Are Marvel's X-Men too powerful? X-Men boss warns of "power-creep" and quotes The Incredibles' villain

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As you know if you followed Popverse's reporting on Marvel's Mutant Classifications, the X-Men characters are broken into categories based on their power levels. The most powerful level of mutants is designated as 'Omega,' and according to the editor leading 2024's X-Men relaunch, that designation might have a few too many members. Let us explain.

The comments come from Tom Brevoort's Substack, Man with a Hat, after a reader by the name of Zac write in regarding the question of too many Omega Level mutants.

"Something that has really bothered me over the last few years," writes Zac, "has been the importance placed on the Omega Level Mutant, especially making certain mutants retroactively more powerful to fit a story." Zac goes on to point out that Storm uses her powers to terraform Mars, and that Cyclops is called "Omega" in the comic Fall of the House of X #5, making both characters - and mutants in the same boat - "less relatable" to readers.

"[The designation] doesn’t really add to the character and rarely makes them more popular," says Zac, "It only seems to be fodder for fanboy versus arguments."

Brevoort seems to agree, beginning his responde by saying "I think this is very much that Syndrome quote, Zac: when all mutants are Omega-level, no one will be."

(In case you don't know, Syndrome is the villain from Disney/Pixar superhero flick The Incredibles. His quote - "when everyone's super, no one will be" - sums up his master plan of eliminating superheroes from the world by giving every human on earth superpowers, thus taking away what's special about powered people.)

Brevoort expounds upon this idea, saying this kind of power-scaling is par for the course. "[...] it’s the nature of the beast," he writes, "when it comes to power-creep that as soon as somebody introduces a new category that the fans of a given character, both among the creators and out in the world, all rush to promote their favorites as being a part of that category."

"But in my world," Brevort concludes, "I would think that there probably shouldn’t be any more that, say, five [Omega level mutants]."

Well reader, if you've been following X-Men comics (even before the Krakoan Era), you know that that number is... more than five. Emma Frost, Magneto, Rachel Summers, Legion, and more have all been designated Omega Level at some point in their histories. And with the Omega designation becoming a plotpoint in the recent Gerry Duggan-written X-Books, even more were added to that number. That said, we'd be remiss if we didn't point out that one of the characters referenced in Brevoort's substack isn't technically an Omega Level mutant.

"Reading Tom's newsletter," writes Rise of the Powers of X and Immortal X-Men's Kieron Gillen on Bluesky, "are people really taking Gerry's description on Cyclops as the Omega Mutant (as in, the last mutant standing against Nimrod) to mean he's an Omega mutant? Guys. GuysSsSsSsssSss!"

So perhaps, as Gillen points out, Gerry Duggan he doesn't fit into the group of creators "rushing to promote their favorites," but there are plnety of thers that surely do.

Along with an absolute army of Cyclops stans online. That guy is like their Pope.

Join Popverse in our own little X-Mansion as we cover just about everything you need to know about the X-Men. Learn how Marvel's mighty mutants are classified by power, or why the Krakoan Age of comics is coming to an end. And once you're done with those, keep up with the characters' big screen outings via Popverse's X-men movie watch order.