Maybe a personal thing but I don’t like Anole’s monster arm, and I like that his arms are back to normal, I just wish they explained why it happened
I like it because it marks what happened to the New X-Men and the struggles they went through; which is actually partially why I think editorial wants to get rid of the Popeye arm.
Anole got that arm protecting Pixie-in many ways it’s a symbol of their friendship and Victor’s sacrifice to protect his friends. It’s also probably the biggest story arc for Victor.
… I also think it just looks kind of cool because it’s rather unique look.
Besides pure laziness, I think Marvel is trying to remove it because it makes it a lot harder to argue ‘the New X-Men are trainees/haven’t gone through any trauma/haven’t been utterly failed by the adults’ when you have a literal physical representation of loss…
In many ways I think the reason people at Marvel dislike the New X-Men so much is because their story calls out the failings of the A-list X-Men.
*It’s hard to do rose-tinted nostalgia about characters you grew up with, and how the X-Men are ALWAYS right and ALWAYS perfect and ALWAYS great-when you have a whole team that basically represents their failings.
It’s why I think Liu threw Surge and Hellion under the bus to prop up 90’s classics like Jubilee, Gambit, and Wolverine (and COMPLETELY ignored their OWN questionable choices), it’s why Iceman regularly makes nasty put downs towards the New X-Men, it’s why all their trauma is swept under the rug/under addressed, and it’s why the O5 were pushed while the New X-Men were used as wallpaper.
*There’s also the question of whether the New X-Men are thrown in Comicbook limbo because they’re one of the most diverse X-Men teams and whether this is Marvel subtly going along with Comicsgate…
My opinion-it’s a mix of all four things I’ve stated.