It's hard to say if there's something nefarious going on with how Marvel is handling the X-Men. What we do know is that there are a myriad of X-Men titles around right now like All-New X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, X-Men, X-Force, and so on and so forth.
And, perhaps it's a coincidence, but a lot of characters that Marvel owns the full rights to show up in those titles. The Guardians of the Galaxy were part of a cross-over event in All-New X-Men. In the latest run of Uncanny X-Men, SHIELD, the Avengers, and She-Hulk have all shown up at one point or another. And in a comic called Uncanny Avengers, which is about a team of Avengers and X-Men, the X-Men story has slowly been turned into an Avengers-centered plot.
The story lines involving the X-Men could be taken as affronts. In 2005, Marvel implemented the "Decimation" storyline, where Scarlet Witch (an Avenger) altered reality and took away powers from over 90 percent of the mutant population. This eventually resulted in the deaths of some mutants, as well as classic mutants like Jubilee — a long-standing member of the X-Men — losing their powers.
New mutants wouldn't start showing up again until 2010, after the "Second Coming" story arc. That was followed by the "Avengers vs. X-Men" crossover event in 2012, which ended with five X-Men going power-hungry and turning into villains (X-Men fans don't really like it when Avengers beat up on X-Men). And further, the franchise's 50th birthday was marked by an event called "Battle of the Atom," largely seen by X-Men fans as underwhelming.
When you look at the big Marvel news over the past few months, you'll notice that the X-Men — save for a Storm solo series — have largely been absent. In July, Marvel announced that Thor would be a woman. The company followed that a day later when it announced that Captain America would be black. Aside from the Storm solo series, the next big event for the X-Men will be the death of Wolverine — but, again, neither of those events got the kind of buzz that Marvel got with Thor and Captain America.
What do fans think of this?
It's split. The important thing to understand here is that there are several different segments within the Marvel fanbase. With movies like Guardians, Captain America: Winter Soldier and X-Men: Days of Future Past each drawing over $90 million in their opening weekends, it's safe to say that Marvel has a lot of fans, and it's more than likely that a lot of these fans aren't exclusively tied to a favorite superhero (i.e. there are probably fans who love X-Men but also really enjoyed the Guardians of the Galaxy movie, and vice versa).
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A classic X-Men roster (Marvel)
But when you break things down to just the comic readers, the situation becomes a bit more fragmented, and allegiances are a bit more pronounced. At Comic Book Resources, a popular comics site, the forums aren't just split into DC and Marvel but rather are split into: Marvel, Spider-Man, Superman, Wonder Woman, and X-Books (and so on). And in those fandoms, there's even more jagged segmentation.
In the X-books forum, a message board to discuss everything going on in the different X-Men titles, there's a 17-page (and counting) thread called The Complex, a thread made especially for fans (and their skeptics) who believe that Marvel is purposely short-changing the X-Men.
"It's feeling like Marvel is sort of just going through the motions with the X-Men, and is using them as a legacy cash-cow while simultaneously shoving Inhumans and GOTG down our throats," one fan writes there.
That fan is referring to Marvel's deep investment in the Inhumans, a race of superhumans whose powers lie dormant until exposed to a substance called Terrigen Mist. The Inhumans were an integral part of Marvel's "Infinity" crossover event, where a Terrigen Mist bomb was released on Earth, turning many people into Inhumans. From an editorial standpoint, this gave and will give Marvel a whole new batch of superhumans to write. But some X-Men fans think that there's more going on here, and believe that the Inhumans will be Marvel's way of creating X-Menesque characters without having to use the X-men, thus opening up more movie possibilities and diminishing their favorite X-Men and X-Women.
"Marvel WILL shove Inhumans down your throats, it IS going to happen. They will not stop until the property is considered a success. They will put whatever creative teams they need to on it to make it work," another fan chimed in at The Complex. "They will change whatever mutants into Inhumans to make it work."
Granted, these views don't represent the views of all X-Men fans. These fans are the ones most likely to believe the conspiracy theories full-tilt. And though these X-Men truthers might seem, to Marvel fans in general or even some fellow X-Men fans, largely crazy, the fact that their views warrant a 17-page discussion feels like there's something there that should, at the very least, be examined. Marvel's writers know this.
"I was told when I started writing the X-Men that there is a very small part of the readership that feels very persecuted," Brian Michael Bendis, one of Marvel's star writers wrote in June, addressing rumors of an X-Men cancellation. "[T]hese readers think that Marvel hates the X-Men with a fiery passion and are looking to destroy it... so even though the best artists on the planet and franchise writers have been put in charge of this very important part of the Marvel universe, some people still think that Marvel is out to blow its own foot off," he added.
Bendis writes the wildly fun All-New X-Men comic. And devout X-Men fans would point you to the fact that All-New X-Men has curiously been a vehicle for crossovers with other Bendis comics like Guardians of the Galaxy (which Marvel owns the rights to) and Ultimate Spider-Man.