in a battle against Magneto. He was a superhero, even though he never looked the part.

Beak is the ultimate underdog with the heart of gold, someone who is always going to give 110%. And from a narrative standpoint, his worth is immeasurable. Beak is the ugly duckling in all of us, doing the best with what life has given him, and not letting the prettier, more powerful X-Men hold him back. The handsome, perfect Superman is boring. The ugly, clumsy Beak is fascinating.

2. Cypher

Yep, he’s really this plain

Doug Ramsey’s power is language. He can communicate in any language, be it French, Swahili or Alien. Your immediate thought, of course, is what good is that power when fighting an army of mutant-hunting Sentinels? Is Cypher going to try to impress them with his Latin? Which is probably why Cypher was killed off a few decades ago, early into his career as an X-Man. But the X-writers knew they couldn’t let someone as cool as Cypher stay dead forever. He was brought back to life and showed the world how awesome he could be.

All it took was a little creative thinking.

What else might count as a ‘language’? How about body language? Cypher could be the master of the counterattack, able to predict what you’re going to do before you do it. He’s able to know if you’re lying just by looking at you and reading the signs in your face. What about binary? That’s a language. Cypher can ‘speak’ to computers, and considering how computers are everywhere in this day and age, he theoretically has the power to take over the world! But he’s not going to, because he’s one of the good guys. He’s also a great example of a good writer finding a great way to utilize a character.

1. Maggott

He makes it look good

Maggott is awesome on every conceivable level. He’s also one of my favorite X-Men of all time. Maggott is named for those two blue slugs he’s holding on his shoulders, nicknamed Eany and Meany. And if you thought Beak had a weird mutant power, wait until you hear about Maggott: those slugs are the physical manifestation of his digestive system. Rather than having a stomach and intestines like the rest of us, Maggott’s slugs leave his body and go around eating pretty much anything, from garbage to bombs. Then they crawl back into his body (painfully) and provide him the sustenance he needs to survive – while also granting him enhanced strength and turning his skin blue.

How is that not the coolest, most creatively creepy super-power of all time?

Just like Beak, Maggott is an example of a mutant ‘curse’. But much like Beak, Maggott makes the most of it and still tries his best to be a hero. He’s a humble guy who has not only accepted his weird lot in life, but embraces it. Eany and Meany are his pals! The guy turned ‘having pets’ into a super power. Plus, Eany and Meany are great from a visual perspective. There is no one else in comics who looks like Maggott, and that alone should make him a valuable character.

But sometimes people aren’t ready for a superhero with a pair of giant insect pets that hang out on his shoulders and eat garbage. And people are stupid.

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