Age of Krakoa

Dawn of X Review: HiX-Men Report’s Favorite Moments & Characters

September 23, 2020 by krisis

As we gear up to dig into X of Swords: Creation tomorrow(!), Fariha, Tyler, and I talk about our favorite moments of Dawn of X, top characters, and a certain open bedroom situation.

(watch on YouTube)

What was your FAVORITE moment of Dawn of X? And, what characters have really shined for you? Tune in tomorrow for our deep dive into the first issue of X of Swords!

Want to relive the deepest dive into HOXPOX on the entire internet? In 2019 we recorded nearly 24hrs of content covering House of X and Powers of X (with me providing musical interludes for most of the episodes) on The HiX-Men Report.

Need help making sense of the X-Men? Visit my comprehensive guides to reading and collecting Marvel Comics or my definitive X-Men Reading Order.

The return of THIS WEEK IN X, every week during X of Swords!

September 21, 2020 by krisis

I’m SO EXCITED to announce that Fariha, Tyler, and I are bringing back my weekly series “This Week in X” to dissect the massive X of Swords event every week on YouTube starting this Thursday!

(We might even eventually see Zach make his return from the resurrection protocols. I’ve been assured top men are on it.)

Want to know as soon as we publish our first episode? Subscribe to my YouTube channel now! To get warmed up, we’ll discuss some of our favorite parts of Dawn of X tomorrow before we dig into X of Swords on Thursday.

New Mutants, Generation X, Academy X, & other young X-Men – Reading Order & Comic Book Collecting Guide

Follow Marvel’s youngest mutants in New Mutants, Generation X, Academy X, Young X-Men, Wolverine & The X-Men, All-New X-Men, and Age of Krakoa comic books in a definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and reading order for omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated February 2024 with titles scheduled for release through October 2024.

X-Men launched as a comic book about a school of mutants, but by the early 80s it was clear that a team written by Chris Claremont and featuring the likes of Cyclops, Storm, and Wolverine had outgrown being students.

While the injection of the occasional teen like Kitty Pryde or Jubilee into the team would briefly revive the scholastic concept, there was no getting around that Xavier’s School For Gifted Youngsters was neither a school nor filled with many youngsters.

Marvel’s solution to this was to capitalizing on the X-Men’s massive popularity to have Chris Claremont launch a second X-Men series and a third wave of new mutants. The book was called, appropriately, The New Mutants. It launched in 1983 with a prestige graphic novel followed by a series that ran for 100 issues.

New Mutants was meant to bring the X-Men back to their roots – a team of teens who had just discovered their powers, as mentored by Professor Xavier. As it turns out, even though comics characters don’t need to age, comics about teens have the same problem as TV shows about high school students – eventually there’s a need for them to learn something and eventually graduate! The New Mutants transformed into the more-proactive X-Force (see Guide to X-Force), once again leaving the line without a school-based title.

Marvel rectified that in 1994, when the Phalanx Covenant crossover launched Generation X – a fourth generation of new mutants. This generation was based in Emma Frost’s Massachusetts academy as mentored by her and Banshee – long-since retired from active adventuring.

Generation X ran through 2001, when Grant Morrison’s arrival shook up the entire X-Men line. Morrison repopulated the world with mutants, spawning new characters with bizarre powers at every page turn. The concept of the school moved back into their title, the newly-christened flagship of New X-Men. However, that book was mostly focused on the core of teachers at Xavier’s school, so Marvel launched a new volume of New Mutants alongside it where the former New Mutants could find even-newer mutants to recruit to the school.

This was the fifth genesis of new mutants, which became codified as New X-Men: Academy X. Academy X was the first real “school book” that kept the high school experience centered throughout its run and between team adventures. continued through several other flagship X-Men runs and transform into Young X-Men in 2008.

By that point, the effects of House of M meant there hadn’t been any new mutants in several years of publishing, and the X-line was under the direction to keep the mutant population contained. That changed again in 2010 after the end of “Second Coming” with the arrival of Generation Hope – the first of a sixth wave of new mutants.

Generation Hope subsequently was consolidated into Wolverine & The X-Men, which combined Academy X students with members of the new sixth genesis. That continued into Marvel Now, which would add some familiar faces to the sixth genesis – the original five X-Men, plucked from their Silver Age run as teens and brought to the modern day! This familiar cast of old new mutants took the spotlight off of the sixth class, although we’d continue to see new sixth class members as late as 2017 with a revived Generation X (with the original team as mentors).

Finally, the advent of the Age of Krakoa in 2019 began the seventh class of new mutants. This generation of mutants was different than what came before, because they arrived in a mutant society that promised them everything – health, happiness, and safety. However, that brought with it challenges unique to the mutant world, including many old foes intent on corrupting these young mutants to their own aims.

X-Force – Definitive Reading Order and Collecting Guide

X-Force comic books in a definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and reading order for omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated May 2025 with titles scheduled for release through January 2025.

X-Force was born in an act of pure marketing. Over time, it became synonymous with the idea of a team of X-Men that aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty.

Artist Rob Liefeld grew to be one of the hottest artists in the industry as he drew the final year of New Mutants. Comics were reaching the early height of the speculator craze, and Liefeld wanted to take the team in a new, more X-TREME direction. Thus, New Mutants ended and X-Force was born – a team of proactive young mutants lead by Cable, for whom the ends always justified the means.

Liefeld didn’t last very long on the title before defecting to Image, but X-Force as the proactive X-team has remained part of the X-Men brand ever since. Fabian Nicieza continued writing through Liefeld’s departure until issue #43, setting the tone and voice for many of the recurring characters.

Generally, the X-Force cast consisted of some combination of Cannonball, Boom Boom, Warpath, Sunspot, Rictor, Shatterstar, & Siryn, as mentored by Cable and Domino. The cast also sometimes included Feral, Dani Moonstar, & Karma. (Though Wolfsbane is associated with these characters via New Mutants, at the time she was appearing in X-Factor and Excalibur.)

In 2001, X-Force took a detour to reality TV-inspired, mature-readers X-Statix, followed by brief return by Liefeld and his familiar cast in 2004.

The title returned to popularity and acclaim in 2008 as a team of covert team killers lead by Logan and authorized by Cyclops. This team included connections to earlier incarnations with Warpath, Domino, Wolfsbane, & (eventually) Boom Boom, to which it added Wolverine (X-23) and Archangel. Elixir and Vanisher supported the team.

After that series ended with the “Second Coming” crossover, X-Force returned under the coveted “Uncanny” adjective. There may have never been a series more deserving! Rick Remender penned a fierce, all-time classic story that began as a hunt for Apocalypse but turned into much more. Remender brought Psylocke to the X-Force brand and turned her into its marquee star, along with Grant Morrison’s Fantomex and a team that included Wolverine and Deadpool.

In Marvel Now, Marvel launched not one but two X-Force titles at the end of 2012. Cable & X-Force was a familiar, 90s-tinged version of the team. A new volume of Uncanny X-Force lead by Psylocke and included Storm, Bishop, Spiral, Puck, & Fantomex. Both books were later consolidated into the darkly comedic X-Force (2014) with both Cable and Psylocke, as penned by Si Spurrier.

The title went on a brief hiatus from 2015-2018. The 2017 ResurrXion line replaced it with a familiar-feeling Weapon X title starring Warpath and Sabretooth. Marvel briefly revived the classic Cannonball & Boom Boom cast in 2018 for a 10-issue run by Ed Brisson that followed his Extermination mini-series.

In 2019, the entire X-line launched into the Age of Krakoa from the clean start of Jonathan Hickman’s House of X and Powers of X. This recast X-Force as a combination Krakoan FBI & CIA in a title anchored by Wolverine, Quentin Quire, Domino, and Forge, among others.