The X-Treme X-Men are a forgotten team of X-Men created by Chris Claremont. Who were they and why are they still relevant?
With so many X-Men teams out there, the X-Treme X-Men often end up being lost in the shuffle. Between X-Force, X-Factor, the New Mutants…the myriad of Mutant teams often end up blurring and overlapping. What distinguished the X-Treme X-Men was that it was originally written by Chris Claremont following the X-Book revamp in 2001. With Marvel giving Grant Morrison a chance to write Uncanny X-Men, Claremont was given a spin-off title where he could write his own X-Men team alongside the now-iconic Morrison run of Uncanny X-Men.
X-Treme X-Men is most noteworthy for being in many ways a continuation of Claremont’s then-current run, while still contributing significant new additions to the X-Lore that would forever change the books — or, at least, seemingly forever change them.
The Team
Despite sounding like a whole-new faction of X-Men, in actuality, the X-Treme X-Men was a subteam of Xavier’s School, led by Storm. The initial line-up of the books featured Beast, Bishop, Psylocke, Rogue, Sage, and Thunderbird, with Storm, as mentioned before, standing in as the team leader. This lineup would change within the first few issues after Psylocke died. Almost immediately after, Gambit would join the team, with membership changing every few issues with new mutants joining and old ones leaving. The only core consistent members were Bishop, Rogue, and Sage — and, of course, Storm.
The first arc — consisting of the first four issues — features Psylocke being killed at the hands of a new adversary known as Vargas. Vargas also severely injures Beast, which results in Beast mutating into a cat-like creature. This cat form would become prominent in Grant Morrison’s X-Men books. From there, the team would go on adventures, taking on iconic adversaries like the Shadow King and returning to iconic locations like Madripoor and the Savage Lands, essentially continuing the X-Men story Claremont had been writing for years.
However, this title didn’t have the ripple in the X-Books that Claremont probably intended, especially when running alongside Morrison’s truly revolutionary run on Uncanny X-Men. However, thematically, X-Treme X-Men did something particularly clever that later books would run with: division among mutant-kind.
The Rift
One major theme throughout X-Treme X-Men is the idea of a philosophical rift in the X-Men. While the initial philosophies of the X-Men focused on mutual understanding of humanity and mutant-kind, over time the books had featured Xavier having a more morally-grey perspective on what it meant to co-exist with humanity. The X-Treme X-Men books proposed that Xavier’s goal had morphed over time from mutant co-existence to mutant isolationism. Xavier’s X-Men increasingly began to run their own culture apart from the rest of society, which sparked conflict between the mainline X-Men and the X-Treme X-Men, who wanted to co-exist and function in society.
This division came to a head during the initial volume of X-Treme X-Men in issues 20-23. In this arc, Bishop and Sage investigate a brutal murder, only to realize that the perpetrator is a young mutant named Jeffrey Garrett. This child has taken refuge at the Xavier Mansion. While the X-Treme X-Men wish to bring the killer to justice, Emma Frost, who believes strongly that mutants should police their own, pits her students against the adult X-Treme X-Men. This results in a battle between the two teams. While it turns out that Frost is being possessed by Elias Bogan of the Hellfire Club — and that Bogan is responsible for the murders — the battle continues anyway between the X-Men and X-Treme X-Men, culminating in Storm almost killing Frost.
In the greater context, the X-Books have later found themselves in, with the X-Men further isolating themselves from the rest of society, it’s very telling how this comic, especially in its first volume, seemed to foreshadow the direction the X-Books were going, even after the ultimate erasure of mutant-kind thanks to the Scarlet Witch.
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