If you haven’t heard yet, the original Jean Grey is going to come back from the dead next month. I have no real opinions on this turn of events. For one, characters coming back from the dead in comics is second nature, especially with the X-Men. For two, I’ve never cared about Jean Grey. Was she ever her own person? Can anybody tell me any personality traits or character trivia that is specific to the original Jean Grey that warrants her coming back?

Anyway, once Jean is back, she’s going to star in a new X-Men team book called X-Men: Red, to go along with the Blue and Gold books already seeing print. Why does the X-Men line need another team book? I dunno.

The important thing is, the reason I’m writing this post, is because Marvel once again did a big, day-long tease about what random X-characters would be on the X-Men: Red roster. As if the lineup matters.

And me, being a fool, got my hopes up that one of my favorite characters would be on the team. But none of them are.

Let’s see. We’ve got Jean Grey, obviously. She’s joined by Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Gabby, Namor, Gentle and new character Trinary, which is a really dumb name. The book will be written by Tom Taylor, with art by Mahmud Asrar. I like both of those creators, so I’ll probably pick up the first few issues, especially since Tom Taylor bringing both Laura and Gabby to an X-Men team sounds like fun!

But suffice to say, I don’t care about any of the other team members, especially after getting my hopes up. In fact, I kind of hate the fact that Marvel is putting Prince Namor back on an X-Men team. That is a personal comic book pet peeve of mine. He does not belong there.

In the end, this is just another example of what I’ve come to dub the X-Men Assembly Line. Slap together a new title made of adjectives and cobble together a roster of seemingly randomly selected X-characters. Rinse and repeat ad infinitum. Hopefully, someday, characters like Multiple Man, Mimic or Strong Guy will get to be randomly chosen! I’ll even take Maggott.

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