X-Men

X-Men on a Budget: Intro to X-Men

July 7, 2011 by krisis

Does this describe you: You dig the X-Men – from the movies, cartoons, toys, or video games – but you’ve never read a comic book.

It’s not so unusual! In the nearly fifty years since their introduction in 1963 The X-Men have become a ubiquitous pop culture presence – making the word “mutant” synonymous with being a superhero.

While it’s easy to be an X-Fan without ever touching a comic book, if you’ve never read a comic you’re missing out! At their best, X-Men comics far outstrip their representations in any other medium.

However, it’s hard to know what’s “best” with almost 50 years of comics to choose from – over 3,500 individual issues of dozens of titles. Plus, those comics are collected in hundreds of “trade paperbacks” or “graphic novels,” making your entrance into comics even more confusing. I created a Definitive Guide to Collecting X-Men to help, but it’s still hard to know where to begin.

What to do? Try this – a budget path to becoming a quickly well-read X-Men comics fan.

For under $25 each, every one of these books stands alone as an excellent story whose effect can be seen monthly in today’s comics.
For under $125 for them all, they make a terrific condensed crash course through half-a-century of comics legacy.

Intro to X-Men for $125 or less

#1. Dark Phoenix Saga for <$20 (Amazon)
Collects Uncanny X-Men #129-137 from 1980.

Why? The 1980-81 Dark Phoenix Saga remains one of the pinnacles of the X-Men’s long history, as well as one of the most widely acclaimed stories in all of comics. It takes the team from the New York sewer to a distant galaxy, with displays of powers and pathos throughout. Writer Chris Claremont does a great job of introducing each character and explaining what they can do, which makes this a perfect starting place. (Watch out – there’s also a $75 hardcover with the same title and issues – it’s not worth it!)

#2. Mutant Genesis (hardcover) for <$20 (Amazon)
Collects X-Men (Vol. 2) #1-7 from 1991.

Why? Witness the end of Chris Claremont’s unparalleled era of solo scripting as well as the pinnacle of X-Men’s popularity with this multi-million selling introductory arc from 1991-92. This affordable hardcover pits the team against Magneto, Sabretooth, and brand new foe Omega Red. If you loved the 90s X-Men cartoon this version of the team will seem very familiar to you.

#3. New X-Men Ultimate Collection, Volume 1 for <$25 (Amazon)
(or pocket-sized New X-Men Book 1 (Amazon) & New X-Men Book 2 (Amazon) for <$25)
Collects New X-Men #114-126 & 2001 Annual from 2001.

Why? Notable comic author Grant Morrison was brought in to reboot the X-Men’s secondary title to be more palatable to fans of their hit movie debut. As long as he slimmed down the roster and slipped them into black leather he was allowed a slew of liberties, like killing millions of people and breaking up a marquee Marvel romance. While his fast-paced, sci-fi laced writing can sometimes be off-putting, there’s no denying he plotted one of the best introductory arcs the X-Men have ever seen.

#4. Astonishing X-Men: Gifted for <$15 (Amazon)
Collects Astonishing X-Men #1-6 from 2004.

Why? Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon took the reigns in the wake of Grant Morrison and started with a hugely entertaining blockbuster arc. He maintains Morrison’s brisk pace, but focuses more on finding the definitive voice of the characters – especially fan-favorite Kitty Pryde. This story sets the scene for the last few years of X-Men, with Cyclops and White Queen in charge of the mutant race.

#5. X-Men: Messiah Complex for <$25 (Amazon)
Collects Uncanny X-Men #492-494, X-Men #205-207, New X-Men #44-46, X-Factor #25-27, and X-Men: Messiah CompleX One-Shot and Mutant Files, from 2008.

Why? This one is advanced level reading! Messiah Complex represented a huge change in status quo for the X-titles as the teams scrambled to find the first mutant baby born since the species was decimated. The process is a cinematic adventure that pits friends against friends, features some brutal fights, and fractures several long-time bonds across the X-Men. It lives up to its “complex” title, so be prepared to not recognize much of the huge cast of X-Factor and Academy-X students.

#6. X-Men: Manifest Destiny for <$20 (Amazon)
Collects Uncanny X-Men #500-503, X-Men Free Comic Book Day, and material from X-Men: Manifest Destiny #1-5, from 2008.

Why? Enter the modern age of X-Men, with the entire mutant race pulling up stakes from New York to move to San Francisco. This book captures a brief arc that followed Messiah Complex as well as a collection of short stories that will help you get to know the newer characters. From here you should be ready to pick up any newer X-book. (Beware, there is a second title with the same name and a different cover).

This is the first post in what could become a new series, so your feedback is appreciated! Are you a longstanding fan with a different where-to-start suggestion? Are you a new fan who nabbed one of these books and came back confused? Or, are you already started, and need second-step suggestions? Let me know in the comments.

Collecting X-Men limited series & one-shots as Graphic Novels

The definitive, chronological, and up-to-date guide on collecting X-Men limited series and one-shot comic books via omnibuses, hardcovers, and trade paperback graphic novels. A part of Crushing Krisis’s Collecting X-Men: A Definitive Guide. Last updated July 2016 with titles scheduled for release through April 2017.

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In the early 1980’s Marvel found renewed success with comic fans, in no small part due to a surging X-Men title helmed by Chris Claremont.

With the trend 60s and 70s anthology titles out of vogue, Marvel tried a new approach to promote their most popular characters to a growing audience – releasing limited series telling finite stories.

Some of the earliest characters to receive the limited series treatment were Scarlet Witch and Wolverine, but soon the trend expanded to include seemingly any and every character. Some of the series were collected in trade paperbacks at the time, and are now being revitalized in Marvel Premiere Classics hardcover editions.

In the 90s the comics speculating trend helped limited series and one-shots balloon out of control – each first issue bore a “Collector’s Item!” burst! These editions are under-collected, just as their stories are frequently ignored by the canon of current X-Men authors.

Marvel’s tactic changed in the 2000s, using limited series to showcase hot creators and to test the waters for possible ongoing series. It seems that the more targeted approach is yielding more collections! [Read more…] about Collecting X-Men limited series & one-shots as Graphic Novels

Baby I Can Drive Your Car

April 18, 2011 by krisis

This morning I was on the slowest possible trolley.

It made me think about travel powers, how we take our limitations for granted, and how no one can change that but ourselves.

In defense of my parking, that was the first time I had ever driven an SUV and I didn’t really understand the concept of its turn radius.

I drove a lot this past week.

I drove us into the city to hang out with friends. I drove Nan’s massive shuttle bus of a vehicle to pick up our fine dinner of Chinese food. I drove a tipsy E home at midnight in blinding rain.

(Which is an absolutely perfect situation to learn how to drive on a highway, and don’t let anyone tell you any different. The rumble strip is there for a reason, you know.)

My recent time behind the wheel has given me a chance to contemplate how I’ve limited my life around not being able to drive. I buy my essentials in bulk, since I can’t drive myself to the grocery store. I’m perennially absent from parties – especially ones at any distance – unless I can crash with someone else.

Even music – music – my number one commitment outside of staying married and holding down a job I enjoy – is limited by non-driving. I don’t go for gigs outside of Center City. I don’t look at concert listings outside of Philly. I assume I have to buy all of my friends’ new LPs online because I’m not going to make it out to their shows.

Of course, that all seems pretty normal. It’s been my life for my whole life. My non-driving was a serious commitment, right up there with my not watching TV, not eating meat, and not acknowledging the existence of Miley Cyrus. It was a big part of my identity.

It was also practical. And I didn’t have the money for a car, or for car insurance. I didn’t have the time to constantly circle for parking spots when we lived in South Philly. And for a long time I didn’t even have a car to learn on, so the entire point was moot.

Really, me not driving was for the best.

Back when I lived most of my life inside of City of Heroes I had a similar limitation: I wouldn’t take a “travel power.”

Most superheroes have them. Superman can fly. Spider-Man swings from rooftops. Batman has a mobile. Nightcrawler teleports – the whole point of him is travel! In City of Heroes every hero could choose a travel power at level 14 – flying, super-leaping, teleporting, or having super-speed.

Nightcrawler’s mutant power is teleportation. At the point that your entire super-power is all about travelling, would you even bother to get your driver’s license?

All seriously cool powers, right? But, my main superhero gal was meant to be a normal human being. Plus, why waste a power on moving around when I could be… you know, more SUPER. SUPERER!

I was super. I was a serious superhero that could kick the ass of anything near my level. But you know what? I was slow. It took me forever to get to the place where I needed to be super. Teammates were constantly standing around waiting for me.

It didn’t bother me at all … until I finally broke down and learned to fly, at level 35. It was awesome. Everything was faster. I got to PLAY the game more, instead of just jogging around the game. Within a day I was saying, “Why the hell did you all wait for me all of that time? You should have given up on me and made me learn to fly!”

They all cross their arms (really, there was an emote for that) and said, “You SAID you weren’t interested in flying. You SAID you were happy.”

I don’t have my license yet, but my increasing confidence in the car means I just need to wrangle up a licensed driver if I want to go for a ride. I drove to a party I would have never made it to in time on SEPTA. I got new prescriptions on a weekend, without wasting a lunch break on them!

I drove the Nan-Tank to get Chinese food like it was nothing, electing not to dwell on the fact that it was my first time driving a car other than my own, and it was in flood conditions.

(“Just think,” Nan pointed out with glee, “if we weren’t in [the Nan-Tank] that wall of water we just kicked up would have swallowed your entire car!”)

(I can neither confirm nor deny if that was followed by a subtle “yee-haw!”)

As it turns out, real life isn’t entirely different than City of Heroes, except I wasn’t stubborn enough to wait until I turned 35 to learn to drive. In both places I insisted I spent my time, effort, and money on the most high quality parts of my life and not letting anyone convince my otherwise.

That’s great when it comes to not wasting money on cable TV or never having heard a note from Miley’s lips, but not when it hamstrings me from doing even more of the high quality things I like to do.

Soon I will be a sure enough parallel parker to obtain my lisence, and then that housebound, SEPTA-reliant portion of my life that I’ve always taken for granted will be over. I can go to parties. I can go on a vacation alone! I can go on a road trip!

Odds are you probably have your own travel power, but maybe you have some other limitation you’re taking for granted. Do you have the power to eliminate it? How would your life be better without it?

Or, is it there for a reason – like paying for cable television would just give me a pointless way to waste my money and time?

Collecting X-Men Vol. 3 and Vol. 4 as Graphic Novels

The contents of this page have been integrated with X-Men Flagship Titles (2010-2019).

X-Men Titles (2010 – 2019) – The Definitive Collecting Guide & Reading Order

The definitive, chronological, and up-to-date guide on collecting X-Men flagship title comic books from 2010 to 2019, including Uncanny X-Men, X-Men, Extraordinary X-Men, X-Men Gold, and X-Men Red via omnibuses, hardcovers, and trade paperback graphic novels. A part of Crushing Comics – Guide to Marvel Comics. Last updated December 2024 with titles scheduled for release through February 2025.

This guide follows the main, “flagship” titles in the X-Men line from after “Second Coming” in the Heroic Age in 2010 through Marvel Fresh Start in 2019, just prior to Jonathan Hickman’s takeover of the entire line.

X-Men titles had been distinctly separate from the rest of the Marvel Universe for years even before they headed into two years of tightly coordinated stories and crossovers from 2008 to 2010.

It had been since Onslaught in 1996 that the X-Men interacted significantly with other Marvel heroes – or even wider Marvel Universe storylines! – in their own books. They also didn’t get out much. Aside from House of M’s ramifications in Decimation, you’d be hard-pressed to find a non-mutant Marvel hero in any X-Title other than Wolverine!

While that made for thrilling in-continuity stories for big X-Fans, it didn’t help bring new readers into the fold – or to share the wealth of X-Readers with other Marvel titles.

Marvel’s solution began with X-Men (2010). As with Astonishing X-Men before it, this title occurred relatively free of the convoluted continuity of other X-Titles, even though it made reference to outside events. And, unlike the self-contained Astonishing, X-Men, this title frequently featured guests-stars from throughout the Marvel Universe.

In 2011, Marvel ended their longest-running and highest-numbered title when they cancelled Uncanny X-Men, Vol. 1 with #544 to make way for a split in the X-Men between Cyclops and Wolverine explored in Schism. The subsequent Uncanny X-Men (2011) was still written by author Kieron Gillen with a similar tone and cast – just less Wolverine and Kitty Pryde. It was by many accounts (including mine) one of the best runs of X-Men ever written.

This, too, was in the service of steering the X-Men toward more interaction with the wider Marvel Universe – this time in the form of the major event, Avengers vs. X-Men.

In the wake of Avengers vs. X-Men, Marvel relaunched their entire line with nearly every creator shuffled onto a new book. In the shake-up, Brian Bendis hopped from the Avengers franchise to the X-Men franchise, taking over Uncanny X-Men (2013) (as well as a team of time-displaced teen X-Men in All-New X-Men).

Meanwhile, the adjectiveless X-Men volume relaunched a few months later with a primary cast entirely composed of X-Woman! It didn’t feel like a gimmick at all thanks to the X-Men’s legendary roster of women – including Storm, Psylocke, Jubilee, Kitty Pryde, Rogue, and Omega Sentinel, and more. Unfortunately, the title was quickly sent askew by the “Battle of the Atom” crossover and launch writer Brian Wood never quite recovered. Two later arcs by Marc Guggenheim (of TV’s Arrow) and G. Willow Wilson (creator of Ms. Marvel) were well-steeped in X-history, but not terribly exciting.

Bendis promised a lengthy run on X-Men, but another creator shuffle after Secret Wars in 2015 saw him depart the franchise for Iron Man in the All-New, All-Different Marvel.

In his place, Cullen Bunn took over Uncanny X-Men (2016). After a long streak of wrapping up soon-to-be-cancelled series for other writers, Bunn improbably struck gold on a menacing take on Magneto (2014) in his first ongoing series. He brought that villainous tone to his ongoing.

Alongside that, a more-heroic new title – Extraordinary X-Men – launched under the pen of Jeff Lemire and tied in closely to the wider Marvel Universe plot of the Inhumans and their Terrigen Bomb being poisonous to mutants.

After the resolution of the Inhumans thread in Inhumans vs. X-Men, Marvel relaunched the entire X-Men line in “ResurrXion.” This marked the first time since 2013 that there was no ongoing “Uncanny” title serving as one of the flagship books of the line. However, X-Men Gold was effectively “Uncanny,” with a Claremont-esque classic team of Kitty, Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus, and Rachel Grey, among others. Meanwhile, Cullen Bunn continued his Magneto thread into the All-New X-Men cast with X-Men Blue. Nearly a year later, Phoenix Resurrection returned Jean Grey to the cast of X-Men, and she launched a third flagship with X-Men Red. And, finally, the period wrapped up with five X-Men Black one-shots focusing on major X-Men villains.

Then, in November 2018, Uncanny X-Men returned with a bang – as a 10-part weekly story arc called “X-Men Disassembled.” That story branched out into “Age of X-Man” – an alternate reality event – while writer Matthew Rosenberg continued the storylines of his past year of X-Men mini-series into a disturbing final run on the title that killed off many beloved characters… only for them to return in Jonathan Hickman’s relaunched Age of Krakoa!