E is for Extinction
While much of Secret Wars may be taken up with callbacks to the great crossovers of yesterday, but E is for Extinction turns its attention to Grant Morrison’s New X-Men run from 2001-2004. (Strictly speaking, “E is for Extinction” was just the first arc of his run, but you can’t really call a book Grant Morrison’s X-Men when Grant Morrison isn’t doing it.)
In its way, of course, Morrison’s run was far more significant to the X-Men than any “event” book. For the first time since the 1975 relaunch, it broke with the idea that the X-Men was a single, ever-growing saga. Not everything in the preceding decade had been a straight emulation of Chris Claremont – the Seagle/Bachalo run was in that period, for example – but it was all positioned as a continuation. Morrison’s run, both at beginning and end, is a break point.
Something like this would probably have happened anyway, in due course. The current century has seen a general move away from the idea of the Marvel Universe as an ever-growing saga dating back to 1961, partly because of the increasing impracticality of characters trailing such quantities of history behind them, but also due to the influx of a generation of creators who are far less interested in the idea of world-building across the whole line, and far more concerned about the stand-alone qualities of a particular story. But when it happened with the X-Men in 2001, it wasn’t something we were used to seeing.
I’ve heard it claimed that Morrison’s run was largely reversed when he left. This is less true than people seem to think. Yes, a wildly awkward series of clumsy retcons followed immediately his departure, which reversed aspects of his climax. But a fair amount of his run stuck around for years, such as the idea of the school as a fully-functioning Hogwarts for mutants, and the coupling of Emma Frost with Cyclops. (Granted, the school can also be attributed to the 2000 film, but it was still Morrison’s run that brought it into the comics, and also made it a public institution.)
What hasn’t stuck around, though, is the relative optimism of Morrison’s run. Previously, the well-established set-up for the X-Men was that mutants were the next step in human evolution, and so normal humans hated and feared them as usurpers, an idea that goes back to the Lee and Kirby run, but became central under Claremont. For him, the “future of humanity” angle was less interesting than the “fear and hate” – the alternate futures that were depicted over the years tended to suggest that it was a future that would never be allowed to come to pass. Instead, the central metaphor in the 80s and 90s is mutants as an oppressed minority group. It’s not a perfect metaphor by any means, since the fact that mutant powers were often shown as genuinely dangerous implied that humans had at least some legitimate reason to be concerned about uncontrolled teenagers spontaneously exploding and such like. But it worked pretty well.
Morrison seemed much more interested in the idea of mutants as the future of humanity, which for him makes them work as a symbol of potential and promise. This results in entire districts of mutant communities going about their ordinary business, mutant pop culture being presented as a phenomenon, and mutant artists being shown as fashionable. Obviously the minority group metaphor is still intact here, but with less of a single-minded focus on the aspect of rejection and oppression. So alongside the raving dinosaurs who want to slaughter mutants, you have the U-Men who want to appropriate them. It’s a take on mutants that could have worked very well if Marvel had stuck with it; it would certainly have lent itself much better to exploring topical themes.
Instead, what we’ve seen over the last few years – and not just since Marvel became obsessed with the Inhumans, because this goes back to House of M – is a strange obsession with shutting down the idea of mutants as a potential future, and repositioning the X-Men as the last of a dying breed. Theoretically you can see why this is supposed to be interesting, but at best, it’s interesting for entirely different reasons than the ones that have worked for the X-Men in the past. We’re about to enter another cycle of this. We’ll see if it works any better this time round.
The Secret Wars E is for Extinction story doesn’t have Grant Morrison on hand. But it does have Chris Burnham, who worked with Morrison on Batman, as a writer. And it has Ramon Villalobos on art, whose work already has the combination of clean lines with a slightly squishy grotesquerie that makes him perfectly suited to homage Frank Quitely.
The book takes as its starting point the idea that this world diverged from “E is for Extinction” by having Xavier blow his own head off to stop Cassandra Nova. Several years later, that results in the mutants having ascended to the status of social acceptance that Morrison gestured towards, and Magneto running an entirely successful school for exceptional pupils, whether mutants or ordinary humans. Of course, they’re overwhelmingly mutants. Mutants are superhuman. But it’s a gesture. Meanwhile, the original X-Men find their powers waning, and a younger class of X-Men graduates – the kids from the Morrison run – treating them as a bit of a joke.
This is a promising set-up, playing into a theme of generational conflict that was also thoroughly present in the Morrison original (where, after all, Magneto also ended up with a bunch of kids tailing along after him). But the actual plot turns out to be about Magneto secretly hiding a Phoenix Egg which appears to have been formed when Xavier killed himself, sucking in Jean Grey at the same time (because they were mentally linked or something). Magneto wants to use its power for himself, to ensure the complete ascendancy of mutants – even though they’re clearly winning anyway, because he’s Magneto and he still believes it’s all going to go wrong somewhere.
Unfortunately, in plot terms, this means that the book rapidly degenerates into a multi-issue fight scene at the school, with assorted Morrison concepts showing up for callbacks and to periodically raise the stakes. The upshot is supposed to be that the black and white of Xavier and Nova end up being synthesised into a balanced Grey, which is a cute bit of wordplay, but doesn’t actually wind up carrying a great deal of weight. There’s a sense of scale and importance lacking here, and it’s not clear that there’s any real point to it beyond “wasn’t Morrison/Quitely X-Men great?”
Indeed it was. The book does successfully evoke that run, with the art doing a lot of the heavy lifting in that regard. And it’s a nice run to revisit, not just for its own merits, but because it represents a path not taken for the X-books – in many ways, a more optimistic vision of what the X-Men can be, and can stand for. That all gives this series a certain charm, but not really enough to make it work in its own right. It’s a decent enough homage, but it doesn’t really find anything to add to the original run.
I really hated the mutants as an endangered species direction. So much for mutants as the next stage in human evolution. The persecuted minority symbolism was always fine (although it ended up over-used after a time).
Changing that around and saying mutants are really a dead-end just ruined the X-Men for me.
I always liked Morrison’s run, because it showed how a minority can gain acceptance in the wider society. That a generation of humans would grow up thinking of mutants as cool and not aberrations.
This series started out great. That if mutants really were the next stage in human evolution, then Magneto’s dream was the one that would eventually come true. Not through using violence, but playing the humans’ own game, mutants would out compete humanity. Mutants are stronger, faster, smarter…
It was great that the X-Men couldn’t deal with this new world. History had passed them by, and they were stuck with the idea of fighting other mutants to somehow gain humanity’s acceptance. That Magneto was the one to grow and adapt, by realizing that ultimately Professor X’s dream of mutants and humans living in harmony would lead to Magneto’s dream.
Unfortunately, the book didn’t play up the premise of this reality very long. It just turned in to a protracted fight. Wasted potential.
Burnham said at some point he had a conversation with Morrison about the book and Morrison passed on one or two ideas he hadn’t used the first time around. I’d be interested to hear what those were.
Magneto’s school having “gifted but human” students is something that Morrison wanted to do at Xavier’s but never found space for it.
They ever do anything wth the stratification and cliqueynes of a mutant society? Like, bias, elevation, fetishisation and/or discrimination towards/against mutants based on their distance from a baseline human template? Like, someone like Glob Herman being a mupermodel, or conversely, someone like Riverdale’s own Bobby Drake being regarded as a minty-mutie-munter? Or like flying mutants having it over non-fliers. That sort of thing.
//\Oo/\\
Does Xorn appear in the new story? That was the clumsiest bit of post-Morrison dismantling Marvel did.
I thought we all agreed to not think about Xorn anymore after the total mishandling of that character. What a disaster.
Among the things it doesn’t add to the original run is backgrounds. The bulk of the story appears to take place on a featureless, pale blue/purple landscape.
The hard 180 after Morrison’s run, especially with House of M, always struck me as the predominantly white comics establishment desperately trying to return mutants to the status of a “safe” minority. If they’re threatened, they can’t be threatening, and apparently the idea of a marginalized, minority culture becoming mainstream is very threatening to the powers that be.
I thought they had to get rid of the mass of mutants Morrison created because otherwise you’d had had an army of mutants on Captain America’s side during civil war that would have rolled over tony tin man.
Never do I disagree with Paul more than when he talks about Morrison’s run as something other than lazy, irreverent garbage.
@Michael P. – I don’t know it’s that so much as the world needs to look as similar as possible to the real world. Much the same way Reed and Tony don’t cure AIDS, world hunger etc.
It’s a shame really, when the Ultimate line launched, I was hoping that would be the “real world” and 616 could advance forward. Bump off some characters, let tech develop, mutants do some taking over.
And yes, I know “looking as close to the real world” sounds stupid, but I remember “the world outside your window” being the company line circa Dark Reign.
Paul: “Morrison’s run, both at beginning and end, is a break point.”
I’ve always viewed the start of Morrison’s run as a de facto reboot. The style, the characterizations, the interpretation of the central ideas are so different from the 1975-2001 era that, to me, it feels like a different continuity entirely.
For example, I was never able to buy Scott and Emma as a couple. The Emma I knew, from the pre-Morrison era, would’ve viewed Scott as beneath her. At best, a useful idiot to be used on the chess board. The only X-Man she would’ve seriously viewed as even close to a peer and potential romantic partner would’ve been Xavier himself. Maaaaaybe Wolverine, but then only if she was looking for some no-strings-attached sex.
It has been a *long* time since I read the Morrison run, but wasn’t it implied that the relationship started more with Emma wanting to piss off Jean rather than having any actual preference for Cyclops?
I’d disagree about Emma’s tastes at that point, though. Pre-Morrison Frost had already had her edges worn down through Generation X, where her romantic potentials were Banshee and Iceman.
Okay, that sounds grosser than I meant it. When I said “edges worn down,” I mean she had already been written as generally less ruthless and more appreciative of empathy and the X-Family concept.
@Person of Con: “It has been a *long* time since I read the Morrison run, but wasn’t it implied that the relationship started more with Emma wanting to piss off Jean rather than having any actual preference for Cyclops?”
Yeah. Scott didn’t cave to her advances until he started having a nervous breakdown over Jean going cold on him (which, IIRC, we never got a well-explained reason for; it just sort of happened), and Emma offered him “therapy” by dressing up and role-playing as Jean. Then, of course, Morrison had Jean catch them in the act in Scott’s head and telepathically lay into Emma. At that point, Morrison then played the “ice queen who’s really just a lonely, damaged little girl who wants to be loved” trope with Emma.
God, I absolutely hated that.
For me, the appeal of Emma Frost as a character was that she really was a hard-boiled, cast-iron bitch all the way down and the only true emotions she could feel were maternal ones toward her students.
Starting with Morrison, she degenerated into a substitute Jean. She slept with Jean’s husband and she filled Jean’s role on the team (i.e. den mother, team therapist, etc.), just with blonde hair, bigger boobs, and a sharper tongue.
What would’ve made more sense to me, and been truer to the character’s backstory, would have been for Emma to evolve into Xavier’s successor rather than Jean’s. That is, the new Professor X, not the new Mrs. Summers.
I’ve never been a fan of neurotic-adulterer!Cyclops, either. I much prefer Claremont’s swashbuckling, Heinleinian boy scout version.
“Pre-Morrison Frost had already had her edges worn down through Generation X, where her romantic potentials were Banshee and Iceman.”
Eh, somewhat. Neither of those potential pairings ever went anywhere, though. If memory serves, Lobdell ended up spinning the thing with Iceman into a teacher/student dynamic.
That’s cos he’s gay.
Nah. Not at that point. The gay subtext thing was still fan slashfic fantasy back then. It didn’t seep into the comics themselves until Austen.
Lobdell wrote Iceman as an underachieving man-child, not a closeted gay guy.
It’s not a perfect metaphor by any means, since the fact that mutant powers were often shown as genuinely dangerous implied that humans had at least some legitimate reason to be concerned about uncontrolled teenagers spontaneously exploding and such like.
I never understood this objection to the mutants as a stand-in for minorities. People who hold bigoted views of a minority see them as dangerous. The supposed “danger” presented by black men has always been a major excuse for slavery/segregation/mass incarceration. Read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ article in this month’s Atlantic Monthly.
It’s true that there’s nothing inherent about African Americans that is more dangerous than other people, but that’s actually true of mutants as well. Teenagers with or without powers can cause huge tragedies, as we know quite well in the United States. Some pubescent mutants are “ticking time bombs,” but so was James Holmes.
Saying that people’s fear of mutants as a class is justified because some of them are unpredictably dangerous is the exact same argument that because young black men in America are disproportionately responsible for violent crime we are justified in treating them differently as a class.
To anticipate another argument:
“But some mutants are capable of destroying whole cities.”
So is a single terrorist with a dirty bomb. But that doesn’t make fear and bigotry against all Arabs or Muslims somehow acceptable.
That’s always been the point of the allegory: judge people as individuals based on their deeds, not on their membership in a class–be it race, religion or GeeCees.
@FUBAR007: “Scott didn’t cave to her advances until he started having a nervous breakdown over Jean going cold on him (which, IIRC, we never got a well-explained reason for; it just sort of happened), and Emma offered him “therapy” by dressing up and role-playing as Jean.”
I’m pretty sure it was the other way around with Scott/Jean: Scott had been possessed (by what/whom, I don’t actually recall) and he was afraid of hurting Jean, so he clamped up tighter than ever. Jean tried talking to him about it, knowing a little something about being possessed herself, but he wouldn’t open up to her.
It was exactly because Emma was ice cold (and could turn into a diamond at will) that Scott could talk to her — he didn’t have to be afraid of hurting her.
Scott was possessed by Apocalypse. It was a terrible plotline, but at least GM got some milage out of the aftermath.
To add to Nu-D’s point, it’s worth noting that mutants don’t exist in an ordinary universe; they exist in the Marvel universe, where a baseline human like Tony Stark can put on his super-powered hoodie (forgive the terribly crass analogy) and be celebrated as a hero to the world, whereas a mutant can just walk around at night with equal or lesser powers, and get murdered by the Friends of Humanity.
I would think that double-standard/bigotry would ring true to anyone following the news in the last couple of years.
This is not to say that Paul isn’t right about there being a breaking point to the mutant metaphor, but it’s important to remember that a metaphor is an image, not a system. Metaphors are meant to evoke real-world concepts in key aspects only, and the rest should be considered its own thing. If you scrutinise it long enough, you will always find a point at which the metaphor doesn’t reflect its subject anymore, but that doesn’t necessarily make it less valid if the storytellers aren’t focusing their story on that aspect.
I’m reminded of a literature class I had in my freshman year, where the professor compared a tense plot point to a tiger in a cage, and the students started bombarding her with questions like “What do you feed the tiger?” and “What do the fur stripes represent?” until she just sighed and walked out for a few minutes.
Finally, to be clear, none of what I just wrote should be read as a criticism of Paul’s review or thoughts on the matter. I really enjoy your work, sir.
It’s just that there’s been a lot of think pieces lately about the mutant metaphor being “problematic” and, as heartfelt and convincing as they might seem, I find that they tend to misunderstand what a metaphor is.
@Thom H: “I’m pretty sure it was the other way around with Scott/Jean: Scott had been possessed (by what/whom, I don’t actually recall) and he was afraid of hurting Jean, so he clamped up tighter than ever. Jean tried talking to him about it, knowing a little something about being possessed herself, but he wouldn’t open up to her.”
According to Morrison himself, his intent was that Scott was justified in cheating on Jean with Emma because Jean “wasn’t being his wife anymore.” I.e. that Scott was having a nervous breakdown (again) due to his possession by Apocalypse, Jean for whatever reason was freezing him out, and Emma, for her own reasons, would listen to him.
I tend to think it was really all just veiled meta-commentary on Morrison’s part that the Scott/Jean coupling was stale and boring and that Scott would be so much more interesting with Emma regardless of the consequences to his standing as a heroic protagonist. Whether or not Morrison intended it, the message he conveyed with Scott/Emma was: “Having a mid-life crisis? Bored with your wife? Ditch her, and shack up with the horny, mouthy blonde with the boob job!”
As eccentric and counter-cultural as Morrison is, I wouldn’t be surprised if he thinks adultery is perfectly okay out of some bizarro sense of romance and psychedelic “enlightenment.” To be fair, none of his successors that I’m aware of seemed to disagree.
I checked out for several years after Whedon’s run. Has Scott ever paid any kind of karmic price for the affair? Or, did subsequent writers just ignore that aspect of the Scott/Emma relationship and play it as a true love match that started somewhat awkwardly?
“It was exactly because Emma was ice cold (and could turn into a diamond at will) that Scott could talk to her — he didn’t have to be afraid of hurting her.”
Or, he’d degenerated once again into a neurotic coward who was too chicken to talk to his wife.
I’ve never understood other readers’ sympathy for Scott in the affair. From a critical standpoint, I get the argument that Scott/Emma was a more interesting pairing in dramatic terms due to the transgressive nature of it (I don’t agree), but I don’t see how anyone can, with a straight face, argue that Scott did the right thing by committing adultery. It just made him into a pathetic douchebag. Again.
@FUBAR007: I’m sure you’re right about what Morrison said he wanted to do, but I have a feeling this is one of those times when he was shooting off his mouth to look cool despite what he’d actually written.
If you read the first scene where Scott and Jean discuss their marriage head on (in New X-Men #116), it’s Jean who’s complaining that Scott is too distant and not communicating with her. It’s right there in the text.
That doesn’t change your argument that Scott was being neurotic and wimpy. In fact, I think it strengthens it. I just thought that was interesting character development and you didn’t. Different strokes, I guess.
I think the closest Scott’s ever gotten to being told off/held responsible for his behavior with Jean in the Morrison era is the odd “I would’ve stayed faithful bub” from Wolverine; I guess everyone else took the “Well, Jean said she was ok with it when she died, so I guess it gets my thumbs up” approach.
@Thom H.: “I just thought that was interesting character development and you didn’t. Different strokes, I guess.”
Yeah, I’ve always preferred Cyclops as the archetypal boy scout. In my book, he and Jean (and Beast) are supposed to be the upright, whitebread squares that the morally grayer characters–Wolverine, Gambit, Emma, Rogue, etc.–are played off of. They’re the standard bearers. They’re not supposed to be edgy and transgressive!
As for Morrison’s statement, I got it from an interview he did with Tom DeFalco for the latter’s book Comics Creators on X-Men, published in 2006. I just checked on Amazon, and it’s still in print.
There are some real nuggets in there. DeFalco also interviews Claremont and Louise Simonson, and you find out just how thoroughly they got hosed by editorial before they left the books in 1991. Claremont goes into detail over just how pissed off he was when they brought Jean back in 1986.
@Person of Con,
Logan was a little more assertive about it than that in the first issue of Whedon’s Astonishing. Kitty Pryde too.
In all fairness, it’s not like Hank, Bobby, or Warren ever complained when Scott walked out on Madelyne….
The closest Scott ever got to ‘karma’ was teen Jean dumping teen Scott because she found out about Emma. But really only ‘hurt’ teen Scott. Pretty much all of the other writers treated it as ‘true love that started out awkwardness’
I never got the “true love” vibe from Scott & Emma. More the “good for one another,” and “hot for one another,” vibes. I’ve never been sure that they liked one another very much.
“According to Morrison himself, his intent was that Scott was justified in cheating on Jean with Emma because Jean “wasn’t being his wife anymore.” I.e. that Scott was having a nervous breakdown (again) due to his possession by Apocalypse, Jean for whatever reason was freezing him out, and Emma, for her own reasons, would listen to him.”
I fully believe that this was his intent. But his inability to translate this to the work itself is a great example of where he falls flat as a writer.
Rachel wasn’t too impressed by Scott’s relationship with Emma. When she came back to Uncanny in that post-Morrison Claremont run she took her mother’s surname and code name as a point (It seems to fluctuate these days back and forth between Grey and Summers) and was pretty antagonistic against both (although mostly Emma).
But I like that Scott and Emma have remained a thing for so long and that Jean is still dead (timeline shenanigans aside). It feels like one of the few changes to the X-Men that has managed to stick in decades. A bit sad that the only new member of the X-Men to hang around as an active member of the team for a long time (15 years now) since Claremont’s first run ended was a villain dating back to the 80s.
@Paul Fr: “…and that Jean is still dead (timeline shenanigans aside). It feels like one of the few changes to the X-Men that has managed to stick in decades.”
I’ve long assumed there’s a formal editorial edict from Quesada–and upheld by Alonso–in place specifically precluding (adult) Jean from ever being resurrected. Possibly with a corollary banning her and (adult) Scott as a couple.
A lot of Marvel’s senior editorial staff came of age during the late 70s/early 80s, and I think we fans tend to underestimate just how thoroughly they hated Jean’s resurrection in 1986. For them, she’s supposed to be dead. Period.
With Quesada, I wager it also ties into his opposition to married superheroes and his long-rumored hatred for female gingers.
Bringing the teen O5 forward in time is clearly a turn-key reboot mechanism for when Marvel gets the X-Men film rights back. When the time comes, they’ll send the O5 back in time and use that to hit the reset button on the franchise, retconning out everything they don’t like. With Jean, I fully expect them to retcon away everything after the end of the Dark Phoenix Saga.
It feels like one of the few changes to the X-Men that has managed to stick in decades. A bit sad that the only new member of the X-Men to hang around as an active member of the team for a long time (15 years now) since Claremont’s first run ended was a villain dating back to the 80s.
Some of that is attributable to the awful stuff that was being done in the ’90’s, and some is attributable to the much more diverse palette of characters and stories that contemporary writes have to draw on.
These days, the “X-Men” are not a dozen characters with tight ties, but rather scores of characters with very, very loose ties. Characters come and go from issue to issue, arc to arc, because writers have so many more to choose from for each story.
It’s difficult for a character like Armor to have the staying power of a character like Kate Pryde, because there are so many different choices to play the role of “spunky Wolverine sidekick who has come into her own.”
It’s not a comment on the quality of the new characters, so much as a comment on the vast wealth of choices. It’s also why so many new characters fall flat; because they’re not sufficiently distinct from characters that are already well developed.
A lot of Marvel’s senior editorial staff came of age during the late 70s/early 80s, and I think we fans tend to underestimate just how thoroughly they hated Jean’s resurrection in 1986. For them, she’s supposed to be dead. Period.
I like this theory, but I also wonder whether the current status quo (Scott-Emma) has more potential than the old status quo (Scott-Jean), so writers haven’t really been pushing back. I also wonder whether Bendis might have been pushing back, hence the mess he left.
@Nu-D: “…but I also wonder whether the current status quo (Scott-Emma) has more potential than the old status quo (Scott-Jean), so writers haven’t really been pushing back.”
I thought Scott and Emma split up with AvX.
Anyway, I’m not sure what potential is left there. They were together for over a decade. Emma taking over Jean’s role as team mom and Mrs. Cyclops? Check. Alt. future/timeline kids (i.e. Ruby Summers, X-Men The End, GeNext)? Check. Resisting challenges from old flames and other women (i.e. Madelyne showing up again)? Check. Periodic relationship angst followed by protestations of love and commitment? Check.
Beyond that, much of Scott and Emma’s appeal is as meta-commentary, specifically as a contrast to and deconstruction of Scott and Jean. At this point, is there anything left to be said there? I mean, I get the appeal of trolling Scott-Jean shippers, but are there enough of them left to make it worth it?
The only place left to go is to have Scott and Emma marry. But, then, they’d be caught up to where Scott and Jean were in the 90s, and they’d hit the same editorial brick wall. Lobdell intended for Jean to get pregnant and finally have Rachel in the core timeline, but Harras nixed it: no kids. He wouldn’t let Scott and Jean stay retired, either. Given Quesada & Co.’s views on superhero marriage, I can’t see the current editorial regime taking a significantly different stance.
Re: writers pushing back, my understanding is that Claremont, Yost, and Carey all pitched bringing Jean back at different points, but Quesada vetoed them all. I suspect the only reason teen Jean got OK’ed was because a) she’s not adult Jean and b) it was Bendis doing it.
“Lobdell intended for Jean to get pregnant and finally have Rachel in the core timeline, but Harras nixed it: no kids. He wouldn’t let Scott and Jean stay retired, either.”
Funny enough, Claremont (and Byrne) were planning on something similar for Jean long term, but then plans were changed (Jean had to die during Dark Phoenix, Byrne left). And even later, Claremont wanted to retire Cyclops when he and Maddie became parents but then X-factor happened.
Yeah, I believe Claremont’s original plan for the X-Men was to retire them off one by one and let the New Mutants gradually ascend to X-Men status. Makes sense, especially at a school/military training facility, and takes care of the “too many mutants” problem Nu-D mentions above.
That’s back when there were only two X-books. Once they realized they could sell lots of different X-titles, Claremont got caught up in the excitement and then no one was taken off the board — just given their own book, like Kitty, Kurt, and Peter becoming half of Excaliber after getting injured in the Mutant Massacre.
@FUBAR,
Yes, Scott & Emma “broke up,” but of course they’re still on the same team. It looks like Scott is temporarily dead after Secret Wars (good riddance, I say). So for the time being that relationship is over.
And you might be right that it was getting stale. I followed it only through Morrison & Whedon, and then caught a few glimpses under Bendis. The first two got good milage out of it, and Bendis’s X-Men shere shite from beginning to end. So I don’t really know if there’s anything left to be done with them.