There once was a badly done revamp of the X-Men line of comics called Revolution (ca. 2000). One element of the revamp was Warren Ellis taking over three of the various X-related comic series and giving them a new spin. I never read his take on Generation X and his take on X-Force was just wrong and misguided (especially as the series had become actually readable under John Francis Moore after countless dreadful years of writing by the likes of Liefeld, Nicieza and Loeb), but Ellis take on X-Man was nothing short of brilliant.
He took a Cable-substitute (and Cable himself already is second-rate copy of the Terminator mixed with Wolverine or something equally stupid) and made him into an interesting and compelling character. Accompanied by brilliant art by Ariel Olivetti Nate Grey aka X-Man became the shaman of the mutants on Earth, fighting against internal and external threats. Okay, that doesn’t sound actually all that interesting or even clever, but the combination of art and script really made this concept fly, even made it looking brilliant.
Though it wasn’t actually all Ellis work, he shared writer credit with Steven Grant, who took over after Ellis left and completed the run in the same high-concept, high-tension manner as both had started it. And this is actually the point where I find fault with how Marvel collects this, as only the issues with Ellis on board are collected in the X-Man Counter X TPB (63-70).
Honestly, the high point of this already excellent run was the Fearful Symmetries 4-parter where Nate Gray had to face humans from far up the spiral (basically Ellis and Grant introduced a concept of alternate Earths that are ordered like a spiral, down the spiral are the broken worlds, up the spiral are the more advanced onces). There’s one moment where those far advanced humans realize that the spiral is still going on and they look up and see even more advanced beings looking down. This was a real brain-twister, in a good way.
Anyway, the Counter X TPB of X-Man is worth seeking out, but to get all the fun out of it, you’ll need to read the final five issues by Steven Grant.
