in order to recuperate. Influences Gen¹³s most obvious influence is Marvel Comics’ X-Men, which originally featured five young friends who were trained in secret by an older man, who tried to protect them from a dangerous world. Many of the more social aspects of the team were inspired by the second generation X-Men spin-off series: New Mutants. In fact, the original title of the book was to be Gen X, as seen in an early advertisement for the series in the second issue of StormWatch, but was later changed due to Marvel having an X-Men spin-off titled Generation X in development. The character of Rainmaker highly resembled the X-Men's Storm in that both characters had weather controlling powers. Marvel's Spider-Man notes this similarity in a crossover issue, to the point of briefly mistaking her for Storm in their first encounter. Also, the character of Freefall had her direct parallel in the character of Jubilee, both of whom had similar attitudes and physical attributes, including being the youngest in their respective teams. Freefall also had an unearthly pet, Qeelocke, which parallels the baby dragon Lockheed belonging to Kitty Pryde of the X-Men. Conceptual similarities among the pyrokinetic Burnout and the Fantastic Four's Human Torch are also quite evident. John Lynch was inspired by Clint Eastwood, both in appearance and personality. Another influence is Marvel's character Nick Fury, who is also a one-eyed secret agent. Many of the early Gen¹³ adventures also paralleled the X-Men. In issue #2 of the ongoing series, the team fought Helmut, a practically unbeatable armored opponent with a vendetta against the team's mentor, similar to the X-Men's Juggernaut. In the next five issues, the team went on an inadvertent world tour, similar to early adventures of the "All-New, All Different" X-Men of the 1970s. After their mansion was destroyed (a recurring element of the X-Men comics), the team went to a prehistoric island (similar to the X-Men's Savage Land), before going into outer space (X-Men's "The Dark Phoenix Saga"), and returning to a dark future (X-Men's "Days of Future Past"). Most of the X-Men parallels faded after this point when Brandon Choi was replaced by John Arcudi as writer on the series. However, it is worth noting that when WildStorm decided to revamp the series, they hired perennial X-Men writer Chris Claremont to do the job. Another similar comic series that preceded Gen¹³ is the Valiant Comics