S/D X-Men Runs

Diamond was having some crazy sales before Christmas, so I got the Morrison run of New X-Men for $7 as 7 digest-sized TPBs. I'm going to start that when I finish reading Liar's Poker.

I got the Morrison run of New X-Men for $7 as 7 digest-sized TPBs

O_O

it looks to me more like a weirdo cult in many ways

It occurs to me that a lot of Fraction's run on Uncanny could be read that way. Particularly the weirdly optimistic, overly-confident tone it had right out of the gate. But I never felt like he had that great of a grasp on how to write the X-Men.

Whenever I even CONTEMPLATE trying to get back into Xbooks my eyes glaze over - out of the loop since 93 or so, not really missing it

Silvestri was better than many of you think

X-books live and die on how engaging the student characters are IMO

'93 is not a bad place to fall out of the loop. Lots of good places to pick up after, though. Kelly/Seagle era, Morrison's New X-Men, Brubaker/Carey. Assuming you were fishing for suggestions.

Silvestri was not bad, true. We've had much, much worse.

I'd love it if there was always at least one X-book that's pretty much 75% soapy all the time, preferably the X-student book du jour. I'm a few years behind, but the post-Morrison/Whedon WALL-TO-WALL ACTION! style with very little interpersonal drama (particularly glaring in the student-cenric New X-Men, which read like an adolescent mutant holocaust narrative) kinda put me off.

i wasn't fond of the Brubaker space stuff/Warren Ellis Astonishing run that followed Whedon's run and tuned out. all the crazy AvX junk and after makes me want to catch up though

Agreed about the student New X-Men book. A good one in this vein was Zeb Wells's New Mutants which was actually about the old New Mutants getting back together. Involved something of a nostalgia trip, but there was some smart use of old stories, and IIRC the characters were really written as adults, with histories, getting back together, and that was cool. I don't think there's been an actually really good "student" book since the early issues of Generation X.

I think Aarons Wolverine and the X-Men is a pretty good student book.

xpost! I drifted away just prior to the inception of Wolverine & the X-Men, but what I've heard makes it sound like a decent student-centric book.

Re: getting caught up, I was recently idly thinking about picking up the collections of all the X-stuff I'd missed after 3-ish years out of the loop. IIRC, that amounted to approximately a ridiculous 50 trades. Hence my continued out-of-the-loopness.

yeah, i hear ya, the main reason i have slacked off on it

eh there's no real need to catch up, here's all you need to know:

- Cyclops leads a group of outlaw X-Men who are basically wanted by the Avengers for taking over the world and accidentally killing Xavier
- Wolverine leads a mainstream group of X-Men who have gone back to the original remit of running a mutant school
- In an attempt to keep Cyclops from going crazy, Beast brings the original X-Men forward in time to show them what their future holds in an attempt to change it; this ends up breaking time travel and the originals are now stuck in present time

proceed from here

Doc Casino, that re-New Mutants book sounds cool - I may investigate

anybody feel like putting together a list of everything x-universe worth reading that's up on Marvel Unlimited or does that fall to me?

I have no idea what's on Marvel Unlimited

If Age of X is up there, it's worth a look; probably my favorite of the recent crossover stories due to its disorienting beginning and how it spools back into a background thread running through the X-Books at the time

dan, you have a tablet right? You should get marvel unlimited. would save you a lotta money.

question for Dr Casino - a few years ago I think I remember you linking to a blog you and a friend had written where you reviewed the Claremont/Byrne era X Men issue by issue - is this still online and can you direct me to it? (obv if you'd prefer not to link to it for whatever reason then no worries!)

Aww, I'm touched! Yeah, it's still up there, perpetually shaming both of us since it was sorta just hitting its stride when we both got too busy and lost the whole momentum. Here's just the entries for the X-Men project.

Sweet! I'm reading it for the first time right now, that's great timing.

thanks!

Jonathan Hickman's House of X/Powers of X is outstanding, and we're not even halfway through yet.
These Xavier Files annotations are pretty fun to read, I'll definitely be keeping up every issue.
https://www.polygon.com/2019/8/23/20829772/x-men-marvel-powers-of-x-3-spoilers-references-easter-eggs-theories

Would someone not very versed in X-lore enjoy them, do you think? They sound intriguing, but I don't want to be constantly checking footnotes to understand it all.

Most likely, yes, I think. Though it's insanely detailed, the story on its own is pretty follow-able so far. You don't need to read footnotes to understand it, it just adds to the enjoyment and excitement to understand more of the references.

Also it's (sort of? hard to say right now) a reboot/retcon story. It doesn't undo everything that's happened since the beginning of X-Men times, but tries to re-contextualize it, and you see some of those events through new eyes.

I agree the run is excellent so far first time I’ve been excited for new x issues in many many years

Cheers, might have to take the plunge.

i've only seen the first couple issues. seemed wild and awesome and full of potential. it may seem bonkers overwhelming with new concepts and new takes on familiar characters, but my friend who's been keeping up with stuff more regularly assures me that this is NOT a case of it assuming i know a ton of weird continuity from the last fifteen years - - - it's just throwing a whole ton of new things at you, sorta like the start of Grant Morrison's run in the early 2000s. for what it's worth!

Would someone not very versed in X-lore enjoy them, do you think? They sound intriguing, but I don't want to be constantly checking footnotes to understand it all

My partner's been reading them - she knows the characters from the movies mostly, but she digs it and found it really easy to follow.

Hickman likes to make the reader sweat and work out the connections between things, CONSTANTLY, but it's a much more forgiving sort of complexity than "you need to know every character from the past 43 years of continuity, even the bad bits". I got a similar feeling when I read Gene Wolfe for the first time earlier in the year.

Re reading the HOX/POX hardback over the last day or two.

Really, really good stuff all around. I wish there were a way to read the story going forward in some summarized form though instead of collecting like 12 books per month for years

I’ve picked up some singles here and there but ultimately realized I’d rather wait for *significant* collected arcs.

I started collecting them all the X-titles for the first year of that run, but you're right, like 80% of it is spaced out incredibly. there are interesting setups for almost every series but most of them feel totally unnecessary. Winnowed it down to just core X-Men and Marauders. If anyone else thinks the other titles are worthwhile, let me know.

They introduced so many new titles even AFTER Dawn of X that I gave up trying to catch them all. Like is Ewing's SWORD worth it?

You can read the collected X of Swords next which is a decent story, pushing some of the elements introduced in Hox/PoX regarding Arakko/Krakoa and Apocalypse. The following events (Hellfire Gala/Trial of Magneto and Inferno) are just getting started now.

Another note that is that Marvel IS surprisingly - with six months backlog time - collecting the entirely of the X-Men titles in chronological order in various trades, previously Dawn of X (16 volumes) currently Reign of X (up to 3, expected to go to 11). Kinda hoping someday they'll all just be super cheap on Comixology or something.

While I have enjoyed some of these extended storyline type runs, criminy that is like $300+ bucks to read one huge story.

Everything melting down into this stuff is why I pretty much gave up on the weekly habit. Too much...

Nhex, thanks!

I’ll probably wait until the inevitable reboot of the line before really diving into those volumes. Volume form is how I’ve followed say, Saga - it requires some patience but then again there’s no shortage of things to be distracted by.

earlnash, by and large I’m with you. I can’t imagine buying, whatever, 10-15 titles a month like I did when I was 13. For reasons discussed exhaustively everywhere, it isn’t worth it: decompression, the flashiness of art/pages post-1991 or so, etc etc

Much of my comics money goes to comics or collections pre-1992 or so

I could not keep up on Batman at all. It used to be like 2-3 issues a month and DC said f'k it - they want Batman we will give them Batman a few years ago and it was like 10-12 issues a month.

X-men is some serious major nerd commitment. Read a bit of the big late model runs but it's just too dense at this point for me. Definitely need a scorecard to keep track of the multiple versions of characters and all the wacky changes and I cannot imagine what a Hickman deconstruction would be like.

Last i saw, MOST of the X-runs are available in Marvel Unlimited if you have a tablet and/or are comfortable reading at your computer
https://www.marvel.com/unlimited

that's true, a good option for the price
I wish Marvel Unlimited was better at multi-title collections and crossover reading order. though maybe they've improved, I haven't used it in a few years

Just checked - they're only 3 months behind now? Maybe I should just give up on print, most of my floppies are Marvel

there's any numbers of reading order guides online of course
https://comicbookreadingorders.com/marvel/events/

Hickman’s runs are so long I need to pause and get a breather, and then I forget everything and start again.

I read the first issues hickman’s monthly (agree marauders was the only other dece title, although xforce (!) was fun). But then the pandemic and having a toddler happened and I have a year and a half of deliveries from my comic book store to catch up on. Is any of it as good as hoxpox was?

Nope, unfortunately, but I feel like it might pick up on the way out. Also, he's leaving Marvel soon to do that Substack thing, so this era won't be as long as his other projects.

I followed but unsubscribed from his substack– it’s like all the boring texty bits Hickman puts in his book run rampant

Also substack is evil of course

Did anyone make it to the end/read the last issue? I lost track of Krakoa ages ago, it has seemed like a messy ending that hasn't really played to AE and KG's strengths, and that sapped my interest in finishing Hickman's run.

I have the lot but still haven't even started it, lol.

Perversely, I just started re-reading the immediate (initial) post-Claremont era. No, I don't know why. Alan Davis's solo run on Excalibur (that initial nine-issue storyline, at least) is still very near the top of the all-time X-book heap, and I expect Peter David's inaugural X-Force stint to hold up. The rest, well...

His second run on X-Factor is also decent for a few years

I haven't followed X-Men since the 80s, but I do have the House of X/Powers of X hardcover book and liked it well enough although I wouldn't say I completely understood it all. What should I read next? Preferably something collected in book format so I don't have to chase down lots of stuff.

The Grant Morrison run is a classic that works well a single, discrete story. Peter David's short X-Factor run from the early 90s is also fun.

The rest of the Hickman run is collected, but is a bit of a comedown after HOXPOX. After Hickman leaves, Gerry Duggan takes over to finish the story, quite poorly. Al Ewing and Kieron Gillen also had decently reviewed X books that just finished, but I haven't read them - they're a bit too wrapped up in ongoing continuity for my liking.

I read the Krakoa arc here and there but never with any consistency. The beginning mini-series are fascinating as a story, and a few other early issues really sparked, but there was, for lack of a better word, “too much product” to keep up with.