At IGN Comics we're always trying new feature concepts and tweaking the way we approach our content. One of the things we've been wanting to introduce for a while is a greater op/ed presence. Starting today we're firing up, an article series that will pose a question to intellectual powerhouse that is the comics team. (We hear you laughing, punks!) This could be as simple as an in-depth examination of a major event, or it could be something a bit more complicated, pertaining to restructuring a franchise or contemplating detailed industry questions.

But here's the important part – once you've read our question and answers, we want to hear from you. What do you think about the question? How would you answer it? What do you think of our answers? In our opinion, your responses to this feature are the most critical element – and no doubt the writers, artists, editors and execs from the industry reading the article will find your input fascinating as well.So be sure to leave your thoughts below the feature.

THE QUESTION

Our inquiry here is a simple one – should the X-Men franchise have a weekly series? We look to Marvel's success, both critical and commercial, with Amazing Spider-Man and ponder a similar appoach. Despite Spidey being a solo character storyline and X-Men having so many threads and participants, could the same strategy work? What are the positive and negative effects?Comics EIC Rich is joined by veteran IGN writers Jesse Schedeen and Dan Phillips. Read on for their complete thoughts.

My reaction to this question is so instant and so strong – YES!!! I can't imagine a better editorial strategy for the X-Men franchise at this time and place. And if any component of Marvel's publishing line (or any publisher's line, to be honest) is suited for this type of rapid-release, it's the mutants.I think the guiding storylines and themes in the X-books are fundamentally strong at the moment. The future of the mutant race is in question; a possible savior has been sent off into the wild unknown, hunted by a former friend and protected by a frail guardian; at home, various "messiahs" clash to determine who can best guide a near-extinct race. And we're not even dealing with Norman Osborn and his lunatic regime.Where I think the franchise stumbles, however, is its publishing strategy. Here we have a line that takes these very strong concepts and spreads them through too many series. I like the idea of Cyclops having a black ops strike team, but it's not strong enough to justify a monthly purchase. I like the idea of Rogue and Charles Xavier having strong storylines focusing on their characters, but again, I don't need a series for that. Uncanny's interest in showcasing the wide spectrum of mutant players is admirable, but I want the character work of Legacy and a stronger team focus. Another book, Cable , does tell an important story thread, but dedicating a full monthly title to it draws out its message to the point where I don't feel like it's a "must purchase." Do I care about the concept? Absolutely. But it's a small piece in a larger machine, and a horde of ongoing books fractures that machine, making each one far, far less than the sum of their parts. It feels like niches are being served at the expense of what could be a far more powerful narrative.My suggestion would be to eliminate several books (my votes – Legacy, X-Force and Cable) and work most of their concepts into Uncanny X-Men. Drill down and find a core group of X-Men to develop as a cast, but weave in other mutants and guest stars as needed. Other mutant books, mini-series and specials could of course keep going – there are plenty of mutants after all – but for fans, Uncanny would be the key resource for 80% of the mutant adventures. And the talent associated with these books wouldn't need to go anywhere. We'd still need several writers and artists to execute a weekly title. And it's likely that second, third and fourth installments of Uncanny would outsell X-Force, Legacy and Cable, much in the way that Amazing Spider-Man outsold its former sister titles.There's one other key thing I should point out here. The X-Men franchise is, and always will be, a beast of a concept for new readers to grasp. There is so much continuity to digest that it's overwhelming. But imagine for a second what it would be like to approach an X-Men series that contains all of the franchise's critical storylines. That would strike me as something easier to buy into – even if you have a book coming out each week.I'm very much in agreement with Rich that this strikes me as an instantaneous yes. If Spider-Man, a lone hero who at the beginning of Brand New Day had a fairly confined supporting cast, can thrive in such a format, then surely the X-Men and their cast of hundreds could do at least as well.And yes, in a lot of ways the franchise is on firm footing on a conceptual level. The mutant race has certainly never been in more danger than it is now. All the same, I do find myself wishing for the same sort of fresh start for the characters that Brand New Day offered Spidey. No, I'm not suggesting Mephisto show up again to ruin Cyclops' marriage (Cyke already did a stellar job of that himself), but I do sort of yearn for the days when the mutant race was at least large enough to function as allegory for various repressed and downtrodden social minorities. The X-Men resonate so well with readers and even non-readers because everyone feels like an outcast at some point in their lives, and they can identify with the sort of struggle mutants face everyday. I'd like to see that element return to the franchise in a bigger way.Uncanny should definitely become the flagship book around which the ancillary titles fold into. There's a certain amount of redundancy to the franchise at the moment. Cyclops, Emma, and Wolverine are everywhere. With their casts of younger characters, both Legacy and New Mutants seem to be focused on two sides of the same coin at themoment. Uncanny is practically halfway towards making this transition anyway. Matt Fraction's series includes just about every active character in some capacity, and for lately it's been shipping every two to three weeks. Why not go a few steps further and make Uncanny a true weekly book?Most of the current books could probably be cut and the characters and creative teams rolled into Uncanny. I'm not actually convinced Legacy should go, if only because Mike Carey seems to work best with his own, isolated corner of the franchise. The same goes for Peter David and X-Factor . But certainly X-Force, New Mutants, and Cable could easily be rolled into a larger, overarching book. Even Astonishing might become unnecessary if the writers really focus on making the new stories clean and accessible.The X-books have a long history of playing off of each other, dating back to the days of the Blue and Gold teams and even earlier. I see no reason why the X-office wouldn't want to go all out and offer readers one unifying book with a clear direction rather than multiple series that occasionally conflict with one another and often ship on the same week. The trick is to take a long, hard look at what has worked for Amazing Spider-Man in the past two years. It's less about fixing continuity than it is just telling, clean, fun, and engaging stories with a clear purpose and direction.I think I bring a very different perspective to this question than both Rich and Jesse. Though I've read the required Byrne/Claremont era that every comic fan should visit at some point, only names like Grant Morrison and Joss Whedon have spurred me to purchase a modern X-Men comic. Somewhere around the late 1980s, The X-Men franchise became far too convoluted, over-populated and redundant to be attractive to casual fans like myself. Or to put it more bluntly, it became a crowded "wank fest" which is a polite way of paraphrasing Warren Ellis oft-quoted term for the franchise.Streamlining all the X-books or at least a few of them into one weekly or thrice-monthly title would go a long way towards making the franchise more inviting to us on-again, off-again readers. As Jesse stated, nearly everyone can relate to the core X-Men concept on some level, and many of us avoid these comics despite our love for the characters. Think about that. I love cats like Cyclops, Wolverine, Emma Frost, Rogue, Beast and Storm, but if I have to pick up eight books a month the majority of which are simply mediocre in order to follow their adventures, I'd rather not. I've got plenty of X-Men trades on my shelves to hold me over whenever I get the urge to read a mutant adventure.But streamlining the franchise into one weekly or thrice-monthly title would only be a third of the battle in regards to making it more appealing to us casual fans. The creative team behind such a book would have to do their best to avoid submersing their storylines in too much past continuity. There have been tons of truly terrible X-Men comics over the past three decades, and I don't want to have to remember every god-forsaken thirty-part crossover from the nineties in order to understand what's going on in a modern book. I'm not saying that's the case currently with any of the X-titles, but it certainly has been numerous times in the franchises past.The last change Marvel can make in order to make this weekly format work is to separate the X-Men franchise from the rest of the Marvel Universe as much as possible. Give their many mutants their own corner to play in. This would allow creators the freedom to go wild in the same way that Morrison did on New X-Men and Whedon did on Astonishing. Anyone writing the X-Men has enough plates to spin already without worrying about Norman Osborn, the Avengers, and Skrull invasions. Crossovers between the X-Men and the rest of the Marvel Universe should be few and far between, carrying with them an importance that yes, this truly matters.Finally, I wouldn't really be addressing this question if I didn't in some way mention the thrice-monthly Amazing Spider-Man. Though I consider myself a Spidey fan and have devoured all his required classics, before Brand New Day, I only returned to picking up one of his monthly books because J. Michael Straczynski came on board. Even then, my interest wandered, and crossovers like The Other sent me running for the hills. Sound familiar? It was only thanks to the new thrice-weekly format, partly because of the freedom created by the reboot, but mostly because I knew I only had to buy one title in order to follow Peter Parker's story, that I was able to get back into current Spider-Man comics. For the X-Men, you wouldn't need a reboot of any sorts. Just a more focused sense of direction.Us casual X-Men fans want to read and buy X-Men comics. We just don't want the headaches. Going to a weekly or thrice-monthly format could be a great way to tap into our wallets without us screaming foul about it.

And with that, our first Mainframe installment has ended. Or our portion has, at least. We want your opinions. Make your voices heard! The fine folks at Marvel and DC read IGN every day, plus it's always fun to debate and chatter with fellow comic book fans anyway.So what do you think - should Uncanny X-Men go weekly? Would you buy it? What titles would you condense to make way for a weekly series?The comments section calls to you...