Chuck Austen - Truly the worst?

I didn't hate his run, I found Peter Milligans run to be worse.

Austen was every bit as bad as fans remember...

The article still states that Azael is an actual demon, which is one of the few problems The Draco didn't have.

I knew he was an artist before a writer. I didn't know the Alan Moore part.

I do think Austen's run was as bad as fans make it out to be. Some things were just so utterly ridiculous I facepalm at the thought of them. However, I do give him credit for some good plotlines that I actually enjoyed like Polaris becoming crazy (which Milligan built off of successfully). His oversexualization (not a word?) of characters is very annoying but I found Fraction's run to contain similar and equally frustrating elements.

I realize I'm still new(ish) here, but I'd like to add my two cents.

Edited by Rattlehead28 - 02-Mar-2011 at 5:29pm

Oh yes Austen's dirty little fingerprints were all over the Marvel Universe around that time, he just got beaten around for his X-Men the most cause he had a lengthy run on that. His Avengers was the stuff with Lionheart and Avalon. Only good things out of that was Lionheart (who had potential if she hadn't been shoved aside soon after for Bendis disassembled lol) and I actually thought Hawkeye and Wasp would have made a cool couple if that had ever continued and not been overwritten by Hank swooping in jealous and then back at her side come Disassembled. He might have done the Invaders arc after that but I didn't really pay attention. 

To add to the evidence of Chuck Austen being fudging awful, he's also a terrible Elektra artist. Looking at his Elektra, who appears to be a man with a bra on and some overwaxed eyebrows, makes me want to gag, track him down, and stick a sai through him.

I loved Austen's run.  It personally felt good to me that there was no giant epic plot to his writing.  He wrote realer stories with these characters. 

Sammy and Juggernaut both abused by there fathers, Juggernaut sees what Sammy is going thru and decides to help him, lead him through dark times.  It was touching to see the strong fend off the predator and defend the weak. 

Nurse Annie and Havok, two people disconnected from the world brought together by a boy who didnt was to see his mommy alone.  Austen wrote both characters ruled by emotion not just the women (except for lucinda...) It just seems that everyones so used to seeing Jean, Emma, Psylocke and Storm badass there way into/out of relationships that writing other female characters a little less strong is sexist when it isnt.  If I remember correctly, Angel spent the first couple of issues in Dominant Species lamenting over Psylocke, while Husk got him through his pain.....and werewolves.  

I'm not very good at explaining these things, but it seems people are expecting to much when it came to this, like there is some list of rules for writing people. Calling him a misogynist or sexist isn't true.  He just wrote them differently. 

Austen did no long-term favours to the X-Men mythos... but there were a couple of positives.    I liked Juggernaut's humanization during the run.   He was the only writer, IMO, to create an "animal" form mutant that didn't suck (Sammy).   And I actually liked... most... of Archangel and Husk... As for his thin portrayal of females, in some cases I see your point, but for me, here's the bottom line:  not every woman is Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2.   Chris Claremont in the 70s and 80s was very good at writing believable heroines - the 90s Rob Liefeld-era (btw, probably ACTUALLY the worst creator of all time) kicked such things into overdrive for both the women and the men.   It's not a bother to have some characters fade into the background.

Interesting to note, Austen's time at Marvel, although in the 2000s, was kind of the end of that '90s free-for-all atmosphere at Marvel. Since then the current "bullpen" -- people like Brubaker, Bendis, Millar, Fraction, Pak, Loeb, Yost, Abnett, Lanning, etc., remind me of the glory days of the late '70s-early '80s -- Wein, Wolfman, Mantlo, Claremont, Byrne, Michelinie, Stern, Conway, Englehart, Milgrom, Moench, etc. -- even though there really weren't crossovers then, those writers, as now, looked at the Marvel U as a whole when introducing high concept stuff. For a lot of late '90s-early '00s stuff, it seemed like the differnet character sets were quite isolated -- six-month gap, anyone?

I think Icemanjeff makes an intersting point here:

There may be more then enough X-Characters to fill multiple books, but there aren't enough really good and engaging X-Men to fill all those books with.

That's really the issue here, isn't it? Austen's run may have been sunstandard, but it's not as if he was given the best tools to work with. The soap-squad was in X-Treme, and the hardcore squad was in Morrisson's book. He was stuck with the leftovers, none of which were really able to carry the book. Sure, Wolverine was everywhere, but he's just one guy, and any development he's getting takes place in his own series or has been done too many times allready.

Maybe a better writer could have made something of it, like Peter David managed to get a team out of z-listers in his original X-Factor run, but the cards were stacked against him. As it was, Claremont had the best characters according to many, Morrisson had the run of the frenchise over in his New X-men, and Austen was just stuck. He couldn't have done much with it if he tried.... No Jean, No Cyclops, No Jean, No Beast, No Storm, No Colossus, No Kitty, No Rogue... He was pretty much doomed....

Well, I've spent the last hour or so reading all 7 pages of this thread, so I think I'm ready to comment.

Chuck Austen to me is AMONG the worst. He's very close to being the worst, but there are a few others that I might declare worse than him. Top of my list right now is Fraction (I'll comment more on this on the Fraction thread, but it makes me want to die right now), although there is also Arnold Drake to consider: sure he gave us Lorna, but not much else. But Drake was also an early Silver Age DC guy forced over to Marvel, so it's slightly forgivable. Slightly.

So Chuck Austen: Yes his writing was bad, his women were sexist caricatures, his male characterizations were incorrect (mostly Iceman, but his strangley nationalistic Alpha Flight as well), his choices to add to the team were suspect, and he in general did a lot of damage to "Uncanny X-Men" the title, if not to the X-Men themselves. And yes there was little good -- among that, the return of Havok, Juggernaut's redeption and Northstar joining the X-Men.

But what makes Austen's run (at least his "Uncanny" run) even worse for me is that it coincided with Morrison's run, which, up until the Xorneto mess, was shaping up to be one of the better runs in the characters' history. In fact, had Morrison let the X-Men actually where their costumes instead of flight jackets, I might have ranked it in my top 5. But I'm digressing.

I tend to judge how much I love the X-Men in terms of "eras," and in my mind, the eras are broken up for the most part by who is writing (not drawing ) the book(s), be cause writers stay far longer than artists (except maybe Andy Kubert). So we have the Morrison/Austen era. Morrison is writing great stuff (at first), Austen is writing bordeline crap.

(Remember, unlike the Avengers/West Coast Avengers and New Avengers/Mighty Avengers, when the X-Men have two books, they don't usually have two separate teams, they have one team with some shared characters -- in this case Xavier and Wolverine primarily and Cyclops and Jean secondarily -- and some exclusive to either book --everyone else.)

So what makes Austen's stuff look worse to me is when you are reading the storylines published simultaneously in "Uncanny X-Men" and "New X-Men" in their intended chronological order -- Morrison story, Austen story, Morrsion story, Austen story, etc. Oh my god, reading the Nightcrawler Holy War thing and then reading  the Murder at the Mansion story, it's like reading  Tolstoy and then Dr. Seuss. Or worse, Dominant Species followed by Riot at Xavier's. Wow.

Also not going well for Austen's run was his "exclusive" characters seemed lost when compared to the other X-Men. Morrison and Austen shared Wolverine, Xavier and Cyclops pretty regularly, but Austen still used Phoenix, Beast, Emma, Xorn, etc., while Morrison did not touch Iceman, Havok, Husk, Jubilee, Juggernaut, Northstar, etc. Not even during the attack on New York, if I recall. Which seems weird to me. Like even Morrison didn't want to acknowledge what else was going on in the mansion.

Usually when two writers are sharing characters, , there is a lot of discussion going on so that both writers can do their own thing but still maintain high quality. Look at the early days of dual-book Spidey -- Wolfman/Manlo, O'Neil/Stern, Stern/Mantlo, DeFalco/Milgrom; each writer was able to write what he wanted, yet the tone and characterizations, as well as running background plots, remained consistant. Morrison effectively ignored Austen, while, Austen seems to be forbidden from really developing "Morrison's characters." That certainly didn't happen with Lobdell/Nicieza.

I'm not saying it's Morrison's fault Austen's run was bad, but the stronger writer certainly could have bolstered the weaker one. And they could have threaded the ongoing stuff through both books --like the Xorn mystery and Cassandra Nova.

One thing I will credit Austen' run with, and that is "Uncanny" 421 did feature the first time Xavier and the "original 7" shared a scene together since possibly the X-Cutioner's Song. And that was kinda nice. Even if they did look stupid in those flight jackets.

Also, remember something I said above: USUALLY when the X-Men have two books, they don't have two teams, unlike Avengers/West Coast Avengers. Well this time there was one little monkey wrench, in that there was a THIRD book, and it WAS separate "West Coast X-Men" -- er, "X-Treme X-Men." And the thing that team had going for it was this: Storm, Rogue, Gambit, Bishop. The fan-favorite characters were off-limits to BOTH squads of the mainstream team in the two main books. Plus Colossus and Psylocke were off-limits too, because of the no ressurections policy at the time. And Morrison had already scooped up the rest of the popular characters. Austen was late to the game, replacing Joe Casey, so he got left with the scraps essentially. Sure, he could share some of Morrison's toys, but Morrison had Jean Grey, the X-Men's Optimus Prime. Austen had Husk, the X-Men's lion cassette tape from Blaster in the future. We're all nerds here, we get the reference. Right?

Wow, even though I really dislike Austen's run, I feel like I've been defending him this whole post. Color me surprised. Def won't be doing that on the Fraction thread.