{"id":388648,"date":"2026-04-12T18:42:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T18:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/388648\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T18:42:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T18:42:08","slug":"marvel-just-introduced-the-best-mutant-team-ever-and-im-already-hooked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/388648\/","title":{"rendered":"Marvel Just Introduced the Best Mutant Team Ever and I\u2019m Already Hooked"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marvel Comics<\/a> hasn\u2019t been doing the X-Men<\/a> justice lately. The House of Ideas spent years marginalizing their mutants, trying to replace their bestselling team with the Inhumans, who they owned the film rights to. 2019 saw parent company Disney get the rights to the X-Men back, and comic arm of Marvel hired superstar writer Jonathan Hickman to redefine the team. This led to the Krakoa Era<\/a>, five years of stories that pushed the boundaries of what mutant stories could be. It played with the political side of the group\u2019s metaphor, and fans in marginalized communities loved the books. However, the \u201cFrom the Ashes\u201d reboot left almost all of that behind, trying to bring back a more homogenized version of the mutants that called back to the \u201990s.<\/p>\n

Even diehard X-Men fans aren\u2019t happy with things, but there has been a beacon of light for many X-fans: Uncanny X-Men<\/a>. Uncanny X-Men sidestepped the \u201cFrom the Ashes\u201d curse<\/a>, and has been giving readers solid, character-based X-stories that aren\u2019t scared of their history with civil rights. Writer Gail Simone has made it the most diverse book on the line, embracing queer themes and introducing new mutants from a variety of backgrounds. She even played with the United States\u2019 past with racism in \u201cDark Artery\u201d, one of the best X-Men stories of the 2020s<\/a>. This story fleshed out the history of Haven, the new X-Men base, and the St. Junior family. Uncanny X-Men Annual #1 expands on \u201cDark Artery\u201d, and introduces the best mutant team of this era: the Regulators. It\u2019s exactly what\u2019s missing from the X-books, and I\u2019m already hooked.<\/p>\n

The Regulators Are Everything a Mutant Team Can Be<\/p>\n

\"\"Image Courtesy of Marvel Comics<\/p>\n

The history of Haven is one of the coolest things that Marvel has introduced to the 21st century X-Men. The house was owned by the St. Junior family, who had a previous friendship with Gambit, and its history plays into both the mutant hatred of the Marvel Universe and the United States\u2019 history with anti-black racism. Haven was a place created by black mutants so that they could have a place to bury their own. They used symbols to communicate the path to Haven, which was a thing back in the racist days of Jim Crow, a language that only those who knew it could read and told travelers what places were safe for them.<\/p>\n

In \u201cDark Artery\u201d, it was revealed that Wolverine had a history with Haven and Uncanny X-Men Annual #1 fleshes that out by introducing the Regulators. The story kicks off with new character Slaughter Freedman, a black mutant former lawman, bringing his dead son to Haven. He is accosted by racists, who he kills, and discovers that they were burying Wolverine alive. He brings him to Haven, but his actions against the racists leads to two black children being blamed for it. Logan and Freedman team up with Mother Witchfire, Michael St. Junior, and Lady Henrietta (all introduced in \u201cDark Artery\u201d) to fight the racists and save the children as the Regulators.<\/p>\n

One of the best parts about the X-Men is the fact that they are more than just superheroes. Sure, they fight supervillains and save the universe, but the whole point of the team is anti-racism. Their best stories are able to incorporate a message of diversity and fighting for the marginalized, and that\u2019s been almost completely missing from the X-books since Tom Brevoort took over editor of the X-office. The current version of the team is the most lib-coded, centrist view of them and their struggles, one that was common in the \u201990s. A lot of fans hate this simplistic, somewhat ignorant view of the group and their allies.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what makes the Regulators such a great concept. The group exists to fight against the racists who have made their lives so much worse, which is exactly what a mutant team should be. The entire idea of Haven takes real life history \u2013 the way that black Americans had to create their own support network against the racists who controlled everything \u2013 and brings it into the mutant corner of Marvel. The Regulators are a part of that. The idea of this group \u2013 a group of marginalized people fighting against the racist, oppressive powers around them \u2013 is wish fulfillment, but in a time when the oppressors are winning it\u2019s exactly what we need.<\/p>\n

The Regulators Show the Direction the X-Men Should Always Be Taken<\/p>\n

\"\"Image Courtesy of Marvel Comics<\/p>\n

The X-Men have lost their way. Tom Brevoort doesn\u2019t seem to understand that the group is more than a common superhero team, and we\u2019ve been getting books that mostly pay lip service to the ideas of the X-Men. It\u2019s all so homogenized and boring, and it has shown in the various books and their sales failures, not to mention the bad event stories. The Regulators are a perfect example of what a mutant team could be, and I want more of them.<\/p>\n

The Regulators take the ideas of the best X-Men stories, and puts them on display brilliantly. While I doubt that Brevoort is going to change his approach to the team and their allies to give us more groups like this (he\u2019s notoriously pig-headed and combative with fans who don\u2019t agree with his views), this type of team is what the X-Men line needs. It\u2019s the perfect encapsulation of the group\u2019s ideas and hopefully we can get more of them to brighten up this mediocre era of Marvel\u2019s merry mutants.<\/p>\n

Uncanny X-Men Annual #1 is on sale now.<\/p>\n

What do you think about the Regulators? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marvel Comics hasn\u2019t been doing the X-Men justice lately. The House of Ideas spent years marginalizing their mutants,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388649,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[146,85,46,43105,397,53235,126930,19780],"class_list":{"0":"post-388648","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-marvel-comics","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-regular-feature","14":"tag-uncanny-x-men","15":"tag-x-men"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}