"Revolution" was the title given to the May 2000 revamp of Marvel Comics' X-Men-related comic books, released at a time coinciding with the publication of X-Men vol. 2 #100.
Publication history
In each series, the "Revolution" issue represented a jump of six months after the previous issues of events. In most cases, "Revolution" also marked an attempt to send each title in a new creative direction. To this end, new creative teams were assigned to the titles. Many costumes of the characters were redesigned, and a "Revolution" logo was printed along the right-hand side of each issue.
The event also included nods to early-1990s marketing strategies, such as printing variant covers[1] and including trading cards.[2]
The excitement of the event was dampened by Marvel Comics' timing, as most of the series involved had launched with the new creative teams a month before the real event—even though the "Revolution" logo was still printed on the May issues. Uncanny X-Men did not join the "Revolution" event until its June 2000 issue. Furthermore, Claremont stated in later interviews that he had ghostwritten several issues of various X-Men titles before the event.[citation needed]
Counter-X
As part of the Revolution event three X-titles, X-Man, X-Force, and Generation X were to be show-run by a longstanding creator working with new writers and artists. Rob Liefeld was originally approached to take over the titles, but he turned down the offer when he found out he would be unable to hire his own colorists.[3]Warren Ellis was then approached, and the Counter-X line was born. Ellis plotted the general direction for each of the Counter-X books, and initially co-wrote each title with Steven Grant on X-Man, Ian Edginton on X-Force, and Brian Wood on Generation X.
Aftermath
The "Revolution" event was poorly received by fans and critics, leading to Claremont leaving X-Men and Uncanny X-Men after nine months. The X-Men line of books were revamped again in July 2001 with Grant Morrison writing New X-Men, Joe Casey writing Uncanny X-Men, and Claremont writing the new title X-Treme X-Men.
Bibliography
The included issues, in order of publication, were:
The Revolution stories by Chris Claremont have been collected in a Marvel Omnibus
X-Men: Revolution by Chris Claremont Omnibus (collects X-Men (1991) #100–109; X-Men Annual 2000; Uncanny X-Men #381–389; X-Men Unlimited (1993) #27–29; X-Men: Black Sun #1–5; Bishop: The Last X-Man #15–16; Cable (1993) #87, 904 pages, August 14, 2018 978-1-302-91214-7)
Volume 5: Generation X - Four Days (collects Generation X #71-74, February 26, 2013, ISBN0785167307)
Volume 6: X-Man: Fearful Symmetries (collects X-Man 71-75, material from X-Men Unlimited (1993) 31, 152 pages, April 23, 2013, ISBN0785167315) * This volume was solicited for release but cancelled in March 2013 before being published.[4]